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Comment by tdoggette | Hacker News Reader

From an outside observer, Britain seems pretty clearly to be creeping toward an authoritarian state. Why is there no pushback to things like ASBOs being used to criminalize everything and omnipresent CCTV cameras?

EDIT: Not that this topic in particular is anywhere near the most serious example.

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Most of the CCTV cameras are privately owned by businesses, shops and the like. They're not all joined up. If the police want to see what has been on them, they need to go in and ask with a warrant.

On the other hand, councils etc have been shown to be abusing the permissions in RIPA to snoop on relatively minor offences so some concern is justified.

The difference to other countries is that you don't need permission to set up a camera overlooking land not owned by you, which is what has caused this massive proliferation. Whether the cameras are privately or publicly owned is irrelevant - the executive can gain access to the recordings fairly easily.

Social problems are caused by the beliefs held by individuals in the public, and the actions they take as a consequence of those beliefs. For example, if many people in a society believe that theft is an act they can live with, there is a high rate of thievery. The beliefs currently held in most western societies that lead to a lack of defense of personal freedom are that security is more important than freedom, that security can be improved through restriction of freedom, and that the average people in law enforcement and the government have the capability and will to restrict freedom in ways that increase security. Since most people no longer seek rational justifications for their beliefs and rely on naive intuition, it is impossible for their beliefs to be corrected through rational argument or by better informing them. Intellectualism is viewed as a form of extremism, and their intuition tells them that all extremism is bad and that truth always lies 'in the middle.' Therefore, when someone wants to appeal to them to consider the ideological underpinnings of their belief, or the logical consequences of it, they turn off and immediately ignore the person. Anything that is substantially different from their present experience is rejected, regardless of its rational basis. For example, when it was found that almost all of the MPs had been illegally using taxpayer money to pay for personal expenses, the concern of the public was never whether this is a behavior that should be punished on principle. The fact that throwing almost every MP into jail, or even just ejecting them from office, would seem "extreme" to them, so they reject the idea out of hand.

Were rationality still a valued trait in western society, the public might come to realize the things learned about human behavior over the past hundred years or so and the futility of efforts to improve security by limiting freedom. They might realize that conditions in prison are caused by the lack of freedom rather than the type of people put into prison. If prisons were full of plumbers and judges rather than criminals, they would be nearly indistinguishable from prisons full of criminals. The Stanford Prison experiments and many other real-world scenarios (Abu Ghraib was one that garnered publicity) illustrate this facet of humanity well. Having your freedom limited strips you of your humanity, and stripping someone of their freedom also strips you of your humanity.

Part of it is probably that there is no protected constitution in the UK - there is no distinct set of laws set up as "the constitution", and therefore there aren't any laws which see special protection from changes. Moreover, privacy in general is a relatively new idea, and the lack of political upheaval over the centuries means there haven't been any major events to cause a general overhaul where such privacy laws might have been created.

Part of it is probably that the scaremongering from mid-market and tabloid print media, as well as the ruling party actually works, and people have been led to believe that the authoritarian measures are for their benefit. There seem to be fairly widespread xenophobic attitudes, and a fear of the "out of control" youth.

The education that kids receive at school seems to be pretty poor [1], which gives people little historical and political perspective and therefore no strong feelings towards personal freedom.

The plurality election system of the House of Commons also causes a relatively weak opposition. I haven't been following UK politics recently, but as far as I know, the second most powerful party, the Conservatives, don't oppose the authoritarian measures, anyway.

[1] I studied at a UK university - the average standard of education among my fellow students seemed far lower than what I received in Austria

Because the general public loves it.

I don't tend to notice the CCTV cameras all that much. In my view the privacy violation they pose is relatively minor, considering that anything you do in public is, by definition, not private.

Orwell was British; prophets and home towns, etc. :-)

But seriously, crime/terror are getting easier with better technology. Some solutions are needed. Also, soon cameras with logging will be trivially cheap, so video logging your life ought to become common.

Let us be grateful that the British research this type of society and risk a 1984 scenario. We can then copy what works.

If you want to have a seemingly-psychic look into the future of Britain, read up on the Stanford Prison Experiments and scale them up.

Britain has a serious problem with its youth, more than any developed country in the world, including gun crime america. In america the rough spots are confined to certain sections of town. In other european countries youth are generally well behaved. In the uk though, many youth are just simply out of control, I wish there were a lot more cameras (and people looking at them). Droves of the middle class are simply choosing to leave the uk and settle in france,australia,spain,canada because of this.

What do you mean by "a serious problem with its youth"? High crime rate? Gang activity? Why do you suppose the problem exists?

Chavs. Not really gangs, not serious crime, but generally "anti-social behaviour" - disrespect to adults, picking on the weak, sitting on other people's cars. Basically, types of behaviour you do not see in any other developed country. Even in us 'ghettos' you won't see the youth harassing their neighbours.

The reasons are many - -high density, more use of public transport -mixed development (rich living near the poor), -lower levels of welfare than the rest of europe, -more exposure to american television because of shared language (wannabe gangsters). -football hooliganism

There's are also a rise in american style gang activity, expecially among minority youth in cities, but it's nowhere american levels yet.

> disrespect to adults

Seriously? People see it as a problem? I see it as a normal symptom of being a teen.

I'd love to see some hard evidence of that claim.

It's a tragedy of the commons. Daily Mail readers like parent poster are convinced the country is going to the dogs. Since many of them have the power, money and/or influence to do some small thing such as set up private CCTV surveillance of public land, or deny public space to a disenfranchised group (only by ageism of course - watch for a proper fight if they try this on a race-related basis), between them they can damage our public spaces and society. The same people will write the council demanding double yellow lines outside their house, and write to the council bemoaning lack of on street parking near their favourite shop.

Eventually you end where we are now - with local councils using anti-terroism laws to create mini intelligence agencies for the school admissions system. That is not a joke. Google it.

If that's the case, daily mail readers overreacting and having power, how come it hasn't happened in other countries, why aren't there daily mail type people in those countries. There's got to be some truth to a 'youth problem' otherwise asbo's wouldn't have been created.

Maybe the problem is that Britain has more "Daily Mail readers" than other countries, and THAT is the great British problem (not antisocial youths).

Actually, American "Daily Mail readers" worry more about terrorists and pedophiles (and 10-20 years ago, drugs). We've had this problem forever. This is the country that declared war on Spain and conquered their overseas empire based upon agitation from the newspapers. I can't speak for other countries, but Britain's not alone in using tabloid-generated memes and moral panics to chip away at civil liberties.

You know, this is a perception I've picked up about almost every post-war generation of British youth.

More control means more crime. Youth, even more than adults, deal very poorly with being treated like animals.

> More control means more crime.

Citation? Every study I've seen says higher numbers of police and CCTV surveillance cameras both lower crime.

Unless you mean criminalizing normal behavior causes crime, in which case, yeah, I'm with you. But if we're talking street crime - vandalism, mugging, pickpocketing, robbery, assault, etc - I think it's pretty well proven that more presence/proactive action actually reduces that stuff considerably.

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