Longrider

Sitting as I do in training rooms on a daily basis, I’m used to casting an eye over the various safety posters that litter railway premises. Some are valid and provide useful information. Some are pretty inane, but harmless enough.

Recently, Network Rail started issuing a series of safety information posters under their “365 Safety” logo. Most of these have either been genuinely useful or statements of the obvious, but nonetheless, not particularly worthy of comment. Today, though, I saw one that took my breath away. It exhorted us to eat healthily, to make sure we consume the requisite approved five a day fruit and veggies.

I no longer work for Network Rail, so can cast an eye over this poster and cheerfully ignore its stupidity. If I worked for them still, I’d be insulted and patronised. I’d also wonder at them wasting money on something that is absolutely nothing to do with them.

The BBC site draws our attention to yet another attempt to put people on a database that will be abused, that will lead to people suffering gross injustice and that appears on the face of it, to have little in the way of safeguards:

Workers accused of theft or damage could soon find themselves blacklisted on a register to be shared among employers. It will be good for profits but campaigners say innocent people could find it impossible to get another job

This is not people who have been convicted of a crime, who have been demonstrably proved to have been guilty – this is simply a blacklist of grievances, of allegations, of subjective opinion, tittle tattle and unsubstantiated gossip. No “innocent until proven guilty” here. There is the useless and toothless data protection act that an aggrieved employee can call upon in the event of being wrongfully included on the database, of course. That is, if they are aware that they are on the blacklist in the first instance. At least with the criminal records fiasco, people get to see what is held on them.

I don’t have a problem with employers using references to check up on potential employees – that’s prefecrtly acceptable. And, in the event of a falling out between employer and employee, the employee may choose not to use that employer as a referee; it’s what I have done in the past. That this database is a terrible idea and is little more than a blacklist with no proper safeguards, and, indeed, is wide open to abuse by employers with a grievance and has the potential to wreck an innocent person’s life, is pretty obvious to a reasonable observer. However, to realise that not everyone is a reasonable person, indeed, that some are terminally and dangerously stupid, one only has to look at the comment from Les in Elgin. This moronic fuckwit has this to offer the discussion:

Big brother state? I’m all for that as at the end of the day, it makes society safer and fairer and gives criminals a harder time; if you have nothing to hide then why should you be worried?

To think that my grandfather ruined his health on the convoys, and died young as a consequence, to make this country a safer place for ignorant totalitarian shitheads like this.

Thus goes the headline in today’s Groan.

Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.

Am I surprised by this revelation? Am I buggery. CCTV was always going to be a placebo, a comfort blanket for the hard of thinking and terminally gullible. It makes a certain portion of the population feel safe; it doesn’t actually make them safe, though.

The first and most obvious reason being that the clued up criminals will simply move their base of operations to an area devoid of CCTV. This leaves the more empty headed variety to carry out their nefarious activities under the watchful eye of the CCTV operators. But, even then, it still isn’t working… Why might that be, then? What about all this fantastic face recognition technology? And what about all those cop shows where someone says “enhance that, please” and a pin-sharp image of the suspect is displayed neatly on-screen?

Ah, ain’t fiction wonderful. They can do all sorts of things in fictional TV land – travel through time and space, speak English to aliens and be immediately understood, solve crimes with DNA alone and, importantly, enhance an image that is so dreadfully low resolution that all you should get is a few unrecognisable pixels – but, hey presto! we get a razor sharp picture of the perp with not a pixel out of place. The reality is somewhat more mundane. The reality is that a low resolution image cannot be enhanced because it doesn’t have enough information in the image to enhance. And, frankly, facial recognition is a pile of poo.

So, there you have it, the entirely predictable being announced. The surveillance state has wasted millions on piss-poor technology that achieves bugger all. The low tech solution would be to spend that money on police officers patrolling the streets, but that, presumably, isn’t sexy enough.

Reading on through the article, though, they want to utilise the technology anyway – quelle surprise.

The warning comes from the head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) at New Scotland Yard as the force launches a series of initiatives to try to boost conviction rates using CCTV evidence. They include:

· A new database of images which is expected to use technology developed by the sports advertising industry to track and identify offenders.

· Putting images of suspects in muggings, rape and robbery cases out on the internet from next month.

· Building a national CCTV database, incorporating pictures of convicted offenders as well as unidentified suspects. The plans for this have been drawn up, but are on hold while the technology required to carry out automated searches is refined.

They also complain that the use of images in court cases has a poor record. Well, given the poor quality of the images, I suspect that a decent defence counsel would drive the proverbial coach and four though it. And, what is it with these people who think that national databases are going to do what good old fashioned policing won’t? Sure, if you have a decent image of your suspect, it will help – but go back to the original point; they are not decent images. They are, frankly, barely recognisable. You have only to see what they put out on news items and Crime Stoppers to get a feel for the poor quality of the pictures CCTV produces. They are little better than photofits.

Why do I get the feeling that the police are looking to make their lives easier rather than making a proper effort to secure safe convictions?

Slowly, surely, inexorably, the new puritanism is enveloping this country. Trawling its way through parliament is the egregious amendment to the criminal justice bill that will outlaw the possession of “violent” pornography. This terrible bill is the consequence of a terrible crime – and as such, is a terrible reason for it to be considered in the first place. As with the dangerous dogs act and the handgun legislation, we have bad law built rashly on the back of a tragedy.

Five years ago Jane Longhurst, a teacher from Brighton, was murdered. It later emerged her killer had been compulsively accessing websites such as Club Dead and Rape Action, which contained images of women being abused and violated.

So this man liked to watch violent porn. This does not mean that violent porn leads to violent acts. This is the facile thinking of the ban-it brigade, those who claim that porn leads to rape, that violent video games lead to violent behaviour. This is a non sequitur. People who are predisposed to behave badly may well want to watch videos and pictures of acts that turn them on. It does not mean that watching such material corrupts or depraves people to the point where they will carry out acts of violence against others purely as a consequence.

Under the new rules, criminal responsibility shifts from the producer - who is responsible under the OPA - to the consumer.

And where will this lead? Another operation ore is highly likely. This from Deborah Hyde of Backlash:

“How many tens or hundreds or thousands of people are going to be dragged into a police station, have their homes turned upside down, their computers stolen and their neighbours suspecting them of all sorts?

Such “victims” won’t feel able to fight the case and will take a caution, before there are enough test cases to prove that this law is unnecessary and unworkable”

Which is pretty much what happened with operation ore – innocent people had their lives and reputations destroyed by an obsessive, puritanical state set upon prosecuting scapegoats.

While I have sympathy for Jane Longhurst’s mother’s loss, I have no sympathy whatsoever for her nasty little campaign:

Speaking from her home in Berkshire, Mrs Longhurst acknowledges that libertarians see her as “a horrible killjoy”.

Ah, yes, the old “I’m jot a killjoy, but…” argument. Yes, Mrs Longhurst, you are a killjoy, because you want to subvert the law in order to impose your sensibilities on others.

“I’m not. I do not approve of this stuff but there is room for all sorts of different people. But anything which is going to cause damage to other people needs to be stopped.”

There being no evidence that watching pornography, violent or otherwise, causes such damage to others; it is not the place of the state – nor the victims of crime – to decree what people watch or read in the privacy of their own homes.

To those who fear the legislation might criminalise people who use violent pornography as a harmless sex aid, she responds with a blunt “hard luck”.

There you have it. Mrs Longhurst is now the arbiter – with the blessing of a puritanical state – of what you may or may not watch. Don’t like it? Hard luck is the reply. Mrs Longhurst is right and you are wrong. Hard luck, tough titty. That you are a consenting adult engaging in consensual activities, watching other consenting adults engaging in consensual activities is neither here nor there to Mrs Longhurst. She doesn’t like it, she doesn’t understand why you want to do or watch it, so, hard luck. What she says, goes. Get used to it. Your life is not your own. Mrs Longhurst will tell you what is okay or not.

“There is no reason for this stuff. I can’t see why people need to see it. People say what about our human rights but where are Jane’s human rights?”

Which just goes to demonstrate how catastrophically ignorant this woman is. Her daughter was murdered by a violent criminal – this has nothing to do with the matter of human rights or freedom of speech and expression. Mrs Longhurst is confusing negative and positive liberty. In restricting the liberty to read and watch what we like, Mrs longhurst will not prevent another tragedy of the type that befell her daughter. Those who are predisposed to murder, will do so. Meanwhile, innocent people will suffer the consequences of bad law because Mrs Longhurst went on a vengeance trip enabled by people like David Blunkett.

Via Freeborn John, yet another staggering intrusion by the state into our private lives:

More than 500,000 people a year are to be questioned about their sex lives and salaries by Government inspectors, it has emerged.

Sigh… The bastards want to know the ins and outs of everything. Is nothing sacred?

Officials will ask for information about former sexual partners, contraception and how long couples have lived together before getting married.

The 2,000-question survey, which will be carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), has prompted fears of further data security breaches as both names and addresses will be logged by inspectors.

The thought that went through my mind was echoed by Juliam commenting on FBJ’s piece:

…what happens of every one of those selected 500,000 people simply tells the researcher to fuck off…?

Should any inspectors be knocking on the door of the Longrider abode, that is exactly the response they will get.

I refuse to blow a gasket… I refuse to blow a gasket… I…

Now here’s an interesting idea:

The UK’s first ever prepaid card to incorporate Government-approved proof-of-age verification has been launched today.

By combining a prepaid Visa debit card with a colour photograph and PASS accredited proof-of-age hologram, the UreLife card provides a new way for parents and retailers, and for the first time online retailers, to stop underage spending on age-restricted goods.

This just goes to show that government is not needed when it comes to providing identity verification schemes. For those people who feel that they need some sort of proof of identity or age, this combined card does the trick. No NIR and no politicians or civil servants poking about.

That said, it will still be vulnerable to the risks from fraud as any other system.