Sorry but Mcintyrej, this is turning into a Big Brother nation. I'm a 17 year old who's trying to make something of his life. I'm paranoid about being arrested because of what our country has become/is becoming. There are traffic cameras everywhere, in fact on my commute to work there is often a couple of cop cars in inconspicuous places along a small section of dual carridge way (which I often use to overtake the gridlocked morning rushhour)
I'm worried about being arrested, not because I'm 'breaking the law' but because of the way our country is going.
thats unreasonable, tbh.
Speed traps are not an invasion of privacy or even...anything. They've been around since ticketing started. Traffic cameras are not a "bad direction" and you certainly won't be arrested because of them. If you're trying to make something of your life, make it legal and you won't need to worry.
but the ease at which traffic camera's are used is a symptom of the larger issue.
I wholly condone a government putting in systems of control that can be quite easily abused in the future. In fact the police already use the recent terror laws to arrest and detain perfectly innocent people in really ridiculous situations.
Did you know there is a no protest zone without prior police consent around the houses of parliament?
It really is becoming quite frightening and the ease at which the general public are allowing it to happen is truly staggering.
My Wish "I cannot wait till i can afford a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, somewhere far from this madding crowd we call society. Build a small wooden house and forget this world exsists."
Each day that goes by the stronger this wish becomes.
The sad thing is people walk round ,carry on day to day, blinded by the lights so to speak. Those with shades are unable to fight (or should i say unable to afford to fight) the oppression that blights life.
And once your marked well lets just say theres lots of flag waving.
So when is the right time to stand up and say NO MORE.
There will come a point when theres nothing worth fighting for, by which time im pretty sure we will have either anihilated ourselves or become detactched so far from "real life" that nature has provided so far that we just dont care.
Maybe i got this all wrong and theres more fiight left in people then i guess.
But when is the last time this country took a stand for anything as a whole unified nation.
Divide and Conquer, the new order of the day, online 24/7 in your house your car in your minds and in your hearts.
It's arguments like this that dilute the anti-Big Brother argument. Your local constabulary's traffic enforcement has sweet f.a. to do with big government's big plans for big national databases. The police cameras are most likely part of the ANPR network, and the police cars are waiting there until a suspicious car goes past. No tax, no insurance, associated with wanted criminal/bail jumper, etc etc. Either way I drive from my place, I'll usually end up going past a set of permanent ANPR cameras, but it doesn't bother me, because I know that it reads my plate, looks it up against a table of "wanted" registrations, finds no match, then moves onto the next one.
The problem lies not with a couple of traffic cops waiting for an illegal driver to go past, the problems arise when the govt starts to legitimise the process of integrating the DVLA database with the NHS's database, and the PNC, and the Inland Revenue, and so on. All these organisations have vast amounts of data on us, quite legitimately - they need it to do their job.
It just needs to stay separate, that's all. Some half-witted PCSO rent-a-cop has no right to access my NHS details, and some civil servant at the DVLA doesn't need to know anything about how much tax I've paid.
Have you read 1984? I know it's a bit over the top, and it's fiction, but it really is an excellent example of where governments want to end up.
Secondly, traffic police are doing something wrong. They're preying on easy targets rather than getting out there and catching criminals. In a way you could say that's infringing someone's human rights. By all means catch speeders now and again, and police on patrol (for murderers etc) should be allowed to catch speeders, but the whole Gatso camera and 4 or 5 policemen using one speed trap is a bit much. Then they put up CCTV pretending it's for our own safety (which most unthinking people accept as they feel scared because the government keeps telling us bad stuff to make us scared), but very quickly it won't be for safety but to make sure we're doing things correctly and.... Arrrgggghhhh. Then you're not far from thought crime.
I disagree ... Gatsos are the advanced guard of an automated system of justice. This is highly undesirable: once guilt is determined by which side of an arbitrary threshold you happen to find yourself on, then the particularities of a situation can be conveniently forgotten, and the right to "due process" is eroded even further.
Due process is an essential element of any proper system of justice, and its fundamental role is precisely to protect the people from the excesses of law and government. Automated penalty systems do not improve justice; they weaken it.
I agree, I remember back when I had a company car I was passing a lorry who was driving, in my view, dangerously and erratically. I floored it to get passed and away from him. I didnt have the fastest car in the world, but the turbocharger saw to it that as I cleared the front of the lorry I was exceeding the speed limit and the GATSO said "Hello!".
Thankfully it didnt have film in so I wasnt sent a ticket, but in taking an action on safety grounds I had broken the law. If there had been film in that camera I would have been ticketted, had my insurance increase, paid a fine and had points on my licence purely because I value my safety and slowing up and holding back half a mile wasnt an employment friendly option.
A policemen I can talk to and explain, but GATSO cameras are hard to negotiate with without having a tipex bottle to hand for painting the lense.
Here's an example of possible abuse of the DNA database, involving linking it with other existing databases. In this case, it would use the DNA database along with the electoral roll to link a DNA record with local people with the same surname and incriminate people who aren't on the first database.
(This isn't *quite* the article I was looking for, the one I wanted mentioned more about the police using it, but it's the closest I could get whilst having to sneakily look at the internet while my boss isn't looking..).
It's a complete breach of my privacy and rights to have the police come sniffing round my house just because someone who happens to have the same surname as me has pinched a car down the road. It also negates the 'if you haven't done anything wrong, you've got nothing to fear' argument.
I support ANPR, because they catch uninsured drivers and stolen cars. I am totally against speed cameras, they don't work and they are dangerous, people are so paranoid about their speed they don't concentrate on where they are going. We have had more accidents on the main roads near my house since they put in speed cameras. I don't remember a single accident before they were put in, but now people keep rear ending other cars while looking at the speedo.
The other issue I have with speed cameras is they divert funding from the police, at a time when we should be giving them the funding to hire civilians to do the paperwork so the actual police can do their job.
A few things I would love to do if I had the power...
-Abolish all Anti-Terrorism laws, liberty and freedom is the greatest weapon against terrorism
-Ban speed cameras, use the money saved to hire more traffic police
-Ban talking CCTV cameras, or CCTV cameras with microphones
-Scrap ID cards
-Scrap the NIR
-Scrap the DNA database
-Scrap Trident, and spend the trillions of pounds wasted on it giving our troops the pay increase and recognition they deserve
..that's about all I can think of for now. Sadly any party that offers something close to that has no hope of getting into power. So instead we have to put up with two parties that will bring in some form of ID card.
I just hope some people see sense and realise the only way there will be change is to avoid voting for Labour or Conservatives...
The U.S. National Research Council reports that data mining for terrorists doesn't work (link). But I trust the forces in the government will be bloody-minded enough to carry on with the project.
More people die in accidents related to speeding than murderers. I want the police to focus on criminals as well, but I'm torn between wanting them to protect me from murderers and protecting me from a much more likely and realistic death on the roads.
I don't really understand the GATSO system but in the US, you can go to court and contest the ticket that is sent in the mail. I always thought that was part of due process.
-Liberty and freedom are exactly what terrorists hate you for and are the reasons they will kill you. only weapons are weapons.
-i already talked about speed cameras
-The reason CCTV cameras don't work very well is because we can't hear the perps use names and places that could incriminate them. the government doesn't care to hear you talk to your friends about your level 70 night-elf. The CCTV issue is not nearly as bug of an issue here in the states so I cant honestly sympathize with that.
-I only support ID cards that verify citizenship, other than that you're spot on
-nir=ID cards
-You realize that if you were murdered, the first thing the detectives would do is check the scene for the DNA of your murderer. scrapping the DNA database would leave the public far more unprotected against criminals who can't be caught or convicted for lack of evidence. I'd rather be protected against murderers than the government.
-the trident system may very well prevent those soldiers you and I respect from ever going to war in the first place. Britain will never again be invaded by another country's army mostly because you could disintegrate them with nukes.
I'm pretty conservative but i can't even tell what the heck you are. A libertarian maybe? I'm all for limiting government in a big way, but not one that will leave me unprotected.
You can contest speeding tickets here too, but you'll end up in front of a petty magistrate that probably doesn't drive a car themselves because their excessive public salary can afford them a house just round the corner so they can walk to work in their hemp slippers whilst hugging some precious, angelic juvenile delinquents. Afaik you also need to be able to prove that you were avoiding an accident or suchlike. Naturally, since you avoided the accident, there tends to be no evidence of something that didn't happen, so you're screwed. Afaik, performing a safe overtake is no excuse either. Indeed, you'll often find a speed camera placed in the one spot where it's safe to overtake after you've been trundling along behind a lorry or caravan for the past ten miles.
Wow, you actually believe that?
If only reality were so simple.
Well, excuse the link to a paper which is best used as bogroll, but the Daily Mail article suffices here, and might give you an idea of the scale of the problem in the UK: link
I agree. However perhaps what you don't understand is that the DNA database in the UK doesn't just consist of convicted people. It includes people who were unsuccessfully charged with crimes. Hell, it includes people that have never even been charged. Your DNA is routinely taken in a whole variety of situations, put on the DNA database, and never removed. The DNA database should stay, but for convicts.
Have to agree there. If anything, let's have a few more ballistic subs. In a "have your say" section of the BBC news website about our two new aircraft carriers, one succinct comment pretty much summed things up (bearing in mind we spend £30+billion a year on benefits) which read along the lines of: "Only £3bn each? At that price, let's have a dozen of them. We're going to need all the firepower we can get when everything kicks off in the future."
ah i had no idea the CCTV issue was so bad, but that article and the attitudes of the british people on this forum assume that the government is malicious towards its people and is giving the information to private companies which I just don't see happening.
Some pessimism concerning the government is, sadly, to be expected but have a little faith, the only things that are truly out to get you are traffic cameras.
Only 1 in 10 accidents in the UK are caused by excessive speed, the most common cause is lack of concentration, things like not looking at the road because you're so paranoid about getting fined for doing 33mph in a 30mph limit you're too busy looking at your speedo.
If we lose our liberty and freedom, exchanging them for weapons, we will be exactly the same as those terrorists. They want to take away our freedoms, the governments are letting them win by doing exactly that.
Murderers don't affect my daily life, I've never met one, seen one, or heard of anybody else who has seen or known one. Perhaps in America there is a murderer on every street corner, but not here in the UK.
Name one war that has been prevented by having nukes. I would rather spend money on paying the soldiers better, and giving them proper support when they get back from tour. You would have enough left over to give them the equipment they always seem to be so short of.
I mix and match, but I guess I would be described as libertarian. I just remember the time before all these restricting laws came in, back when nobody was scared of terrorism. Since the laws came in and the war on terror started, the risk of terrorist attacks has sky rocketed. All the data showed that going into Iraq would seriously increase the risk to civilians being targeted by terrorists, but our leaders still did it. They approved actions that would kill their own citizens, and I don't see how anyone, conservative or liberal, can support that.
OT - Saw someone on GMTV this morning who was titled of "Director Of Liberty". Now if that doesn't remind me of something off some oppressed society in a Sci-Fi movie then I don't know what does...
You may joke about that, but when people see democracy failing and their freedom being taken away, they have to take more extreme actions to get their point across. There is an interesting section in the Bill of Rights that condones overthrowing the government if they don't follow the constitution.
"George W. Bush is the first u.s. president to declare himself exempt from over 750 U.S. laws, sidestepping most of the bill of rights including the constitutional requirement that the president follow all laws."
Erm, my memories not what it used to be, but wasn't it in York that some farmer sprayed several tonnes of cow shit all over his local council offices a few years back ? Cool dude
Cheryl Cole's Mum and Dad live about a hundred yards from my front door....err, so yeah...lets go put lighted fireworks through their letterbox...err, i mean through Gordon Browns letterbox, that'll show em, him, that'll show him... Grrrr..
You're in Newcastle? What have you got against the Tweedy?! Admittedly she's not the brightest bulb in the room and doesn't care much for toilet attendants (then again, who does?), but I'll have to think whether I'd kick her out of bed for that.
This is a very valid point, actually. The speed camera completely usurps due process. You are tried and convicted in your absence. It is LEGAL to briefly exceed the speed limit while overtaking another vehicle, but the camera doesn't take account of this.
Near where I live there are cameras about 200yds into a 30mph zone, following a national speed limit zone. Unless the law has changed recently, you legally have 1/4 of a mile to slow down and those cameras are fabricating false convictions all day. Too many people are paying their fines rather than appealing their unlawful convictions, because of the absence of due process.
If you only looked at the statistics you'd be yelling at the government to work on curing diseases and improving traffic safety, and not worry about murder (including 9/11). But apparently our minds are not that "rational".
Scary. I hope Liberty is the name of a company or movie. "Director Of Liberty" is a contradiction in terms.
Fines have a different legal status than convictions, and you have less guarantees against unjust treatment. If a policeman fines you because he saw you break some traffic rule, and you say you didn't and appeal in court, you'll lose every time, unless you have technical evidence.
Sam - Not sure if you're right or wrong on the exceeding the speed limit and 1/4 mile acceleration zones, but I'd very much appreciate a link to somewhere that might tell me more about it. I tried Googling, but failed to find anything official. Not saying you're wrong, I just want it straight from the horses mouth (as it were).
Great