Robert,

How much privacy do you expect in a shopping center? The slippery slope argument is always to taken to extremes. Cameras in public areas is not a precursor to Big brother watching you in the can. The only way to ensure privacy in a public place (with or without cameras) is not to go there. If I take a photo of a public building, I don't need your permission to post it on Facebook or anywhere else.

Dear SM,

<<If I take a photo of a public building, I don't need your permission to post it on Facebook or anywhere else.>>

You do.

This is an example of something that is legal, but not moral.

No, I do not expect the law to guard our morality: it cannot, it should not, and certainly the law-makers of this age have no clue about morality anyway.

But if you do wrong, it WILL weigh on your conscience, forever or until you atone for it.

Y you do present thoughts that are hard for some to fathom.
That one just defies logic.
A criminal, most, surely by their actions shows no ability to be concerned by their actions.
Increasingly, people we would never believe would do it, commit crimes.
In a country market day, just two weeks ago, I dropped cash, a well presented woman leaped on it and took off.
I cannot get my head around a Liberal/Conservative, as RObert is, holding tightly to a minority and usually leftist concern.
Who has lost, other than perpetrators by these helpful law assisting cameras?

Dear Belly,

There are two separate issues here:

One is about preventing serious crimes.
The other is about invading the privacy of ordinary, non-criminal people, or even of light-transgressors who fell from grace once or twice.

How is it possible to balance those two, to prevent serious crimes without hurting innocent people? This is an extremely difficult problem, one for which I believe the only solution, as wisely noted by Praxidice, is to reduce population numbers, or at least try to live as far as possible from population centres. I honestly believe that there's no other just solution.

In any case, the example that I quoted from Shadow-Minister, is definitely and obviously not a situation where sacrifice of privacy is required for the sake of preventing crime: SM suggested sacrificing other people's privacy merely for his personal gratification, and that is plainly wrong.

<<In a country market day, just two weeks ago, I dropped cash, a well presented woman leaped on it and took off.>>

Whenever I dropped cash recently, people came and told me to pick it up or even returned it to me themselves. If as an exception that woman took it, I would assume that she needs that money more than I do and bless her for having her dire situation improved. I would also contemplate, digging my memories, reflecting on when have I done something similar myself that I deserved to have my money taken like that and thanked God for getting even with me. Had she been caught on camera and sent to jail because of me, I would have felt much worse than just to lose that money.

<<Who has lost, other than perpetrators by these helpful law assisting cameras?>>

Many can potentially lose if the information from the cameras is used in other ways, other than to stop serious crime: some I've listed above (on 9 May 2013 1:25:50 PM). Earlier I also mentioned orthodox Jews whom the very presence of the cameras in their suburbs would force them (and their children) into a weekly home-detention for the duration of the Jewish Sabbath.

Yuyutsu if orthodox Jews are so stupid as to believe that a 2+thousand year old religion made some pronouncements about something that has only existed for a hundred or so years, then so be it. They deserve to be restricted by their stupidity, not the rest of society.

I am getting totally sick of being expected to make changes in my life, in consideration of fools, or religious rat bags.

I go along with allowing others to practice their strange cults, but I draw the line at changing how we live our lives, just because they are rat bags.

As with any migrant, it is they that must adapt to Oz ways. If they don't like what they find in Oz, well it is a big world out there, & just may be they would fit better somewhere else.

Tolerance is a two way street, & if some small groups have difficulty tolerating our ways, it is their problem to solve in their own way, not our problem.

I am still wondering why, if people are concerned about crime, they are not badgering government over the high incidence of home burglary and the low clearance rate?

Could it be because the government and police commissioners serve up to the public what they want them to believe and the lazy, incompetent media are only to willing to focus on stories to sensationalise for an audience that wants to be entertained?

Honestly people, use the grey matter God gifted you with, instead of always allowing the spruikers and storymakers to do your thinking for you.

There are very few situations where public cameras can actually help you more than just a few extra police patrols or Council employees, such as monitoring traffic flows on busy roads and intersections, and reading number plates for regulatory authorities.