On Wednesday, February 13, 2002, at 08:59 AM, Adam Shostack wrote: > Jeffery Rosen had an excellent bit in the NYTimes > http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/07/magazine/07SURVEILLANCE.html?pagewanted= > print > on 'that model.' > > "Last year, Britain's violent crime rates actually increased by 4.3 > percent, even though the cameras continued to proliferate. But CCTV > cameras have a mysterious knack for justifying themselves regardless > of what happens to crime. When crime goes up the cameras get the > credit for detecting it, and when crime goes down, they get the credit > for preventing it."
The American television program "The Agency" had a refreshingly honest angle on this whole thing: British surveillance nazis were busy using the ubiquitous cameras in parks to look up the skirts of attractive women sitting on the park benches. (The cameras are shown as having zooms and some very tightly crotched, er, cropped images are easy to get. An interesting hack would be install webcams around the homes of Supreme Court justices and their clerks and staff. "Oh, but our cameras are official...no, we can't show you a blanket search warrant for why our cameras are legal but yours are not...by asking these questions you must be a terrorist." > --Tim May "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." --John Ashcroft, U.S. Attorney General
