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Internet + Wireless Cameras = Homeland Security
NumberField writes "According to an article by
Steven Levy posted on MSNBC, Jay Walker of PriceLine fame is talking about a
system he calls
US HomeGuard. His plan is to hire large numbers
of unsophisticated users to monitor Internet-connected security cameras looking for
suspicious activity. Although many security details (i.e.,
DOS attacks,
cryptography,
privacy)
need to be handled carefully, it's a weird enough idea that it might actually work..."
sig globally, act locally
Forgive my ambivalence about having 'unsophisticated users' watching a webcam, trying to outsmart and detect people who have been training in the desert for the past 5 years on how to AVOID being detected.
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I just heard that they are laying off a bunch of TSA screeners in our state. Americans are very reactionary. My father talks about how "9/11 changed everything". Time rolls on, eventually we will get complacent/get back to normal (depending on your point of view).
What? That's crazed - you're actually saying that te right to privacy is limited by your property. By your reasoning, a homeless man doesn't have any right to privacy - after all, he's always outside his own home - he doesn't have one, but he's just as human as we are, that's what it's about. Privacy is a right, and it means that noone may force you to reveal stuff you want to keep hidden, if its none of their bussiness. The point of a right like this is that it *is* your right, no matter what. The only question here is if placing cameras is an actual violation of that right.
Naturally, it's not the monitoring of restricted areas that I fear so much as the next step. Government expanding to fill all adjacent spaces, I can't help but believe that the next iteration of that technology would be to begin monitoring public areas for suspicious behavior. Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
My concerns aren't privacy, I'm more worried about letting the average person run basically run this system. This smacks of 1930s/40s Germany, where you were asked to basically spy on your neighbor. It smacks of the Red Scare here in the US, where, again, you were basically asked to spy on your own neighbor. The list goes on and on.
I'm all for securing potential targets but I don't think that letting the average person run the system is a great idea. Think back a few months to an incident in Florida where three medical students on their way to their new residencies were chased down and then detained on the side of the highway for nearly 24 hours. This was all because one ignorant woman saw three Middle Easter-looking men having a private discussion in a restaraunt. I'm afraid that this system of cameras will only increase instances like this.
Whenever I read about "looking for suspicious activity" I cringe at what my neighbors might be suspicious of. We (at least in the USA) are trained from birth to conform and not stand out. We are taught in school to ridicule and/or fear people who are different--people who look different or behave different. Some of the folks I live near are afraid of people who wear black. Others don't like seeing people walking home after midnight. The problem with letting joe sixpack look for "suspicious" people is that anyone who does anything besides sleeping, going to work and shopping, will inevitably be considered suspicious by someone.
The USA has become a nation of freightened sheep, and the general public is happy to lock people away who don't totally conform to the norm (please compare our imprisonment rates for non-violent offenders against the rest of the world).
Would you want your neighbors to watch you and decide whether you're doing something "suspicious"? How about letting your business competitor decide? How about that homeowner's association nazi who thinks your yard gnome is too big?
These cameras are protecting the private or secure public areas.
Cameras dont protect anything. The collect "evidence". And unless the response time is around 60 seconds, no matter how many people are watching remotely, not a single act of sabotage will be prevented by the presence of a CCTV camera, no matter who is behind it.
The "security" industry in this case is a vile parasite, feeding off of the fear of crime and sabotage. It would be far better to spend time fixing the root causes than putting cameras on everything.
But you know this.
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As technology progresses, this expectation is eroded. What does it mean to go to the store and buy a magazine? It used to be, it was public, but unless someone you knew saw you, no-one would now. It is possible now to track what magazines I buy (through credit cards, Bonus cards, etc. and the UPC code on the magazine), and form a database. The test of "expectation of privacy" is the same, but technology has lowered that expectation.
You're right, in that the test of "expectation of privacy" is the current way to determine if you have a right to privacy, and this stuff happens in public view. The question is whether we need to change either the test, or our expectations, or whether we accept an ever-vanishing amount of privacy. If millimeter wave imaging became cheap (which can look through walls), would that mean I wouldn't have the expectation to have sex in my own home without being seen?
Technology has definitely changed the picture. Privacy is no longer an issue of being seen, but also of being tracked. Just because we have lost so much privacy does not mean we can't reclaim it.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Besides, why should the average american be concerned for homeland security?
I'm sure domestic any number of different things, cars, tobacco, alcohol, etc. kills more people each year on american soil than terrorism does.
Yet, I see no huge overarching "war on speeding" for example.
I'm not american, but let me tell you. From the outside this fixation on security looks a lot like hysteria.
Furthermore it seems like a lot of people in the position to do so is converting this paranoia into money and power for themselves.
I think the general US population would be much better of without these monsterously huge efforts to "increase security" att all costs.
But what do I know, I'm just a dirty foreigner.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
This morning I heard a local shock-jock lament that we should treat gang-members as terrorists after all, they hurt far more people than terrorists do... I understand and to some degree agree with this logic.
Seems to me that we could put webcams through-out the city and use untrained people to filter the cams and pass suspicious activity along to the police. Of course every once in a while a pizza delivery dude would be mistaken for a drug dealer and once in a while a lady waiting for a bus would be mistaken for a prostitute.
But what the heck, what are a few civil liberties compared to safety? Everything - ask the few Jews that survived Nazi Germany.
The PROPOSED use of the system seems reasonable enough.
But if it works, what do you think the next applications of the technology are likely to be?
And, of course, the implications of the "piecework" model are a little chilling.
The article says that the "pay for this part-time work would be $8 to $10 an hour" but there's no reason why it would have to stay at that level, why it would have to remain part-time, or why the work would necessarily be given to Americans. I can easily see a world in which companies use this kind of technology to perform constant surveillance on their employees--and the surveillance piecework would be done overseas where the labor rates are lowest.
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Sounds good to me. Then maybe the judge will believe me that I really didn't go through that red light, and that the cop was lying. Then maybe I can charge my state senators with speeding, which we all know they do just as much as I do. I may have something to hide, but I don't have anything more to hide than anyone else.
But no, I'd much rather have racist cops on every corner than cameras. I'd much rather have webcams that only corrupt politicians can view.
"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." - Abraham Lincoln
No, it is quite insightful.
;) ). I'd be willing to bet more terrorism would be stopped 10 minutes after the creation of a Palestinian state, than with all the cameras, bombings and special ops combined. People won't attack your country if they feel you are acting fairly.
How many times have we seen the videos of Mohommed Atta and his buddy walking through Logan airport and entering the gate on CNN over the last 1.5 years?
Millions.
Most major airports already have plenty of video surviellance to stop baggage theft. That didn't stop the 9/11 guys, nor would it stop anyone bent on a suicide mission.
All that was needed was a good, solid cockpit door and 9/11 would just be another day on the calander. Or maybe an Air Marshall and 1 or 2 Glazer safety slugs. Or better intelligence gathering by the people whose job it is to know about and prevent these things (NSA, CIA, FBI).
Better yet how about stopping the root cause of terrorism in the first place? As other posters have pointed out, terrorists don't usually recruit from populations that are happy and treated fairly . Perhaps US foriegn policy should concentrate less on supporting repressive regimes so they can get cheap oil and more on helping the people live free (without all the bombing
Any and all of the above would help, But not more cameras.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha