UK Government Considers Lining the Streets With Lip Reading Surveillance Cameras

[mandy]

Lip Reading Surveillance Cameras To Stop Terror
Shouting, face scanning, eavesdropping, X-Ray firing and now lip reading CCTV, do you still feel free?

"Read my lips...." used to be a figurative saying. Now the British government is considering taking it literally by adding lip reading technology to some of the four million or so surveillance cameras in order identify terrorists and criminals by watching what everyone says...

full article: http://www.infowars.net/articles/april20...eading.htm

[BellisimaJ.]

"Read my lips...." used to be a figurative saying. Now the British government is considering taking it literally by adding lip reading technology to some of the four million or so surveillance cameras in order identify terrorists and criminals by watching what everyone says...

There comes a point when you have to decide if giving up your freedom is worth your safety. I think this may be that point for the Brits.

On a personal level, I am not willing to give up any of my freedom to the government. Safety without freedom is not my idea of a good life.

[amy]

There comes a point when you have to decide if giving up your freedom is worth your safety.

The people who were most willing to give up their freedom after 9/11 were people who in reality were in little to no danger--terrorists have no interest in unknown towns with 100 people in the middle of nowhere because it wouldn't have the same media impact as hitting a symbol that is known worldwide.

New Yorkers (like myself who lives a little over 1 mile from the WTC and knew people who worked in it), for the most part, were among the strongest objectors to the curbs that were put on people's freedom (Patriot Act etc.).

[BellisimaJ.]

The people who were most willing to give up their freedom after 9/11 were people who in reality were in little to no danger--terrorists have no interest in unknown towns with 100 people in the middle of nowhere because it wouldn't have the same media impact as hitting a symbol that is known worldwide.

And, those same people in the least populated areas, are the ones who most staunchly defend that piece of trash known as "The Patriot Act".  : : :

I knew one person who died in the WTC. He would have agreed.

[mandy]

A related article:

The UK's first police "spy drone" has taken to the skies.

The remote control helicopter, fitted with CCTV cameras, will be used by officers in Merseyside to track criminals and record anti-social behaviour...

The spy plane was launched as a senior police officer warned the surveillance society in the UK is eroding civil liberties.

Ian Readhead, deputy chief constable of Hampshire Police, said Britain could face an Orwellian situation with cameras on every street corner...

full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story...87,00.html

[mandy]

A related article: NYC to copy London

The New York Police Department plans to outfit Lower Manhattan with some 3,000 security cameras as part of a homeland security plan, similar to the network of cameras that is monitoring the streets of London. Cameras will be equipped with face-recognition software and the capability to discern license plate numbers...

The central question is how the NYPD will ensure that the data gathered from the cameras is not misused, Kark pointed out. Policies no doubt will be developed to limit who has access to the information garnered through the cameras, he said. However, information security policies often lack in the area of implementation.

"Government employees tend to sometimes not be as conscious of implementing those policies," Kark said...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/spQHuUzK...kers.xhtml

[mandy]

Related news - a small victory for privacy advocates:

Closed-circuit television (CCTV) system operators would need exceptional justification for recording sound as well as video, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has warned.

In a newly revised CCTV code of practice (pdf) the ICO said that sound recording is intrusive and unnecessary in most circumstances, and that the use of sound recording could undermine any public support there is for CCTV.

The UK has more CCTV cameras than any other country in the world according to the ICO. There are an estimated 4.5 million cameras in the country, recording the average person 300 times a day, according to some estimates...

full article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/29/...recording/

[Kristijntje]

2 related articles:

The United Kingdom has the most surveillance cameras per capita in the world. With the recent news that CCTV cameras do not actually deter crime, how can the local town councils justify the massive surveillance program? By going after pooping dogs.

In a recent interview with The Guardian, the head of the Metropolitan Police's Visual Images Office explained the failings of CCTV:

    "Billions of pounds has been spent on it, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It's been an utter fiasco: only 3 percent of crimes were solved by CCTV. There's no fear of CCTV. Why don't people fear it? (They think) the cameras are not working."
...

full article: http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9939635-46.html

Despite being a modern liberal democracy, the UK seems to be in the thrall of the kinds of state surveillance that wouldn't go amiss in Judge Dredd's Mega City One. DNA databases, proposed ID cards, and most notably the widespread adoption of closed-circuit television (CCTV) are all tools that have or are being employed by the UK government as anti-crime measures. But new statistics show that this reliance on remote surveillance of the population has had an insignificant effect on crime prevention...

full article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/200...crime.html

[jax]

Derby City Council, Bolton, Gateshead, and Hartlepool used surveillance to investigate dog fouling.

They spent billions of pounds so they could watch dogs poop?