back to article Info chief slaps Met on CCTV in pubs

The Met Police got a short sharp rap over the knuckles yesterday, as the Office of the Information Commissioner questioned what looks very much like a blanket policy to force CCTV onto public houses in certain parts of London. The story begins with a letter to the Guardian last week, from Nick Gibson. He is currently …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @CCTV - Prevention or Solution?

    ... or oppressive system of surveillance that is neither prevention nor solution.

    "Dear oh dear, MPS. But then, if the police had said we're only going to support the issue of a licence provided that the bar employ trained door staff would there be an issue?"

    Well yes I would, since when do I want the rozzers dictating any aspect of my life? Since when did I become a criminal whose drinking habits need to be recorded? Or who needs specially trained staff to control me? If this was a camera outside a police station the rozzers would be attempting to lock the owner up for 10 years for filming them because it might be useful to a terrorist. Hypocrisy is rife here.

    The Rozzers should not be dictating what laws and rules they want, nobody elected them, they don't answer to the public and such things belong in police states.

  2. Chris
    Black Helicopters

    More suggestions

    I think dave lawless and Dave (Bar Towels) are on the right track. Is there anything that says the camera has to actually be plugged in to anything? What about the recorder? Does it have to have tapes in it?

    Maybe the camera is on a dedicated circuit and the breaker "accidentally" got tripped, and no one noticed for a few months (or years).

    Is the camera installed in an unlighted foyer?

    Say there's a pile of free advertising papers next to the door that everyone gets a hankering to read very carefully (right in front of his face) as he enters the establishment.

    Perhaps the shutter is out of adjustment and it snaps its photo a half-second AFTER the person has passed.

    Come on folks! Get creative here. Maybe a playmobil re-enactment would get the creative juices flowing...

    No anonymous posting for me, I don't think the "long arm of the law" is long enough to reach across the Atlantic, but it sure looks like the black helicopters are circling.

  3. Magani
    Unhappy

    Remind me...

    ... where George Orwell's grave is so I can see where he wrote "I told you so" on his tombstone.

    ... where the great tradition of 'innocent until proven guilty' in Her Maj's Sceptred Isles has gone.

    ... where personal freedom and its bedfellow, personal responsibility, have gone.

    ... to stop visiting the land of my forebears. It's getting even more depressing every year. Thank goodness that due to the economic climate, I'll be staying in the Greater Antipodes this year.

    ... to cut the news feeds from the UK to our benighted colony's leaders as all these ideas give the local pollies' limited imagination far too much food for thought.

    ... that we're all dooooomed, I tell you.

  4. Danny

    Quintessenz

    Austrian activists took control of a CCTV to test how best to blind them, recommended laser pens and balloons.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Great idea

    Last year there was an argument followed by shooting at a taxi office 200 yards or so from my house. A perfectly innocent guy standing outside the local pub was hit in the head and killed. The pub is near a major junction in a part of London not known for being peaceable. The area is knee deep in CCTV, and I think the pub and taxi office have their own outside. Guess what? In spite of all the "valuable evidence" that must have been gathered by these modern technological wonders, no one's been caught or - to my knowledge - questioned.

    Perhaps the whole crime solving thing is just a diversion, and the real purpose is to provide ITV with an endless supply of cheap programming in which a stern-voiced presenter makes snide remarks about criminals and makes our boys in blue shine - endlessly helped by CCTV. Where these programmes always come a little unstuck is the muttered bit at the end of 90% of cases where it turns out the "criminal" wasn't charged or got off with a caution.

    If the police want public support, they should start solving real crimes and making charges stick, rather than going for CCTV driven easy wins (litter dropping etc etc) and criminalising photographers.

  6. Dave

    Big shopkeeper is watching

    You know the VAST majority of CCTV cameras aren't run by "the authorities" but are privately bought and run by businesses, shops mostly. Your local westfield shopping centre has more camera than your local council. And that doesn't count the cameras installed in each shop by the tenants. And don't even start me on petrol stations, with their numberplate readers!

    Boycott these shops who have no right to treat YOU like a criminal who is going to steal things?

    Mr Ozimek - I'd be genuinely interested in seeing some statistics on the % of CCTV that is police run, since it seems to be your specialist subject - fancy it?

    "The Rozzers should not be dictating what laws and rules they want, nobody elected them, they don't answer to the public"

    I'll refrain from just calling you stupid for that argument and just say you're just ignorant of both the law and local government. Do a bit of googling and take a look at licensing regulations and police authorities. If you don't agree with how the police are run in your area what are you constructively doing about it?

  7. David Robinson

    There

    have been over 3600 laws and over 17000 new regulations installed by the Labour regime in the last 12 years. The government has increased its employment of watchers and enforcers by over 700,000,all well paid with enviable pensions. The government of East Germany went broke through their spying on their people and all of the communist countries were poorer and less advanced than the west. You wonder where all our money went? Heres part of the answer.

    Dave.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    re human rights barrister Emily Thornberry.

    This human rights schtick is just a career move, cf Harperson and the ex health woman who's now in the trough at BT

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Tony

    Surely wearing a towel on your head is enough to get you black bagged and shipped off to the yanks for a friendly torture session? No thanks.

    Sorry Tony , your gov is going have to this on their own. we don't torture innocent people. Now if the person steals from American corp, we demand his ass be sent over right away so can tazer him in the genital as a warning to others . It will one can of peanut butter he wont ever forget.

  10. Catkins
    Linux

    Michael Nyman

    Nothing like having a famous local resident weighing in against CCTV.

    http://www.thecnj.co.uk/islington/2009/022009/inews022009_01.html

    Somehow I can't see Michael Nyman as the sort of person who visits spit n sawdust pubs with serious crime problems. Good on yer Mike.

  11. Craig Cockburn

    Big Brother

    I live in the UK and work in Ireland. The number of CCTVs in one street in the UK is probably more than all of Dublin put together. It's like a UK time warp in Dublin - the only CCTV you see is the occasional camera for monitoring busy roads. No traffic light camera and few if any cameras for watching individuals. Even the UK government is happy to admit that the UK has more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the world http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/topic_specific_guides/cctv.aspx and it is only when you go to other countries that you realise just how vast the gulf is. Incidentally, the Irish government isn't talking about ID cards, another UK government Big Brother obsession.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Big Bro' IS watching you

    Time I think for pubs to have lots of Groucho Marx parties. You know the thing, the thick framed glasses, the large nose, the moustache. Turn the lighting down. Lots of background noise. More, when did you last see a rowdy shopper in the supermarket wine and beer area? More false moustaches, I think. I can't find the link now but I read that a guy in the U.S. was paranoid about webcams and mikes inside digital-analogue boxes, quoting a Magnavox model. He reckoned it was the reason for the worldwide push to switch to digital TV. The poster bought a digibox and opened it up to disprove his pal's conspiracy theory. And there they were - a camera and a microphone. Don't know about you, but my family hardly speak while watching TV and surely the volume from the speakers would crowd out anything the mike might pick up. Not sure my folks would go along with watching from behind plastic Groucho marx masks though.

  13. Henry Wertz Gold badge

    Surveillance society

    "The police pretty much said they can't do anything for our apartment block 'cos we didn't have CCTV"

    I think I'm speaking to the choir here but that is a bald-faced lie of course. Most of the US is not such a surveillance society (the police-state shit happens in New York City area mainly, along with Texas). But areas WITH excessive CCTV, they will try to use cameras *instead* of police on foot and in cars in the area (I don't know if they just figure the cameras can replace police, or just don't have money for both...) Since cameras don't catch anyone, and there's no longer police on patrol, crime goes up. They use this crime increase as an excuse to install *more* cameras.

    Here, some apartments have cameras in the hallways (to prevent vandalism mainly -- i.e. spraypainting the hallways... a few I've seen obviously were not even hooked up.) But in general, the best deterrent, police can get to anywhere in town within about 5 minutes. They still managed not to catch a serial mugger (even after they were given info what bar he hung out in, bragging about how he beat people up every night...) But in general..the US chav-equivalents (meth heads, gangbangers, and drunk students.. I don't live far enough south for drunken rednecks) are FAR more deterred from commiting petty crimes by the likelihood that someone will call the cops, they'll show up and toss them into a black-and-white, than they are deterred by being picked up on some shitty, blurry camera.

    The British plan for massive use of camera, and centralizing police in massive centralized installations, is exactly backwards from what you need to help with crime. It will not be documented well enough on the typical cheap cameras to do anything, and the centralized police will be so far from, well, everyone not immediately near the police station, that they won't come out to actually help with any crimes. And criminals are already criminals, will police catching them on CCTV and mailing them a ticket or whatever really going to do anything? No, if they are already vandalizing, mugging, and chaving it up, I see no reason they would pay the ticket anyway.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Get on with it already.

    The UK need to go ahead and get on with it already. It's obvious the government won't be satisfied until it has shoved an electronic leash up the arse of every citizen.

  15. Wayland Sothcott

    Make it easy on yourselves

    Or rather go along with it because it helps the police.

    We used to use Windows with 64MB of RAM but now most computer professionals would refuse to deal with such a machine until it had been upgraded to at least 512MB. It's not impossible for us to work on a 64MB machine but you would think so based on our reactions.

    And so it is with the police. They used to be able to solve crimes based on what witnesses saw. Now because CCTV is avialable, the only crimes they will work on are the ones on CCTV. So if you want help from the police you had better gather good CCTV evidence.

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