.
I agree, Drog, the average citizen is videotaped perhaps a dozen times a day (especially if one frequents 7-11’s for drinks or lotto tickets), but most of the cameras are for show. In my own apartment building, the cameras in the elevators and elsewhere broadcast (not taped) in dingy black and white to the maintenance room where the guys seldom are (hey, they’re working — and only like 8 until 4). Not much protection, eh?

However, the big question is who’s in charge of the cameras? Having police cameras try to “police” the police is nonsense. Having military cameras check for improper interogation techniques will be about as effective as it’s been so far: ineffective. If the threat of cameras (like those running on the dashboards of police cruisers) doesn’t stop abuse, then what makes you think a camera in every corner will do any better?

And I’m not knocking you, Drog, but the system of checks and balances in this country has little to do with abuses of prisoners of war on foreign soil.

One more thing — I voted to DUMP this article because it [1] has nothing more scientific in it than cameras; [2] it’s a political commentary; and [3] even for rickyjames, it’s a rather heavily worded rant.

If these “political” articles are going to appear regularly, then why doesn’t the staff and management of SciScoop create a new site, perhaps called “PolScoop”?

jon

Anyone that was coerced or outright forced into confessing to a crime they did not commit would be very thankful if that interrogation had been videotaped and could be used as evidence at trial, and if failure to videotape the interrogation in its entirety would be grounds for dismissal.

In Robert Sawyer’s recent trilogy "The Neanderthal Parallax", everyone from a parallel Earth wears an A.I. on their armband, which is constantly recording everything and storing it wirelessly into a storage archive. Nobody gets to see that archive, except you, unless you are charged with a crime, in which case it can be used to either convice you or exonerate you. It was a little more complicated than that, but the point was that nobody commited crimes because they knew they could never get away with it, while at the same time everyone got to keep their privacy under most circumstances. Obviously, a system like this could most likely be abused, but it was an interesting idea for a novel, I thought.

As for this particular story, SciScoop started out as Sci-Fi Today, with the idea being that stories could not only be about pure science, but also about how yesterday’s fiction is becoming today’s reality. And since much of science fiction deals with social issues, such as 1984, stories about the current rise of totalitarianism were common on this site, and still continue today. But it’s a community site, so if the majority don’t want to see these type of articles, then they’ll never make it through the moderation queue.

As for a political Scoop site… funny you should mention that. I’ve been seriously considering creating such a site for awhile now. Of course, there’s always kuro5hin.org…

sadly enough, often the same persons who claim that one cannot judge all Arabs by the acts of a few, (which is correct, btw) believe one CAN judge the entire military and GW by the actions of a few.

You have yet, Ricky, to prove that GW’s “intent” behind this entire war was to enter Iraq solely to abuse innocent Iraqis.  This you have not done.  And without that single bit of key evidence, all the links and accusations in the world mean absolutely nothing.

The gist of the Copper Green article was that the government has set up an organization that works outside of the normal channels, to maintain secrecy. I’m sure surveillance cameras would not sit well with their idea of secrecy.

I think a good question would be: do you think that it is appropriate for the government to set up a super-secret organization like this? (Not saying it did, but the article is plausible enough.) The article says that this was done because going through normal channels was much too slow. For example, special forces would have to wait around for the OK before going in to nab a card-deck guy. At what point do you trade openness for efficiency?
But, as has been mentioned, this is Sciscoop, not Govscoop.