Whether the Britlandian rioters are rioting for political reasons, racial reasons, greed reasons or any other reason, a great many of them are clearly violating the law and deserved to get caught by the police and put on trial. In years past this would have pretty much meant being caught in the act. But now, they are rioting in one of the most spied-upon nations and urban areas on the planet. So it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out. There are a few relevant reports on the topic:
MP calls for BlackBerry Messenger suspension over UK riots
Yeah, that’ll go over well.
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Is technology being misused to identify London rioters?
Yay, technology!
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Where you can upload incriminating photos of rioters and help identify other rioter photos.
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It sure looks like a whole lot of the criminal rioters did not make a whole lot of effort to hide their identities. This to me indicates a serious lack of strategic thinking on their part. Not only are you dealing with public spaces that are highly spied upon by the government (according to the BBC in 2006, there was one closed circuit camera for every 14 Brits), but every yahoo has a camera, camcorder or cell phone with a camera. Who would be dumb enough to go about committing blatant violent crimes in public under such circumstances? Well… apparently, rather a lot of people.
This would seem to be The Test for Britains surveillance society. If there was ever a time for the CCTV system to prove its worth, this is it. But if relatively few convictions come out of all this nonsense, then it must be declared to be rather a crashing failure.
6 Responses to “Rioters vs The Surveillance Society”
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Well it’s not like your average rioter is working with a triple-digit IQ.
I just read that a lot of shop owners are defending their stores, even though they’re afraid of what the Police might do to them for it. Wonder how long it’ll be before the CCTV system is used to convict people for defending themselves?
That’s where a thinking jury comes into play to nullify stupid laws.
Yeah, but how many juries still a) think, and b) remember about the existence of jury nullification?
I suspect that the looters just don’t care. They’ve probably had plenty of experience with British “justice” and know it’s a toothless joke, so who cares if they get caught? They’ll get an ASBO, or serve a few weeks in jail, and then be back in their council flats getting their dole checks just as always.
Also, a lot of the rioters seem to be very young. As in, 11-15 years old. Even I would have a problem with levying a serious sentence on an 11 year old for anything less than murder.