London Police Equipped With 360-Degree Cams

OriginalArlen writes, "In a story so surreal I had to check the primary source, the Register reports that the (London, UK) Metropolitan Police are trying out the use of eight tiny cams, mounted in the police helmet, to provide 360-degree evidence gathering in the event that an officer witnesses a crime. The press release also gives more evidence of the stealth spread of ubiquitous ANPR systems across the country as a spin-off 'benefit' to the London car congestion-charging scheme, which is likely to be rolled out across the country in the next few years. Are we already living in a Panopticon Society?" According to this report from the information commissioner for Great Britain, yep.

Sigh

[Jordan Catalano]

When I was a child I always thought how nice it would be to visit England.

Now it just... I'm just really dissapointed is all.

Where did I get such a silly notion that public surveillance is 100% wrong, regardless of benefit?

As I remember from Clarke's 3000 A Space Odessy

[Marxist Hacker 42]

We need highly portable petabyte flash rom to make pentopticon a reality for everybody. While I have no doubt that (at least at the resolution my PDA displays) you can get 8 low res video feeds, with audio, at a cost of only 100MB/HR, and thus a 4GB compact flash could handle recording everything a police constable does for a half a shift (change the card at lunch, with a couple of spare card sto slap in after a crime occurs so that the original card could be "sealed" for chain of evidence purposes), this technology won't be widespread until you can go a month or more without changing the data storage card out.

Re:Doesn't seem TOO bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever honestly tried to watch one of those police tapes? I wanted to view one because of a incident
that had happened me but after the stalling by police the tape 'vanished'. The system protects itself.
Its only logical......not necessarily right but its logic.

The technology - worth £15,550 !!!

[mspohr]

I can't believe that they paid £15,550 for this when they can get this http://www.oregoninstruments.com/product.asp?itmky =882426 [oregoninstruments.com] for US$129.00.

Granted, the cop version has more memory and a screen but...???

When will citizens be wearing these?

[ciaohound]

Seriously. I bicycle a lot, and cyclists experience all kinds of aggression from people in cars -- flipping the bird, shouting, throwing things. First it scares the crap out of you, but once fear subsides, you want to get even. If you had a camera on your bike helmet, well, your memory would be admissible as evidence. As this technology gets cheaper, I have to think that ordinary citizens may choose to protect themselves in this way.

Re:Can I wear one too?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is apparently a very common tactic. If you ever see a group of police with their badges covered chances are there is going to be some trouble. I learned this first hand at the Seattle '99 WTO protest. I was up in front of a big crowd and there was a line of cops done up in full riot gear with their names and badge numbers covered up, most were holding clubs but a few had AR-15s - it was very weird and intimidating because the crowd was mostly just sitting around and singing stupid songs about democracy and freedom like a bunch of hippies. It was about as non-threatening as you could get, many people commented on how the names and badges were covered and how the cops were just standing there staring and a lot of people felt scared. Other people tried to engage the cops in conversation (all of it friendly, I didn't hear a single insult towards the police). There had been reports of a small group of masked people smashing some windows earlier, but no violence of any sort at this point. After I was there for about a half hour or so someone in charge showed up in a car and talked to the guy who I assume was in charge of the riot cops. About 10 minutes after that the riot cops began "crowd dispersal" by attacking us with pepper spray, clubs, and rubber bullets. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life, there was no real warning of any sort. One of them said something into a bullhorn (I assume an attack order, I couldn't understand it) and then out came the pepper spray and rubber bullet guns and then the clubs started swinging and everyone ran in terror. As they chased us down the street I saw an old woman get clubbed in the back and fall face down on the sidewalk, they kicked the woman who tried to help her back and then shot both of them with rubber bullets as they laid on the sidewalk together screaming. I've never felt the same about the police or America since.

Terrorism, antisocial behaviour, etc.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

And we have far greater problems still with our current government's obsession with the perceived terrorist threat. Last week there was a big thing made of the head of one of our security services, stating that they had x groups and y individual terrorist suspects under surveillance, and knew of at least z active plans to hurt us. A lot of our media was hyping how terrible things really are, and now we really know how bad the real terrorist threat really is.

Me, I thought "Is that all?" and figured we'd do better if we spent the gazillions of pounds we throw at "anti-terror" activities on cutting KSI figures for road traffic accidents, researching promising medical treatments, and raising education standards. This is not to belittle those who belong to the security services. Indeed, I've no doubt that they do some valuable work and protect us from some genuine threats, and I'm grateful to them for it. But sometimes, the price of a little extra security (you can never have 100%, nor anywhere close) is just too high. Tony Blair has talked a lot during his time in office about taking tough decisions. The tough decision on terrorism is not to take all those headline-grabbing steps that ultimately reduce overall quality of life, in a futile attempt to make the country Safe And Secure(TM).

This camera thing is just another gimmick. It used to be that children would naturally respect a police officer and the local constable would stop and say hello to them in the park while walking his beat, yet today the police feel the need to cover their backsides with all kinds of video footage. Why have the police lost the implicit moral authority they used to have? Why is antisocial behaviour one of the biggest dirty marks on today's society? What happened to policing by consent? It is left as an exercise for the reader to decide whether the answers involve the threat of terrorism, or whether they're more to do with the government stripping parents and teachers of any legal right to effectively discipline children, misunderstanding human rights to mean treating convicted criminals like the second coming, adopting the nanny state view of legislation over education, enacting an extensive series of laws that are more about ease of enforcement than outlawing genuinely harmful behaviour, and eschewing all sense of personal responsibility from senior ministers on down in favour of a litigous, CYA, spin-laden society.

Why wear one? Put it in your pocket.

[Kadin2048]

I don't see why you couldn't wear one too, and then you'd be able to show your (assumedly) unexpurgated version alongside theirs, and thus prove not only did they do something wrong, but that they attempted to cover it up.

More realistically though, unless you want to be like the gargoyle guy from Snow Crash, totally covered in data-capture gear, what's going to keep law enforcement and government in check are the little cameras on everyone's cellphones. The tasering incident at UCLA is just the beginning; in the next few years as video-cameraphones become more ubiquitous, and ways for sharing the resulting video (Youtube, Flickr, etc.) become totally mainstream, you'll be able to pull out your cameraphone when you see something odd going on, and post it to the web (hopefully with some sort of geotagging and time/date stamping), and suddenly the onus will be on the cops to show exactly what they were doing.

Cameraphones and YouTube are more than just ways to make porn and stupid pet videos, they could be the beginning of a whole new era in the balance of power between common people and the authorities. How the people in power attempt to regulate the use of these technologies should give you a good indication of how threatened they feel by them.

Re:Why wear one? Put it in your pocket.

[b0s0z0ku]

in the next few years as video-cameraphones become more ubiquitous, and ways for sharing the resulting video

The "ways of sharing" is more important. You need to be able to stream the video to a server where it is kept for at least 2 weeks before any deletion is even possible. That way, even if you're arrested, the phone is smashed, and they find out your password, they won't be *able* to delete the video without your consent.

-b.

Re:Not 360

[TubeSteak]

They are activated by a switch on the belt.

I assume that means the cameras can be deactivated by the aformentioned switch on the belt.

Re:Can I wear one too?

[arivanov]

Well...

I suggest that you will have to learn from American Government approach to peacefull protest.

The standard scenario goes like this: US embassy sponsors the local Baseball League (at least several teams). It does it quietly for 2-3 years after which it gets a bunch of "democrats" (quotes on purpose) to demonstrate in front of the elected parlament on some issue. This is always done during the winter and it is done so for a reason.

Simply, the baseball teams are brought in to demonstrate as well. The demonstrations are mostly peacefull except a few snowballs thrown at the police. Now, there is a world of difference between a snowball thrown by an average kid and a snowball with a chunk of ice inside thrown by a baseball player (even a lousy one). In the first case the police shrugs it off. In the second a policeman is down with a very satisfying clunk and carried out on a stretcher straight to the hospital. Jolly good approach actually. The crowd is "unarmed" and if police opens fire the USA screams loudly about violations of democracy and police brutality.

So next time you want to demonstrate against something make sure that it is during the winter and draft a baseball team. Works a treat. Worked great in Bulgaria in 1997, in the Chech Republic, Serbia, Poland and nearly worked in Belarus (where the police had none of it).

As far as the original topic of the article goes this is silly. The only reason for this silliness is that the police in the UK is afraid to prosecute based on policeman evidence and testimony and is trying to do with CCTV instead. Unfortunately that is where UK police is going. They now have vans with hidden cameras parked in key sections of roads (I see one every 2-3 days), they have it in their cars, it was only a matter of time until they mount it on their head (or arse).