Not as bad as that silly Panda to be fair.
Merry April Fools all.
Google to fund 'video Street View' for Central London
A joint project by the Metropolitan Police and London's Westminster Council to put CCTV onto the Internet has received substantial financial backing from Google, The Register has learned. On completion of the first phase, practically every square inch of Central London - including narrow alleyways, council debating chambers and …
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Wednesday 1st April 2009 09:57 GMT Jord
The Google machine
"Basically, it shouldn't be about surveillance at all, it should be about sharing. That's when we got the call from Google - it was almost as if they'd been listening to our meetings."
Did anyone else experience a chill running up their spine and some very loud ringing alarm bells in their head when they read this...?
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Wednesday 1st April 2009 10:01 GMT MnM
But what about privacy?
El Reg, this is lazy journalism and makes you no better than government propagandists. I don't want my kids, or anyone else's growing up under this kind of scrutiny. Even Paris Hilton (yes, leave it to me to find the PH angle) doesn't want that - one camera between at least two is where she draws the line.
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Wednesday 1st April 2009 10:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Related to this....
It seems the stimulus money will be spent almost entirely on CCTV cameras & surveillance equipment. Said Jacqui Smith, "the stimulus money will create millions of jobs putting idle hands to work, especially my husbands who has been busy with his quantitative easing".
The Right Honorable Yvette Cooper MP is quoted as saying ... "obviously once government spending has finished, the growth in CCTV will fall away, however we expect the demand from other countries will create a great export market for surveillance....they'll literally be able to see how good our surveillance is right there on the internet. I will be passing a law banning the wearing of herringbone shirts in London, as this does not look good on the cameras, together with a 'smile your on camera' law....we must look our best to potential customers!"
But many are not convinced, professional women of the night, fear "Google Street Walker View" will end up talking 90% of their revenue as men can pick and choose their girl from a wider range of streets. Google however has promised to only permit adverts *next* to the girls and then only for related services, condoms, whips, butterscotch, pay-per-view movies etc.
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Wednesday 1st April 2009 10:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
What a great idea
This way we can all play a part in stamping out crime in this city. Privacy? Bah! If you doing nothing wrong you've nothing to hide. Let's organise community surveillance committees so that we can watch the miscreants round the clock. Better start that prison building programme right now. Hey, and what better way to kick start the economy, or the building trade at any rate?
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Wednesday 1st April 2009 10:04 GMT Stuart
Good Idea
In general I'm against CCTV. But if we have it (and nobody asked me if it was OK) then it should be available to all and not just the taxpayer financed screenwatchers deep in a council bunker.
One protection is that we should be able to see what they see. If its too intrusive for us - then so it should be for them. I'm particularly incensed by the legislation restricting (that's effectively a ban) photographing police here in London while they aggressively photograph innocent people doing innocent things for their files.
Picturing them doing nasty things has resulted in prosecution and the threat of being photographed will discourage abuse.
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Wednesday 1st April 2009 10:04 GMT Tim
Not too bad a try
... but was never a possibility, as it would mean that they would have to show all the many demonstrations which go totally unmentioned in the press and on TV.
Years back I left a "management circular" that I had created on a colleague's desk, about the new charges for cycle parking at work. He was absolutely steaming livid at the proposal, ranting and swearing and banging piles of stuff down. Probably still hates me for it. Hehe.
Tim#3
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Wednesday 1st April 2009 11:22 GMT Ash
We must think of the children!
I fully and wholeheartedly agree with this scheme. Google should assist the Government by providing satellite images of every tree within London in order to have them properly monitored. We can't have kids falling out of trees, can we? They might fall into the hands of a paedophile!
We also can't ignore the terrorism issues with this. Happy Japery Day, all! Just making sure you're reading...2 minutes to spare on submission! What if a terrosismist got into the control centre? He could coordinate all manner of schemes from that location! I say we move it to China in order to prevent some extremismist terrorismist from gaining control of our entire video monitoring system, and potentially the ContactPoint security measures.
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Wednesday 1st April 2009 11:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Too credible?
Careful, we might all be laughing the other sides of our faces if Frau Schmidt and Gruppenführer McNumpty get wind of this "valuable addition to our arsenal in the war against civil liberties/terror". Although Jacq may be more keen on using such a system to catch the Old Man playing with his Old Fella in front of some taxpayer funded smut.
Nicely done.
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Wednesday 1st April 2009 14:17 GMT Steve Roper
Pity it's an April Fool's
because I'd actually have a lot less of a problem with CCTV if all the cameras WERE publicly accessible. Then we really could watch the watchers - and that's why this will only ever be an April Fool's joke, because the watchers don't want to be watched. Imagine: if we could all see what was happening on the CCTV the pigs would actually have to abide by the law instead of making it up as they go along. Government coverups would become almost impossible. As things stand, secret CCTV allows those in control to selectively delete or doctor footage, so for example if a judge, politician or cop does the wrong thing, or if the cameras prove an accused scapegoat's innocence, the evidence can be quietly removed or modified. Not so with public CCTV.
So my reaction when I read this article was, this has GOT to be an April Fool's because there's no bloody way the government would empower the public in this fashion. It goes against everything the police state we are being railroaded into stands for!
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Thursday 2nd April 2009 00:00 GMT kain preacher
At first
At fir st I thought this was real. Then it hit me.. We would able to see granny get robbed as the local police are eating doughnuts and cant be bothered . It would also show lots of crimes were the cops never showed up. Nope it would look bad if it caught some one getting stabbed and the local police showed up to late
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Thursday 2nd April 2009 14:33 GMT Jerome
The Transparent Society
I assume Mr. Ghia hasn't heard of The Transparent Society by David Brin. It's funny that we've got through so many pages of oh-so-insightful "Woo! April fool!" comments with no-one having mentioned it (although Steve Roper a couple of pages back came perilously close!)
Brin evangelises the idea that a surveillance network which is totally open to the public, much like the one described in the article, just might be a force for good. Regardless of whether this idea has legs in practice, it's certainly an intriguing concept.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
