Over in Britishland, a young mother named Nicola Bulley has gone missing while taking her dog for a walk one evening a couple weeks ago. There have been all sorts of theories (coupled with the usual bollocks from people unrelated to the case who have nothing better to do with their lives): that she fell into a river along her walk, that she was kidnapped, that she decided to do a runner (leaving behind her two small children), and so on.
No investigations have turned up anything at all — the Britcops are getting all sorts of crap for their slipshod investigation — and her disappearance has remained to date a complete mystery.
(Here’s a sample of articles on the topic.)
Here’s what disturbs me about all this. For a small village, there sure must be a boatload of CCTV cameras around. Here’s a photo map of the “blind spots” in the CCTV coverage — which are tiny — which means that there’s an awful lot of geography that’s apparently covered, and isn’t a blind spot.
To me, this means that surveillance cameras Over There are practically ubiquitous. One might expect, perhaps, that densely-populated urban areas might have cameras all over the place (as seen in the gloomy 2006 Red Road movie); but in a remote little village like St. Michaels-On-Wyre?
I bet it’s not just in Britishland, either; it’s probably growing Over Here, too; and that gives me the creeps.
Of course, if anyone has proof that this is not the case, then I stand corrected.
Isn’t technology just wunnerful?
We stay home most of the time where we don’t have to worry much about such things. So far.
That’s why Siri, Alexa etc were developed.
JQ
We’ve never seen the usefulness in such things. BTW, what happened to the dog?
I wonder how many cameras the average person comes across during any given day. I’ve been watching Blue Bloods lately and they portray cameras being everywhere throughout the city. After 9/11 maybe government and private cameras are everywhere in NYC.
JQ
Always assume you’re being recorded, especially in public.
My wife is practically addicted to the Investigation Discovery channel. There is actually a show on there that shows cops solving crimes using surveillance cameras. Apparently for a lot of detectives, the first thing they do on the scene is start looking up to see if there are cameras around.
Around here a lot of people have the RING doorbell camera (it has a distinctive tone and people get phone alerts all the time). On the neighborhood website, whenever anyone had a crime occur they start asking all the neighbors to check their camera feed to see if they caught anything. In fact, full camera coverage of your house is pretty cheap these days, thinking of doing that myself. Plus car camera recordings are popular.
So yeah, between govt, business, and private cameras you are pretty much covered anytime you are around civilization.
Yes, exterior coverage of both the front and rear of the house. Lots of 1081i video of every delivery driver and all the deer and other semi-tame critters around the house. Door bell cameras assume that the scum will approach from the front. Our break-in happened on the side porch.
However, only a small portion of all the cameras are pointed in the right direction, have sufficient resolution, have been updated recently from analog to digital, save to the “cloud”, have a feed that can be retrieved easily. have been checked and serviced, are even functional when needed.
Yes , you’re on camera, but chances are no one will see it ( untill the AI gets better and can proactively track whoever is of interest. )
Most cameras aren’t even owned by the government or its agencies. They’re owned and operated by local businesses and private individuals.
Just walk around the block and notice the massive number of Ring (and similar brands) doorbells, each has a wide angle camera that records anyone walking or driving past up to quite a distance away, and has a memory for at least several hours, if not several days, of footage.
And most of them are connected to central servers that can be queried without warrants by police and other emergency services (and who’d deny such access in an investigation into the disappearance of a young mother, right?).
And then there are the Teslas and probably other cars with camera surveillance to detect and record vandalism for their owners.
While shorter range, they still scan the area around the car for several meters.
If you want to see how pervasive surveillance cameras are check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/c/activeselfprotection/videos
People here will enjoy the self-defense content too.
Yannow, watching all those cameras would be a good job for all those un/under-employed out there that are presently on the dole.
Crazy Eighter,
You’re right but too many of these layabouts wouldn’t do a damn thing while the videos played. They’d play on their phones crushing candy or playing with angry birds while they stuffed ho-hos down their gullet then bitch that their chair broke due to their growing obesity.
JQ
Our city has HD quality cameras, (often able to read license plates), at about 60% of all traffic-controlled intersections — aimed in multiple directions. On top of that, the downtown areas and riverwalk are covered by the same system. Just a guess, but that likely makes over 100 cameras, (but probably still under 200), in a city of just under 40,000 residents. Not every street is covered, but enough that with a vehicle description, police can usually track a suspect vehicle throughout most areas of the town, only losing it when it gets on the freeway or leaves the city. The system was setup by a private company, but the city now hires an IT specialist to do the grunt work and continued expansion. Local* police have access to it at the main police department, not remotely.
(*) The feds likely have zero limitations.
I would start with any followers of the goat god living in the area. She will probably be found in the canal/river at a later date.