Re:China's social network surveillance databases are apparen...
by _cs2017_ on Monday March 04, 2019 @10:32PM
(#19307886)
Oh you're right, I didn't think about it. I take it back, it's not that obvious that it offers meaningful safety benefits.
Still, I suppose if the probability of being caught goes from 1% to over 50%, it might be enough to scare off even the spur of the moment criminals.
Also, a decent fraction of crimes are at least somewhat planned or even repeated, and those should be affected by the chance of being caught.
On the other hand, there are also more things I didn't think about. Suppose surveillance actually catches all car thieves. Will most of them go get a job? Or will they just switch to crimes that are harder to detect with surveillance? My guess is that most criminals will either stop committing crimes or spend most of their life in jail. But I may underestimate the creativity and capability of criminals.
Is it, though? As far as I know, most crime is of the "spur of the moment" type, decided on the stop, without much regard for the consequences. Thus, I'd expect more surveillance to be able to increase the odds of getting caught, but to not actually reduce the amount of crime.
I'd also be ware for increased surveillance to hamper the ability to correct "wrong" laws.