British police tv shows

[matt819]

With all this talk about surveillance, I have to chuckle when I watch British police tv shows.

In more current series, the police turn to three things when trying to catch the criminals: cctv, anpr, and mobile phones.

In every episode, there's one poor guy who has to watch hours and hours of cctv to see where the bad guy comes from and where he goes. With the exception of a few blind spots, it appears that all of Britain is available on cctv.

Then there's ANPR - automated number plate recognition. Again, it seems that every plate is captured everyone one travels in Britain.

And the first thing they look for at a crime scene is a mobile phone, from which they track everything from the person's phone calls and texts, movement, and favorite color.

It's astounding that it takes so long to catch the perps in Britain or that anyone bothers to commit a crime.

[Fumesucker]

1. I'm sure they are just as realistic as US cop shows

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. As realistic as 'Criminal Minds', perhaps

Note that Garcia does not, herself, create any of these files or databases. She’s not Big Brother, recording or compiling data by snooping on private citizens. She simply helps herself to all the data compiled by the perfectly legal snooping that has long been practiced by a variety of private, corporate entities. She’s not tapping anyone’s phone, but merely tapping into the records of the phone company. She’s not creating a surveillance state in which every individuals’ every movement and transaction is being tracked and recorded. The cell-phone companies and credit-/debit-card companies set all of that up on their own. She’s just borrowing their data and putting it to some other use.

A benevolent use, of course, because Garcia is good and kind and honest and she would only ever use her otherwise-unaccountable and unchecked power to protect the innocent and to punish the guilty.

That is essentially the same argument being offered to defend the otherwise-unaccountable and unchecked power of the NSA. And it’s a lousy argument. A presumption of benevolence is never a sufficient check on power.

Penelope Garcia is fictional, and in fiction we can agree to play along with the impossible notion of an unfailingly benevolent person. But we know real people are not like that. And real institutions are nothing at all like that.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/06/11/dont-worry-penelope-garcia-is-a-good-guy/

[monmouth3]

2. And, they do it in an hour....n/t