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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.
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
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!"
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
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
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.
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 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
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
In that case I'd like to be the first person to complain about flocks of geese looking like soviet nuclear missiles...
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"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.
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.
I saw a blurb about Washington, D.C. wanting to install a massive system of cameras like London has and now I understand why there is such a backlash. There are cameras everywhere in our society now. Our homes are just about the only place left that we can hope to not be captured on camera without our consent, but how long will that last? Why do Americans allow our government to slowly eradicate our civil rights in the name of safety and security? Benjamin Franklin would be turning over in his grave if he heard some of the twaddle people are blathering about these days. What you say? Yes, we should ban guns.. they're dangerous and can be used to kill people. Hmm, yes.. privacy.. that's an odd issue too, maybe we don't need privacy. Let's install cameras everywhere and use them in a court as evidence. Freedom of speech? Well, only when it is convenient and when it doesn't offend anyone. We wouldn't want to be politically incorrect now would we? The PC police might come and haul us away for being insensitive. What? You plead the 5th? What do you have to hide? Are you a TERRORIST or something? Only terrorists plead the 5th Sir! You must be hiding something. Let's go review the video cameras for the last month of your movements.
Anyway, I'm getting a little off topic, but from what I've seen, the London camera system was installed to combat the IRA terrorists (sound familiar Americans?) but according to the program hasn't ever actually resulted in capturing an IRA terrorist. So, pray tell, what is the massive camera system in London used for? Spying on the citizens of course. Am I paranoid? A little, but without paranoid people we would not have a Bill of Rights in the US. We'd all be ignorant trusting twats who believe evil men don't exist and believe everything spoon-fed to us by the media and our government.
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.
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
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?