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Smart Cameras To Predict Crimes
hairybacchus writes: "The Independent News is reporting that scientists at Kingston University in London have developed video processing software that is able to predict behavior patterns of the people on-screen. They say it will be used to alleviate congestion in the London Underground or alert police to potential muggings. I wonder how long it will be before this is combined with face-recognition technology? It's spooky." I can't wait. "We searched you because the computer told us to." Trust the Computer.
And rightly so! Ever since the settling of the New World we have experienced racial/ethnic/religious oppression, corporate power-mongers using their money and influence to squash our rights and freedoms, magic bullet theories, the use of fear to convince us to sign our freedoms away (eg. 09/11 "terrorism", crime) among other things. All of them committed by those in power.
It all boils down to whether you trust them to responsibly use the power they have in cases like this.
Well, do you?
STUDY THE PAST
-- Jim
I'm still not sure how I feel about this, really. There was a little grocery shop across the street from my high school, everyone would go there to buy candy and pop for lunch, and it made for a popular hangout after school.
Once new management came in, it took approximately three hours for them to come up with a rule that changed all that. They were tired of stuff being shoplifted (can you blame them?), so they said nobody can wear coats or backpacks into the place. We all had to leave them outside the front door. And it wasn't their responsibility to watch the coats and bags, either.
The very first day, someone walked out and picked up two backpacks, the next day a leather coat was stolen. After that, nobody wanted to go.
The problem? They assumed everyone with a coat or a backpack was a shoplifter. Inconveniencing everyone in order to stop one or two people seems wrong to me. I imagine this new camera system will use some sort of stereotyping as well, like watching for people who bounce around nervously, looking all around them for escape routes or police (many armed robberies in gas stations are like this). But, will the software be able to tell that from someone who really has to use the bathroom, and is bouncing up and down impatiently, searching around the room for the nearest restroom? I think not.
I admire the optimism, though.
The speed of time is one second per second.
Study the past, indeed! From your post, you would think that all this began with "the settling of the New World"! ROTFL! Try reading any history about any part of the world at any time!
When we consider whether we allow the police to have guns, we don't ask whether we can always trust them to use their guns wisely. Of course we can't. Instead, we ask what are the advantages of the police having guns versus their not having guns and what procedures we can have in place that will minimise the abuses.
We don't ban police from interrogating suspects even though sometimes they abuse their power in those interrogations. We do prevent them from torturing suspects, and we also will exclude certain evidence if police disregard the rights of suspects. Some jurisdictions also videotape all (custodial) interrogations of serious crimes, an excellent practice, which should be required.
But, notice, we do not ban interrogations. Nor do we say, we trust police to do the right thing always. The very foundations of our government are based on accountability to the people and checks and balances, not on trusting authorities to always do the right thing. Try reading The Federalist Papers some time instead of watching Oliver Stone movies.
Of all technologies, this one of having computers analyzing video surveillance cameras in public places, seems amazing innocuous. I can hardly imagine anything less threatening to me.