It’s worth noting that there is a cultural difference between the US and the UK. In the UK, the police police by consent, rather than police by force. It’s the reason that most police officers are not armed (and went against the government when they suggested it).
The police have a lot more trust than in the US. They are also less attractive to the aggressive power trippers. This limits the rot. They are not perfect, but I know, from friends, there is a continuous game of wack-a-mole going on, to deal with problematic officers, and break up problematic internal groups.
The end result, there is more trust given to the police themselves. They have also shown they won’t abuse it egregiously.
The UK has been saturated with CCTV cameras of all sorts for decades so the frog has been thoroughly boiled on public opinion on them.
They weren’t exactly subtle during the post-911 fascistic scramble.
Even as an American, I’m well aware of the history around surveillance in Britain. V for Vendetta was largely a commentary on it, Radiohead has made some references to government/corporate oversight in their albums, etc.
ALPR cameras were invented in the UK in the 80s and as a country they stopped caring about privacy around that time as well.
The US is mad about them because its police force is uneducated, untrained and murderous. Whatever flaws the UK’s police have, it’s not nearly as bad, and having surveillance (in public) is not likely to result in you or your dog getting shot for no reason.
The US is (also) mad about them because it’s a violation of the 4th amendment of our constitution against unreasonable search.
And because US law enforcement have been using the private sector to bypass the need for a warrant.
I don’t really know the legal arguments that make surveillance of public places into searches, but let’s assume they exist and are valid… I still don’t think people would be that mad about it if you thought you could trust your police to use the information half-way responsibly.
police are untrustworthy in any country on earth.
Great contribution, very informative
ding ding ding
Humans generally don’t mind guardrails and the like when they trust the people enacting them.
We’ve never really trusted the PO-lice in the USA, some have enthusiastically but many have never
The state song of Tennessee has a line about murdering two federal agents searching for a moonshine operation. Americans only like cops if they are brutalizing minorities or striking workers.
Americans only like cops if they are brutalizing minorities or striking workers.
Yes.
Whatever flaws the UK’s police have, it’s not nearly as bad
The only major difference between the US and UK police is the numbers that are armed.
UK police are still full of the corrupt, racists, misogynists, rapists, child abusers and wife beaters.
The entire basis of policing in the two countries is different. This is reflected in their attitude and use of force, which is relevant when evaluating any new police power or tool.
At very very least, UK police don’t carry guns.
And the ones that do have a load of training and physiological tests
The difference is ANPR is that Flock is a private business, collecting data and stalking people across the US for commercial purposes, which sold this data to law enforcement - meanwhile law enforcement were using the private sector to bypass the checks and balances of court warrants.
In the UK, ANPR is an official tool, not private. Police need to get authorisation to use it, and it is not used for commercial purposes.
It’s still wank, but it’s not quite as wank.
It’s not used for commercial purposes
Maybe not in that way, but private car parks use ANPR all the time to fine you £70 for staying 1 minute over your allotted time
It’s the same technology, but it’s not the same network of cameras, is it? I’d assumed ParkingEye and the like would only have access to their own cameras that they had been contracted to set up by private land owners of car parks.
I was thinking on this when I wrote my comment above, and I’m not quite sure.
Either there’s a muddying of terms, where you have ANPR as a technology (which anyone could implement), and the police have their own, separate network of ANPR cameras. Then the police can obtain footage from private cameras as needed through warrants.
Or private entities submit their data to an ANPR database that the police maintain.Regardless, there’s not one big private network of ANPR cameras that the government have permitted to be installed on public land, and the police still have checks and balances in place to prevent abuse.
It’s not like big brother was invisible, but it’s much more different in a hypercapitalist state where a private corporation tracks and sells and launder data for a shell government. I’d prefer uk to that any day, and that’s saying a lot
Policing by consent is what is different, in America police are often a private force for those in power
More specifically, Flock is a private company. Because it’s private and commercial, police can just purchase access and don’t need a warrant.
ANPR in the UK is run by police. Using it falls under the same rules as any other police investigation.
How exactly would one withdraw their consent?
Buy a boat.
If society decides they don’t want the police I am sure they would disband
Probably with guerilla tactics.
We don’t have “Flock-style” cameras at all. We have a statutory system with a strictly defined remit that was subject to years of argument, scrutiny and rewrites before it was turned on, not an invasive profit factory run by ruthless, messianic psychopaths. Secondly, our cops are all educated to degree level, they’re not just a bunch of otherwise futureless thugs who sit a three-week impossible-to-fail class and are given a gun. Neither the UK ANPR system nor police are perfect, far from it, but both are orders of magnitude better than what you have the Land Of The Free™.
I know enough about the ANPR systems on public roads that the UK police have access to. Firstly, it’s centrally managed through the PNC and every single query is logged: each query has to me made by an authorised officer who signs in with a federated identity and has to make the query in the context of an investigation - any query made without that immediately launches to an internal investigation and instant no-questions-asked dismissal is on the cards for anyone who makes a query without official justification. You know how American cops can shoot a protester and go back to full work after a two-week fully-paid break? Last month a cop in the UK was fired and blocked from ever working in the police, as a security guard or even as a doorman for the rest of his life without any possibility of appeal. He stole a reusable carrier bag from a supermarket.
Also, different people in different organisations have different levels of access. The DVLA can see if a particular license plate has been logged anywhere in a given month to see if an untaxed car is in use, for example, but they can’t see anything else. A traffic cop can see if a car has insurance, tax and an MOT certificate, but not the owner’s name or address. The biggest loophole at the moment is private car park owners who can ask the DVLA for the details of the owner of a car to issue parking fines, but that’s being clamped down on and, regardless, is nothing to do with public cameras.
Also, also: as a public, statutory systen the UK system is subject to FOI and GDPR: anyone can demand a copy of all of their own records from it. Highly recommended.
The UK has surrendered their rights to a nanny state. They can’t even own pointy knives.
Let the crumpets fly, rosbif!
Americans idolise Europe and wouldn’t stop bitching about how great it is here and how easy we have it. But then they’ll go ‘No kings!, no government ID!, no mass surveillance!, no face scanning and fingerprinting everyone without them committing a crime!..’, like, do you lot want Europe style ‘democracy’ or not?
I’m an American living in Germany, and I’ve got warring feelings about how a country should be. That’s pretty normal for immigrants (I also teach integration classes and this comes up a lot). I prefer some things from the USA, and some things from Germany. On the whole, I prefer Germany, and while I’m very grateful and glad to be able to live here, it’s not a completely frictionless cultural transition.
For example, I really like that unions and guilds are respected and protected here and I love that people care for the environment more here, but I also enjoy changing my own oil (I don’t dump or spill it outside, nor do I dispose of it inappropriately- to answer the first question Germans always have). These are in opposition to each other, because even if I’m meticulous, a general population isn’t, and if most people changed their own oil, there would certainly be more small scale contamination events, and it would likely have an impact on the mechanics industry. If I have to choose between the environment and unions or changing my own oil, I choose the former, 100%. But it’s always going to chafe a little to pay someone else >50€ for an oil change.
At first, I didn’t understand the relationship between the environment, unions, and oil changes, so I was exclusively annoyed by the restriction. Once I learned, it became a lot easier to deal with.
It’s not really sensible to get annoyed at someone for not understanding a culture they don’t know. Obviously, it can get annoying when people completely ignore cultural unwritten rules, but just understanding half of the problem is pretty common for humans in general when talking about other cultures.
I’m 99% sure you’re allowed to change your oil at home, even in Germany.
There are restrictions about washing your car though.
You’re allowed, but you’ll probably get more hassle than it’s worth. Auto part stores don’t accept old oil, so you’d have to work something out with a mechanic. Your neighbors will be horrified, and depending on what type of place you live in, you might get some police who “casually” come by to make sure you’re being meticulous and have a plan for your oil.
I was hoping it didn’t come off like I was saying it was automatically illegal, it’s more just generally frowned upon. It might also be received differently from someone who seems like they really know what they’re doing: I’m a woman in my thirties, and while I grew up helping my dad do normal maintenance work on cars and can do all of the common maintenance tasks, I don’t fit the stereotype in Germany of someone who’s into cars.
Oh yeah, that’s fair then and totally me misunderstanding.
I don’t even have a car so the social ramifications of changing oil yourself are a little lost on me. All I know about car maintenance is what little I remember from driver’s ed - like how you’re not allowed to wash it outside of facilities with certain waste water filtering infrastructure and how to check your oil level.
Well said. I like your example, too.
Different people can have different opinions in America I think
