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Prying Eyes of Tampa Police
Anml4ixoye writes: "Building off of the Super Bowl incident here in Tampa, the Police have instituted the technology directly into the cameras around Ybor City. From Bay News 9:"Police, using pole-mounted, remotely-controlled surveillance cameras, scan crowds of people and feed their digital images into a massive databank with the purpose of finding a match on anyone with an outstanding arrest warrant. The cameras have the ability to tilt, pan and capture digital images of anyone within range." Read the Bay News 9 Report here, the St. Pete Times version here, or visit the Visionics web site or the Tampa Police Web Site."
Actually 'The City' or the Square Mile is covered by number plate recognition systems. It logs cars going in and out of the financial district, it checks if the car is reported stolen, and properly taxed and insured. It logs cars that 'go missing', if a car was logged into the system and wasn't seen leaving the area it alerts the police to the possibility of a car bomb. You can read more about it on the Home Office site.
The rest of London and many other parts of the country do have extensive CCTV coverage, however it's just bog standard cameras and monitors.
The only face recognition system in use in London (and possibly the whole country) is the Mandrake system in Newham, which had a particularly bad crime problem. I know it's also being tested in Australia, but it's not used widely in the UK (yet).
Just outside Plano Texas there was a robot speeding camera installed. It photogrphed you if you were going 1+ miles over the speed limit and mailed you a speeding ticket. A week later I noticed it had been shot up (looked like shotgun damage). The following week, it had been replaced. A day later it was again in pieces. After that it never returned. The city decided that the camera was just too expensive to keep replacing. Score one against big brother.
You know, that's exactly how a lot of people in Stalin's Russia felt. About the purges and mass arrests, I mean. After all, it was only traitors and subversives who were being rounded up and sent to the GULAG, not loyal Soviet citizens. So if you were opposed to it you must have something to hide, right?
Right?
Similarly, as long as the majority of Americans feel that it's only minorities that are effected by no-knock searches, random stop-and-searches on the streets and rampant police abuse (jailings, murder) then they don't need to worry about the continuing erosion of their civil liberties. After all, everyone knows that most Blacks and Hispanics are crooks, right? But there are over two million people in jail right now, and surprise! Most of them are white. And that number keeps on growing. And more and more prisons are being built every day. And those laws that you think are directed only at minorites can and are being used against us, as well. But hey. . .you don't have to worry. You're a law-abiding citizen, right? And we all know that the police would never fake evidence to put people in prison without cause, or murder innocent citizens, right?
Right?
Sleep well. . .
While I'm not going to say I am for or against this because I still don't know enough to forumalate an opinion. I will say one comment for and against.
Imagine if there is someone walking down the street that has some type of scam for mugging people (and don't say this doesn't happen because it does). Say they have an outstanding warrant. Normally, their "look-out" spots a cop and they hide. Now they can't do it there or they try to do it but the camera spots them. Sure they could hide their face with a mask, but then that gets rid of the need for the scam -- since they would probably scare people and just mug someone.
Now for the flip side. Camera's are installed most everywhere, meaning most public places are monitored. It is incorrect to say then that the next step is camera's in your house. Anyway, say the US because very oppressive. Some people want to start a revolution. Now it is hard to do that because in a public place, people are monitored.
Now I know that my teacher was wrong. Never mind China, it is a lot worse at the United States of America.
The database *will* be hacked, and every possible permutation of your scenario *will* occur. Count on it, dude. It's just too tempting.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
I think it was around the same time the GOP and Moral (Moron) Majority made "liberal" a cuss-word. I think that as our population increases and the media pounces on every single lurid crime average people tend to think things are much worse than they really are, and so are willing to accept these things. And of course you always have these fools that say "if you haven't done anything there'll be no problem" as if we haven't had numerous death row inmates freed after DNA proved they weren't guilty.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Actually I've read accounts that indicated a large population of the country was working for the Stasi secret police by the time they went down. They just intimidated everyone into reporting on their neighbors, friends and families, so you couldn't trust anyone. The "burden" of that didn't bring them down; it was the fall of the Soviet economy and a crazy situation at the Berlin Wall that brought it to a close.
And there are still people there that miss the old days.
Paranoia is a healthy thing. In small doses.
Yes, but also (as Woody Allen said):
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean somebody's not after you."
The revolution will NOT be televised.
CCTVs in public places aren't placed there to infringe on the constitutional rights of you or anyone else. They can't do that because the Constitution doesn't protect your right to be invisible in a public place.
As time has gone on, it is becoming obvious to me that this concept has become an anachronism. I remember reading an interesting article concerning a case that was decided in Quebec. The Provincial High Court (forgot what it's called there) decided that there are has to be some type of protections in public with regards to being under surveillance/photographed otherwise an individual may lose the liberty to enjoy a public space. (If memory serves, it was a straight CCTV case.)
I like to say it this way--there are multiple levels of "public" versus just one level of private. Certainly a candidate campaigning for public office speaking at the local library is in "public." I am also in "public" when I take the trash out to the curb at 6am in my skivvies. In my mind, it's absurd to consider both scenarios as being equivalent to each other--i.e., you can use surveillance in the same way in either situation (however, in the latter situation, if I were George Clooney, then they may be equivalent.) I do know that I am in public in some way--my snooping neighbor may be looking out their window, but unless I am someone of consequence, I normally do not expect television cameras videotaping--even though it is a risk taken. Just because the risk is there does not necessarily mean that I should then accept them when they are installed (for my protection and benefit) right on my street.
If your a known criminal or are engaging in criminal activity then a CCTV camera on the street corner isn't exactly welcome. But if your Joe Average it's no better or no worse than someone standing there taking in the view.
When I go out in public as Joe Average, I do indeed expect that people can look at me, however I don't necessarily expect that there is some person wondering about who has a mental database of potentially millions of people in his/her brain who can quickly scan through that database comparing my visage to that internal photograph database. This is a level of "public" that I am normally not accustomed to, since I am not a celebrity.
If you believe that you have done nothing wrong, and therefore have nothing to fear, remember -
That you have done wrong is not for you to decide, but rather it will be determined for you, by someone whom you do not know.
It is society's right to protect you from your own ignorance.
"I live in the Bay Area. There are cameras on top of every intersection's stoplights, to make sure nobody runs a red light (funny, I personally have never noticed rampant red-light-running, even before the cameras).
"The traffic/stoplight cameras are over the line too, but they're very hard to protest nonviolently (they're 25 feet in the air and I'm in my car -- what to do?)"
We have the start of the same thing in San Diego. But recently all of the cameras were turned off by the San Diego Police Department, pending an investigation.
Seems Lockheed-Martin (the owner and installer of the proprietary camera system) had sole descretion as to which intersections to monitor. Last week it was found out that they had put cameras not at intersections with histories of accidents, but only at those with either high traffic, or short yellow lights.
At several other monitored intersections, Lockheed-Martin's installers adjusted the yellow light times to be shorter than required by law. Some yellow lights were shortened to less than three seconds.
It has been reported that both the City of San Diego and Lockheed-Martin have received so far this year, over $1,750,000 in revenue from red-light camera tickets. Lockheed-Martin gets $70.00 from each $271 fine paid for running a red light in San Diego.
No, they're there for running red lights. In Portland/Beaverton Oregon -- we pioneered the use of this technology before anyone else. We also were the first to be caught having shortened the time of yellow lights so that more and more people were caught "running red lights". This is documented and was investigated by our local news stations and has been brought to Congress by one or another congressman, I believe.
About the only useful thing you can do is 1) put a mirror on the front top of your car to hopefully angel the glare of the sun into the camera or 2) print a very nasty message on the top of your car so that the camera catches it. Not much, but it's about all you can do. I suppose there also might be some type of advanced gear that could fuck with the signals of the camera and toast it passively too, but I'm not aware of them.
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seumas.com
Really? Hmmm, and here *I* was thinking they would use it to track down us conservatives. You've got an extremely interesting view of modern America.
One state trooper with racial motives pulled over a black woman from Florida (who was not doing anything wrong) and tried to violently pull her out of her car at gunpoint (while her seatbelt was still attached).
He wouldn't have been caught had it not been for the camera--the genius left the stupid thing running!
Cops there are hard up for dirty Tampons?
*snork*snork*snork*snork*
:)
(And yes, I get to say that 'cuz I live in Tampa. So there.)
Given enough hydrogen, just about anything is possible.
fucking racist idiots get out of slashdot!
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People who have opinions contrary to mine deserve to be shot in the back of a head in front of a crudely dug trench. You're first up, asshole.
---
"A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged." (Frank Rizzo)
"A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested." (Tom Wolfe)
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
so what youre saying is that blacks commit violent crimes simply because theyre black? sorry buddy, but you are a bigot...if the glove fits wear it
Bigot is someone who holds opinions without having done the research to justify them. Such as yourself.
Ever watch the NBA? Are you saying that black skin makes you good at basketball? Of course not, but other genetic traits to, and evolution has happened to place those traits together in the same populations. You are confusing the Cause and Effect.
The fact that someone's skin is black, white or yellow is just one of millions of variations in the DNA, that control skin color along with every other aspect of human development, such as the inclination for criminal behavior, alcoholism, height, intelligence, eye color, physical build, hereditary illnesses and so on.
You say that guns cause crime? That's absolutely false. Criminals cause crimes. Criminals commit crimes with whataver weapons they can obtain. Be it knifes, guns or bricks. You reduce crime by reducing the number of criminals. For example, the crime rate in the US has been steadily declining over the past 10 years. Coincidently, 30% of our young black males are now in prison.
Did you happen to notice my pledge for educated replies? Or did you just ignore it in favor of exactly the kind of unjustified TV blabber that you have been force-fed for so long?
I lived in Ybor City for about 2 years around '94, befor it was the mini Bourbon Street its become and when it was still a counter culture Mecha for ppl from all over Central Florida. I remember a time when one could walk down 7th ave on a Tuesday night around 8 o'clock throwing bricks through windows and no one would notice (much less care).
Now theyve got cameras that can recognize people. Who wouldve guessed.
Well then, I guess you wouldn't have any problem with us recording you and publishing a record of every single place you went every day and how long you spent there, right? After all, there's no camera in your house and you still have your privacy, right? I'm sure you wouldn't mind your wife knowing where you went to pick up her birthday gift, or your boss knowing that you went to the competition for stuff.
You better check you Bill of Right again, Jhon, because no where in there will you find a right to privacy.
Personally, I don't have problems with systems like this, as long as they don't enter private property without owners consent (I could see store inviting them onto their property).
I'm not sure where I read it, but the one idea I liked to counter the potential for abuses was to require cameras whereever the images for these camera could be viewed, and broadcast them to the public, as in a web camera. After all, they should all be public servants.
I believe as we find less and less privacy, thanks to technology, we will gradually become less concerned about the stupid things cameras catch us doing. Those stupid things will become incredibly mundane to the people behind the cameras on watching the others do the same things.
And imagine if all this eventually made a few people responsible for their actions, how horrible is that.
Anm
Okay, well put. For those interested, here is The Right to Privacy by Justice Brandei from 1890.
All I can say is, I disagree. IMO, privacy is a luxury and not a right, something that has to be a active investment by someone. I believe the existing laws against tresspassing (for protection of 'privacy' in one's home) and against libel (for protection of truthfulness of acquired media) are enough. But I guess I have to convince the Supreme Court of that.
Anm
Ok, now change the scenario a bit: John #34 is on Avenue 1 with an outstanding warrant for triple homicide, but for torturing and killing 3 cops. Do you think the police are simply going to walk up to you and simply ask you for your ID???????
Guns drawn, nervous, shaking hands (hey, one of those guys was my drinking buddy at the academy) around a 9mm Glock, a slightly too tight grip, an accidental squeeze -- BANG -- your head is turned to garbage with your brains all over the walls.
Think about it!!!!
I don't think that the media needs your consent to take your picture. I think they do generally ask before they publish it, however. If they do have have to ask, maybe I need to sue the Washington Post for some of the 4th of July crowd shots that I know I'm in, somewhere...
As for the police, acts in public (which is where these cameras are) have no reasonable right to privacy and no warrant is required for a police stop and search. Also, the information they are matching against is a database of individuals who have warrants against them, essentially an electronic version of the wanted posters down at the post office.
This is creepy as hell and the potential for abuse is huge, but I don't think we can do much to touch the legality of these devices short of passing laws that make them illegal. If you live in an area that wants to install these and are opposed, vote accordingly.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl dominos.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
I visited Ybor city this January for the first time. I noticed (almost immediately) that there were survelence cameras on literally every corner of the down-town. I was with my wife and my folks (both of whom are lawyers) and we began discussing the merits of privacy invasion via survelance... the long and the short of it is, yes its an invasion, but it is quite possibly a necessary evil -- Ybor City has been know for being an incredibly tough place to live/work.
If you ever get a chance to go down there, I highly recommend eating at "La Columbia" and picking up a slew of cigars -- I would take out loans to buy the cigars they sell down there!
-C
"This above all, to thine own self be true"
They already did, It was in the news a few years back. I don't recall the company that bought them, but if was from a few states, FL and others. I think it was for a credit card id check system. Who knows where they have be sold to now?
Apparently, you don't live in the DC metro area. If you trust the police and the local government to not abuse the authority that you give them, you deserve what they will do to you. I live in Philly, I watched the DNC and the police reaction. I think that Philly cops are 99% great people doing a 99% great job. It's the 1% bad cop, and that 1% bad job that bother me. That 1% makes camera systems like this terrifying.
itachi
And if the camera system tells the cop that you look like that guy with the warrant (even though you have no warrants and have never done anything wrong...), the system functions as a probable cause generator. So we're back where we started - it's scary and wrong.
itachi
But the cop on the street doesn't remember the faces of every single person with a warrant. The cop wont stop you if you walk down the street past them with dozens of warrants, because the cop wont look at you and say "hey, that gal/guy has a warrant out because they have 30 unpaid parking tickets" The cop doesn't have the face of every single person with an outstanding warrant memorized. The cop might know the faces of some people who are wanted for major felonies, and the cop might recognize people that they have arrested before. So the cop wont have probable cause, and you wont get stopped. The camera, however, will say that you might be that person, and then the cop will have probable cause to stop you and search you. Hence, the camera is a probable cause generator. Look at it this way - if you were walking down the street, and the cop was walking down the sidewalk with a drug sniffing dog, and the cop was pointing the dog at every single passer-by, would that be okay? That's what the camera system is. Even in public, you have some expectation of privacy - public pay phones do not make your conversation public, you have the right to expect that people wont go digging through your pockets, etc. It's not the same as being in your own home, but there is an expectation of a degree of privacy.
itachi
No, the problem is that regardless of the performance of the recognition system (be it 5% accurate or 95%), it is generating probable cause to search. The thing that makes the 4th Ammendment so powerful is the burden of proof that it places on the police. With the camera system, they are creating an excuse, a way that they can say "well, he looked like the guy, and even though he wasn't, we decided to search him and his belongings and we found " The 4th Ammendment prohibits random stop&searches like that. A camera system like this, although it might not be violating the letter of the law (I think it is, but it is open to interpretation) is most definitely violating the spirit of the 4th Ammendment. You have to remember that the police are not going to recognize the individual just because the camera does. Say you are walking down the street. The camera thinks that you look like some random 3rd party who is wanted for some crime. The police who respond wont know what the 3rd party looks like, and they wont know that you aren't that party. They now have probable cause to search you based on the camera. This is the same as walking down the street with a drug sniffing dog, pointing it at passers-by and searching people that the dog alerts at. They have no probable cause to sniff at them with the dog, so they aren't allowed to do this. The only difference here is that they are using a camera rather than a dog, and they are just as much in violation of my constitutional rights either way.
itachi
Two words: Right Now.
Right now.. the police are only chasing real criminals.
Right now.. the FBI attempts to prevent real threats..
Right now.. the CIA is banned by law from operating against US Citizens.
What happens if any of that changes? What if someone starts a pogrom against a minority that you happen to be a part of? What if it becomes culturally OK to persecute someone with strange beliefs?
Think it cannot happen here? Heh. History proves not only that it can, but that it is simply a matter of time.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
The police need it to do anything to you in public. This requirement prevents much harrassment (not all of course, it can be trumped up, but it does make it more difficult). This system, if it CURRENTLY DOES NOT keep a record of matches, is the ultimate Probable Cause generator.
"Yes your honor, the system flagged the suspect's face as having an outstanding warrant, so I proceeded to ask him to step aside and empty his pockets. How was I to know he was carrying a gun?"
Don't be so gullible.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
As a recent Tampa resident, let me share a little insight with you about that town.
It is almost %100 focused on "Family Interest". The nightly news, on all channels, is playing solely to Soccer-mom's and churchgoers (Christian, specifically).
Ybor city, where this plan is being implemented, is the only place in town where you can find a decent club. It is the nightlife center of town, and it is always shown on the news as being dangerous and crime ridden.
Perhaps ten years ago, that was true. But since then it has been yuppified and turned into an adult playground. I've been there many times, and the worst crime I've ever seen is the occaisonal drunken brawl.
It certainly does NOT need this level of surveilance to prevent crime. In actuality, I suspect the cameras are there simply because criminals like to have fun too.
Why no cameras in real crime ridden areas, like College Hill or Suitcase City?
Also, and this is very very strange: Tampa has more cops than anyplace I have ever lived. I moved to Miami about four months ago, and there isn't half the police presence here.
Though there is far more corruption here in Miami, or perhaps the criminals are just less intelligent.
"Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
There is a group called the Delaration Foundation which does exactly that.
Past Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes is the chairman of this organization. Right now they are focusing their efforts on "The Founding of America" bill in Ohio, which would revise Ohio law and require that all high school students study the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights before graduation.
Texas has a similar bill, HB 1776, that established "Celebrate Freedom Week" during September. Students from grades three-12 study the Declaration of Independence and the history of America's founding during that week.
I always thought it was very sad the way Alan Keyes was ignored during the presidential primaries or written off because he was a "religious extremist." He was constantly referencing the Constitution and why this or that was unconstitutional. The Bible didn't get any mention at all from him as I remember, but he mentionioned God a few times and people pigeonholed him.
This doesn't seem to different to me then wanted posters. Police post wanted posters with pictures of known criminals, and others then compare that photo to the faces of people around them. The difference in this case is that the process has been automated.
Notable amendments not in the first 10 are #13 (abolished slavery), #19 (allows women to vote), and #21 (repeals prohibition)
-y
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150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
"LEBANON, Tenn. -- A 61-year-old man was shot to death by police while his wife was handcuffed in another room during a drug raid on the wrong house." This is simply sick. Think about it. You're sitting at home, reading ./, and suddenly your front door breaks in! First reaction? Defend yourself. I am appalled by this story.
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
So by using these systems, what happens if I am
mistakenly 'identified', hauled off to the police
station and waste a few hours there (maybe missing
some important task)? While it is true in the
US that the constitution does not appear to
protect privacy in open public places - It does
seem the lawmakers must come up with a bill that
puts severe penalties on its misuse, whether
intentional or accidental.
Life isn't worth living in a cage, being supervised and monitored 24/7. Would i want someone to sacrifice my life in order not to be put into that position? Would I do it myself? YES... and it has happened. The world wars are perfect examples of the allies beating down an enemy who seaked to reduce our freedoms and privacy, and now we forget Them - they gave up their lives for our freedom, and now you are so willing to forget the great sacrifice they made.
Thank a veteran if you love your freedom.
What if you're, say, an environmental activist. Not violent, not even one that has caused property damage, but by association you are considered a (potential) terrorist? Wouldn't it be nice to know that just because you think that we shouldn't drill for oil in Alaska the police will keep tabs on you, potentially stop you every so often, ask for ID, or even ask you to leave the area if a politician appears to hold a speech?
There is a reason why even criminals, or suspected criminals have rights. They might be innocent, or their crimes may not warrant the kind of opression that results.
I dunno, this doesn't seem all that new. I know its a big deal cause its, you know, on the street and its the cops but they've been doing this kinda thing in high risk ventures (most notably, Las Vegas) for years and years. But then again, I suppose that the ones in Vegas are looking for cheats and not just random people with records, but who's to say, right? Let's just hope that, you know, standards prevail and that the man decides to only scan for criminals and not every day joes with less than conservative view points.
pop big brother in the eye till the expence of replacing cameras is embarrasing enough that theyll quit.and they always said i'd put someones eye out with that thing.LOL
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Unless you can get EVERYONE to wear this stuff, you'll just be making yourself stand out & will be more likely to get close, human surveillance.
Hack into the database and start adding pictures of local politicians with the label "Known terrorist -- extremely dangerous. Shoot on sight." See how long the system lasts after that...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Remind me again which right (constitutional or otherwise) of yours prevents me (or the Tampa Police) from taking pictures of you in public.
Jeremy
--
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
How patronising you are.
Sorry, I just wanted to get you thinking a little. I didn't mean anything by it, I swear.
(Notice how I know can't help be anything but patronising)
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Well, you've trolled me. "Cops and Robbers" is not a game. When people have crimes committed against them then the perpetrators need to be punished.
Do you even know why?
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I think you may be mistaking me for your typical ignorant American slashbot.
Hehe, thinking a little extra never hurt anybody. The truly wise regard himself as ignorant.
Also, what's the deal with that Art Of Living crap? Didn't you know that Ravi Shankar is a con artist?
No, but perhaps you can enlighten me with some info on that?
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
It's already illegal to wear a mask there...
If not now, when?
there are cameras everywhere. and the police have just as much right to use cameras to look at you as they do binoculars. the whole idea is to give the police more eyeballs. if you're a crook or just a common sidewalk spitting citizen then the onus is on you to turn your head and wear a hat. I wouldn't suggest a mask for anyone though. in case you forgot its against the law to wear a mask in the perpetration of a crime. its also jsut as easy to have guy in a van watching the cameras telling a guy on the street to grab darcula by the lamp post.
-
I don't know about Florida, but many states do, in fact, have laws against wearing masks in public. These were written to counteract Ku Klux Klan rallies.
I must say I do find this whole scenario quite disturbing. Now, I don't necessarily think police should be able to abuse technology in this manner, but what the taxpayer feels means precisely dick these days, so whatever I think is a moot point. Police have been using radar for speed detection for many years. Its surely no coincidence that "fuzz-busters" are quite illegal in many states. Why do ya think this is? Admittedly, radar is about the only halfway reliable and accurate means to measure speed, so it sort-of makes sense that the cops wouldn't want you to have a fuzz-buster.
However, there are plenty of reliable and accurate means of identifing a person without the eye of big brother scanning crowds and tagging people. I highly doubt that shit can be done in realtime anyways, so its efficiency sure as hell doesn't justify the intrusion of rights. I figure someone will find some technological way to fool big brother's eye, and you can bet that it will be outlawed in short order. Question: So is wearing a mask in public going to be illegal too?
Think about that shit people. Where does the long arm of the law reach to? Just far enough to suffocate lady liberty, I guess. Its getting to the point where I think there should be a law that basically states that any device which negates the effectiveness of a tool of law enforcement must remain legal for a citizen to possess and use. Consider it an opt-out. If the cops want to bust my ass for something, maybe they should consider doing it via good old fashioned police work, instead of lowering everything to the lowest common denominator by using technology in this fascion (sic).
Just another reason why I'm not proud to be an American.
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
Not only that, but now they can look at them from ANY ANGLE! Woohoo!
Check out the story of the cameras in Clearwater, Florida.
Don't just worry about the government or the police monitoring you 24/7. Private organizations can do the same thing, and believe me, there aren't as many checks and balances on those corporate entities. And they have far different agendas than the police do. You can unelect governments, and change police chiefs. But private intelligence agents with sunglasses answer to know one, ultimately. They are scary.
OK. The ACLU argued that the Ohio state motto ("With God, All Things Are Possible") is unconstitutional. Read it in their own words here. Who cares about that Drug War stuff, about property seizure or gun banning or police brutality, when there's important stuff like state mottoes! to fight over, huh? Now do you understand why people think they're a joke? There are a lot of real causes they could be fighting for, and they waste their time and money on crap like that.
You can use a slingshot. It's cheap, disposable, and easy to make. Find a way to launch gum or some other goo and you have a constructive new hobby that doesn't involve actually damaging the camera (like rocks would, if you were trying to take out the lens.)
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
So I deserve to punished for performing cunnilingus on my girlfriend in the priavcy of my own home? Bullshit. You make the assumption that all laws have a purpose and are just. That is a mistake. There are plenty of BS and outdated laws on the books.
sweet..IM gonna come search your house. Youve got nothing to hide, dont worry about it. Oh ya...your house is more private than your body, I forgot. Dipshit.
"Do you even know why?"
It's pretty obvious isn't it? Without some form of law enforcement, there would be no disincentive for breaking the law. Of course, the law isn't necessarily what is right, but it is intended to represent a means for protecting the innocent from the malicious.
How patronising you are.
I think you may be mistaking me for your typical ignorant American slashbot.
Also, what's the deal with that Art Of Living crap? Didn't you know that Ravi Shankar is a con artist?
I'm not sure where this "guilty until proven innocent" thing comes into play. Watching somebody in a public place is hardly an assumption of guilt. Snagging people off the street is one thing, but watching them and arresting them if they're caught on camera doing something wrong is quite another. Get a grip.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
True, the Constitution doesn't enumerate all of our rights, but the idea that what you do in a public place is protected by some sort of right to privacy has been repeatedly rejected by the courts.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Exactly what liberties do you think are infringed upon by the government's ability to monitor your behavior in a public place? The only ones that I can think of have to do with breaking laws that you would not otherwise break when a police officer is standing there. Face it. Your "privacy" in public is still limited by the fact that other people can see you while you're out there, whether there are police there or not. The only difference between a police presence and a general "public" presence is the fact that the police care whether your litter and tag walls while the general public may not.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
A few years ago I stopped in Ybor city during Spring break for a day before we left for Daytona. I was with two friends when we were jumped on a street corner by 2 men for no apparent reason possibly a case of mistaken identity. Luckily nobody was hurt too bad, the assalints appeared to be too intoxicated to fight but this is EXACTLY the type of thing these cameras could prevent. I am usually a big fan of privacy and its easy to argue against such invasions, but you never really know when a camera can actually end up being benefical.
I disagree to some extent. There's a difference between 'someone' standing there and taking in the view and the 'state' (ie. police). Agreed that that's no Constitutional right to be invisible in public, there IS an implicit guarantee (as upheld by the courts) to a degree of anonymity in public, IIRC correctly, sometimes directly to prohibit infringement of that that IS Constitutionally protected, the right of assembly. Also, while the 'public' are freer in public to do/cause certain events regarding other individuals, some of these same things the state is specifically prohibited from doing. So, it's NOT the same as 'just taking in the view' be it a person or camera. The fallability (or infallability) of the system to identify or mistakenly identify is going to be interesting as cases end up in court. (There will certainly be some. While the super bowl didn't have any impact, the article stated nobody was detained due to crowd size, etc, so that isn't good example.) I have a feeling it may end up with detention of someone without real probable cause who's been mistakenly identified or identified by a 'misfiled' picture. Plus, as someone else noted receiving a license with a picture from a database, there are obviously OTHER large accumulations of pictures that have nothing to do with criminals. How about those arrested but never convicted? They could easily be mistakenly included, and watched even though they technically that prior arrest shouldn't provide any more probable cause than for average joe. And those, as in my case, where photo's/fingerprints are on file becuase of a previously submitted security clearance for an event (and anyone who's ever served in the military'). As for the comment on East Germany, maybe it only failed because they didn't have the technology that's available today? I don't think it's wise that we in the IS answer that question for them. I loved the comment that if someone is identified, a policeman will be sent and the person asked to identyfy themselves, etc, and it not the one they want, will simply explain the situation. Do they think criminals are going to correctly identify themselves as criminals or not carry false identification. And the person that isn't carrying identification (there IS no law that requires one to carry that, that was more the USSR style.) A person could be detained for absolutely no other reason than walking down the street, taking no action that would normally provide probable cause to stop the individual.At that point the individual has to prove their innocence, the opposite of what the founding fathers had in mind.
In a real quick response, that is exactly what happened in Washington DC, when they first put them up. It appears that the local neigborhood drug dealers didn't like the idea of a camera being aimed in their direction and proceeded to shoot them out every week.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
Why is everybody so against the eye in the sky?
I'm not trying to flame, I'm trying to be serious.
I know I have nothing to hide from big brother, and if he wants to look into what I'm doing to keep me safer, all the better. The FBI or CIA or whatever does not care a/b whether you cheat on your wife, or skip work for a day. They only care a/b whether you are breaking the law. So if they come up with systems that allow them to better test whether or not you are breaking the law, why fight that? How will this camera system affect any of you negatively? All it means is known criminals won't want to hang aorund Tampa as much b/c of the chance of getting caught. PErsonally, if I were a Tampa resident, I would find that very exciting. Great awy to lower crime.
-- Henry, the soon to be flamed!
This story has 1984 written all over it, three cheers for the worlds "Greatest democrasy". America has proven itself to be the worlds greatest Hypocrisy if anything. Someone's sig once said, if you realy could change the system, it would be made illegal.
good idea, I would love to watch my favorite officers sleeping in their patrol cars, but I have a serious problem because the whole ideas of cameras everywere scare me. Cameras make me nervous.
And a BB gun won't knock out the protective glass, if they're like the traffic cameras where I live. Better upgrade to at least a .22.
I and a few of my associates have agreeded that if these cameras do go up that there will be a wire to them that can and will be cut at night. I refuse to be spied on. If that is not enough, a BB Gun or somesort will take care of the camera.-----> Probably not.
Those things are REALLY well-armoured. No exposed wires or anything like that to cut -all inside of a steel pole or under the cement. A shotgun slug might blow a hole in the camera, but a BB gun? Won't happen.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
We have politicians who want to introduce the Ten Commandments into every classroom. Why isn't anyone clamoring to introduce the Bill of Rights into every classroom?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I've got news for you. The cops *STILL* treat it as ground zero, only now their numbers are bolstered by Centro Ybor's security goons.
I was in Ybor last Friday night, and only found out about the software this morning. I feel physically ill right now at the thought of this.
Not long ago, Ybor's culture had a unique duality- during the day it was the respectable "historic district", and by night it was a no-holds-barred party district, and a haven for oft-persecuted subcultures. True, it was a little seedy at night, but it was also a fascinating showcase of how different groups could (mostly) co-exist and still be themselves.
Centro Ybor came in with their "more culture, less subculture" campaign and wrecked shop, turning the place into an oppressed shadow of it's former self. Sure, I don't feel as likely to be mugged by some ruffian, but now I have to worry about me or my wife being detained by the cops or security guards because we choose to wear predominantly black leather when we go out clubbing, which is significantly less often now.
Have you seen the rules for Centro Ybor? They're posted in several locations. In short, if you aren't spending money or moving to a store for the purpose of spending money, you're loitering (for those not familiar with the area, CY is situated such that it's rather difficult to get from most of the parking to most of the main establishments without going through it). If security doesn't like what you're wearing (their sole discretion), you're outta there. A group of 5 people under the age of 18 constitute an obstruction for foot traffic, while 50 senior citizens loafing about would not. Whats more, Centro Ybor security has decided that their jurisdiction includes not just their complex, but the streets adjacent to it. Read the Weekly Planet. They've made a habit of chasing people off for "loitering" in areas that CY doesn't even own, and of course the city cops have no problem with this.
These are weak examples I'm providing. There are much better ones, but I must admit to being a bit flustered by this all. I could go on and on, but I'll spare everyone a full-blown rant. Suffice it to say that the cameras installed along 7th Ave last year are utterly offensive, and the inclusion of face-recognition software is even more egregious.
Independance Day is in two days, but I must admit I'm not feeling particularly patriotic lately, or particularly free.
-Cybrex
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
For anyone who lives in Tampa and is even mildly aware of local politics, the answer is obvious.
Tampa is a police state.
The Tampa City Council uses its position to impose it's members' morality upon us ignorant heathens. Case in point: Tampa is an adult entertainment mecca. Not too long ago (just in time for the SuperBowl) lap dancing was banned in our fair city despite overwhelming protests from citizens from all walks of life. Regardless of your stance on lap dancing, their rationale was laughable: that lap dancing spreads STDs, even through denim jeans.
Our mayor, Dick Greco, has overtly used the police as his personal brute squad. Case in point: When his car was booted (immobilized) for being illegally parked, he didn't pay a fine like the rest of us do. He called in his thugs to "deal with this guy" (his words) and intimidate the owner of the parking lot into letting him go. The press picked up on this story briefly, but the mayor was completely unrepentant and they let the whole issue drop. Now I'm no fan of the parking lot attendants in Tampa, and their rates amount to theft, but this was clearly an abuse of power.
Just two examples off the top of my head. There are many, many more.
-Cybrex
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
I think you're misinterpreting what you read. First of all, the average was 15,000,000 matches per minute. Even so, all this means is that the system could compare 15,000,000 pairs of faces per minute. So after several minutes, the system could pick one face from the crowd and identify it as one person in the US. But with a database the size of the US, it would probably come up with many equally likely matches for that person. In practice, the database sizes are smaller, e.g. the list of suspects are smaller, so that they can actually use the system. For example, if there were 1,000 people in the crowd, and 1,000 people in the database, it would take 1,000,000 matches to compare everyone in the crowd against everyone in the database, which would take 4 seconds. But I'll bet there's no way in hell that the camera system, and the other components of the system can feed it faces from the crowd that fast. The system is doomed to never work well for large databases, if you read the FAQ, its Windows and COM-based. We know how well Windows scales!
Actually, there are (at the moment) some 27 amendments to the United States Bill of Rights.
Er, that's 27 Amendments to the Constitution as a whole.
"Bill of Rights" refers to the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution (and to those Ten alone), ratified a few years after ratification of the Constitution itself.
EC
This made me thing of the cameras installed along the major highways in the Raleigh, North Carolina area, where I live.
... and it seems to work well... police use them, news shows use them (during traffic reports) and you can pull them up on the web .
... there's someone at the door ...
The original idea behind them was for traffic monitoring
Having said that, I am a lawbreaker.
I speed constantly (90-100 mph in 60-65 zones).
It would seem that it would be fairly easy to see me zoooooming past all the othe traffic.
Evidently such is not the case.
Oh... hold on
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
"Who elected these phucks that are doing this? "
Oops. This might have been another accident. Whe are elderly Floridans going to learn how to vote?
And we know how unfailingly polite the police are toward people they consider to be potential murderers and drug dealers. They would never arrest the wrong fellow, nor would they possibly even inadvertently kill an innocent person before that person got a chance to present ID.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
The police of course would make a statement that this is for the "good of the public" and does not require any type of warrant because it is a "public area" and not a private residence.
Notice, however, that the police did not many any statement - they just did it.
Why? Because there is to be no scrutiny of it by the public. I'm sorry, but as a citizen, I would feel *incredibly* violated by knowing somewhere, there could be hidden cameras filming me at any given moment, and some guy is checking to see if I've committed a murder or brought in any drugs from another country.
This is the reason why I DO want to get into government - to stop absurd and dangerous ideas from being initiated by our government (in this case, local government). This is outrageous.
This is a major change, if you think about it, from old standards ---
Guilty until proven innocent.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
For this go-'round, the faces and identities will not be saved after matching (or so they say). However, it's a short step from the present system to archiving your whereabouts forever.
Future conversation in front of one of the camera monitors:
Holy Shit! That cassette in his walkman doesn't have a commercial label, against DMCA2. Let's bust his ass! Aren't these HD cameras great. Makes things so much easier
IIRC, they used this technology at the Superbowl.
How many criminals did it detect? How many where caught?
There was a lot of press about it before the game, but I don't recall *ANYTHING* about how well it worked.
It may all by hype.
--- If it's worth doing, it's worth doing in Perl!
I read about a man who looked like a known criminal and was arrested so many times that he spent more time in jail than in his own bed.
And in France there was a case once where a man who came into the police station to report the theft of his bike volunteered to take part in a lineup, was misidentified as a murderer and ended up being executed on the guillotine!
Could cases like this happen more frequently with buggy software misidentifying innocent people who are then are automatically marked for arrest and if they rely on computers more than on human sources they could be sent to prison or even to death row just because some programmer made a mistake somewhere.
Scarry stuff!
Are these cameras really for catching red-light runners? This would require issuing tickets based solely on photographic evidence, which I don't think any city in the bay area is currently doing. I always assumed the cameras were just for traffic monitoring (for now at least).
That's interesting!
This kind of system will necessarily have a problem with false positives and false negatives. False positives are going to be very annoying, as it will lead to unjust harassment by police of innocents. For example, if you scan 100000 people, and the probability of a false positive is one pr. 1000, police will wrongly accuse one hundred people.
Eventually, having a lot of false positives will lead to that police officers isn't responding to real situations, false negatives. Now, that's interesting, is this really going to improve handling of crimes? Given all the noise?
Instead of fighting more crimes, we may have more cases with police officers on the stand in court, saying: "No, your honor, it didn't look like rape to me"...
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Why would this be a bad thing? Fighting crime is not a 'Gentleman's Game' that would should be trying to keep the playing field even for. Any rational person should be rooting for the Cops to win.
I guess the rest of us will care when they start documenting where we go in Tampa. i.e. "Mr. Neal went to a strip club last night on Ocean Blvd. - let's follow him for a few days."
Grow the hell up -- the police have far more important things to worry about than tracking some random nobody who went to a legal entertainment venue. That's true today and it will always be true.
-Poot
Maybe its because practices like this are acceptable to the general public...? Don't assume that just because Joe Schmoe isn't outraged like you are, doesn't mean that he hasn't evaluated the situation and made up his mind about its acceptability.
Wait... you think shooting an AIR RIFLE is a NONVIOLENT APPROACH? Do you people even READ what you post?
Destroying police property is a crime, and shooting an air rifle in a residential most likely is a crime in your area as well. Don't be an idiot.
-Poot
No, but they should be.
If you break the law and you get caught due to these cameras, don't whine about how unfair it is that you didn't get away with your crime. Instead, pay your fine and learn not to break the law in the future.
They could become the object of harrassment and search warrants, all "justified" because they were caught on camera throwing a chewing gum wrapper upon the sidewalk.
You must think every person in the judicial system is an idiot.
My worry is that it'll become too tempting for the law enformcement agencies to streamline their search for the usual suspects.
The whipping boy is a feature of law police work now, but this makes it so much more efficient.
Certain groups will install massive amounts of
cameras in places. There will be omnious presense
but cameras will be not analysed by single
entity. Then one of the three letter agencies,
will demand and threaten government officials to
put a law in that will demand feeding unencumberd
images to them via a secured internet service,
for further analysis. All it takes is massive
presence, single law, and police enforcement.
At least in California. The California State Constitution, Article I, Section I says:
All people are by nature free and independent and have
inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and
liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing
and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.
Emphasis added.
Watching everyone all of the time takes a lot of resources. The former East German government tried it back in the days of the Cold War. Eventually, it toppled under the strain that such a machine placed upon itself and, in turn, so did the Berlin Wall.
While this factor may have contributed to the decline of East Germany, I am sure that this fact was of great comfort to the people who lived there for the 40+ years it took to happen.
The Revolution. Now available as a convienent six tape series from PBS.
Because the only taxes we pay to the city down here are property taxes, so I'm not losing my house over it.
I live in a nearby city, not Ybor.
Umm, criminals don't think like that except in movies. Some guy that just knocked off three banks will just go down to Ybor with his buddies and get drunk. It won't even occur to him.
The ACLU made themselves a dirty word. They have spent too much time fighting absurd claims. Seems like they have a tendency to go too far. Turns people off.
I've never seen the ACLU associate with something like this.
Point taken. Drug tests will undoubtably get better as medical technology improves, which is why it's important that we not have legislation blocking it. And yes, there is a false sense of security, however that's better than taking no action (and I don't think the companies are concerned about marijuana users so much as people who do crack, etc).
I guess the idea there is if you admit to it, and "try" to get help, that's better than trying to hide it.
Justin
Why do you think people accept drug tests being part of job interviews? If my employer can prove that my being a coke addict directly affects my job performance fine. But it's an invasion of privacy to see if I am indeed a coke addict. People are drawn to it because some Demopublican will mask it about being for the children.
And just what the heck is wrong with a drug test? This isn't the police coming into your home and taking a urine sample, this is voluntary (hey, no one said you had to work there) and it for the benefit of others. You want to go in and be around hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, work with hundreds of others of employees, and be trusted with the materials and tasks of a company, and you expect them to hire people who voluntarily break numerous laws and modify the workings of their brain? I mean, if someone has enough disrespect for the law and for the safety of others to start using stuff like cocaine, I don't see why they would have more respect for their boss, their coworkers, or the rules of the company. I don't see why their cognitive functions could be fully trusted when they are sitting there wanting their next fix. This isn't the company going through your private posessions, they are simply analysing that which you give away for free every time you visit the company john. Corporations, good or bad, need to be able to trust their employees to some extent, and I'm not sure if people who routinely fry their brains and break numerous (and very serious) laws are the most trustworthy bunch. We're not talking about people who speed a little on their way to work, these are people who knowingly posess and use substances which are prohibited nationwide, substances which are dangerous, deadly (even sometimes in small doses) and people kill others over consistantly. If I was an employer, big business or small, I would want to be able to trust my employees at least enough to respect established rules, etc. And if people lie about their drug use, what else are they lying about, their qualifications? Their resume? Whether they indeed worked 40 hours last week? No one's perfect but there's nothing wrong with wanting to know before you invest a lot of time, effort, and resources in someone whether or not they can be trusted.
This isn't like DNA testing, (which I'm against in most circumstances) there's no such thing as having "illegal DNA", and furthermore you cannot choose your DNA (at least not yet). This is testing for an illegal activity which has hazardous side effects. Cocaine, to use your example, can cause extreme irritability, sleep disorders, confusion, hallucinations, violent behavior, paranoia, and deep depression. I wouldn't want anyone using such mind-altering drugs (whose effects can last long beyond the time they have their "fix) to be in a situation where they could cause signifigant harm to one or more other beings (e.g. running heavy equipment, a nuclear reactor, etc). I think that those people have a right to be protected from those who abuse substances and could cause problems.
For those who are caught in addiction, there are many workplace and government sponsored agencies that are happy to help those who are willing to break their addiction, and rehabilitate themselves. The system is far from perfect, but it's better than letting them live their lives as they are, and endanger others in the process.
Here on slashdot, along with the corporation bashing, we also bash laws. Some laws like the DCMA, do, in fact, nothing more than serve the interests of large corporations. But the majority of laws are there to protect the individual, and the public. I think people are putting their rights to not have their urine examined above the rights of others to have a safe work atmosphere. It's not a private hobby, you bring the effects with you into the workplace.
The rights of the individual CAN be taken to an extreme, and that is when society suffers.
I feel that if a company is going to institute these tests, it should be unilateral, and be in a non-descriminatory way. That means yes, the boss and CEO should take them too.
People that have nothing to hide have no worry about this. People who have something to hide need help. If you know that getting help with your drug problem is going to help you get a job, you're more likely to get that help.
How much is privacy worth? Is it worth lives? Personally I dont' care if the government reads my e-mails, if AOL tracks what web sites I go to (AOL trackign what web sites you go to is like a grocery store keeping tabs on what you buy, you're buying it from them). I dont' care if the government puts up cameras and knows I take my girlfriend to Victoria Secret. If it helps cut crime, if they use it for enforcing laws which are designed to protect, and if that information is never given out to third parties, then yeah, go ahead, survey away. When you're in public, you're in public, duh! If you want privacy, live in your parents basement. If you have something to hide, well, hide! Otherwise don't complain about things which are not being abused.
I feel the same way about employers monitoring employee e-mail and computer use. Privacy is for at home. What you do on company time with company resources (computers, bandwidth, etc) you have to be accountable for. And I feel there is a definate corrilation between drug use and job productivity. Corporations care about the bottom line, and they spend money on these tests because there IS a correlation there.
Privacy is not living in a police state. We don't live in a police state. You go see how people lived behind the iron curtain, and then you talk about stupid privacies like drug tests.
Justin
Although, come to think of it, they might not have a gun detection algorithm in their software, so if a human isn't looking, you might be safe.
Ah - The System Shock method...
I was flying through London last Christmas and managed to grab a couple of hours "telly" time on a stopover.
The long and short of it: a comedian called Mark Thomas was using the UK digital protection act to requisition any and all recorded instances of him in public - a quick websearch yielded this http://www.mtp2001.co.uk/
The interesting thing was that in a typical Goverment inept fashion 1/3rd of the feed he attempted to solicit was either
1) The wrong camera, time and location
2) Unwatchable - CCTV doesn't give much definition
Why don't we have comedy like this in the US?
Wouldn't that be vandalism?
--
Baahh...fuckin' sheep....
There is a war going on for your mind.
wear make-up then, if that's illegal, I know a lot of ladies that will be in trouble...
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
"No, if John #34 is known to use PCP/be HIV positive/be armed/be an arrest resistor/be Walking While Black, you might end up just being beaten, maced, tazered or even gunned down."
all of this without even an "Excuse me sir"
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
You are a very deluded person....you need to lay off of that TV diet of C.O.P.S. & Hawaii 5.0
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
"They have spent too much time fighting absurd claims."
Name one...
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Fixer, if there is a warrant outstanding for your arrest, then the Police have the right to arrest you on the spot re that warrant regardless of "probable cause".
Whether they identify the person initially by having a cop oin the street corner seeing him, or from a camera identifying him, makes zero difference.
You really do need to think calmly about things before you start flaming, you know.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Nope, you are in EXACTLY THE SAME situation as if a cop on teh street thought you looked like the guy with the warrant.
EXACTLY the same situation.
The only downside is in the mind of the criminal who has a (slightly) higher chance of being spotted and apprehended.
Deal with it.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
So let's see if I get this right.
You are complaining because the camera does a better job than a cop and, as a result, there is a slightly higher chance of "bad guys" being caught?
As for the cameras giving probable cause to allow a stop&search - that is utter bollocks and you know it. All that they identification will do is enable the police to spot someone who may be one of their suspects, whom they can then look at phgysically in person, and if they still look like a known suspect, THEN they can approach them for identification.
Please do try to control your paranoia!
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Invasion of WHAT privacy?
When you are in public, how CAN that be private?!?!
Now, if they were targeting the cameras to look through your bedroom curtains or whatever, then I agree with you.
But using cameras to identify people who are IN PUBLIC? Get real!
--
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
I see a lot of people saying things like "if you're not a criminal, then don't let it get to you, you have nothing to hide, right?", which worries me. Quick question for the privacy exhibitionists who agree with that statement: Would you be equally in favor of having your e-mail screened, to make sure the contents are not illegal?
You don't have to be much of a conspiracy theorist to see that this easily extends to outright McCarthy-and-Orwell practices. Add some storage and you can easily track an individuals doings over time. Add some guilt by association and members of a TLA agency will be on you if you make the mistake of asking a shady individual for the time.. and what would happen if you happened to even resemble a wanted person and wasn't carrying any ID should be fairly obvious
No matter what the rationale behind CCTV cameras might be, it is an invasion of privacy.
The problem is, that it's not convicted drug dealers, but suspected drug dealers. And ordinary people have lost thousands of dollars because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
For a while -- maybe still -- you had to be very careful not to drive through certain counties in Florida with large amounts of cash. If you did, you were likely to lose that cash. No kidding.
The police can take -- without compensation -- any cash that they can show has drugs on it. I once heard a statistic that at least 90% of all twenty dollar bills showed enough trace cocaine that they could be confiscated.
Ordinary, law-abiding citizens have lost their money and their livelyhoods because of something of which they were suspected, not convicted.
It's one more step towards the police state the US seems to be heading toward, and it's wrong.
Sean.
Care to explain why anyone but criminals would be afraid of this?
The cameras are in public places so its not really an invasion of privacy, and unless you're breaking the law, they're not going to be interested in you.
I just can't see how any law-abiding citizen would have a problem with this?
What creeps me out is that the DMV can sell your picture to Equifax for their check security services.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet (I, v, 166-167)
Have you ever listened to something called an "mp3" by a music group on a major record label? what is that? you have not? good, you are not a criminal-
The US media made a big issue on how the Soviets and all it's eastern european brothers used cameras to spy on people. Now in the USA we imitate the Soviet Union all in the name of state security.
--
Will the last company to abandon Linux please turn off the lights??!
Only if they caught you cutting your face...and you were in the military / product of government research.
:)
Yeah, right.
Follow the links man!
Get your Unix fortune now!
Why don't the people there just plain stop paying taxes [given you pay city taxes].
Phuck 'em - they don't work - they don't get paid!
Get your Unix fortune now!
Not every crime is caused by a repeat offender. Not all crimes are violent. Not all crimes are really crimes - because [yes it can happen!] the law is wrong.
I can almost see that you think 'criminals' should all recieve strict punishments - lex talionis - law of the claw and all that eye for an eye stuff.
But not everyone agrees.
Also, take into consideration, most people hauled in because of this system would more than likely be wanted for traffic tickets or such. If there were so many rapist/murders on the streets in Ybor, they wouldn't be buying this system to take some snapshots.
Cops can sit back, and do nothing while the computers do all the work. You want a cop everywhere? In every store - in every aisle? In every dark corner watching you? It's starting
Why even have cops?
I could see this being used in pro pot rallys to snap everyone and see if they have a reason to harass them. On the visionics web site they advertise for "Human ID at a distance". This will eventually be used to pick out previos offenders and harass them. Giving no one a break.
"an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" --Ghandi
Get your Unix fortune now!
in america we do things on a case by case basis right?
thats the point - this thing can distinguish. But neither can law enforcement.
The law is only setup to describe guilt - not innocence.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Earlier I stated that it's legal for them to take your picture - and I'm right.
I live in Ohio, just as you do, but once your in a public place (or go unto private property which can reserve the right for THEM to take it) you are no longer private. I believe that is a National practice, but I know for sure it is here in Ohio.
When my [ex]girlfriends house caught on fire, the news crew showed up, and filmed her and her family - I asked them to stop and they complied. But later I called the news station to apologize for my rudeness I was informed that I really had no right to tell them, but they wouldn't put us on TV against our will. Only out of courtesy.
They were being nice. Now when I called the Cincinnati Post (which I worked for there sister company at the time- Gannett Media) they told me there was nothing we could legally do for publishing a picture of two family members. We were on the sidewalk, and the police agreed, we were in public and there was nothing we could do.
So there you go. Even a lawyer friend [retired] said sorry - nothing could be done.
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Not to mention the fact that most non-whites are prosecuted more than whites.
More blacks and hispanics are harrased by police than whites.
Look at Cincinnati... like the top thread says - the cops are the criminals, and the blacks are the victims.
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Here in Hamilton County Ohio (where Cincinnati is) they have file cabinets of warrants (yes they are still on paper) and no one even looks for these people.
It's simple laziness.
Plus they [nati cops] shot one guy for running on traffic tickets - and two cops got shot two or three years ago going to someone's home.
Cops only close 50% of cases every year - and some of that 50% comes from last year. [see playboy few months back]
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2. "You don't have to answer a police officer's questions, but you must show your driver's license and registration when stopped in a car. In other situations, you can't legally be arrested for refusing to identify yourself to a police officer"
So now I'm carrying ID without even knowing it. They can't come up and ask everyone for a fingerprint sample to check your ID - but now they will. That's what is scary.
No one has mentioned this at all. You don't have to tell them who you are if they just come up to you and ask you. But finally:
"We all recognize the need for effective law enforcement, but we should also understand our own rights and responsibilities -- especially in our relationships with the police. Everyone, including minors, has the right to courteous and respectful police treatment. "
--ACLU
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I'll make a fortune!
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As for this system being used to target select groups of people: like who? Is there any group that the POLICE would be likely to harrass besides criminals (even those who don't believe they're criminals, like j-walkers, speeders, and napster users)?
And as for most people not being 100% law-abiding: Of course this is true. DOES IT MEAN THAT NO-ONE SHOULD BE PENALIZED FOR BREAKING A LAW IF IT'S "JUST A MINOR ONE"? NO. If you break a law, no matter how insignificant, then YES you deserve to be punished.
I'm afraid I fail to understand what's supposed to be so compelling about your (and everyone else's) objections to this. /. are making it out to be. THE POLICE ARE NOT TO BE HATED AND FEARED, AND NOR IS ANYTHING WHICH HELPS THEM DO THEIR JOB, WHICH IS YOUR PROTECTION, YOU PARANOID INGRATES.
"...what if someone was...falsely identified as someone else with an outstanding warrant?"
Well, then presumably the police would write up a ticket and go to your house and ask for ID, and then they'd apologize profusely for bothering you because oh, we're sorry, that's not you. Is this such a major inconvenience?
"I still don't think this is a good idea because it means that someone is collecting information on you without your knowledge or permission."
Screw that paranoid bullcrap. What is it that you're doing that is so very very important to keep secret? This isn't some evil corporation or government conspiracy spying on people, it's the POLICE using a relatively unobtrusive technology to help them track down CRIMINALS. Not find out what kind of coffee you like and tell Starbucks. The police are not your ENEMIES that you need to hide from them!
"...it means your freedom is now in the hands of computer software..."
Please. "your freedom?" The police are not going to start arresting people solely based on their RESEMBLANCE to a criminal. Do you have a driver's liscense? Show it to them and you're all set. Don't have one? Use your freakin' thumbprint! There is simply no way this is as big a deal as you and all the other morons on
Who needs to bust the thing out? All you need to do is block the lens, no need to blow it away. A paintball gun won't likely get you as much time as a .22, is quieter, cheaper, and doesn't require a license.
I'm playing Desu Ex right now...and there are security cameras everywhere, including in the streets. Life mimicing art I guess...
My
>HELPS THEM DO THEIR JOB, WHICH IS YOUR PROTECTION
Actually their job is to enforce the laws.. which != protecting you. What do you suppose the cop/joe ratio is anyway? You are supposed to protect yourself.. and the cops clean up afterwards.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
Or they might cross-reference and store even non-matching faces. Imagine being able to input a photo or even an artists' reconstruction into a computer and get a complete listing of every single place the suspect has been in the last few years, no matter where in the country he/she went? Technically, I can't help thinking that it's an awfully cool thing, and I assume most cops would agree. Unfortunately, as a citizen it scares the crap out of me. Imagine if someone could access years of your history in a few seconds without leaving their seat? I don't think we need to go down this road.
But the possibility for abuse is tremendous. Nobody could hide from that kind of surveillance; the KGB could only dream of being able to watch people like that. Of course non-criminals have nothing to hide, so why shouldn't the government trace their movements, right? Just as long as you're not a closeted gay, or a political dissident, or cheating on your wife, you've got no reason to worry about people watching your movements.
Do you grasp how this changes the level of privacy in citizens' lives? Of course you have no guarantee of privacy when you're in public, but you do have a certain expectation of anonymity; it's the nature of the world today. Cops on the street can watch you, but no cop can watch every single person on the street. If the government or a private citizen wanted to follow individual citizens around in public, they could, but if they decided to do it 24/7 without justification, you can bet our courts would have a problem with it. It's just too invasive.
And that's what a fully implemented, linked surveillance network is. It's a cop following you around everywhere you go. Even if that information never leaks into the private domain, it simply changes our relationship with our government. We (and our courts) would not stand for constant, overt surveillance today, so I can't think of any reason we'd accept covert surveillance tomorrow. The only reason that this will be allowed to happen is that people are ignorant of the true capability of this technology. By the time we do become aware of it, it'll be a fait accompli, and our concept of anonymity will be irreversibly changed.
This is even more scary if you consider the natural extension of this. How about cataloging everyone in society, tying all your records (financial, criminal, medical, etc.) into this huge database now add the fact that the government can track your every move every day. It becomes terrifying. Especially, terrifying if you become subject to a case of mistaken identity. Imagine how embarrassing it would be to be arrested in front of your family & friends just because some video camera/computer thought you were someone else.
How about civil use? It seems to me that eventually this technology will be used in the private (ha!, that seems to be becoming a extinct word.) sector. Will your ex be able to use these records of your whereabouts in divorce cases to prove you were with the other woman? Or your boss, would he consider firing you if he knew what you did on your time off?
Where do we draw the line on what privacy means?
>False identification issues aside, I still don't think this is a good idea because it means that someone is collecting information on you without your knowledge or permission.
You struck on a point here. On all other records (i.e. medical, financial, credit, criminal), you have the right to access what information is stored on you, how it is used, and dispute inaccurate information. A dispute then requires an investigation into the accuracy of the information & removal of incorrect data.
With cameras, how can you access the records to see what 'evidence' the police are gathering on you? Can you dispute a false indentification?
This is a lot like the traffic cameras popping up around intersections taking snap shots of red light runners. What happens if there is a electrical malfunction or the road sensor is bad? There is no recourse because you must prove your innocence.
This can be seen as a threat to the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, especially if you are unable to dispute the evidence.
For those who think that this is just for so called crimials. Just remeber that the system will detect and save ALL faces criminal or not in its database with a time stamp and a location. So maybe the gov will find a reason to accuse you later and then simply query the computers as to your where abouts for the last five years. Also so far the system works worse than a dog trained to bark at a bag. It hasn't had many hits, but lots of false alarms, which means that innocent people got searched without a warrant! It will get more accurate and faster, but right now there needs to be laws that are based on the actual "correctness" of the system. The actual correctness is almost complete failure in MHO at the moment.
You are a criminal they just haven't allocated the resources to catch you yet. For those who think that this is just for so called crimials. Just remeber that the system will detect and save ALL faces criminal or not in its database with a time stamp and a location. So maybe the gov will find a reason to accuse you later and then simply query the computers as to your where abouts for the last five years. Also so far the system works worse than a dog trained to bark at a bag. It hasn't had many hits, but lots of false alarms, which means that innocent people got searched without a warrant! It will get more accurate and faster, but right now there needs to be laws that are based on the actual "correctness" of the system. The actual correctness is almost complete failure in MHO at the moment.
Sure Visionics has a tape out. They are very proud of it.
I agree. This is a matter of law. But until law is made, defense may be necessary. The old problem is that this is a great technology when used responsibly. It can be a terible nightmare if used to enslave people. Personally I'm in the business to create AI, games VR out of it. Of course evil companies like Visionics will always take advantage of technlogies for their own greedy purposes.
If everybody did it, then you would not stick out would you? Its not far off now. At the company I worked at previously we had to ask people to remove their baseball caps. Since the cameras were high up, it was good defense against face detection.
Cameras may be good or bad, but I think they are certainly significant.
The question should be "How much democratic input goes into making these policy decisions?"
I certainly doubt there is any kind of plebiscite, but I would be unsurprised to discover it was basically a bureaucratic/police decision with minimal democratic accountability.
Jhon is quite right, people should be questioning, and even directing the development of their community, society and country.
m
While none of the MS employees I know want to create an Orwellian world, this would seem to be a very efficient way to go about it.
Maybe I do need to switch entirely to FreeBSD...
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
THEIR JOB, WHICH IS YOUR PROTECTION
Theoretically, that is right. However, in practice, the police enforce laws enacted by a very corrupt congress, presidency, and to a lesser degree, supreme court. Laws and judgements are routinely made that are not for your protection. They look out for the interests of big business and special interest groups. For example: speed limits. Speed limits are supposed to establish a maximum speed at which a road can be safely traversed, taking into account the terrain, visibility, weather possibilities, pedestrians, and other traffic. Now in the town next door, there is a four lane, straight, crosswalked, turn laned, and stoplit, level, well illuminated road. The speed limit on it is 20 MPH. The average speed of traffic traveling on this road (from my experience) is around 40 MPH. The stoplights are timed for approximately this speed, and there are no problems with pedestrians, or accidents that I've ever seen. There is no ratonal reason for the speed limit to be 20 MPH. SOmeone going 20 MPH is more likely to become involved in an accident by getting rear ended, or narrowly making it through a yellow light. As the speed limit is 20MPH, the police have no right whatsoever to pull over this menacing driver, while they can have a field day on everyone else (the safe drivers). This speed limit story (and I'm sure there are far better ones) is an attempt to prove my point that the police aren't able to serve for the good of the people because of all the incredibly terrible laws on the books, locally and at the state and federal levels. It makes me sick to see some of the things that are illegal. The police are to be hated and feared, but only insofar as they are the brute force and enforcers of big business' hold on our nation's government. Our laws need to be brought out into the open, examined, made readily understandable, and consolidated into something of a sort instruction guide or field book, explaining things that are illegal and WHY they are so. Until then we will be servants of the large corporations and special interest groups.
~Mike
~Mike
A big enough hammer fixes *anything*
The ACLU does NOT defend the Bill of Rights. Try getting their help on a 2nd Amendment issue. Their defense of the 1st Amendment usually stops short of "freedom of expression" - when they don't agree with the ideas being expressed. The ACLU defends the Bill of Rights, mostly when it is good for its own adgenda.
"This is awful."
:)
"What about our privacy rights?"
"Why are people accepting this?"
I can't believe most of the posts here. Since when are we guaranteed privacy and anonymity in a PUBLIC place? Yeah, that's right...outside your property is PUBLIC. You're not guaranteed any privacy.
Oh my god! Sooner or later I'm going to be automatically fined for jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk!!! BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING!
Yeah, so. Most people should be watched in public because they're phucking bass poles. I cheered when they started placing systems to automatically record motorists that run red lights. Why? Before I almost get hit on a regular basis, after I do not fear for my life. I look forward to when they automatically ticket speeders. Yes, I speed. Yes, I'll DEFINATELY slow down if I know I'm being watched. That's the point isn't it?
What? Don't want to be ticketed for actions that you want to do? Well, I have the perfect solution for you. I'll even give you a choice:
1) Don't do them.
2) Lobby your local/state/federal lawmakers to CHANGE THE LAWS.
I think it's high time those old ridiculous laws you hear about on joke sites get reviewed and tossed. Think of it as a code review.
The only thing I fear is the system being used on political dissidents. On the other hand, if we can keep our right to arm ourselfs we shouldn't worry too much.
What you're suggesting (perhaps not explicitly) is that because these systems are currently (note: no forward thinking to technology ten to twenty years from now, where it may no longer be as easy) easy to beat by wearing hats and sunglasses, that its OK to allow these systems to be put into place. In other words, treat the symptoms of the problem, not the problem itself, which is that these systems should not exist in the first place (or, at the very least, if they are to exist, the system should be very transparent, people must be able to "watch the watchers".) The underlying message in allowing these systems to be put into place "because they can be easily beaten" is that it is actually OK to have these surveillance systems .. thus people accept it, and thus gradually accept more and more future encroaches on their freedom (frog in boiling water analogy). Quite frankly, I DONT WANT to wear sunglassses and hats everywhere I go, all the time. We should be sending a message that a 'surveillance society' is not acceptable at all to begin with. Yes, there are some powerful possible benefits to installing these systems - but as far as I can tell, they are currently rampantly being installed with little or no regard for accountability, responsibility, freedom of individuals etc - that is, there are few or no mechanisms in place to ensure that these systems are only used for the good of the public.
There is of course another aspect to this, the psychological aspect - when people know they are being watched all the time (and not too far in the future, everything will be recorded permanently too), they behave differently, e.g. behaviour becomes more subdued and "politically correct" (just look at the difference in the way people post e.g. on Usenet who know posts are recorded permanently compared to how those same people would have posted years ago when it was not known). If your life was being recorded, wouldn't you do at least some things differently? I know I would.
I really don't see the problem here. If the system is used for the job they've announced then no-one can really argue against that (except those unfortunates who bear a superficial resemblance to someone who's wanted and who get picked up every time they go into town). If they (whoever they are) start to misuse the system then you've got guns and cameras are fragile and expensive...
Input error. Replace user and press any key to continue.
Take a look at http://grc.com/dos/grcdos.htm, under the "An Attack 'Prone to Filtering'" heading a short way down the page.
Further sensationalism and misguided ranting can be found at http://grc.com/dos/winxp.htm
Still more amusement can be found on Gibson's security newsgroup where his most feverent groupies and sycophants display an astounding lack of clues. These are available via the web at http://grc.com/x/talk.exe?cmd=xover&group=grc.secu rity or through a standard NNTP interface at news.grc.com, newsgroup grc.security.
--
Have crack, will moderate.
The occasional poster formerly known as jihad23
I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.
--
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
But is all seriousness this topic is chilling. 1984 deeply affected my way of thinking. I can sort of tolerate it on private property, but the public sphere is way out of bounds in my oppinion. Like, I am WAY not liking this junk.
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
... expect to be photographed. If you don't want to be photographed, stay at home.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
Read it
Anyone who has watched the reality television show Big Brother would realize they people are BORING!!
Anyway, what are they going to do if they spot someone??
Computer: suspect located (oustanding parking fee)
Dispatcher: central to p453, suspect heading north on main road in jeans and flannel t-shirt
(3 mins)
p453: p453 to central we have lost suspect. He has entered a western fashion store.. I repeate has entered western fashion store.
Dispatch: confirmed p453, abandon search..
Enjoy POWER? Enjoy GUNS?
Join the Tampa Police!!!
We are looking for young, eager people to join our crack new cyber-crimefighting squad.
No danger envolved, suspects carry walking frames and are in wheel chairs
Tampa Police - Cracking down on unpaid jay walking tickets (from 1956) since July 2001
We will, and actually we already have you inDUHvidual. We are a class above you and we will smite your with our geek powers!!!
I agree, but even more: "e.g. voting". What occurs to me is that this development is completely rational. It can be argued through top to bottom, and there is no mistake in it. Short version: The law is made, or agreed upon by the people, the cops enforce the law to their utmost ability, with is nothing less than what the people want. However - taking one of the more controversial issues of today as an exapmle, namely hemp, it is clear that the law cannot agree with everyone at all times. And what happens if the law, or certain parts of it, suddenly are no longer agreeable to a majority the people, because they were drafted by "someone else" (*cough*big business*cough*)? Ybor City is only 17 years behind schedule (due to software release dates, no doubt), but going strong.
yes, we have no bananas
I wonder what the legal definition of liberty is, and if this voilates Article XIV of the constitution.
The difference between this technology and ways of finding criminals in the past is that this technology has memory that lasts forever, and I don't trust the Tampa police to forget.
--
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
This tech is in use in a buch of places like, INS (US), Vegas, various places in britan etc. It seems to be almost common. The register has an article here
I'm a programmer, I don't have to spell correctly; I just have to spell consistently
Big Brother is Watching you!
Down with Emanuel Goldstein!
Well, at least I have nothing to worry about. I am a double-good member of the party.
I suppose this is really not a terrible use of technology, as it is being used to locate people with outstanding warrants. As long as corporate sponsors never take over and use it to send marketroid generated gibberish to our cell phones, PDAs, pagers or personal stock ticker that will one day be scrolling across our sunglasses.
Until that day I say more power to the police forces that want to trust a computer to locate people with warrants.
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.sig seperator
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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Or never go outside again. :) It seems in some ways England is more backwards than the US, and in others the US is more backwards than England.
The real concern here is that the US legal system is largely based on precedence which guarantees that this will have effects far beyond this actual situation. I am not especially for or against having CCTVs in public places but, like all issues regarding technology and the police, we need very strict guidelines about its uses. Without a concensus about what is legitimate and illegitmate use of this technology we can quickly find CCTVs in a lot more places and used more invasively than anyone intended.
Drug testing in the workplace is a good example of how this happpens. At first it was the train companies who wanted to start testing their engineers because train crashes were occuring far too often and the engineers were often found to be drunk or on drugs when the trains crashed. Who was going to argue the reasonableness of that? These guys are moving toxic chemicals, dangerous freight and people. There was a clear danger here and reasonable minded people everywhere agreed that this was clearly a situation where drug testing was fair. All argument was squashed in the name of public safety.
What few people considered was that just about everyone can, in some way, pose a danger to others through their own negligence. I don't think any of the reasonable minded people believed that in the end just about everyone applying for any job in the US would have to take a drug test but here we are. Police can, should and will use technology. We as a society need to be mindful of its implications, remember that precedence has reach far beyond small reasonably framed arguments and ask tough questions.
It is illegal to wear a mask in public in Florida. The law is not enforced on Halloween/Guavaween.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
I don't think the companies are concerned about marijuana users so much as people who do crack
;)
And to your "point taken".....point taken
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
I wonder if their machines have the processing power to handle Guavaween and Gasparilla Night Parade. You'd figure that with the large amount of people that come down here for those you would get an lagging effect like in the NES and then they'd have enough time to get away.
+++
//----(triple c)-------//
'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley It's the one with the faceless baby.
so what youre saying is that blacks commit violent crimes simply because theyre black? sorry buddy, but you are a bigot...if the glove fits wear it
what about your neighbour to the north? up here the crime rate is very (extremely even) low compared to the US...and guess what, we dont have widely available firearms...neither do the japanese...neither do most industrialized countries in the world.
My cat's breath smells like cat food.--R. Wiggums
interesting way you have of twisting words around completely...youll get no further argument from me. youre right, youre absolutely right...those damn niggers are the cause of all the problems blah blah blah send them all back to where they came from blah blah blah
My cat's breath smells like cat food.--R. Wiggums
What creeps me out is the fact that my renewed drivers license came the other day. I didn't have to go take a picture or anything. It arrived in the mail with my picture from 5 years ago, in better quality than the original. Not a big leap from DMV Database to BigBrother 0wnz j00 Tracking system.
High-Tech Camera disabling devices? I wonder if Tampa has a law outlawing EMP weapons around their surveillance equipment. I also wonder if there would be a market for devices designed to conceal (or distort) certain spaces in a standard camera setup.
Then again, cameras just detect normal light if I'm not mistaken. So you could probably just stick a giant, bright light ontop of your head all the time to distract the cameras. Something that pulsates many different psychodelic colors or something. But chances are, that'd just make you stand out more.
A very complex problem.
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No, we aren't invisible, nor do we have a right to be invisible. But if you read something like "The Culture of Surveillance" by William Staples, you'll come to realize that the constant watching by cameras, drug testing, electronic friskers, and other surveillance techniques has many EXTRA affects on society.
The fundamental problem with this constant surveillance of everyone is the fact that we are no longer innocent until proven guilty. Instead, everyone is assumed guilty, and then the camera acts as the judge of their innocense. And the camera is seen as flawless. If you're cought on film doing something wrong, it must have been you, and you can't argue with that.
Technology is not flawless. What happens when the computer accidentally marks someone who's never even had a parking ticket in his life as someone who has an outstanding warrant? I would highly doubt the authorities would even double check. They would just go and grab the guy, haul him to the station, and then check it out.
There is tons of problems with this constant watching. Most people are apt to just say "Well, if you haven't done anything wrong, you should have nothing to hide." Well, I haven't done anything wrong, and I still don't want to be watched.
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On the other hand, it is a full listing of the powers of the federal government. If the Constitution doesn't specifically give it the power to do something, then it doesn't have the right to do it.
Read the 9th and 10th Amendments for more info.
In this case though, I fear you are correct. Since a cop could stand out on the street with a mugshots looking, they can place a camera there to to the same thing. I would say that the camera should be in plain sight and clearly marked though (as is the cop looking). This seems to be on the edge of legal though. It would probably be illegal if they used sensors beyond normal human perception (infrared, radar, etc). Makes me wonder if augmented memory would be considered beyond normal perception.
Yes, I can explain. I have several look-alikes and a common name. It's quite possible I'd end up underneath a well-meaning cop trying to explain I'm not THAT "xxxx". What if you look like a local notorious figure? Are you going to be stopped and "explained about the situation" each and every time you walk through there? The software's going to get a match each time. Can you imagine being harrassed (and potentially shot) every time you went to work, or to the market? I find your comment seriously naive.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
For you Oakland Raiders fans, how about sharing around some of the silver face paint?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
in California, if you look around quietly you'll see cameras springing up everywhere. I am not sure we have the backend high tech bio-metrics stuff...YET. But it is very eery how these things have popped up very quietly over the past year. They even have them on residential streets now. We play a game at work and in the neighborhood looking for the "blind spots"
Big Brother is here he just got sidetracked by a dozen years.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
with the successfull operation of the camera. It might swing around and white out. It is much easier to use in the dark with the night filter, so it can see and YOU CAN'T :) That does tell you the priority of the local government.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
their freedom for safety deserves to be caged....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Gahd. I should hope the cops have more important things to concern themselves about than some exposed tits.
If they don't have something better to do, then they should be fired: the police department is obviously overstaffed.
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--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
As we move closer to the world of Orwell's 1984, remember why this country is failing (and sadly the story is the same around the world). Japan is a rare example of a successful, non-violent, low-crime nation, but more on that later.
The US has one of the highest crime rates in the world (except for some African and South American countries.) The reason for this is simple, but not exactly "politically correct". If you weigh the crime rate averages together for the population groups in the US, it makes perfect sense.
- The low crime rate of the Asian/Japanese-Americans make up a small percent of the population.
- The low European-American crime rate is about the same as that of the native people in most countries in Europe.
- The African-American crime-rate(1) is orders of magnitude higher, consistent with the extreme crime rate the sub-Saharan African countries.
- The same is true for the Hispanic crime rate, which mirrors that seen in Mexico and the other South American countries of origin.
Instead of facing these simple facts, the liberals go to great lengths trying to disarm honest citizens whose families have been law abiding for hundreds of years in this country. Since gun ownership is already illegal for criminals, there is no reason to expect felons will obey new laws if guns are outlawed for everybody.Politicians continue promoting the flooding of America with 3rd world immigration that compound the problem further.
The final result of this is still years off, but the US will be no different from The Roman Empire, Egypt, India, Bosnia, South Africa, Israel, Zimbabwe, The English Empire, The Soviet Union or anywhere else where multi-cultural empires have existed. The end result is always the same: The empire's government disintegrates when the "ruling" class becomes too heavily outnumbered, and tribal warfare breaks out.
We're already seeing the beginnings of this in Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Seattle and Washington and other cities around the country.
Measures such as the government cameras (and electronic passports you must carry on your person, and other future protocols) are becoming increasingly necessary while politicians and police scramble to hold the scattering pieces of America together.
The constitution was intended to govern a country populated by the people who founded the nation. Jefferson and the others did not predict that America would turn into a multi-cultural empire (like the British one they has just left), where a legal system based on freedom and liberty cannot work.
So back to where i started, why is Japan so much more successful than us? Because they are not a multi-cultural empire. Japan is a homogeneous nation, made up of 99.8% native Japanese, basically an extended family, with a high average intelligence, and very similar to each other. They do not allow any significant immigration, and as a result, they will continue to prosper while America and Europe deteriorate into tribal civil wars sometime later in the 21st century.
(1) The rate at which Blacks commit murder is thirteen times that of Whites; Rape and assault, ten times. These figures, as given by the F.B.I. reports, vary somewhat from year to year but fairly represent the trend for the past decade. [Source: the FBI uniform crime statistics reports, and Harris, Marvin, Why Nothing Works. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY]
If you are going to flame me, do not use words such as "racist", "bigot" and "hater" that you have learned to repeat after the TV. Reply with your own opinions that you can back-up in a debate, not immature name-calling.
Many states have in the past, and are currently selling their drivers license databases. I'll agree that the number sounds farfetched, but it's not impossible.
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
I was there New Years' Eve 1999-2000. There was a huge party atmosphere and a fair amount of Mardi Gras style exhibitionism (I give you beads, you show your tits).
Since this is technically illegal, I could see the cameras being used to enforce that type of law; for the first time, it could be practical to do so, given a sufficient database of shots. Nobody actually at Ybor City wants to have it enforced, as far as I know, but a group of prudes could make it happen.
Needless to say, I would not appreciate that sort of thing. I'm sure it would reduce the revenues of Ybor City businesses, too.
The criminal element would simply avoid Ybor City or only go there masked. If you have any sense, I'm quite sure this sort of thing is trivial to defeat. I saw masks on many of the people in Ybor during New Years', so no, the answer would not be to detain anyone with a mask.
D
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As for your arguments about east germany. They didn't have the computing power we have. All you have to do is tell the camera to keep an eye on somebody and then alert you when some event happens. It won't be as rigorous as a human watching all the time, but it will be rigorous enough for most purposes. Part of the reason we should protest such technology is that it makes having an east german grade secret police possible.
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Since so many teenagers frequent Ybor City, Todd said, it is an area that could be targeted by sexual offenders, who have restrictions in their probation that typically prohibit them from contact with minors or with alcohol, he said.
Just because the system alerts them saying "John #34 is on Avenue 1 with an outstanding warrant for triple homicide" and it's really you, Joe.... doesn't mean you are going to get arrested.
In fact, if there's a APB out for someone, and you look like them, the cops will probably stop and ask you for some ID if they see you, I mean, what else can they do?
I doubt they would just 'haul him to the station and then check it out' given the chances of being sued for false arrest.
Again, you're making the mistake; being drug tested is more a violation of your privacy; being watched at home is a violation of your privacy.
Being watched in public is something you should EXPECT. You are outdoors, in full view of others, you cannot reasonably expect nobody to look at you. Whether it's a camera or a cop or joe blow on the street who recognizes you, what's the difference.
Now, if they start requiring people to be bare-faced in public... that'd be a different story.
The cop could also be in disguise. There is no reason for the camera to be clearly marked either, you are in a public place, you have no expectation of privacy.
Now, another thing: using directional microphones to pick up conversations, that would probably be a complete violation... you have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you are talking quietly to someone on a busy street and there is nobody within obvious earshot.
As for infrared, no, you don't have an expectation that nobody can see your infrared emissions, sorry.
Just wait until it starts to be used for other means. It already IS happening.
1) These cameras are only for traffic statistics.
2) We are going to use them for fighting crime now too.
3) We added face recognition.
What next?
1) We need to let insurance and advertising companies use them to help pay for the cameras.
2) Private Investigators willing to pay to use them... maybe to check on a cheating spouse.
3) Maybe employers will want to pay to access it... to make sure you're really out sick on a sick day
Maybe corrupt political uses. You know they will eventually be able to track one person around. Then they can not only watch the "dissident", but also find out all of his contacts, friends, etc. (They will probably come up with a good excuse... how about "need it to follow drug users to find the dealers").
Then there are the operators who will misuse it. Perverts using it to spy on people, nosy person using it to spy on enemies, neighbors, spouse, kids, etc.
If we DO have to put up with the cameras, then I like the idea of the system being completely public. Any person can access any camera at any time. Also they must install a camera pointing at the person in the police department that is watching the cameras. This camera must include the screens so we can see what they are watching. I would also like to see cameras inside the police department (excepting really private areas such as bathroom, locker room, etc). If they don't allow that, then break out the BB guns.
This makes you wonder:
"Corrupt the young, get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial, destroy their ruggedness. Get control of all means of publicity and thereby: Get the peoples' mind off their government by focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books and plays, and other trivialities. Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance. Destroy the peoples faith in their natural leaders by holding up the latter to ridicule, contempt and obloquy. Always preach true democracy but seize power as fast and as ruthlessly as possible. Encourage government extravagance, destroy its credit, produce fear with rising prices, inflation and general discontent. Foment unnecessary strikes in vital industries, encourage civil disorders and foster a soft and lenient attitude on the part of the government towards such disorders. By specious argument cause the breakdown of the old moral virtues: honesty, sobriety, continence, faith in the pledged word, ruggedness. Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with the view of confiscating them and leaving the population defenseless."
- Vladimir Ilich Lenin
It's a good thing the world sucks or we'd all fall off.
They company claims to have "electronic "library" of over 100-million people" which by my calculation is more than 1/3 of the people in this country (although they don't claim that all 100 million are US Citz.).
It just seems like way to many people to legitmately have in a data base.
http://www.hawknest.com/
I wouldn't mind this thing so much say in school yards, in front of the the Federal Reserve Bank in NYC (it's probably there already anyway), and other places of major security concern (say around US installations over seas, etc.).
The real question is should they really be able to back haul every video feed from every building and ATM and web cam and run it through their system. While that my very well be legal it shouldn't
http://www.hawknest.com/
Like many of you, there's a certain personal line that these cameras leap right over -- "It Just Ain't Right!"
I live in the Bay Area. There are cameras on top of every intersection's stoplights, to make sure nobody runs a red light (funny, I personally have never noticed rampant red-light-running, even before the cameras).
The traffic/stoplight cameras are over the line too, but they're very hard to protest nonviolently (they're 25 feet in the air and I'm in my car -- what to do?)
HOWEVER, these CCTV cameras sound much more amenable to resistance. TastyWheat has some interesting ideas (I especially like the "face glitter" idea, though I'm not sure I'd actually wear that around all day). What if a significant proportion of people, say 10%, were to always wear big floppy hats and sunglasses when outside? What if that were a Statement -- you will know my identity when I choose, and on my terms?
In the words of Benjamin Franklin, "When society trades its rights and freedoms for security it deserves neither the freedom or the security."
Resist!
Part of the Second American Revolution!
Of course, those folks living under authoritarian regimes will not be able to get the .22s or shotguns needed. But those of us lucky enough to be living under more enlightened rulers should have no problem.
Wait... you think shooting an AIR RIFLE is a NONVIOLENT APPROACH? Do you people even READ what you post?
Yes, I read what I post most closely. It is nonviolent in that it does not advocate or involve you going and throttling the politicians that let this kind of thing go on. The odds of a well aimed air rifle doing anything beyond superficial damage to anyone's person or property, aside from the aforementioned camera, are slim to nil.
Perhaps the people who might perform such a "crime" also think that automatic police survilence is a crime? Or an excessive violation of the rights given to them in the consitiution? (I'm not an American, mind you).
Don't be a sheep.
..don't panic
Yeah right, and you can't log some packets from a router without logging all of them, and you can't tap and record one person's phone conversations without tapping and recording everyone's phone conversations. It sounds to me like you're full of excrements.
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>Of course, as you're lining up to take aim at the lens, the camera has a perfect view of your face.
.22, it really shouldn't matter what angle you hit it from.
Why do you assume that the only way to hit a camera is from directly in front of it? With the paintball gun, you should be able to disable it from 120 degrees or so off the center line, and with the
Hell, you could use a scope with laser sight and bench-rest and do it from 300 yards away if you're a reasonably good marksman.
Hmm. Come to think of it, 1/2 a watt or so of HeNe laser light ought to fry a CCD pretty well.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
> > are "every day joes with less than conservative viewpoints"
>
> Really? Hmmm, and here *I* was thinking they would use it to track down us conservatives.
> You've got an extremely interesting view of modern America.
Actually, the fnord Illuminati fnord are using them to keep track of the conservatives and the liberals. The rest of this thread on Slashdot is just a smokescreen. (Best $3,125 I ever spent!)
Y'know, you had me going here. I mean, who would have a problem if the Tampa PD hired 100 patrolmen (recruiting for people with good memories) to walk the beat and keep their eyes open for anyone on the List Of Naughty Folks.
Unfortunately, you just torpedoed your own argument:
> Watching everyone all of the time takes a lot of resources. The former East German government tried it back in the days of the Cold War. Eventually, it toppled under the strain that such a machine placed upon itself and, in turn, so did the Berlin Wall
If I follow your logic here, you mean to say that the society created in East Germany, which enforced compliance with its laws by means of Stasi omnipresence was a Really Swell Idea, and that it's a real shame those poor Stasi leaders didn't have the right tools for the job?
Umm, nothing personal, but... no thanks.
> Paranoia is a healthy thing. In small doses.
But it isn't paranoia when they really are out to get you, is it?
I originally wrote that as a joke. Then I realized that widespread paranoia in a population is a logical consequence of the move towards an omnipresent surveillance / police state.
Consider - the civilians are afraid they'll "get caught" for any of a thousand infractions, and the cops, because they now see so many more infractions, realize there are a lot more criminals than they ever imagined.
Both sides' paranoia escalates as the degree of surveillance increases, each regarding the other as the enemy. The end state is - as in East Germany and the former Soviet Union - a nation of clinical paranoids.
Are you nuts? Do you have any idea what our politicians will do if they read all those books at once? Any idea how many ideas it'll give 'em? (Don't fall back on the fact that most of 'em are sub-literate, they got aides and interns to read the books for them.)
Shit, man, we had to pass antiterrorism laws to keep "The Anarchist's Cookbook" out of the hands of kids, and we had to pass that antidrug law to keep textfiles on methamphetamine manufacturing out of the hands of would-be-crankheads...
Now, thanks to you, I gotta get off my ass and lobby for a new law - this time to keep books like "1984" out of the hands of politicians. They use these works of fiction are like .HOWTO files, damnit!
You think I'm gonna trust a politician or a lawyer with a copy of Fahrenheit 451? (I'll see every copy of that book incinerated before I ever let a Congresscritter get his slimy little tentacles on it! :-)
True, as someone suggested. We won't be able to stop this CCTV future, but we can make it more equal.
Like, how about the first 5 cameras that are put up focus on the four largest police stations and the town hall. (Where footage is available to any citizen upon request.)
Maybe put another camera up on the street the mayor lives, and where the councilmen live. And where the chief of police lives. They're all public spaces aren't they?
Oh? This is an intrusion into privacy? Well, tough. Police aren't mythical creatures who deserve more rights than the general public. Nor are they entirely honest.
Oh, and the public gets the right to also see what ANY camera is seeing. Say, a couple of cable TV channels that flips between the cameras every 10 seconds.
I want accountability, and I want the people who think this future is a good idea to see it for themselves.. See it from the perspective of the 'sheep' they want to CCTV.
This future is coming, whether we like it or not. But that doesn't mean that it can't be made fair. I would accept cameras in public places as inevitable. But cameras watching police stations, town hall, and the streets where the city council, chief of police and mayor live is not so inevitable. It should be.
(Now I wish I remembered the URL of the guy who gave this view.. I think he was MIT.)
One day we'll all wake up to the fact that we are a bunch of slaves under surveillance. Then it will be too late to do anything about it.
who are the majority of american voters? currently it's middle-aged people to seniors (if i remember my stats correctly). at their age, being nearer to death than the rest of us, they think more highly of safety than civil rights. what's the problem with giving up a few freedoms if it keeps you alive a bit longer?
if you've ever watched bill maher, this is a subject he brings up frequently. i'd say it helps explain a lot of stupid recent regulations and laws.
I know it is a very cheap move to post under an early post for most people that read threads etc. I appologize. Here in Wichita, KS they are talking of putting up the 'red-light' cameras that will bust you for running a yellow. (Also worthy of note, many cities that have these have also shortened the length of the yellow lights so as to get more people. This makes intersections w/ a highway that need a long yellow dangerous.) I and a few of my associates have agreeded that if these cameras do go up that there will be a wire to them that can and will be cut at night. I refuse to be spied on. If that is not enough, a BB Gun or somesort will take care of the camera.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
if everyone dresses like nixon, it would slashdot the surveillance ID system and the police would freak!
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.
We need private groups to put wireless webcams watching city hall entrances, legislative offices, and restaurants and bars near such locations. Recognize elected officials and lobbyists, then start correlating contacts. In California, members of public bodies aren't allowed to meet privately with more than half the group present, or it's a public meeting and has to be publicized. This has real potential.
Burris
Now THAT would be kewl. Couple of years back, I lived in an appartment with a camera mounted in the lobby, pointing at the door w/ the intercom; it showed up on channel 2 if you were plugged into the building cable system. Obstensibly, it was so that you could tell who was asking you to buzz them in. But you'd be surprised how many hours the wife and I spent just watching, making up voices, stories, all sorts of stuff, watching humanity flow past. Same with people-watching at the mall, actually. I'd love something like this.....
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
i can't advocate monitoring of the populace.
... gunshot, running people vectoring in odd directions, etc. notifies police.
but, i think two things are accetable:
1) continuous recording for later analysis if a crime is reported in the area (perhas a court order will be needed to scan the tape);
2) automated recognition (via computer) of a crime
i'd be against general scanning of the population, totally against it. especially police scanning via joystick...the personal prejudices would be completely out of control.
i doubt i'd ever sign off on facial recognition. the police would start using it for warrants, tickets, deadbeat dads, etc. it would get crazy.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
following someone around and staring at them will get you a harrassment charge and a restraining order.
drug test programs are pseudo random -- it comes up in court all the time. just how random will this be? a bunch of people of one race folling people of another race with the joystick? or economic class?
the presumption of innocence? you seem most willing to just blow that whole concept away.
at what point does it become abuse? suppose a parent is accused of child abuse (a common tactic by a disgruntled spouse) and it's false. suddenly state resources are being used in a divorce case as these cameras start scanning for this person.
1-adam-12, 1-adam-12, there's a group of teenagers drinking beer under the 12th st. bridge! one has bong and a bag of chronic! BRING OUT THE DOGS!
the truth is ugly -- this is probably unconstitutional. in general, the government is legally obligated to remove itself from your life to the greatest extent possible unless a complaint is lodged. gov is not supposed to be 'scanning' for crime. obviously, capital crimes are an exception.
remember, this probably has more to do with someone trying to sell something to the police depts. than trying to make society safer.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Just because I am paranoid doesnt mean everyone is not out to get me! Er, I mean watch me walk around the mall, or, hmm what do I mean...
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Instead of a cop sitting in secret location watching the public through hidden video cameras, how about we put him or her ON THE STREET?
Then people can ask for directions, mention suspicious activity, approach if they feel threatened, etc.
And it's safe to say that there's no computer system in the world for recognizing human faces that is even remotely as good as the human brain.
Hmm, last time I checked, people are only criminals in America after they've been convicted of a crime. Think these cameras have a built in Criminal Detection System (tm) that stops them from taking pics of the rest of us?
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Hmmm.... Same state. You think they'd be a bit more cautious with technology right now.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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< )
( \
X
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Funny, I was saying the same thing not too long ago when the same Tampa Police department was doing the bidding of the GOP by creating a "First Amendment Zone" when Bu$h came to town and spoke at a public event. This is also the same police department that at the above said event, injured 1 and arrested 2 elderly citizens because their protest signs were a "security risk".
Survelliance Camera Players. Others are in the UK: mtp2001, in Belgium here or in Germany - Chaos Curcuit Club.
If you want to think about all of pros and cons of camera systems, read Public Surveillance System Privacy Guidelines.
Trying to make chaos pieces meaningful. The more meaningfullness I get, the more new chaos appears.
"That's awesome," said Souders, 35, a caterer. "If you don't have anything to worry about, it won't bother you. As far as any invasion of rights -- if you're breaking the law, your rights are kind of dissolved."
If the argument "if you don't have anything to worry about, it shouldn't bother you" makes sense to you, then you have no respect for privacy (your own or that of anybody else). It's about information, and how little information is needed to separate the "good" people from the "bad" people. It is due to a logical fallacy, which only stands if people do not recognize it as such.
This is the same kind of argument that marginalizes encryption. In other words, if encryption is only used by people who have something to hide, then anybody using encryption is suspect. Same goes for the paper shredder I recently bought: if I only shred sensitive documents, then it can be assumed that anything I shred is important.
Examples:
"If only people who are trying to hide something complain about public surveillance, then simply investigate those who complain." This kind of thinking will destroy privacy with amazing efficiency. If people fight the surveillance system for the sake of privacy in general, then it remains impossible to isolate people based on their reaction to the new technology.
"If only people who are hiding something use encryption, then simply investigate those who use encryption." One way destroy this kind of thinking is to use encryption as much as possible to add noise to the system.
"If only important documents are shredded, then it may be worthwhile to reconstruct everything that is shredded." Shred everything. Doing so lowers any perceived value of whatever is shredded. It also increases the volume of things to reconstruct, and makes it difficult to determine how much or how often something important is shredded (i.e. traffic analysis).
I realize that this all sounds somewhat paranoid, but consider how little information it may require to go smashing down your privacy. Just because a technology makes life more difficult for criminals does not mean it is good for everybody else. In other words: I have nothing to hide, but you are just going to have to take my word on that, unless (through due process) you have real evidence to the contrary. Without this attitude, there can be no privacy.
Huh? You got some references? That sounds like an "interesting" read. Did I miss a Slashdot article?
From the PDF File at: http://www.visionics.com/faceit/faqs/faqs.pdf
What are the major causes of face recognition failure?
a. Significant glare on eyeglasses that obstructs the eyes. Adjusting the lighting that causes the glare can typically solve this.
b. Long hair obscuring the central part of the face.
c. Poor lighting that would cause the face to be overexposed and low contrast.
d. Lack of resolution, in pixels, of the face.
So, as long as they don't ban long fringes and wraparound sunglasses or mirrorshades we're safe =)
-- kai
Give a man a mixtape, and he'll be grooving for an hour,
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
How much is your privacy worth?
Its easy to stand up and say that this is a privacy violation, although it seems pefectly legal. If this system enables the capture of one murderer, rapist, or sex offender, then I think its probably worth a minor infringement of our privacy.
Would you sacrifice someone elses life for your paranoia?
I would personally have to provide identification every time the camera falsely identifies me as a criminal than to let a criminal walk the streets. The problem is that there is no guarantee that the criminal will strike again, so the "benefits" of such a system are invisible, while the privacy implications are right in front of us.
Captain_Frisk
Thank you for helping me out here. I think you made a good point, and I'm sorry that you lost a karma point to back me up. The freedom to break the law is not a right we should enjoy.
Anyway... this is totally off-topic, but yeah, in general you're completely right about "never trust a junkie". It's complicated by the fact that she's my girlfriend & is making genuine attempts to get clean. OTOH she's stolen money in the past, & lied consistently to me when about being clean when she obviously wasn't.
OTOH she paid the money back (from earnings - she holds a job down, no not that kind of job, one in an office, honestly!!... and she's been honest lately. (Yes, I can tell. She's a very bad liar... ) If she wanted to screw me over for money, she's had ample opportunity to do so & it hasn't happened.
Obviously I realise that I'm taking several enormous risks*[1], on the other hand I couldn't sleep at night if I threw her out on the street. *shrug* Perhaps I'll look back in a few years & curse my stupidity; perhaps not. It just seems the best thing to do at present.
[1]: When she first told me, right after we met, I thought about it... "why, what could possibly go wrong?" I thought. "I mean, what's the absolute *worst* thing that could happen?" *pause* "Uh,.. oh, fuck!"
We now return you to your normal programme of flamewars and ill-informed ranting from zealots :-)
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Ok, I hear their arguments about lockin' up criminals and the such (when they are the ones who should really be locked up). They don't fly, because this isn't what the system's actual purpose is anyways. Can anyone tell me honestly they believe the 100% honest police want to use a video camera system spying on the public for "checking faces"?
This really ticks me off because in my own city (Columbus, Ohio), the corrupt Columbus Public Police Department is also going to implement a similar system. This is the same police department which is run by the bigot Cheif Jackson and has been under Federal investigation for such things as racial beatings. The point is that although some good police departments may be able to use the technology for a slightly good purpose, what happens if it falls into the hands of creeps like these?
There has also been the argument that as long as you're in public, someone can take your picture and has full rights to it. I'm sorry, but that's just not correct. This is why the media has to obtain permission to TAKE YOUR PICTURE. Suddenly, the police are exempt from this. They can take anyone's picture and not tell a soul. Since your picture belongs to you (it's your body, isn't it?) they are steeling when they run it through their system and use it for their purposes. If a model gets paid for her picture, why can't you? Why has this right been taken away selectively when you're dealing with the police?
Another good point is the police must have probable cause for obtaining any evidence or doing any types of personal checks. This was made to protect the privacy of citizens and to eliminate the ability of the police to do things like "Check 'em out." to try to get information on someone for a friend, or a favor for a favor type things. You can't just go digging into someone's personal records for no reason, which is exactly what this system does. By converse, if you are not a match, they know you don't have a record == invasion of your privacy.
It's sad that our privacy is being taken away, and there is no one there to stand up for it. Instead, we have people believing what they are told, including the fact that the government owns you, your image, and your life. When will people realize that they, indeed, have personal and certain fundamental rights?
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
If you think that's bad, consider the camera on top of Independence Hall, the building where the Declaration of Independence was signed.
(Previously submitted and rejected, BTW)
The ACLU associates with tons of stuff like this. Just go check out their website. They're not popular because they take on unpopular causes-- unpopular, but just and important. Look at it this way-- probably 85+% of the people in this Florida town think that putting cameras around town is a great idea. Stops crime, right? They're not concerned about the potential for abuse, or the threat to privacy. So if the ACLU were to walk in there and try to do something about it, they'd just muddy their name even more (those damn interfering liberals!)
By the same token, plenty of people think that property forfeiture law is great. Takes property away from those damn drug dealers. They don't realize that the seizure laws make a mockery of the constitution (relying on archaic English law), and will eventually be used against them (ie Giuliani siezing drunk drivers' cars, even if the car belonged to somebody else.) But the ACLU does something about this, and conservatives accuse them of protecting drug dealers. Get over it.
This is about a computerized facial recognition system that will be used to automatically match video to faces in a database. This technology, whether constitutionally authorized or not, is ENTIRELY different from placing cops on the street. It's also potentially worse than anything Orwell envisioned. Let's face it, the scenario outlined in 1984 could never have encompassed more than a small percentage of the population. The USSR, even at during its most brutal Stalinist periods was never able to bug or surveil more than a fraction of the populace.
This technology gives the government the potential ability to monitor the comings and goings of every single American who travels through a public space. This seriously changes the balance of power between the people and their government, even if the people don't yet realize what's going to happen as this technology matures (and I say this as a certainty. This tech will become ubiquitous and will be used for significantly more than it is today, unless we do something about it.)
You may be right that our constitution gives us no precise guarantee of privacy in a "public" space. It does, however, give us certain intangible guarantees to liberty, which this technology may seriously undermine.
The natural (knee-jerk?) reaction to this kind of story seems to be negative: I don't want someone, especially the government, watching me, etc, etc.
As far as I can see, the knee-jerk reaction is the one you just had. Most people in this country probably say "hey, cameras on the street'll reduce crime." What's the matter with those damn liberals?
That's a sickening story. Is anyone else feeling like government and business (and what's the distinction?) are treating the Bill of Rights as something to be fought, rather than a guiding principle?
As in, they're saying "We'll do anything we damn well feel like. If you don't like it, argue it in court after the event. That's your, heh heh, 'right'."
I know they've always done that to some extent ("When we said 'All men are created equal', we meant 'All white land owning men'..."), but it seems more and more prevelant under the current political climate of career politicans bought and paid for by corporate America. Damn.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What's scary to me is that I'm almost certainly just a few bytes different from somebody that's wanted and classed as armed and dangerous.
Picture it: "John Adam Twenty, be advised that Bloodbath Bill is standing ten feet in front of you. He is known to be armed, dangerous and HIV positive. Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of Bloodbath Bill has been approved."
That's what I find scary.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Whoa there! Got references? Cameras everywhere, sure, but this is the first I've heard that they're tracking faces.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Uh, actually, that's the only way I'd be happy about these things being up.
If we're having camera in public places, and I'm on them, I want public access to the feeds. Make everyone a watchman.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Picked up, or gunned down? What happens if your face is just a few bytes differene from Bloodbath Bill's, and some armed rookie cop gets the call that you're right there, you're standing right in front of him! ?
Extreme example, sure. The most likely snafu is people being falsely convicted after being placed near a crime scene. "Can I see the pictures?" "No, but we'll tell you the 300 bytes that identified you."
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
That's pretty funny, considering that you used to be able to get automatic weapons, pistols with >10 round magazines, that you didn't have to prove that you weren't a criminal before getting a gun...
Pop quiz: will taking out cameras with your guns hasten the slide towards the inevitable situation of them being taken from you?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I agree. Only it's not working. During this spring's anti-capitalist protests in London, the police took the BBC's (publically funded) webcams offline whenever any trouble started. Not a great precedent.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
In a post above, the stats for these things are given. A ballpark figure is 47,000,000 matches a minute.
The matching isn't the problem, it's what you do with it. I can't help but wonder what exactly the police are going to do with this information? Place people near crime scenes? It's only going to take one proven false positive to screw that one up.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's already illegal to be masked in some Southern states (KKK laws). Police in all US and European cities regularly detain (or punishment beat) anyone wearing a mask during civil disorder - or, importantly, before expected civil disorder. Probably cause and all that. A 2600 guy got charged with conspiracy to be naughty after Seattle last year because he made a call on a cell phone to tell his buddies where the police were moving to.
It's already illegal - or punishable - to hide or conceal your actions, and to monitor the actions of the state. We're already there, in Europe and the USA.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
That's exactly what happens. CCTV is very popular in most UK cities. Urban crime dropped a little, but suburban and rural crime rocketed, and the overall street crime figures went up after CCTV took off in a big way.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is absolutely correct, and a splendid point. A friend in traffic told me that handheld speed detectors are often deployed heavily at the end of the month to meet quota. He reckons that if he wanted, he could write two or three times as many tickets as he currently does, but then he'd have to explain why he was ticketing "abnormally". So he just picks up the worst offenders at the start of the month, then fills quota at the end.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Interesting post. Mitigating factors:
But you're right that we should debate this honestly.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It is a degrading and humiliating practice (in many instances, someone monitors the entire process to make sure no one cheats). It invades a person's privacy (drug tests can turn up more than drugs. They can also turn up prescription medications and medical conditions). Drug tests can produce false-positives, thus incriminating a completely innocent person. Drug tests can incriminate someone simply because they have been in the proximity of a marijuana or methamphetamine smoker. Drug tests are a slippery slope that will lead to further erosion of people's rights.
This isn't the police coming into your home and taking a urine sample, this is voluntary (hey, no one said you had to work there)
How voluntary is it, when every employer in the area requires it? Is it really voluntary when the only way to survive without submitting to the test, is to steal for a living?
I mean, if someone has enough disrespect for the law and for the safety of others to start using stuff like cocaine, I don't see why they would have more respect for their boss, their coworkers, or the rules of the company.
Just because someone won't take the test, doesn't mean they use drugs!!! And I certainly wouldn't trust someone just because they passed a drug test.
Furthermore, even if someone does use drugs, they are not necessarily untrustworthy. How many people used alcohol during prohibition? How many people violate sodomy laws? Adultory laws? How many people risk their lives to scale the side of a mountain? Can none of these people be trusted?
According to recent anti-tobacco advertisements, nicotine is as addictive as heroin. Is your life in danger because your co-workers are desperate to get their next nicotine "fix"?
This isn't the company going through your private posessions,
Apparently, you don't work for Wal-Mart; where the company reserves the right to dig through your possesions to make sure you aren't pilfering from them.
they are simply analysing that which you give away for free every time you visit the company john.
First of all, the company john is required to have walls so that you have some degree of privacy. Second, claiming that your excrement has no degree of privacy is like giving a reporter, neighbor, family member, or indeed, your employer the right to test for medications, medical conditions, and genes, as well as drugs.
The rights of the individual CAN be taken to an extreme, and that is when society suffers.
In this case, you are taking the rights of an employer to an extreme.
There is little evidence that drug tests actually help employers. The evidence to support drug tests is typically done by drug testing companies.
The National Acadamy of the Sciences conducted an extensive cost/benefit analysis of employee drug testing. Their conclusion was that (with the exception of alcohol or safety-critical tasks like driving) drug tests do not help the employer at all.
I think employers are simply over-reacting to a popular craze (the war on drugs), and throwing away our rights to get a small reduction in insurance costs (reductions that are offered to lower health care expenses).
I have the feeling that the cameras, as described, will only be able to pick out the criminals who are "every day joes with less than conservative viewpoints" (as waterhouse puts it, #6).
Any serious criminals will make the effort to disguise themselves - as ever.
What we have here is a dragnet for social misfits - the the land of freedom.
yes, we have no bananas
In fact, these people would be more than happy to drop the football players, and have the field populated with TV cameras aimed at the audience.
So the Superbowl is not going to be the most controversial place to do video surveillance.
I'm more worried about what private persons are doing these days. spycams are so tiny, and can be mounted anywhere. There are perverts setting up shop in bathrooms and showers. Then there are the nosy ones. Hotel security installed spycams in the employee locker rooms. Recently in Boston, a landlord was arrested, after the tennants discovered that he'd been videotaping everything they did in their apartment for years.
I guess the safest thing is to always imagine there might be someone watching. So never do anything you wouldn't want anybody to see.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
And just what the heck is wrong with a drug test?
Actually, quite a few things are wrong with a drug test. Most of the really bad drugs (coke/crack, heroin, etc.) are not detectable a day or so after the last time you did them. The least harmful (pot) is detectable 30-45 days after the last time you smoked, and about a week after the last time you were in close quarters with someone who was (2nd hand smoke). Probably the most dangerous, alcohol, is not even considered a failure. Basically, the most evil aspect to drug tests is that you have a false sense of security and eliminate many candidates that are likely to be great employees. Most small or medium sized companies (those that are more likely to be attuned to their employees) have stopped, or never have, done drug testing. They rely on job performance.
I personally believe that a company has a right to administer them, but I think they are doing themselves a disservice (as a rule, there are some exceptions like pilots, bus-drivers, etc. that have a public safety responsibility and need to be above reproach).
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
This is for everyone who says "you don't have a right to privacy in public," "police need this to do their jobs," and especially "law-abiding people have nothing to fear." I'm surprised this hasn't come up yet.
An ex-girlfriend who was still in college at the time was taking criminal sociology courses. One of the final projects for one course was to bone up on local, state, and federal laws as much as possible, and then follow someone around for a day and see how many laws they broke. (Not telling the person of course, ad reporting would be done anoynmously as to subject.) The dear, of course, followed me.
I broke the law 235 times that day. I was aware (jay walking, speeding), of about half of them. I was a little higher than average, apparently.
I was stopped and cited for none of them, obviously. Cops can't catch most crime. They can barely catch most *serious* crime. Also, most cops aren't as aware as my gf was of the laws of the town. They just know what's probably illegal and look it up when they bring you in.
Now, nearly all of those law infractions happened in public, which is probably average for most people.
Add that to this system being implemented.
Do you hold unpopular views? Do you have any enemies on the police force? Any enemies with friends on the police force?
Oh, so you're a likeable guy who thinks this is all paranoid.
Okay. So, are you willing to bet the cop on duty on the monitors doesn't have a quota to meet? Nearly all police departments have official or unofficial quota systems by which they judge arrests or cititations of particular crimes. They are used for evaluation and PR purposes. You better bet that they will be in place for the officers monitoring these systems.
Are you willing to bet your privacy against a $20 littering fine because you didn't see the wind blowing a paper away from the garbage can you were aiming at?
That's just an example. For all you safe, law-abiding people.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
On possible solution is detailed by David Brin, in his book "The Transparent Society". Chpater one is available online here
It's well worth reading, and deals with the societal impact of pervasive surveillance technology, and what to do about it, once it's a given that it's implemented - how to _stop_ a Big-Brother like state arising - his solution is fairly simple - give _everyone_ the right to use public-access surveillance equipment. If the police can watch you, make sure that the citizens can watch the police, etc.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
CCTVs in public places aren't placed there to infringe on the constitutional rights of you or anyone else. They can't do that because the Constitution doesn't protect your right to be invisible in a public place.
My favourite quote by Bruce Schneier in Secrets and Lies: "It is poor socvial hygeine to put in place systems that could facilitate a police state".
- wear coloured sun glasses
- sparkly dust on my face
- a hat
- shiny, colourful clothes
Yah, that'll keep me from being spotted for sure.That's actually my chief problem with this. My buddy's brand new Dodge Ram was stolen, the cops found it parked outside the thief's house (we all knew who did it from the beginning), the thief's comb was in the truck along with a pencil and a piece of paper with his girlfriends name and number on it, and the paper lady saw him get out of the truck and told the cops about it. They didn't arrest him. Same guy later stole a couple hundred dollars from my neighbors house, cops did nothing. Then he stole my Dirt Bike, the cops basically came out and told me that they knew who did it, then basically said they weren't going to do much about it.
If they won't make an arrest in a Grand Theft Auto case with an eye witness, why should we believe that camera systems are going to improve anything? I don't know that all cops are either as cowardly or as corrupt as Isle of Wight Sheriffs, but I would personally not want a technology like this in the hands of our police.
I have serious concerns for the methods used by the Tampa State Police to find people with outstanding arrest warrants. My question is what if someone was photographed and because of the light or if the conditions were right then could they be falsely identified as someone else with an outstanding warrant?
Unless there's a human around to verify that the photographs are correct (as is the case with automated speed cameras in my country, Australia) then bad things could happen. False identification issues aside, I still don't think this is a good idea because it means that someone is collecting information on you without your knowledge or permission. And since this is done without your knowing, you're not always able to verify that the information collected about you is correct.
It might also be interesting to know that the Visionics website has a whole host of press releases concerning the use of FaceIt technology in places like Birmingham City Centre, London, in Iceland's Keflavk airport as part of the upgrade of their CCTV system, in the Oklahoma State Investigation Bureau as part of their Law Enforcement Identification Solution, in Mexico to eliminate duplicate voter registrations, in Rhode Island and even in the largest police department in Australia. In fact, the United States Immigration & Naturalisation Service (INS) has placed a $7.4 million order for an additional 276 live scan systems.
So while this development is not new, it's still worrying because it means that your freedom is now in the hands of computer software which is just as fallable and exploitable as the people who wrote it.
Self Bias Resistor
----------
When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer our friend.
If you don't believe me, just look around at how many people sitting in cars at stop lights pick their noses. Sheesh...half of them eat it too. *grin*
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Seems to me that there may be some unintended side effects as a result of this:
Oh, and as these systems become more prevalent, I could see a state- or country-wide network of these being constructed. Thus, a person who has a warrant in one city or state could be more easily located if they should move . For example, police in New York City could forward photos of people with outstanding warrants to the police in Tampa. And vice versa. Add in other major cities, federal agencies, etc. and I expect over time,these disparate systems will become highly interconnected. Call it a high-tech variant on putting out an APB (All-Points Bulletin -- well, that's what they called in on the crime shows I watched as a kid. :)
This isn't the first time that CCTV and surveillance generally has been discussed on /. and it won't be the last.
The natural (knee-jerk?) reaction to this kind of story seems to be negative: I don't want someone, especially the government, watching me, etc, etc.
But all of those comparisons to 1984 and Enemy of the State are just so over the top. Big Brother definitely isn't watching you, and Jon Voight isn't either.
CCTVs in public places aren't placed there to infringe on the constitutional rights of you or anyone else. They can't do that because the Constitution doesn't protect your right to be invisible in a public place.
If your a known criminal or are engaging in criminal activity then a CCTV camera on the street corner isn't exactly welcome. But if your Joe Average it's no better or no worse than someone standing there taking in the view.
Watching everyone all of the time takes a lot of resources. The former East German government tried it back in the days of the Cold War. Eventually, it toppled under the strain that such a machine placed upon itself and, in turn, so did the Berlin Wall.
Paranoia is a healthy thing. In small doses.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
OK, everyone, its time to stock up on KISS and Darth Maul makeup kits!
Seriously -- practices like this are becoming far too acceptable by the general public. Why? Does it start at home? Are we as a society raising drones who refuse to question authority or take an active role in something as running this city/county/country (i.e. voting)?
The answer is simple: expansion (and simplification) of media and resulting simplification of public perception. Today, more than ever, the problems of society are covered in mass media (often in simplistic fashion). There is a perception that morality in this country is falling apart, but really we're just more aware of problems that were already there. Crime rates are declining, but today more than ever people are afraid. And when people are scared, they are willing to sacrifice some of their basic freedoms to allay their fears. If technique X infringes on right Y, but catches Z criminals, it suddenly becomes O.K.
Extended out, continuing to sacrifice basic rights for (percieved) safety, you arrive at an Orwellian state.
SUCKS, don't it?
Out of intelligent things to say and searching for good marijuana,
-- If any of the above made sense, I assure it was purely by accident.
Buy yourself a target air rifle, not a cheap one, but a good one with a nice scope. You can easily find angles to hit the camera without being easily seen by the camera. Shoot said camera out. When they fix it, shoot it out again, later. Enough people doing that will make them go away.
The security gestapo at my old univesity (University of New Brunswick) actually noticed someone breaking into a house several kilometers away with a ultra-high-power security camera. (The University is on a large hill). One might wonder what the hell they were doing looking at houses several kilometers away - or for that matter, who's windows they're looking in. Entertainment value, indeed.
Security cameras are just one step closer.. Safe or Free, your pick.. and Prisons aren't the safest places last I checked.
..don't panic
How hard is it to hit a camera with a paintball gun or a .22 anyway?
Think "countermeasures", people!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
As it happens, in many places in the south, it *is* illegal to wear masks in public. This law was a counter-measure to Ku Klux Klan terrorism.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
The free-thinking and non-bootlicking citizens of Tampa should consider using one of these high-tech camera-disabling products.
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
I think this technology is pretty cool, but of course I hate the idea of this eye in the sky.
It takes everyone's picture - so if your really paranoid then, well there you have it.
But if I'm a criminal visting or living in Tampa - this takes the fun out of cops and robbers. If you're in public anyone has the right to take your picture - and of course take it to the police. But this is the 'napster' syndrome [listen to bob&tom-napster allows millions of copies of a CD unlike taping a CD which would take forever...tangent]. Not only does this thing snap a photo of you, but it does it at such a rate that it becomes more than just taking a few shots.
Who elected these phucks that are doing this? Because I wouldn't be voting for them. It seems more technology means the 'cops' of cops and robbers get the upperhand.
It just doesn't seem like fair play. But if you want to be really [really] paranoid - you could watch "Enemy of the State" and compare.
I guess the rest of us will care when they start documenting where we go in Tampa. i.e. "Mr. Neal went to a strip club last night on Ocean Blvd. - let's follow him for a few days."
just doesn't seem fair.
Get your Unix fortune now!
The video system in Ybor City has bee in place on the main drag (7th Avenue) for a couple of years. It pretty much went up without any fan fare, and the PD said it was for better crowd control during weekends and Gasparilla and Guavaween, when Certified Madness takes over the place. Now, as of last week I hear they are augmenting the system with face recognition. Now, whats REALLY interesting about all this is that Ybor city has gone froma place of miscreants and party goers helbent on rowdiness to a "High Class Locale" and Family Entertainment Venue in less than a year. What was once projects and low quality commercial and industry has become Luxury Apartments (that caught fire and burnt the local Post Office down...). Prior to the interests of a HUGE complex called Centro Ybor and the $$$$ for development, the place was a police wasteland where the boys in blue pretty much treated it as ground zero. Needless to say, this has ruined the club scene.:) SasserianSection
These are the books I've seen listed on privacy violations so far on the discussions here. I figured I'd put em all in one place so their easier to find. George Orwell, "1984." Franz Kafka, "The Trial." William G. Staples, "The Culture of Surveillance: Discipline and Social Control in the United States." David Brin, "The Transparent Society." If there are any other ones, feel free to add.
---
There are many ways to aprehend someone who has a warrant out for them. You pick them up at home, you pick them up at work, you wait till they get pulled over for having a tailight out. Most of the people with warrants out for them are for traffic offenses or other minor crimes. Even if this works as well as they claim, its not going to be instantanious. By the time you've got a "potential" match, the mark will be long gone. Sure, you can attempt to establish a pattern, but frankly as a law abiding tax paying public citizen, I'm willing to wait until he gets pulled over before you call out the swat team for that $200 ticket.
The potential for misuse is too great here. Technology is not infallible. It can be 99.9%, but that means nothing in the grande scheme of things. There will be LOTS of false positives in a system like this. Even if the prospect of getting picked up for someone else's crime doesn't bother you (after all, subsequent validation will vindicate you from this incident), if you ARE attempting to develop a pattern, then false positives will make for an extremely diverse pattern, one that can't be relied on for much.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
They are becoming all too common because of the media. Most people are pacifists by nature, they'll avoid confrontation at all costs. CNN(insert favorite govertainment channel here) will call something like the Million Mom March "groundbreaking" but will insert another adjective like "contraversial" in front of the Guns Owners of America. The sheeple automatically are drawn to a don't-rock-the-boat mentality.
Why do you think people accept drug tests being part of job interviews? If my employer can prove that my being a coke addict directly affects my job performance fine. But it's an invasion of privacy to see if I am indeed a coke addict. People are drawn to it because some Demopublican will mask it about being for the children.
It's very similar to what that idiot Steve Gibson is doing. Cnet, ZDnet, whatever-pc-magazine prints his half-baked theories about UNIX sockets in XP. Just having UNIX sockets isn't necessarily a bad thing, its in how they're used obviously. They follow his words since he has a flare for the dramatic and sounds very clueful to the average AOL user. UNIX sockets don't spoof packets, script-kiddies spoof packets. Look at those kennedy elitists: all of my unregistered handguns have kill less people than kennedy cars and golf clubs combined.
If you really want to do something about this organize a day of protest. Image several thousand people wondering around downtown Tampa dress as Santa or wearing Nixon masks. Will they get arrested for not showing their face in public? What will the police in Tampa charge them with?
Another day closer to redwood heaven
A face is compressed to between 100 and 300 bytes. Even with 100 bytes the reconstructed face looks remarkably similar to the real one.
With a 500 MHz Pentium, up to 47,000,000 rough ("vector") matches per minute can be made. A vector is an 88 byte representation of a face. Then, a finer scan can pin down the top matches.
In other words the entire population of the US can be scanned in a few minutes with a single PC. Is it just me, or is there something scary about this?
The reason for implementing this is that police officers were complaining that they just couldn't manage to get a good look at ALL the women on the beach without these.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
When did "ACLU" become a dirty word? How did defending the bill of rights come to be out of fashion? Did I miss the spaceship that took all the rational people away?
Seriously -- practices like this are becoming far too acceptable by the general public. Why? Does it start at home? Are we as a society raising drones who refuse to question authority or take an active role in something as running this city/county/country (i.e. voting)?
Ok. Stop the ride. I want to get off. It's finally starting to make me sick.
-jhon
I live in Brixton, an area of South London known for a very high level of street drug dealing (smack, crack). A very close friend of mine has the misfortune to be a heroin addict. I went down with her once when she went to score. In a five minute walk around this particular area (which is also the heart of Brixton's new-found fashionable status,. with lots of new clubs and bars, very much part of the London scene[tm]) she was approached *by* no less than eight dealers, most of whom were part of groups of three or four.
For some reason (more yuppies in the area?), the police have decided that open crack dealing is a Bad Thing. As part of a new campaign to *cough* crack down on the problem, CCTV was installed a year ago, the whole length of the street.
It has made no difference at all as far as I can see.
In the last three months, however, the residents of the estate where I live - about a ten minute walk from this inferno - have been kicking up a fuss because prostitutes and junkies bean to come up here after they'd scored / picked up a client. There are lots of young kids round here, & it's not very nice to find used works in your apartment stairwell in the morning. So, CCTV to the rescue again; another few dozen cameras now cover the entire estate. This has actually helped. The reason the dealers can't be busted even when they're seen on video clearly dealing, is that actual drugs are needed to get a conviction - and of course they swallow it immediately if the cops show up. It's harder for a junkie to swallow a syringe, however ;)
Ironically I then met someone who works for the local council on the second scheme. Although when it's completed, only the police will have access to the pictures, she has a stack of monitors on her desk at present for 'debugging' purposes - and she sure as hell uses it for personal use (checking up on her S.O. to make sure he goes to the shops when he said he would, for instance.) She was also attacked on the street a few weeks ago. She called her boss afterwards, who took the tapes straight to the cops 20 minutes after the incident, and the attacker was picked up 30 mins after that. As she herself said, however, this was only because of who she was... if she was a random member of the public, the service would have been much, much slower.
I just remembered another anecdotal data point... another junkie, friend of the above-mentioned one, was beaten up just outside his apartment block. This block is staffed 24/7 and, yep, they have CCTV which is supposed to be monitored. Surpise, they happened to be "looking the other way" at the time... he's apparently talking of sueing them (IIRC it's a criminal offence not to respond in such a situation) - but what's the betting that teh relevant tapes get "lost" or "accidentally wiped"?
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
I have worked in the face detection and recognition business. I think its time to show people how they might be able to defeat the system. In england such a defense system to your identity is highly desired because almost every sqr foot of london is covered by face detectors. Actually the system is so error prone that its really a piece of cake to defeat it. Simple hats and big sun glasses pretty much keep you anonymous. iridescent surfaces will reek havoc with the algorithms also. A good amount of high frequency changes in the image and it won't even detect your face anymore. The systems are appearance based and appearance based systems have trouble with multiclored high frequeny changing images. Such as sparklies on your face cause the system to have more noise in its algs. I can forsee a public revolution as people start to wear more iridescent colored glasses in larger numbers. I plan on doing some research on the defense mechs. Right after my thesis, which will be the tool I use to help discove good defenses. I am a member of the OpenCV group on sourceforge and on Yahoogroups. I will release the tracking program as open source if possibble.