Wanna see bad guys get caught? baitcar.com

[StoneMtn]

In BC we have these cars that are set up with cameras and mics and are used as bait to bust car thieves. About a week ago this website went up where you can watch footage of thieves getting caught. It's oddly entertaining to watch:

http://www.baitcar.com/

[Freak By Night]

Entrapment for $100 Alex

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Site doesn't seem to want to load for me. I think I get the idea, though. Not the kind of thing I'd want priming the pump for a surveillance society, of course, yet there is something of a primal revenge rush I expect could be enjoyed (especially if you've actually had your car - or bike, or guitar, etc. - ripped off).

What's that figure for the number of times people in London (UK) end up on a surveillance camera over the course of a day? I thought it was in the hundreds, if not thousands. That's kinda disturbing. CBC had a good series on Ideas last summer on the surveillance society; the point that kept coming back was that once you've been fingered - at whatever degree of abstraction, say with some accounting error, or screwed-up passport application, or whatnot - the onus falls on you to clear your name, which is kinda difficult if you have any trouble finding out what information someone has on you. This of course only gets worse with Patriot Act / Bill C-7 cloak-and-dagger government bullshit.

On a complete tangent, it was nice to see a front-section story on Meher Arar in last Sunday's NY Times.

And on another tangent, how about that guy who got abused by cops in Ottawa yesterday for DWB, whose friends had the presence of mind to record the whole thing on a cellphone. That's the kind of surveillance, if any, we likely need.

[StoneMtn]

This isn't really random surveillance. It only films the interior of a car, that belongs to the cops. If you're in the car, you are either really dumb and can't remember what your own car looks like, or you just committed a crime.

I have no civil liberties issues with bait cars. I don't consider them the same thing as having cameras randomly filming street corners; not even close.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I'd have to agree, then - cameras in cars are a different story. There's talk again of putting them in Toronto cop cars, which I'd be all for (knowing people who have been taken for rides, as it were). Toronto cabbies getting assaulted in their cars has dropped by somewhere near half (!) since they did that a little while back. I'm a little more sketchy with the idea of cameras on city buses and streetcars, though.