Garry Glitter - I don't get it?

[expatinscotland]

here

Can't Thai authorities cuff this scumbag and force him on a plane back to the UK?

I thought when you were deported from somewhere that means authorties put you back on a plane for your home country and you didn't have a choice about going there?

relinquish even

But really the horror here isn't whether it would or not in reality. Thehorror is that some people on here don't care if it would, they stil think that a few childrens' health and safety are not as importnatad their 'freedom'

I'm not personally questioning it all. The point I was making was that such questions are fairly typical fare if you are going to get into moral philosophy.

For example, a very early question posed to me years ago (again in the context of a philosophical discussion) was that,

"If it could be proven that all car accidents would be prevented by strapping babies to the bonnet of cars, would that justify doing such a thing?" (or some such wording - I'm going back a loooong time here).

The whole question of personal freedom is a biggy in our culture and one that, generally, we all protect fiercely (think 1984 etc.) The reason it is such a hot topic these days, I think, is that we are moving far closer to a world whereby we could forfeit that freedom and anonymity (a lot has gone already of course). How do we live with that? Well, one way would be to be able to demonstrate a proven upside. So, if we could prove that wider use of CCTV would stop child abuse (as an example)would we, as a society, then embrace the loss of freedoms when, under normal circumstances, we find the idea abhorrent?

Or is our sociey ultimately made up of Xenias who feel that such freedoms must be protected above all else?

As I say, such questions are not new - and many people have expressed them through history far more eloquently than me.

The premise as it arose here is spurious though because greater use of CCTV is pretty bloody unlikely to prevent (or even reduce) child abuse - unless we stuck unbreakable cameras on everyone's head.

Elffriend, I do understand the point(s) you are making. I for one also do not believe that CCTV would necessarily cause a decrease in child abuse (particularly as most of it seems to happenbehind closed doors).
I for one don't really understand why innocent people have any dread of CCTV cameras and i do think they can be of benefit in helping to prevent 'outdoor' crimes such as muggings/street fighting/vandalism etc and in aiding police to arrest people when crimes have happened with no other witnesses.

I honestly cant see why anyone would be alarmed by their presence, let alone think it was worth the price of children being abused to prevent them.

Dropdead, I think the problem with CCTV is the question of whether it is the thin end of the wedge so to speak.

If the ability exists to monitor the movements of every person all of the time then it is not too big a leap to ask about the next steps. The continuum is surely to move from observation to judging and control. What, ultimetaly, would be the consequences for society if all movements and actions were being viewed, recorded and acted upon in whatever way the prevailing powers saw fit? (there was that recent drama on BBC1, can't remember what it was called, about mircrochipping people etc - was a bit crap but was addressing the same "what if" scenarios).

Where does it take us all? Who watches the watchers?

FWIW, if me wearing a camera on my head would stop child abuse - wherever in the world that child resided then, yes, I think it would be a price worth paying.

Impact on society of cctv.
v
impact on society of child abuse.

As society stands - its a no brainer for me. But it does take away the questions I raised below.

Yes, all the time we balance rights and freedoms. It's an important issue and we have gone too far, far too far in the wrong direction.

But Xenia do you stand by your statement? That you would prefer some children to be abused if it saved you having more CCTV cameras in your country?

Yes, absolutely - but that wasn't my statement - I think I was writing about more intrusive surveillance, reading every web search we make, all that stuff the police want. It's OTT and wrong.

I would also rather more children die on the roads than have a curfew on them or prohibit them from going out without an adult. There are loads and loads of areas where we prefer children's lives to be at risk in return for keeping personal liberty. I would expect every mumnmetter with any kind of a brain surely to have similar limits themselves.

No Xenia, that's clearly wrong. You would expect every mumsnetter with any kind of brain to have their own limits themselves, not similar ones. Each person draws their own lines as to the balance between individuals' rights and obligations in society. These will all be different as this debate clearly shows.

Some people may very reasonably feel that they would prefer to have a level of intrusive surveillance in their lives provided it stopped certain crimes. Just because you feel it's OTT and wrong doesn't actually make it OTT and wrong and in fact, given the muted response to increasing surveillance to date, you are arguably in the minority.

But to some degree I can see how curfewing children or making it illegal for them to be out without an adult would curtail their freedom ( and that of the adults..)

But how could a camera affect me if I am not a criminal?

cest, I agree with that - I would expect them to have their own limits but I would expect them all to have a limit. What's my limit? Well I don't want the police to have the right to read every internet search we all do for a start.

I am certainly in the minority. There is no political will amongst the 77M people in this country to stop surveillance at all. they're all fully behind ID cards, CCTV, etc etc in the fight against terror.

CCTV is already here. We have more on this tiny island than any other nation on the planet. How would a camera affect you? Don't you just not like the idea that everywhere you do you're being watched, that you're never free, that your every movement is tracked from when you put an oyster card into a London train machine to every foot of your journey, over seen in this big brother of New Labour 2008? It's awful. Enough to make me retreat to my desert island which certainly has no CCTV.

77 million people in this country? Wow there must have been some pretty significant immigration in the last couple of months! I thought it was about 61 million. Anyways, clearly everyone will have limits, just not where yours are. Personally, whilst I don't like the idea of increasing levels of surveillance conceptually I have be little issue with it pragmatically.

The very simple reason for this is that the sheer volume of data generated makes it utterly meaningless in the context you fear. Even assuming the technological infrastructure existed to scan every mail, read every search, contextualise all the CCTV footage and analyse every satellite image (which we're a long way from), the output generated would be impossible to sift through for any practical purpose. As you probably know, and as the US are finding out to their cost, electronic surveillance is largely redundant without the human intelligence to analyses it, support it and contextualise it.

(oops 60m, the Times headline today page 5 says 77m but that's a prediction, I misread it).

I was on channel 5 (very very briefly) last week on a similar issue to this although they cut out some bits of what I was saying and it wasn't live.

The problem is that as soon as you have these massive databases and you give loads of rather thick NHS workers access to them it only needs one idiot and there's a problem whereas if you ensure no one has access to the whole thing and some idiot loses art of the jig saw it doesn't matter.

I suppose most mumsnetters have no problems with all UK children being on one database or the new NHS database or ID cards. And it does matter if data is kept because then if someone has it in for you they have more scope to abuse their position, they can frame you more easily.

I think the proposal is that only the details of who emailed whom will be kept but even that is a step too far and disproportionate. It starts out as being caused by this ridiculous so called war on terror as the justification and then you find local councils are using surveillance to find out if you put a piece of plastic in your brown bin so they can fine you £1000.

Yes, so you were.

Out of interest, why do you assume that, "most mumsnetters have no problems with all UK children being on one database or the new NHS database or ID cards"?

Xenia...I honestly could still say that I would rather have small personal irritataions such as the thought of a CCTV camera on the corner of my street than lay in bed at night without a CCTV camera there knowing that I was happy for children to pay for that 'privilege' by being abused...which in a nutshell is what you said you would prefer, even if that is not what you meant.

However, just to reiterate, the point of being concerned about either the databases or surveillance is that it is only worth being concerned about if it is or can be meaningful. Otherwise, it's just utterly pointless to worry about it in anything other than a theoretical context.

I could repeat what I said but the European Parliament looked at the potential of such a system in the context of a review of Echelon earlier this year - their report is available here but they noted that in terms of monitoring satellite communications alone (i.e. before you even think about e-mails etc.) that "the numbers of personnel required for the final analysis of intercepted communications imposes further restrictions... [and] however extensive the resources and capabilities for the interception of communications may be, the extremely hig volume of traffic makes exhaustive, detaile monitoring of all communications impossible in practice."

Therefore, the practical risk to civil liberties is minimal and clearly this should be born in mind in this sort of debate.

I think if people were able to control themselves, there would be little need for CCTV. Increased focus on the wants/needs of the individual at the expense of society's needs have created this necessity (? demand?) for the 'nanny state'.

We have gone much too far in the wrong direction. In that respect I agree, although generally I'm a pretty liberal person.

To me, the link is that peope have to be watched by the state because they cannot control themselves, that's the way I understood it in the argument above.

Aargh this is starting to go around in circles. I thought we had already agreed that most abuse of children happens in the home. So CCTV and ID cards have nothing to do with it. Xenia you are repeatedly steering this around to an issue which you obviously feel very strongly about - surveillance - but which in fact has nothing to do with what we're trying to talk about.

The only correlation for me is if they start logging what websites people visit. Then they can hopefully find people visiting child porn sites. I wouldn't mind the websites I visit being logged - it's not as if they're going to look at all the info for everyone is it. They're going to home in on people who visit kiddieporn.com or whatever and see what their pattern of internet use is, gather evidence and hopefully prosecute.

Can we move this back to the original debate, which is what can be done about these serial abusers and the fact that they keep getting away with it.