Slashdot Mirror
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.
The could use it to determine which of us are likely "pirates". Oh wait, they have no need. They consoder us all pirates.
The Independent News? Wot's that thar then? The newspaper is called 'The Independent'.
Sorry, but I still on 'Stunned by the Americacentrism' after the story where every man and his dog bemoaned a story that spoilt a television program before it has been shown in the whole of the *states*....
If this actually works as promised, and only alerts police to people who really are about to kick the shit out of someone, this could be a really good thing.
Of course... that's if it works.
I think the subject says it all.
Camera 1: I predict that I'm going to be stolen in 10 seconds.
...
**Damn** I hate it when I'm right!
Robot cameras 'will predict crimes before they happen'
CCTV: By learning behaviour patterns, computers could soon alert police when an unmanned camera sees 'suspicious' activity
By Andrew Johnson
21 April 2002
Computers and CCTV cameras could be used to predict and prevent crime before it happens.
Scientists at Kingston University in London have developed software able to anticipate if someone is about to mug an old lady or plant a bomb at an airport.
It works by examining images coming in from close circuit television cameras (CCTV) and comparing them to behaviour patterns that have already programmed into its memory.
The software, called Cromatica, can then mathematically work out what is likely to happen next. And if it is likely to be a crime it can send a warning signal to a security guard or police officer.
The system was developed by Dr Sergio Velastin, of Kingston University's Digital Imaging Research Centre, to improve public transport.
By predicting crowd flow, congestion patterns and potential suicides on the London Underground, the aim was to increase the efficiency and safety of transport systems.
The software has already been tested at London's Liverpool Street Station.
Dr Velastin explained that not feeling safe was a major reason why some people did not use public transport. "In some ways, women and the elderly are effectively excluded from the public transport system," he said.
CCTV cameras help improve security, he said, but they are monitored by humans who can lose concentration or miss things. It is especially difficult for the person watching CCTV to remain vigilant if nothing happens for a long period of time, he said.
"Our technology excels at carrying out the boring, repetitive tasks and highlighting potential situations that could otherwise go unnoticed," he added.
While recent studies have shown that cameras tend to move crime on elsewhere rather than prevent it completely, in certain environments, such as train stations, they are still useful.
And Dr Velastin believes his creation has a much wider social use than just improving transport.
His team of European researchers are improving the software so that eventually it will be capable of spotting unattended luggage in an airport. And it will be able to tell who left it there and where that person has gone.
However, the computer is not yet set to replace the human being altogether.
"The idea is that the computer detects a potential event and shows it to the operator, who then decides what to do - so we are still a long way off from machines replacing humans," Dr Velastin says.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
"The idea is that the computer detects a potential event and shows it to the operator, who then decides what to do"
So considering it is better to err on the side of caution, the best we can hope for is that these computers show the operator everything...
How exactly are they testing this and do the get many "CrimeNotFound" exceptions?
I am a Karma Library.
One forgets that when the computers hold sway over the people, those chosen few who program the computer are Gods. I REALLY can't wait, becuase this is where it all pays off...
"Gnovos, the computer has informed us that your progress in the 'QuakeSex Research Project' has been incredibly successful, and we are to give you another $100 million extension to the grant. Personally, I don't see how playing deathmatch games against your friends between sexual encounters with supermodels contributes to global peace, but it's not my place to dispute the wisdom of the computer. Machines are always right, after all. Oh, and another Nobel prize came today, should I put it in the box with the others?"
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Or do you make it a habit to look like a criminal?
No, but I will now! Oh, what fun to be had...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
How cynical can you be.. whenever something like this comes around you predict the end of the world.. It's not a question of somebody getting arrested because they thought of mugging a person on the street.. it's about the ability to do city surveilance more effectively by reporting suspecious behaviour of people on screen.. imagine having to monitor 100 cameras at the same time.. wouldn't it then be somewhat of a relief if the program would sort out the screens that show suspicious events on them? Come on people get real! assuming this camera tecnique would work..
Very difficult to spot during editing apparantly ;-) Wonder what it would make of that?
Why can't women be like Hedy Lamarr - beautiful, talented and inventors of frequency-hopping spread-spectrum techn
Minority Report
What would you do if you were accused of a murder, you had not committed... yet?
Based on a Philip K. Dick short story, Minority Report is about a cop in the future working in a division of the police department that arrests killers before they commit the crimes courtesy of some future viewing technology
of an old Guardian Newspaper ad on TV (a few years back now). It showed a skinhead running towards an old man - then froze.
:)
VO: Some newspapers stop here.
Unfreeze and said Skinhead sweeps man out of the way of falling masonry i.e. it was a rescue and not a mugging.
VO: The Guardian - get the full picture.
I guess with this technology in place, computer-controlled lasers would have taken out the rescuer before he could act
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
It's a trashy promo for the new movie Minority Report. Computers predicting crimes before you commit them (in the 'not too distant future' they'd have you believe).
What I find funny is that Phillip K. Dick is listed as an 'author' of the movie on that web page. Promotional bs. He died in 1982 just before Blade Runner was released (his short story 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was the philosophical foundation for it).
aren't we always the ones to yell that it's not the technology, but how you use it, that counts? just saying...
sic transit gloria mundi
Yes, the movie is called "Minority Report".
I don't think the movie was based on thoughts though, rather I think they could somehow predict the future or something. But it certainly does look like an interesting movie (even if it does star Tom Cruise).
A guy I work with has a PhD in image processing. He relates this story of a system that was designed to try to detect human beings, and raise the alarm so that a security guard could check it out; rather than have a security guard staring at it continuously.
Anyway, they wrote some software- it more or less just looked for a human sized blob that moved. Worked too- it could detect human beings pretty well.
Trouble was, they found that it was unreliable- it tended to think birds landing in flocks and groups were people appearing and disappearing. So they improved on the algorithm, and put in some code that if the system could see the wings flapping- it would realise it was birds and ignore it.
Anyway, it worked pretty well, so they thought they'd give a hard test. Could someone deliberately evade it? They got a grad student and told him to work out a way to fool it. They set up the computer guarding a notional prize, and set him at it.
The grad student puzzled over it for a while, then siddled into the middle of view; and removed his jacket. He then waved his jacket over his head vigorously. The computer saw all the flapping, and activated the 'bird' assignment and he was able to steal the item...
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"http://www.cordis.lu/telematics/tap_transport/rese arch/projects/cromatica.html
Their other projects are also interesting as well
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Locating "suspect packages" left in public places
Spotting vehicles parked in dodgy places
Watching for people accessing secure areas
Making sure no service vehicles get onto runways
Yes, all this is possible with more conventional technology but these often need a human being in close attendance. This system filters out noise like stray animals, cyclists, etc because it learns what suspect packages, vehicles and aeroplanes look like and also how they move and behave.
and yes... it could be used to spot human behaviours. It appears that someone plotting a crime moves differently to someone just going about their business. This system knows the rules about human shapes and modalities and fluidity of movement.
My view is that the final bit is a bit of spin for the consumption of venture capitalists and is unlikely to be of much use in prime time - so no need to panic yet. It does however raise interesting questions about "reasonable suspicion", evidence and culpability if someone is wrongly detained. Police would no doubt try to shift resonsibility onto the technology, as is their wont.
It'll only be fun until they lock you up for wasting police time.
Get the EULA T-shirt
Cameras set up at Kingston University in London marked everyone coming into the computer lab as "criminal" as it predicted each individual was about to illegally download copyrighted music.
--
Mike Nugent
-- Mike wildcard@illuminatus.org
...but one oft-proposed use of this technology is to catch shoplifters. If you're running around the store flapping your coat like a bird, I have a feeling that a little computer is a small worry compared to those nice men in white taking you away right now.
Last post!
Every psycologist worth his salt knows that you can't predict the behavior of individuals or even small groups. You need a large group before the mathematics of psycology can be applied with any acceptable degree of accuracy, on the order of the population of a medium to highly populated planet. Seldon would be rolling in his grave if he'd been born yet.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I don't think we have to worry yet about a computer causing the erronious arrest of someone performing thoughtcrime or attempting a mugging: "'The idea is that the computer detects a potential event and shows it to the operator, who then decides what to do - so we are still a long way off from machines replacing humans,' Dr Velastin says." It's simply a tool to help the operators sort through the huge amount of visual data they are presented with.
BTW, I don't support the idea of a Big Brother monitoring the public. However, I'm equally unsupportive of the spread of FUD like this article write-up.
As with all technologies that are present, this one has the ability to be misused or just mis-interpreted.
However, the idea present in the system are not poor. When at university, I knew many students that worked nights as security guards. Most of them would either be studying notes or sleeping! Having a machine to help during the monotony isn't necessarily a bad thing.
If however this leads to harrassment from the authorities just cos you have bad social skills is another matter. Hence its use must be monitored and have regulations inplace to tackle misuse.
-- "To ask a question is to show ignorance; Not to ask a question means you'll remain ignorant."
These analysis programs are interesting research, but it'll be years before there's any thing even close to being have picking up enough threats and few enough false positives to be considered being in production. Besides, by the time physical movement is visible, the target / victim has already been selected, monitored, and assessed by the attacker. Proactive measures are much more effective than reactive. Look at the PC virus industry for detailed case studies in prevention versus cure.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I live 20 steps from Times Square in the only residential building on my block. As such, I probably can't pick my nose without being recorded on 15 different cameras. Of course, you think this is bad, but consider the possibilities!
1. If I seem lost in thought, change the contents of some of the digital billboards to warn me about wandering into traffic.
2. If I seem sleepy, send an email to my employer warning them not to let me touch any code that day.
3. If I seem irritable, call my girlfriend and warn her to leave me alone for a few hours.
4. And of course, if I seem shifty and nervous, like someone about to do something hazardous and antisocial, someone with something to hide, who is going to do harm to everyone around them... warn the police because I am about to experience flatulence.
;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Trouble was, they found that it was unreliable- it tended to think birds landing in flocks and groups were people appearing and disappearing"
So? Flocks of geese look like soviet nuclear missiles to radar operators - i didnt hear anyone complaining about that!
You know, I *LOVE* computers. I've been around them since I was 8 and got my first one, a VIC-20... But I think it's wrong to EVER put them in "charge" in any way in law enforcement.
The popular myth is that "computers never make mistakes". Well, we ALL know this is bullshit. No computer is any better than the software that it is running, and the hardware is no better than the people who designed it.
Show me ONE bug free piece of software that exists, anywhwere, that is more complex than the "hello world!" level and you can argue with me.
Better yet, show me one OPERATING SYSTEM, the layer atop the hardware that any applications software (such as this Orwell-Ware) that is bug free.
Bug=mistake.
That said, the odds of any such application, to be flawless itself, running on a flawless OS, running on flawless hardware, are SO small as to be non-existant.
The best that can be hoped for is accuracy in the 90%+ range. Multiply that by 300 million people, and the number of people who are going to be harassed is in the TENS of million... The potential for abuse, by both law enforcement, and by hackers with agendas is staggering...
Already the face scanners have been proven to be so inaccurate that they are being dropped in places. This is a FAR more complex algorhythm... I'd think an accuracy rate of 20% would be generous.
For one thing, they are assuming that normal people will behave normally, but that criminals will behave differently, evasive, etc... Well, I for one will NOT act normally anyplace I know such a thing is operating, and I doubt anyone else will either. This, I doubt can be taken into account.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Why? Because people can use intuition when looking at a CCTV screen. All a machine can do
is spot patterns. If a criminal can learn these patterns he can avoid making them and even have
a friend somewhere else deliberalty MAKING those patterns to draw the attention of the CCTV operator
elsewhere. People assume criminals are stupid.
They're not.
There is nothing scary about this; in fact, humans already do it on a regular basis. A department store security guard scopes out a crowd of shoppers for potential shoplifters. An airport security guard scans a terminal for suspicious activity. A cop checks out a crowded street looking for potential muggers and pickpockets.
The trouble is, humans are inefficient and expensive, and their "gut instincts" may be fallible. The mall security guard may be the only guy watching a dozen closed-circuit monitors, and he may even be dozing off from the monotony of his job. The airport guard might be a minimum wage high-school dropout with barely any training. The cop's instincts are pretty good, but as objective as he tries to be, he unconsciously tends to target members of a particular race instead of going by solid scientific indicators.
This technology (if it works) will be a Good Thing because:
1. It improves upon an existing system that helps keep us safe.
2. It could be more effective and consistent.
3. It could apply rules objectively, and could be designed to flag activities that truly are suspicious (e.g. "casing" a department store) rather than those that merely look suspicious to biased humans (e.g. a young black man in a record store). This means that it could help protect our rights more than the current system.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
A slight correction...(enhancement?)
:)
There were more than two viewpoints. You missed the middle sequence.
As you say, first viepoint was of dodgy looking skinhead running towards businessman,
it looks like a mugging about to happen.
Next set of shots show a car (not visible from previous angle) with some dodgy looking
geezers in it, slowing to a halt at a junction, next to skinhead walking along pavement
(pavement=sidewalk). Skinhead starts running away from car.
Final sequence, skinhead running towards businessman walking past building site.
Some heavy building material is just falling down from above, skinhead grabs businessman
pulls him out of the way.
An excellent advert.
>>I guess with this technology in place, computer-controlled lasers would have taken out
>>the rescuer before he could act
But of course. Think of all the starving lawyers who could have made a tidy packet out of
suing the building site. (Won't some think of the children^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers !)
Law enforcement is increasingly going to video surveillance nowadays. I've seen a History Channel special on streetlights (nothing else was on), and they mentioned that many big cities are using video cameras to catch people running red lights. One video camera would take a picture of the driver and another would take a picture of the license plate. Then the owner of the car would get a ticket in the mail.
Also, London is filled with tens of thousands of video cameras, and now they all have face recognition software, so they can see a criminal and follow him through various areas of the city on camera until a cop can catch up to him.
And then there's this story about Connecticut doing the roughly the same thing.
This article is much more in-depth and does a better job of representing the technology. The article posted to Slashdot implies that Cromatica can predict a mugging. Cromatica identifies congestion and predicts suicide attempts. And it does this with pretty simple algorithms.
Briefly: Cromatica views crowds as changing colors against a background. When the colors stop, this is congestion. Likewise, suicide attempts are indicated by lingering for 10 minutes or more. It's pretty easy to identify a single person against an empty backdrop.
Of course, people are working on predicting muggings, and the article goes into that as well.
The article also has links to the research itself.
Sir, I call you a troll.
:-)
The Independent is by no means the UK's tabloid rubbish. We've got plenty of them - the Sun and Daily Mail spring instantly to mind
The Independent is a respected, pretty objective high-quality broadsheet. It's not politically aligned at all (hence the name) which I suppose might mean some doubt its accuracy because it's not just following the normal right-wing bias (see, UK media's overwhelmingly right wing, it's not just you in the US who have that problem!) but really, let's be honest. You may not like it but it's straight.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Right now, we have speed cameras all over the UK. These assign an arbitrary speed limit and photograph anyone who breaks this and declare them dangerous. Now, I'm not opposed to speed limits, but any sane person recognises they're arbitrary and so not ideally suited to automatic enforcement.
We have a binch of traffic light cameras but they're less common. Irritating because you're clearly in danger territory then.
Why not apply this techology to dangerous driving, though? Look out for people swerving between lanes, tailgating, cutting other drivers up and so on. If it spots some, video it and notify the police. If someone's being a consistent problem, ticket them.
Seems worth a try to me, plus it would help get people out of the 'I'm going under the limit so I _must_ be safe mentality.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
So, the idea here is that security guards are only human and can't reliably monitor cameras themselves, right? And this system will pick up the slack, watching on the security guard's behalf? I don't mean to disparage security guards, but if this system works well enough to be considered worthwhile by security companies, then it will work well enough that security guards can get away with sleeping on the job until the computer alerts them to a problem. Thus, the human element of the system, being too reliant upon the computer, actually winds up being less aware. Criminals will figure this out. They will figure out that their behaviour can be overt, so long as the computer can't tell (whereas a human could easily do so). No more skulking around in shadows, guys -- nobody's watching! Just act like a civvie and nobody's the wiser. As long as gross (that is, macroscopic) actions look normal to the computer, no alarms will go off.
My deviantArt site
It is being done on casual basis by police around the world for personal preventive searches and car searches. For the time being it is "the trained operator told us so" instead of computer. And to be honest I would rather have a computer decice then some cops. It will be less racially and ethnically biased
Statistics from observing policemen in some US states and the number of blacks and whites they stop for checks and searches are well known, no point in reiterating them...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester
The countermeasure, of course, is to upload Tenser_said_the_Tensor.mp3 into the system.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Take all of the failed PhD project titles. Sort them into lexograpic order. Go to the largest spike in the histogram. The dissertation title is
"Face recognition using Neural Networks".
If you though optical character recognition gives too much classificat error, look at the field of face recognition.
qui est le visage derrière le masque
consider coffee a lubricant that helps one penetrate the coding zone
NTS uses real-time video and neural-network technology at traffic intersections and railroad crossings to predict traffic accidents and enforce traffic violations (bad news for you guys who blow red lights) - kind of similar to the situation in the article...instead of predicting the actions of people, it's predicting the actions of automobiles. There are already many deployments nationwide and lots more being installed.
BTW, the same predictive neural network technology is used to predict all types of financial fraud, including credit card fraud and money laundering.
This is creepy, people, yes even us programmers and tech types amaze me, I guess what I mean is I cant belive the arrogance of people that think they can devise a machine that tells someone what is in the heart and intentions of a man, just from looking at him nonetheless. Someone needs to get ahhold of the "geniuses" that are working on this and give then a good ass kicking, just for attempting to be so naieve.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Whats wrong with genetically modified foods? I understand some people with food alergies need to be wary but what about those of us who have no food alergies at all to begin with? A lot of food in the US is all ready GM, it tastes the same or better so why not eat it?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Statistics from observing policemen in some US states and the number of blacks and whites they stop for checks and searches are well known, no point in reiterating them...
Well, the accusations are well known. Then the US Justice Department got New Jersey to "agree" to actually commission a study of the issue, in a consent decree.
The company hired to do the study found that the incidence of speeding varied by race. In a way fairly consistent with the stop ratio.
The Justice department was outraged, has "grave doubts", etc. because that isn't what they wanted to find.
So when robbers learn to adapt their pattern of dress and behavior when they go out on the streets to mug people, and say, start dressing and shuffling about as old ladies, the police will start arresting old ladies on the street because the computers told them they fit the behavior patterns of robbers? :)
Of course, all this technology assumes that humans don't have the ability to adapt their behavior patterns when performing a crime. The stupid ones will get caught while the smart ones learn what trips the system to "track" suspects and endevour to avoid those actions. True for nearly any aspect of life; from hacking to shooting rockets into space.
But the point with face recognition would truely be a kicker. Once that system acually becomes reliable, anybody with a record notorius enough to have their face mapped would be tracked the moment they entered a store. Assuming you can't obscure your likeness in someway, of course.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
What I read was they use psycics(sp) to predict crimes. The majority have to agree someone will do the deed. Cruise (a cop that chases future criminals) is accused of killing someone in the future. The "Minority Report" says he won't. The rest of the movie is a big chase.
Will the computers that control this be the same computers that subject members of the US Armed Forces (such as myself) to extensive searches every time they board a flight?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
First SPAM, then PENGUINS on the Tellie, and now we all have to SILLY-WALK to throw off the robot-cameras! Technology is morphing Real-Life into Monty Python! Sony's next AIBO will probably be a dead parrot!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I know that sone people will immediately decide this is a bad thing, but wait a moment.
Almost all corridors, platforms and ticket halls on the London Underground (LU) are already covered by closed circuit TV.
These are used to look for congestion, people in difficulty, and criminal behaviour ( mostly pickpockets).
However, on the larger stations, such as Bank, there are hundreds of cameras, which makes the monitoring a very difficult task.
This task would be easy for a computer with pattern recognition software, as commuters on the LU always follow one pattern. They all move with a purpose. Going to a platform, leaving the station, changing trains. This is easy for the computer to spot.
This also makes it easy to spot someone who, for example, has been moving in and out of the crowd in an exit hall for some minutes, but has gone nowhere, and appears to have no purpose to his movement pattern.
The computer can then flag this and alert an operator who can respond appropriatly, eg by sending security personnel to arrest a known pickpocket, station staff to assist a lost tourist or drunk, or medical personnel for someone who has become ill.
Given the vast number of cameras, the computer could do a much more consistent job of monitoring the cameras, without any predudice about race or style of dress. This should result in a safer system.
A system like this would not be much use on a street or in a shopping mall, however, as the range of normal behaviour there is much to broad to allow for any obviously abnormal behaviour patterns.
Escoutaire
PS please ignore any spelling errors, as I have a huge hangover.
When a dream dreams the dreamer, the dreams the real.
... for everyone to always walk with a suspicious stagger, hunched over, and every time we're about to turn a corner, peep our heads around first as if we're stalking prey. Then watch the "bobbies" come a runnin!
Actually, I do this already without thinking about it...
in this context, what you call "intuition" is just conclusions from past experiences - a police looks around and recognizes some behaviour patterns, which leads him to search some people and leave alone others... this is no mystical feat in the crystal ball category, but patterns that a machine can be taught to recognize...
This is just another exampel of how ludicrous some company's "busines plans" are, and how willing the government is to spend money on things like this.
Right, this company out of nowhere can suddenly predict human behavior? Humans in large groups?
This is akin to the millions of dollars that CA just needlessly spent on Oracle licenses -- it's an example of some government flunky with a budget picking up some snake oil from an overzealous salesperson.
Anyone who claims they can "mathematically predict" human behavior is lying through his or her respective teeth.
minority report, eh? but without the whole time-travel bit.. ;)
CMFA
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
I can't wait. "We searched you because the computer told us to." Trust the Computer.
I can't wait. "We didn't implement this system because chrisd said it would be bad." Trust crisd.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
does this remind anyone else of Amadou Diallo where they 'predicted' he was going for a gun b/c he reached into his jacket?
i have a feeling this system would generate an incredible amount of false 'crimes' because it cannot predict intent.
imagine i'm joking around and i grab my girlfriends handbag (and even run away?). you think this system wouldn't set off all kinds of alarms?
this is just another tool to further the current trend of guilty until proven innocent...
In Northamptonshire in the UK, the number of deaths have doubled so far this year compared to last year.
Last year they put a load of static and mobile cameras all over the place. Basically, their "Safety camera" scheme has been a devastating failure.
Cameras have no effect on the casualty rate and are nothing more than revenue generation mechanisms.
Deleted
The problem is, who defines what is suspicious?
Well, if you are cautious, everything out of the normal is suspicous (especially for conservative forces which are the prime supporters of such measures), so one gets in trouble for beeing out of the Norm.
The fact is that many things which are nowadays are legal, and normal have once been illegal. (Think of prohibition, or beeing gay) If there were Universial Surveilance, in these Days, these People, would have been even more prosecuted and I doubt that the Legislation would have changed.
Such Laws exist even now, and I'm even going a step further they will ever exist. There is no such thing as a perfect Rule system, and no matter what we do there will always be people who are discriminated by the Law.
We have a saying here in Germany which says:
"Wo kein kläger da kein Richter" which translates to Where there is no one to sue, there is no judge.
We all do things that are strictly speaking illegal, at some time, because there are some laws which just doesn't make sense (any more|in this situation|never had)
If enough people find that they don't obey a given law anymore, and that it doesn't do any harm, the law will probably be abandoned/changed (A thing which should be done more often if you ask me)
With omnipresent surveilance there would be a judge everywhere, and all the people would just be sued, and the changes in law will be even slower.
Just my two (Euro)Cent
I'm reminded of a quote by George Carlin "Americans are always willing to give up a piece of their freedom for the sense of 'security'"
666... yeah, that's right, it's not he machines top be concerned about, it's the human beasts to watch out for. From the programmers to the cops to the potential muggers and victims...
The machines are just a good excuse and distraction for that beasty point, via reflection.
i'm sure it will work great, just like map software that predicts it is better to go 5 miles out of the way to get to my destination.
Actually, I am in the UK. The Independent is a perfectly good paper, and indeed rather better than the Sun or some such, but it *is* politically aligned with the Liberal Democrats.
Hyperlinking is unauthorized communication, citizen, and therefore treason. You AND your next two clones report for termination immediately.
There was a TV news magazine article yesterday (might have been on Sunday Morning) about the 2 MILLION surveillance cameras that now infest London, in response to IRA threats. The piece pointed out that NOT ONE terrorist has been stopped by these cameras (but that abuse is rampant). It also mentioned that the average Londoner is caught on camera 300 times a day.
Privacy issues aside, somehow a 0:2,000,000 success:cost ratio strikes me as a wee bit useless, not to mention being an utter waste of tax money and gov't time.
And that doesn't begin to touch the problem of sorting out the mass of data from 300 screencaps per day per citizen.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
just great. Now instead of Racial profiling we've got Facial Profiling.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
They should attach lazers or machine guns to these equipped with face recognition that could automatically crispy-fry any troublemakers
Eat at Joe's.
Or a handy can of spray paint. Replacing camera would get expensive after awhile and create the need for those police (to monitor the monitors) you weren't looking to replace. BB guns, paintball guns... Any of those would work...
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to cut out all the bullshit.
Face recognition already has. Anybody who thinks these systems are the end all be all answer to crime really has their head up their arse. The only way I could see it being used effectively is to "highlight" a "canidate" and have a human check the details before any arrest is made. You're right. Just blindly following this system is grounds for huge lawsuits. It's just not even close to being that good for what they want to use it for.
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It isn't that doing so is impossible. It is just that it is prohibitively expensive. Microsoft could release a bug free OS with no public beta if they spent half a trillion dollars on testing each version.
There is software that is life-critical. If it had bugs, it could kill people. Like air traffic control software, or some medical software, or traffic light software, or flight-control or weapon-guidance software. This kind of software is the beneficiary of a really thorough, very costly testing process that normal software (about everything we normally use) just doesn't receive.
Basically, software does not have to be buggy. However, 99% of the time, it is not financially responsible to make sure that is the case.
My dad was a store detective for a little while. He can still spot people who are about to shoplift. If people will do it in front of a security camera in a store, they will do it in front of a security camera anywhere else. Furthermore, despite claims to the contrary, there is no a priori evidence that such a system would be computationally intractable.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
The trouble is that people have too much confidence in the efficiency and infallibility of machines. A department store security guard that suspects you of being a shoplifter might be annoying, but he can't do anything until you actually shoplift.
Also, these kinds of machine vision applications are almost impossible to validate. Where do you get the training data from? How do you measure false alarm rate? Most likely, they will have to get trained by some person's judgement of what looks suspicious, which merely enshrines a fallible human judgment into perpetuity, inexactly at that.
The potential for false alarms is enormous. If you have some disability, carry a heavy package in an unusual way, or wear some strange outfit, this system is likely going to tag you as suspicious. Video cameras and computers have nowhere near the reasoning ability to figure out what is going on, or the resolution to even see the necessary details if they could.
hopefully they didn't test this software on the typical soap opera... which was probably written by "plot writer version 1.0" anyway.
I can see it now: "The camera predicts that the person on screen will turn out to be the long lost, transgender half-brother of the amnesiatic ex-stripper, and that he will marry the heiress to the papaya plantation..."
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
Trying to substitute cheap technology for a functioning society is the wrong path. You can put in cameras to detect potential criminals, but that doesn't get at the root of the problem. Crime and violence are the result of failed government policies. Cameras won't make you secure, and neither will minimum wage security gaurds or a stressed police force.
The cynic is you: rather than trying to prevent crime at the root, you give up and want throw more and more people into jail.
Now I've got me talking to myself... but it just occurred to me: London is what, 10 million people or so? (I really have no idea, just guessing)
Assuming that's tolerably close, that means there is one camera for every 5 residents!!
And postulating that perhaps 20% of Londoners are out in public at any given moment, that's one camera per publicly-visible citizen at all times.
So.. with what statistically amounts to 100% surveillance of each and every citizen while they're out in public, the cameras still can't catch ONE terrorist.
[sarcasm] If the surveillance system is accurate in determining potentially naughty behaviour, it follows that the number of terrorists in London is zero. [/sarcasm]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
!!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!
:-) but no, they're nothing like that.
OK... When at the last general election they merely recommended that the Conservatives didn't look worthy of holding office, that's a recommendation for the LibDems? Wish they were (spot the LibDem
Besides, that isn't compatible with your earlier statement. So, again, I call you a troll, and note your Flamebait moderations. The system can work after all...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Maybe the movie "Minority Report" isn't very far off after all...
"our computer has determined that Simon Phoenix will attempt to set up a drug lab and form a crime syndicate"...
the damned thing wasn't right that time either.
-----------------------------------------
Remove the Greed which plagues mankind.
1984 is a bit late but perhaps it will arrive anyway :-\ that is sad. soon, these cameras will be used to predict thought of an almost "human" nature...
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
"The cop's instincts are pretty good, but as objective as he tries to be, he unconsciously tends to target members of a particular race instead of going by solid scientific indicators."
But statistically speaking, aren't members of disadvantaged groups in society more likely to steal?
The computer would have to take that into account to do an objective statistical analysis.
Maybe a computer doing objective analyses of what characteristics are usually (but not always) associated with criminality, would seem very prejudiced to us.
It's a million times better than, "We searched you because you're brown."
"Windows and Linux can co-exist on the same machine." - Microsoft Corporation.
I was neither trolling, nor intending to start a flamewar. I simply wanted to point out that an article in the Independent criticising CCTV is a bit like an article in The Morning Star saying that capitalism is bad.
:-) Since I'm not concerned about karma points, I post my own opinions, not necessarily popular ones.
Frankly, as a left-of-centre Scottish Nationalist, if I was trolling or inciting flames, you'd know about it
A pint or 2 in the case, a bottle to the UPS, innocence restored.
Ok serious bit...
The cameras around Kingston don't bother me. I hardly notice them to be honest. KUT [... Upon Thames] is pretty safe compared to most places, so I guess if they tune it up around there, it'll go fucking mental when it's switched on around [insert dodgy london bourough here].
Another interesting thing is that a computer, assuming it's responsibly programmed, cannot be racist. The bahaviour/skin colour stats should be interesting.
Ali
"Windows and Linux can co-exist on the same machine." - Microsoft Corporation.
... that has something like this in it. The name of it is Minority Report... It's the new Tom Cruise movie. There have been previews for it, in case it sounds familiar to anyone.
Basically, he is a detective who tracks down people before they commit crimes. Of course, Hollywood being what it is, then he goes on the run because he supposedly is going to do something illegal.
In case you're wanting to check it out (the movie is still in production), the link is here
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
How the fuck is that offtopic? Asshole editors.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?