Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Recently, there has been 'talking' CCTV cameras installed in Middlesborough, England - uncomfortably close to home for me. The cameras are manned from a main room, with police officers watching your every move, 24/7... one toe over the line, however, and they can tell you to stop this time. Tiny offences like dropping a gum wrapper and even just cycling in a pedestianized zone, no matter how safely or sensibly, are worthy of public humiliation.

Read the Daily Mail article for more, and Government jargon attempting to say it's the right thing to do.

"This isn't like Big Brother. This is Big Brother."

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Do you consider this different from placing cops on every street corner?

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Big brother is when they're INSIDE your house.

This is just a way to magnify the abilities of the police force. If you don't believe that dropping gum wrappers and cycling in a pedestrian zone should be illegal, you should talk to your MP. If they start to go into your house, though, like setting up infrared cameras everywhere and justifying it by "well, we can detect infrared signals from your house, so information about stuff you're doing inside is technically out in the public space for us to record..." that's not good. Then it's really time to coat your walls with tinfoil.

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ATTN: LOWER BOARD USERS HAVE MOVED TO ANOTHER FORUM. COME JOIN THE FUN!

I said '1984 in the making', not that it's 1984-esque already. But it makes me wonder... How long until they do put cameras in homes?

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First off, on the topic of CCTV cameras in public places: WHEN YOU ARE IN PUBLIC, PEOPLE CAN SEE YOU. A CCTV camera watching you is no different than a police officer watching you.

Secondly, I don't buy the slippery slope of "They put them in the city, how much more of a step is it to put them in our homes?!?!?!111!?!!!!".

First, it's a slippery-slope fallacy. Second, it's a HUGE step. Unless you're committing crimes or conspiring with criminals and/or terrorists, there is no way that "they" will ever think of putting cameras in your house.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

This is absurd. No one has an expectation of privacy in public!

And how exaclty, does that happen? I don't know a lot of people who spend their entire lives outside.


So in other words, if you break the law, you can expect to be punished for it? How horrible!

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Frankly, if the cameras are in a public place monitoring public behavior, then as far as I'm concerned, there is no violation of privacy. Now, if those cameras are in bathrooms, changing rooms, homes, etc., then that's a different story.

The long and short of it: if you're not committing a crime, then you shouldn't worry about the police watching you in public!

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In my opinion, cameras are better than police officers. If a police officer sees you accidently drop a piece of paper, he might think it was on purpose. However, if a camera see you, the police will be able to replay the recording to see if it was accidental.

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I think it's alright if the cameras are put in a public place. Cameras in people's houses are a different matter. Wether or not it will come to that is questionable. The politicians might not do it once someone important(like a reporter) asks the same question. "Will this become a big brother situation?" Then they won't go into the homes. (Although the civil service might trie to do something)

News flash: There are cameras all over the place in public areas. You are nearly always being surveilled in public. This is not a new idea, nor is it Big Brother-esque.
If it ever gets to the point where cameras, etc. are in private homes, then there'll be cause to worry. But I don't see that happening. There are too many smart people out there who question (at least some aspects of) their governments. Not as many as there ought to be, maybe, but I don't see it happening in our lifetimes.

As for other aspects of 1984...
The media already choose what news to broadcast and when and where.
The media have been proven to doctor photos.
Depending on your viewpoint, history is being rewritten every day.

Our lives are being controlled, to some degree, by the news reports that are readily available to us. Sometimes it's necessary to look beyond CNN and Fox News, and see what the alternative news sources have to say (i.e. AdBusters, zmag.org, and I'm sure there are countless others which I don't peruse). Mainstream media and advertising peddle propaganda, it's just a matter of seeing it for what it is. Of course, one's political views may weigh in there. Someone who is conservative may not agree with my opinion, but someone who is liberal may tend to see some truth there.

Anyway, just another opinion; please don't jump all over me for it.

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I don't think political views really weigh in at all.

Conservatives value their privacy* and distrust "mainstream" media as much as liberals. Well, this conservative does, anyway.

Political views may weigh in with regards to what "privacy" is. I, for one, don't really care if my phone calls are monitored, so long as the calls aren't released without some good reason. I AM against it because I see it as a waste of resources that could be spent tracking down terrorists, but whatever..

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

MHG makes some good points: propaganda is inescapable in the media, but as long as we can preserve basic freedoms like saying and printing pretty much whatever we want (with only a few extreme exceptions, as outlined by the "clear and present danger" clause and other such clauses [at least in the USA, and I realize this is taking place in England]), then the truth should never end up being entirely swept under the rug. When truth is obscured, then the power of an influential few becomes much more dangerous...at least in my opinion.

As far as I'm concerned, beyond all wars, beyond murder and genocide, and beyond all crimes established by law, the single greatest crime in all the history of humanity is to steal away someone else's right to individual thought. Unfortunately, that happens more often than we are aware, because everyday someone is trying (and all-too-often succeeding) to feed someone else a twisted or completely wrong "truth," which will guide that person's audience to think in certain ways...and hence to act in certain ways that may very well be contrary to how they would act were they given the real, uncensored truth. In this light, there's a deeper, darker accuracy to the statement "knowledge is power."

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

Ty, I'm sorry if I insulted you at all. I didn't intend to. It just seems to me that most mainstream media is skewed to the right. But hey, maybe I'm just oblivious to media that is skewed to the left, because I'm more apt to agree with it.

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Meh, no insult there. You'd have to try to insult me. Turn in to Rosalie, come back, and try again.

I don't see a right tilt to the media (maybe with Fox News, but that's not as "right" as some would have you believe, but yeah..).
Occasionally, I do see a left tilt to the news I see on CNN, but they make up for that by adding Glenn Beck.
More often than not, the slant I see in the news is a day to day thing, with it wobbling aroung center. That makes me wonder if it's not the news that's slanted, but my opinion.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Well, I am a criminal justice major, and this has come up a few times before. Basically, this job makes it much easier for us cops to do our job without having to worry about the menial things. We'd rather have the camera's be looking for speeders and jaywalkers, and have the cops working on the more serious things.

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This definately isn't like a Big Brother situation. I mean "Oh no there are cameras invading my privacy in a public place where people can see me." How horrible. And placing a camera in some back alleys where there isn't always someone to see the crime happen is a good idea.

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