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Comment by mancerayder | Hacker News Reader

There are people in the replies below going back and forth about whether the US or the UK started the surveillance state first. I think as undemocratic as the US can behave in practice, it's hard not to argue that the UK won the CCTV surveillance race. London is heavily surveilled. And it doesn't help that someone just posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49255496

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I'm referring to the title of the article blaming the UK for the actions of the US and US based companies.

Most of the cameras in London are privately operated by residents and businesses, not the state.

Who started it isn't really important, what matters is who will kill it?

I agree. The fundamental problem is moral rot in western governments in general.

I am nit saying the rest if the world is better BTW, just the problems and history have less in common.

Hard not to argue in what metric? The US has Flock cameras spreading like the plague, if we're going purely based on vibes. And the Snowden disclosures about how they spy on their own citizens on a massive scale is over a decade old at this point.

Plus, a city covered in CCTV could theoretically be freer than one with much less coverage, if those cameras are recording to encrypted storage and accessible only with a judicial warrant, and the others are a lawless free for all with private and public operators hoovering up all the data.

You missed out that 40% of US household have a video doorbell, 50% of which are Ring.

I find that all the metrics about CCTV very misleading, and the whole thing seems to be to distract that the article is blaming the UK for actions of the US and US based companies.

It's not really worth arguing over who is worse at violating privacy. Crucially theyre both awful, both getting worse and both treating Russia and China as an aspirational model.

This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

First, maybe we can just eventually require Flock cameras to also record only to encrypted storage accessible by a judicial warrant. Presumably you are perfectly OK with that?

Second, privacy advocates have much to say about being surveilled at all, regardless of whether the data is encrypted or not. They’re opposed to recording at all, not recording and then the judge gets to randomly decide when to release recordings.

Finally, the UK is part of Five Eyes.

> maybe we can just eventually require Flock cameras to also record only to encrypted storage accessible by a judicial warrant

This is a private company's proprietary photography and derivative works. While counties and states might be able to insist on such stipulations as conditions of use of public right-of-way, no such requirements would be legal otherwise.

Home Depot's CCTV footage is no different than Flock's footage captured from their parking lot.

Sure but that's all aligned with what I wrote here.

London's cctv reputation predates Snowden leaks. Though, I feel like US trying to get antianonymity laws passed started long before the UK has tried.

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