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Ear to the Ground

Who Wants to Be a Big Brother?

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Posted on Dec 5, 2009
flickr.com / andersdenkend

In London, there’s a surveillance camera for every eight people.

With 4.2 million surveillance cameras in Britain and not enough people to observe them all, a company called Internet Eyes has come up with a solution: reward volunteer “spies” with cash prizes to watch streaming camera footage and blow the whistle on evildoers. —JCL

The BBC:

There are 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain watching our every move.

In London, there are more CCTV cameras than any other city in the world with one camera for every eight Londoners.

But as victims of crime have found to their cost, catching criminals on camera is dependent on the equipment being both monitored and maintained.

BBC Inside Out’s investigation has found that all too often Big Brother either is not watching, had a broken camera, lost the footage or could not be bothered to go through the tapes.

Even within the Metropolitan Police itself, there are differences of opinion about the value of CCTV.

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By CCTV, January 13 at 2:34 pm Link to this comment

Great idea - why spend the tax payers money on having
staff monitor systems 24/7 - sure there is the data
protection side that needs to be looked at - but I
support the idea wholly.

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By cctv system, May 15, 2011 at 7:22 pm Link to this comment

The camera does work, but people are becoming smarter and eventually crime will become more bizarre and in hidden locations. Rest assured we are not addressing the safety needs, just increasing spies.

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By gerard, December 6, 2009 at 1:30 pm Link to this comment

It’s all getting TOO ridiculous. REdSalvo here:  History lives! Perspection over Inspection.

Solution for our “border problem” and all those “aliens” and “drug lords”—just give California back to Mexico which we stole from them in the first place, and give “manifest destiny” back to those mustachiod pater familias in Washington who invented it in the first place. Take the money out of drugs. And open some real jobs for people who can’t find honest work and so live on the street and beg.
Of course we’d have to stop fighting in Afghanistan to get the money to do it.  Ah, well, the world’s never going to be perfect—but it could be better.
Spies in the skies. Spies on the border. Spies in the Af-Pak mountains. I spy, you spy, we all spy—but still we don’t see the important things. Only the stupid cat-and-mouse game. Alas.

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By melpol, December 6, 2009 at 5:36 am Link to this comment

Felons are needed. Housing one prisoner creates ten jobs. Enforcing the law will
put the unemployed to work guarding and feeding criminals. It will also give
millions of unwanted high school dropouts prison jobs, and give them a chance to
become a part of the American dream.

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By samosamo, December 5, 2009 at 9:40 pm Link to this comment

Well, it all began with George Orwell creating ‘big brother’ in his book ‘1984’ so
why not go on to the required video screen that has to be in every room or see
every room in the house, office and everywhere so’s to keep all those ‘evildoers’ in
check, hell, just go ahead and make several of the islands around the british isles
and pack all those evildoers away now.

And I guess everyone britisher will have to prove they are innocent everyday sort
of like going to church every week to ask that old man with a beard living on a
cloud for forgiveness for everything you’ve done all week so you can maintain a
clean bill of health… ummm, er, uh, no make that a ‘clean bill of innocence.

But I would hate to mention this but isn’t there already more spy cams in america
now than what the british have, even proportionally as well a quantitatively?

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By mcthorogood, December 5, 2009 at 4:05 pm Link to this comment

Want to help fight border crime? Instead of wasting your time reading librul blogs, you could be monitoring cameras and sensors on our southern border.  Become a “Virtual Texas Deputy” today! Sign up at BlueServo dot net.

BlueServo is a public-private coalition. Although you won’t be paid, you can rest assured that you will be helping BlueServo earn money.

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By gerard, December 5, 2009 at 3:28 pm Link to this comment

It’s so farcical:  Many people would give their eye-teeth to be “surveilled” daily or weekly on TV and can’t get the attention for love or money.  Many others spend hours putting each other in videos, their own “private” TVs, and can’t get too much camera time. Then the stuff like national and local gadgets watching all of us all the time, plus satellite surveillance, electronic tags and chips, news cameramen sneaking around celebrities here and there everywhere.  Talk about Absurdsville!  There’s just gotta be a way to jam all the circuits and bring the entire apparatus crashing down.  Something this nutty just has to fall of its own weight somehow.  I anticipate the day and hope to be there with my Raspberries.

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