Slashdot Mirror
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..."
I'm graduating and I don't have a job yet. Define unsophisticated... Sounds like a great job, all the fun of being a rent-a-cop without the worry of ever having to stop anyone or get beaten up!
"Unsophisticated" people being paid twice their wages at Burger King will protect me by spotting terrorists from the privacy of their own homes!
Sweet, now I can bid $5 dollars / hour to watch hot co-eds in the shower instead of paying conventional webcam fees. Thank you PriceLine!
Join Team Slashdot at Folding@Home
how about the testing and short training of the TSA screeners at airports?
You think that these people are any better at looking at Xray machines?
Looks lika a good way to see what is available for theft on those locations.
sig globally, act locally
Although many security details need to be handled carefully, it's a weird enough idea that it might actually work...
Yes, sounds like a great idea! It could be very useful where I live. We've got new neighbours, and I think they might be muslims. They're definately foreign, anyway. I don't have the time to sit at the window all day looking for suspicious activity, so if we put a web cam up it would make it a lot easier. God Bless America!
I mean come on. Is this meant to be a satire comparing the modern state to Orwell's 1984 (also with monitored cams in the home) or have things really become that bizarrely stupid?
Criminal guide to avoiding measure (sorry if this is too subversive):
Step 1: Don't make evil plans near a webcam or mike.
Step 2: Don't perform evil plans without mask if near said webcams.
Step 2: Profit! from misdeeds.
If you use this guide while copying music, does this mean I have broken the DMCA?
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
so basically he's going to have the Reatlity TV channel online and you can win fun prizes at home by spotting suspicious activity ...
I can see it now
+5: Suspicious
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Joe Blog thinks the world cares about him, that's why he blogs, right? If someone pays him to look at someone else his whole world will collapse. He won't be the very center of the whole universe any more!
L LLLLL
Instead, you need to worry about Joe Fetishist.
But it still won't matter, as the diagram I've drawn below shows:
LLLLLLLLL
LLLLLLLLL
LLL**LLLL
LLL**LLLL
LLL
* - camera window
L - p0rn window
Note that the p0rn window is on top of the camera window, which is only shown for the relative size.
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.
*This page intentionally left pointless*
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).
unsophisticated users, eh?
little brothers are watching you...
I don't know where everyone is getting these crazy fears that it's 1984 playing out in real life. These cameras are protecting the private or secure public areas. We're talking about power plants and dams here. No one that wants their privacy needs to be in these places. I mean, its not like they're going to put one up in the middle of town square. That would defeat the purpose entirely. The picture would change every five seconds, so someone would have to LOOK at it every five seconds, much less find someone on there who might be a terroist.
I agree with the poster that it is so crazy that it might work. The only thing that i doubt is that they're going to pay $10/hour for people to watch this. That's a very good salary, and i wouldn't mind doing it for that much.
"Men lie."
"Yeah, about sleeping with other women, but never about bioluminescent plankton."
-Dan Brown
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.
I can see all the arguments for and against this system, and while it is obviously well-intentioned, I find it a bit disturbing. It's all well and good sticking security cameras around the place and putting trained security individuals in charge of watching them, but this sounds like a helpdesk thing - they get a small amount of "training" and then they're released out into the real world, with a wizard to help them.
"Is there a person on the camera?" Yes
"Are the person's eyes looking shifty?" Yes
"Is this person wearing all black?" Yes
"Is the person carrying something?" Yes
"Alert the authorities that a Muslim individual is walking around in the local supermarket carrying military-grade C4 explosives! Query the man through the loudspeaker. Don't believe him if he says he's doing his shopping! Don't accept any other explanations he gives! You are ALWAYS right, and even if you aren't, this wizard IS!"
Orwellian nightmare?
We Build Beautiful Websites
And exactly how could a million camera's have prevented the september 11 terrorist attacks?
My karma ran over your dogma
This was mooted at least 6 years ago. In the incarnation I heard, people swapped details with people in another time zone, so that while one person was asleep/at work, someone else in another country could occasionally check a webcam image in the corner of their screen. The two people need not know each others name or exact location, if they were worried that the person watching would take advantage of knowing when the watched person was home.
Add on the ability for anyone with a camera cell phone to send messages and pictures up to the security system as well, think of all the possibilities!
Seems quite worrisome to me... There's a great potential for abuse when dealing with this many people on this scale. And it also could provide easier access to sensitive information for terrorists. The problem with terrorists is that they can pass as normal citizens. So who's to say that they won't sneak themselves in to these programs to give themselves access to these areas?
Blatant self-promotion: Jerek.net
This will work for about five minutes, after which lists of every camera location will have been posted online.
$8-$10 per hour to sit at home and wait for a web-cam shot to analyse? How do they know whether the watchers are watching the web-cams or just reading slashdot? Could you really sell something like this to an insurance company as a security measure, when there's no real way of ensuring that the system is working reliably?
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Looks like we are getting closer to David Brin's Transparent Society.
--Joe
Lose = not win
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."
You know, I was just talking about this over coffee with my good friend Bill Brown. He runs a tour of New York's security cameras, so that protesters such as myself can easily point out the cameras and mock them. I've been going on this tour every week with Dr. Brown, and every time he has even more incisive insights.
As a very famous cybersecurity researcher, I feel that I am highly qualified to talk about Homeland Security. My deep knowledge of computers -- which came with no formal training, just my own intelligence -- can easily be applied to solving real-world security problems. My award-winning research has led to landmark decisions in the field of security.
I have the right to control every aspect of my identity, both in "interspace" and in "meat-space." When someone takes a picture of me in the real world, I have every right to walk up to that person and shout at them until they agree to delete the picture from their "mini-hard drive card" or burn the film in front of me. I know that most of you don't have to deal with these issues on a daily basis, but of course most of you are not prominent cybersecurity researchers such as myself.
Visit my web site -- do revisit, I've added a lot lately. And oh yeah, down with Michael Sims, who stole the Censorware Project from me as if it were candy and I were a baby! I'm not a baby.
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
Previous work by George Orwell supercedes the patent on this process, right? Thank god, we don't have to worry about seeing this topic as a privacy AND copyright issue.
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.
America's most violent videos -- "And the first prize, for all the beautiful gore, goes to John Doe for killing his boss with a rusty spoon!"
Nothing happens most of the time. Watching it will be boring ... maybe if the system was assisted by motion detection software and/or AI that would help. But then how would you deal with suspcious activity in public areas .. The AI cant be that perfect.
I think this will be too boring and most people will fall asleep watching the crap, and/or issue false alarms too often.
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?
So assuming the nation/government/culture doesn't get REALLY silly, there will always be "safe" spots, likely more so than not. So don't panic too much.
Wait, let me get this straight:
1. Hook up some cameras to a network.
2. Hire people to monitor the output of the cameras. (People who may or may not have an understanding of the technology behind the cameras and the network.)
3. Security!
How is this weird? This is how security camera operations have worked for half a century. The only new things here are the use of an open, instead of closed network, and cheap, instead of expensive, cameras.
Whoopdy-freaking-doo.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Oh, that I agree with. Paying Joe Blow $16k a year to monitor this stuff is ridiculous.
BilldaCat
1984, George Orwell. (on-line version)
What are the odds on them starting to recruit children from the schools first...?
Can we not get kids involved, ask to record everything their parents and teachers do and report on anything suspicious - hey why not call it the Hitler, sorry, Bush Youth?
Okay, who's suspicious? Depending on state even carrying automatic rifles is legal or normal.
But what about an unusual number of orientalic-looking people gathering in a house? Having the police storm a family gathering (birthday party, wedding) always is fun, isn't it?
OTOH the family father who carries home his grocey shoppings (a kilo sugar and herbicide every evening) is completely unsuspicious, isn't he? Homebuilding makeshift-bombs made easy.
So: everyone is suspicious - just to be safe. And police won't know where to start digging though all those "alerts" streaming in...
Thank you for you interest
from http://www.ushomeguard.org/coming-soon.asp
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
the cameras monitor YOU!
Oh wait, we'll have that too.
Karma: -2147483648 (Mostly affected by integer overflow)
Yes, privacy depends on your location. If you're standing on a street corner in plain view of the world then I don't see how you can object to your actions being watched by the police or anyone else who happens to pass by. Are we all supposed to avert our eyes because you might want a little privacy?
Become a government informer
Betray your family and friends!
Fantastic prizes to be won!
Remember kids! Guns don't kill people - Americans kill people.
He's standing on the corner. No wait! He's moving. Now's he's stopped again. He keeps checking his watch! I think he's up to something. No? You're sure? Dang! OK, I'll call you back.
laugh hard, it's a long way to the bank
Then there's the Big Brother issue. When Walker unveiled his plan earlier this year in an off-the-record talk at the fabled TED tech conference, the idea of people-scanning cameras on the Net "creeped everybody out," says one attendee. Walker thinks this is a bogus issue, since cameras will be pointed only to areas where people aren't supposed to be. "I don't see a problem with that," says Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. But Rotenberg worries about whether a future iteration of the system might include facial recognition and other features that could track ordinary people.
And if anybody is caught on camera, it's because they are where they shouldn't be. Don't want to be on camera? Don't go where you shouldn't go!
Yes, Virginia, it's really that simple.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
This is sooo 1984 because you didn't read the article. Monitoring the perimeter of a nuclear facility is wildly different from a camera in your bedroom. People monitoring airport runways is wildly different from Thought Police watching you in bed at night.
You think it would be more cost effective to have the cams do a live feed over the net and anyone could watch them. If someones sees some funky stuff goin' down they could call it in and get a reward based on the crime they just helped stop.
So when I'm on the street, you have the right to know everything about me? I can walk up to you and demand to know how much money you earn, what diseases run in your familly etc.? I know you wouldn't tell me if I did that. Interesting thing is some believe that I can't do that, but that the state does have that right - a policeman should be able to walk up to you and ask what he wants to know, even when you're not suspected of anything.
Privacy isn't something limited by your location, it's a universal right - when violated, you've violated someones personal freedom, and thats about the most important thing we have.
"You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. "
Actually, these cameras come equipped with Infra-red.
The ______ Agenda
Speaking of which, browse through this essay on Orwell's 1984 to spot some familiar themes.
There is a difference to watching me on a street corner, and taking away someones right to privacy when he's in a public place. When I'm outside, I know people can watch me. If I don't like that, I don't go outside - and I am outside, so that means I don't mind (and if I don't mind, my right to privacy is not violated, even though I do have less privacy) . But that doesn't mean I don't have a right to privacy when I'm outside (which is what the post I replied to said) - just because I'm standing at that corner doesn't mean you have a right to know, for instance, what I'm carrying in my right pocket (except when that's a threath to you, in which case I'm violating your freedom, and not vice-versa.
> This smacks of 1930s/40s Germany, where you were asked to basically spy on your neighbor
This would only be accurate if all your neighbors lived in nuclear power plants or chemicals factories. Otherwise, I can tell you didn't read the friggin article. Next time, know what you are talking about before you open your mouth.
Protection against unreasonable search is where the right to privacy is derived from, Mostly by the Warren court.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
RTFA... This system as described only sends video when it detects motion. Then once motion is detected it sends the video to three of these "unsophisticated" viewers. If they see somehting interesting, it is then sent to ten more. If there is agreement that something is worth checking out in the video, then the professionals take over.
As described, this is only useful for moniitoring places where people rarely venture, and really shoulnd't be anyway, such as power substations and bridges in remote areas, etc.
Looks like a pretty good system to me, at first glance.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
> I'd rather not have Joe Blog watching me step out of my house...
Unless you live in a nuclear power plant, or some other place where there are not supposed to be any people walking around... Read the fucking article, the cameras would be in places where there should be no peolpe, not in front of your damned house. Come on, the Gov has more important things to do than watching your every move.
No it isn't. Cite the part of the constitution that says "We have the right to privacy wherever we go." ...
I know this is a touchy subject for some of you out there, but:
The Constitution isn't perfect. Which is why you can make amendments in the first place, and why in most countries, the constitution can even be altered.
I'm not talking about your legal rights here, I'm talking about your moral rights, which are what the law should be modelled after - what is right and what isn't? Just that something isn't in the law doesn't mean it shouldn't be.
Here's another link:
e nson-waldman.html
http://www.cfp2000.org/news/student_reports/steph
that sitting next to the monitor, these people's tube will most likely be tuned to FOX news or CNN.
BREAKING NEWS: sniper driving a white van! possible terrorist!
Great future we're promised...
there's no place like ~
Its all about slow encroachment, and acceptance training, of the public.
Once this is accepted as normal, its a smaller step to accepting mass monitoring private citizens as the norm.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Aren't we already doing this? Monitoring, closeley, those suspicious blonde twins with the double headed "bludgeoning device"... Right-o. Someone in the US once said (to paraphrase) "we don't need the government to curtail our rights, the citizens are doing a fine job of that already".
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Big Brethern is watching...
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
Your Privacy is not just limited to who can see you.
The homeless person can expect to be watched 24 hours a day - this is an invasion of his/her privacy but they have more fundemental problems than that. They still have the right not to have their privacy invaded further, for example their personal details should remain private.
How about if some of the money planned set aside for this scheme in 1984 were to go to providing shelter for the homeless?
Although in theory you have nothing to fear if you do nothing wrong, it is misuse of the system that is a problem.
By opening the system up, you are inviting misuse of the system.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
thats true, but later comes the 1984 society, this just sets the wheels in motion.. :(
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
Yes, the article specifically mentioned pointing those cameras at places where nobody is supposed to be.
For now.
For years, the government has gotten around the Constitution by outsourcing its atrocities. They can't really abridge the rights of people by interrogating them here, so they let their allies do it. They're prevented from infringing the privacy of the people (but in many cases still do it), but they're fine with letting companies collect the data and then rifling through their records.
They've made a science of preserving the illusion of freedom while making it scarcer and scarcer in real life. That's because the government's primary goal is to protect itself. The consumers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hitizens come a distant second.
If by some miracle the webcam idea works (and I really don't think it will, except as a psychological deterrent to attacks on soft targets), someone will suggest it gets "spread" to other places. The citizens of the nation will manage to keep themselves under tight scrutiny at the behest of the government. Can you say "worst case scenario," boys and girls?
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Where did I say I was against this webcam idea? It's true, when going outside, you willing let others see you, and thus, a camera isn't a problem either. But again, that doesn't mean you don't have a right to privacy, as the original post said. I am against the idea, btw, but only because of what the second replier to the original post mentioned: it's having people spy on their neighbours etc.
Workers at these facilities will now ALWAYS be on camera. They were on camera before, but it was just internal security cams. Now, your ugly mug is online, all the time. Yuck.
Joe Q Public, the 'unsophisticated user', will now have the ability (and they will) to check out what Mr. Dam Inspector is doing at any particular time.
MOVEMENT DETECTED!
- Joe, you must evaluate this picture.
--Damn...lookatthat...he's pickin his nose!
MOVEMENT DETECTED!
- Jane, you must evaluate this picture.
--Does that guy look kind of....dark? Yes, we must send this to level 2. (even though its merely the guy who refills the Coke machine)
MOVEMENT DETECTED!
- Alice, you must evaluate this picture
-- ahhh...it's that guy coming back from the bathroom again. Damn, he pees a lot. I think there's something funny going on in there. I think we need to call security.
I know *I* wouldn't want to work in such a place.
so the terrorist organization of the day finds a bunch of kiddie hackers who break the encryption, construct a man-in-the-middle set up which either spoofs the images so all appears well or the opposite diverting attention to a bogus site......we've failed miserably so far to secure systems on nothing like this scale - this doesn't stand a chance.
Isn't this the sort of system you can get around by taping a picture to the camera lens? Then anyone looking at the picture just sees something normal...
Evan Reynolds evanthx@hotmail.com
Two peanuts crossed the street. One was assaulted.
It's already been done in Britain, iirc. I remember seeing a short piece on a news program a while back about some poor couple who were living on a city block with a camera mounted on the pole outside. Because of where it was mounted, it had the freedom to turn to look through their windows. The piece was about how they were trying to get whomever had installed the camera to put limiters on it so the people operating the cam would stop peeping on them all the time.
"You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. "
Actually, these cameras come equipped with Infra-red.
So, you are telling me that George Orwell was to optimistic?
*shudder*
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
That post was about as insightful as a Mike Tyson press conference.
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.
These people would not be spying on their neighbors, they would be nothing more than work at home security guards. They are protecting specific public and commercial infrastructure.
Unskilled airport workers go through everyone's underware, do you hear privacy activists outraged at this? Not the ones that fly.
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.
Your appraisal if this incident exposes your ignorance on the matter. The men were purposely speaking to be overheard (their conversation was not private at that point) as part of an insanely idiotic prank with the intent to purposefully cause alarm in nearby patrons. The lady stated that she weighed her correct course of action after hearing the statements and did the obviously correct thing by alerting law enforcement.
Should an individual have alerted authorities after hearing plans for sabotage during world war II?
Go ahead and delude yourself into your own conclusion to this question. The correct conclusion stands dependent on its own merits.
In Brin's naive and silly utopia, the people would be watching the government even more than the government watched the people (after all, there are many more of us than there are of them). No-one here is talking about installing webcams in and around government buildings so that we can watch what they're doing, only installing webcams in public places so that the government can watch what we're doing.
The sheeple are easily swayed by "reporters" who need to attract readers, and so the reporters generate conflict and tension and fear....ooohhh...it's 1984!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The right to privacy has been affirmed, and was essentially created by (afaik) the Supreme Court.
let's put a webcam at every corner in public places, then put a sign under the webcam stating its ip address (maybe ipv6 would help).
Now everybody with an internet connection can watch any webcam at any time.
Since it would be impossible to know who is watching the camera that's above your head, everybody will become a good and productive dron^H^H^H^Hcitizen.
oh, and the paranoia that would arise shortly after will be defined as anti-American: if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have to worry about anything.
say welcome to the new Privacy era!
ps: this is supposed to be a joke. If you don't get it, don't care about it.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
The point is putting cameras at places where normal people aren't supposed to be (nuclear power plants, chemical plants). In that context it makes more sense. Yes it is a little 1984 and could be misused.
My big concern is that it could let potential terrorists know where the cameras are actually placed and give them details about other security measures in place. I guess that's all in how it is used.
Anyway, after seeing the Nova documentary on how vulnerable some targets really are, a little security is better than the level we have now.
Indicental invasions are expected. But no, I don't think a police officer has the right to single me out follow me personally with a video camera without my consent, public or otherwise. That is harassment.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it make more sense to use motion detectors where there's not supposed to be any movement? It sounds like a more efficient system would be motion detector/camera pairs, and a small number of security guards who can then take a closer look when an alarm goes off to make sure they're not sending a SWAT team against a stray cat.
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.
Homeland security is everyone's business, comrade.
And it's all homeland security.
There are a few things wrong with the system as he describes it.
First of all, trained or untrained, it would be very easy to "pass" on a security camera as a bunch of curious college kids with backpacks (full of C4). Even a well-made bear costume would be indistinguishable from the real thing on a webcam.
Second, such a system might not have a fast enough response time. A five second window is a long time to run through a security camera. Assuming the first camera captures you, it might take 30 seconds for 3 people on the internet to recieve the image, and another 30 for the next 10 people, and 60 seconds for a person in the emergency responce headquarters to review, find, interrogate, and notify the authorities on campus. Let's assume the security responce people take 2 minutes to find these terrorists... They now have had 4 minutes to poison the water, plant a bomb, or take an opera full of people hostage.
Third, like all motion detectors there must be an amount of accepted variance. If terrorists walked really slowly or very slowly obstructed the camera they could walk right in front of it. Being wireless, the cameras' locations would be easy to detect. If the system compared this 5 second picture to one 10 minutes ago they could detect such changes, but such a system would consume large amounts of resources to store those backphotos. This problem is sticky but not unsolvable.
Overall this is an interesting idea. In essence, it automates most unnecessary parts of security screening (staring at unchanging images) and taps groups of affordable internet personnel to do the easy but non-automatable task of deciding if a moving object is a person or a blowing trash bag. Once those two criteria have been passed, the real security specialists can respond, thus lowering the number of security personnel needed and the overall cost per camera monitered. And reducing cost for the same service is always a good thing.
The ______ Agenda
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."
Regardless of what the article says, I don't always believe what I'm told. Firt I hear left and right cities throughout the world not just the US are putting up city wide wireless networking. Now I hear their is consideration of a plan to use wireless video cameras in conjuction with wireless networking... hmmm
It has nothing to do with watching you in your house, or in your neighbourhood. It has nothing to do with people watching random cameras.
Slippery slope.
How long until the X10 PATRIOT Act?
The coolest voice ever.
I really don't understand what your point is... if you are walking down the street, there is absolutely no right to privacy when it comes to being taped, watched, etc... you're right in that someone doesn't have the right to know what is in your right pocket, but if you are carrying a bag of pot in your right pocket and pull out while walking down the sidewalk, there is no invasion of privacy if a cop stops to ask what the hell you're thinking pulling out a bag in the middle of a public place... it's silly to argue that you have a right to privacy when walking down the street because you have a right to private information that is impossible to get from being taped, watched, etc... show me a camera that can detect "how much money you earn, what diseases run in your familly" and then your arguement may have a point...
uberslack
-the sexiest slacker, pothead, gay geek around-
Just because you're paranoid does not mean that the world is not full of assholes.
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.
It might be something like this: [reading screen slowly] "Check core temperature, yes slash no." [types] Yes. "Core temperature normal." Hmph. Not too shabby. "Vent radioactive gas." [types] NO. "Venting prevents explosi-on." Heeheee...whoa, this is hard. Where's my Tab? Okay, then, [types] YES, vent the stupid gas. [Cut to a farmer tending his corn. The gas release blows away part of the crop.] part of the crop.]
"Guns don't kill people, bullets do."
The question is if your homeland's security needs a bunch of webcams. Terrorists (the excuse for everything these days) are too smart to be fooled by normal security camera's, and this will be no different. You shouldn't put a very doubtful result for security above the fact that you're creating a state in which "patriots" spy on their neighbours, reporting anything they think is bad.
The real value in surveillance cameras is in people not knowing they're even there. In urban centers/banks/public places, it makes sense to make them big and visible, to act as a deterrent, but at highly sensitive places, there should be (body) heat detectors, tiny hidden cameras, trip wires, bear traps.... you get the point. You have no business sneaking around a nuclear plant.
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
Now, nearly five years after this event with almost no major incidents, the city council approved sticking cameras all over this area. There will be no cameras near residential areas for locals, just cameras for students. The police chief has designated the areas as a problem section and now he will have the legal right to monitor the place with a bunch of cameras.
Using the same mentality other cities could monitor their problem areas and keep a close eye on what the minority population is up to. Personally, I would like to rent a house next to the police chief and stick up 10 AXIS cams covering every inch of his house.
The TIPS program was killed off with the passing of the Homeland Security Act.
This was briefly covered here with a link to a more substantial piece here
Thank god for cooler heads.
Life is not a rehearsal. Step up!
This doesn't sound as bad as I first thought, but it also doesn't sound very effective.
First of all, a bunch of extra people watching the permiters of soft targets is a good thing. Many people would like to do that to contribute to their national security as long as
a) it didn't infringe constitutional rights and
b) they didn't have to be full-time security guards to do it (that is, they wouldn't have to change they're life substantially to help out)
a) This is satisfied by having the web cams only along secure perimiters. You expect to be watched around secure installations; it's a necessary evil.
b) This is satisfied by software that selects only unusual changes, so the amature security guard doesn't have to look at an empty strech of fence forever on the off chance a Terrorist might show up.
The problem I see is the filtering of "unusual changes". Obviously, although most cameras will be looking at areas that have no movement and no change and are generally boring, some will be focused on gates, or on areas bordered by public streets and sidewalks. Those places will have a lot of movement and change. The software can't send the watchers an alert every time a car goes through a security gate or drives down a street, so it'll have to filter out a lot of activity that is "routine". So, all a Terrorist has to do to circumvent this is to do something inocuous every day near a camera until it's time to strike, when he goes to the exact same place and does the same thing, except with a lethal twist. The program has already filtered him out, so no alert is sent to the watchers.
On one hand, this would force terrorists to establish patterns before they struck, which would be better than nothing.
On the other hand, this type of preparation is similar to how they planned for 9/11. They did a lot of dry runs on airport security to figure out what would be suspicious and what wouldn't. These cameras would be a similar hurdle.
A significant difference between the cameras and airport security is that a Terrorist testing airport security probably has a good idea every time he alerts the suspicions of airport security guards, while, in regard to these cameras, he would not have any idea when his actions were sent to watchers. So figuring out what works and what doesn't would be less certain.
Still, having people watch the perimiters of soft targets would probably help the watchers feel better if nothing else. (Everyone keeps making jokes about Homeland Security because it seems to be giving advice on how to survive terrorism, and no real suggestions of how to prevent terrorism. This would allow us to feel that we're doing Something) Also, the filtering would probably be improved over time, so that something that might go unnoticed one year can be recognized the next.
Well, we obviously need to beef up security, inasmuch as the existing system has clearly failed to keep out the Communists....
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
this is a great idea. put one in every room in Washington DC and State Gov't building that lobbyists exist in. if the lobbyist is making policy (like energy, etc) then we'd have a record without having to sue the VP's office.
I think that every elected official could have one in their office, this would help ensure that they are on the up and up.
I mean, if they aren't doing anything illegal, immoral or shameful they have nothing to hide, right? and if they are, they don't have a right to keep it under wraps...not on our nickel.
this is PUBLIC property, we taxpayers are the employer and employers have the right to monitor their employees, right?
we could also put them in the executive offices and board rooms of every company ever busted for wrongdoing of any kind. keep tabs on them while were at it.
William Shatner could could host a weekly show with submitted high(low)lights of the last weeks monitoring effort.
My point is that there's more to privacy than just being seen in public places. The author of the post I replied on stated that in public areas you have no right whatsoever to privacy. That is not the case. You always, everywhere, have your right to privacy, but sometimes, you willing give some of your privacy up - when I go outside I let people see and tape me. Because it's willing, it is not a violation. The moment you do or say something outside, you make it public bussiness, that means you willingly give up your privacy for the moment, but not that you don't have your rights any longer on other subjects. This is not just about the camera's.
Here's a tidbit..
From the article:
Walker's goal right now is getting the federal government to spend $40 million to build prototype to see if the idea works.
How is "success" going to be determined? Like the rock that keeps the tigers away?
While I'm sure that this is true, it's completely irresponsible to base an argument on those premises. It infuriates me when people have no idea of how dangerous just getting one foot inside the door really is.
So it's not 1984 yet. Who cares? Either we have privacy, or we have a culture of systematic monitoring. Once it becomes okay to have joe-internet-user watching a power plant, the idea of monitoring becomes a *little* more okay... a little more acceptable. And then we move on to the next thing. This is called a slippery slope, and I can't understand why people can't or don't want to see it.
The USA PATRIOT Act is a lot like this. People say, '...well, damn, we *were* attacked... this *is* a time of crisis, and so it's *okay* to let the government increase its ability to watch us and those who might do this kind of thing again. We can understand... it's necessary. We'll deal with it." We think it's okay if it only impedes our constitutional rights *a little*, *just for now*. But it really just creates a climate of acceptance, in which every further act is just that much easier to push through in the mind of the public.
Once you open the door, it's damn hard to go back. There's a reason it's called a 'slippery' slope. So it may not be 1984 yet, but if people start using these ways of thinking, if we actually start believing these steps are *good* for us, and that we can sacrifice *a little* of our rights, we've cast off the entire set of our freedoms, even if the effects of that cast-off aren't visible for a long time to come.
We need to stop thinking of ways to keep everyone out, and start finding ways of letting them in. The culture of fear only makes things worse.
B
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
Miscreants spray-painted "w3 0wnz j00" on the third cooling tower at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility overnight. The citizen watching Camera 7 at the time, Johnathan Witkowski, of 77 Washington Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, could not be reached for comment.
</nightly-news>
(any resemblance to real names and addresses is purely coincidental.)
Why would any terrorist worry about getting boxcutters past airport security now when they could dump an assload of ricin into a big city's reservoir and watch hundreds of thousands of people croak?
Why did they bother to do it in the first place?
Maybe because the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon was first and formost an attack on the symbols of the military and financial might of the US and that the civilian victims were just a side effect?
If they only were looking for a huge bodycount they would have choosen another target, or another method.
Contrary to popular opinion, terrorism (per definition) isn't just about killing people, it's about furthering your agenda through intimidation.
This means that they are mostly primarily interested in maximizing the propaganda value of their actions, not the destructions they cause.
Take Usama Bin Laden for example.
As I understand it one of his most important objectives was to get the US military out of Saudi Arabia.
And, guess what, you're pulling out of there right now.
From his point of view: Mission Accomplished.
And all this essentialy because of the fear instilled by one operation.
As an added bonus you crushed a secular regime in the middle east.
Be prepared for Al Quaida operatives (or others) trying to instigate a islamic revolution in Iraq sometime in the next few years...
I think most of the proposed methods for reducing terrorism misses the point.
Almost all methods try to take the terrorists on directly. But terrorism is only the symptom, not the decease.
It's root cause is: A lot of people are so desperate that supporting these guys seems like a good idea.
A terrorist organization can't live without popular support somwhere. Take away this support for their cause and what you have left is a few extremists with a serious funding problem (ok, OBL might be an exception) and nowhere to hide.
In the case of islamic terrorism solving the Palestinian question would probably go a long way towards reducing the threat.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Isn't it wild that instead of computers serving us, we're being hired to serve them?
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Sounds like the life of a camgirl.
sudden downturn in the popularity of reality-tv shows!
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
This idea of 'professional voyeurs' and the ability to release avatars to buy and sell footage in real-time from a variety of public, private and hidden sources factors very large in 'Kiln People' (reviewed a few weeks ago here).
The idea being that if you have a permanent record of time-space from a specific vantage point and you have overlapping areas of coverage its a natural to allow for time-tracking people across multiple geographic points.
The owners of these units can barter their images with people who require them. Its quite an interesting concept.
Read the book, its fun.
ooooh, they have cameras that can read minds now? will wonders never cease;-}
Why is there the assumption that if an idea is sufficently bizzare, it has a greater possibility of success?
Most (if not all) of the achievements around us today come from the refinement of previously successful solutions.
Let's take a look at a much simpler system which is already available: camera monitoring against shoplifting.
Camera systems in most stores are intended to prevent shoplifting, but often fail due to lack of human observers to interpert the tape. Even when there are people to observe, these system often lack people to act prior to the departure of the shoplifter (and so shoplifting is still a problem even in monitored stores)
These systems do work well in providing proof that the person was shoplifting, provided that the person was caught (usually by other means)
Assuming that we can teach software to recogonize a shoplifting event, we might be able to put more manpower on catching the shoplifter. But it will always be done "after the fact." To "pre-emptively" catch shady shoppers would be so outrageous that I sudder to think of the consequences.
Eventually, the shoplift catchers will prioritize what they will act on and what they will allow to be taken. Just like police who "only" stop cars traveling 10 or 15 MPH over the speed limit.
I always thought that something along these lines would be good way of providing oversight of CCTV systems. In Britain, most towns and cities are monitored by CCTV but the only people who can see what is being monitored and recorded are those employed by the local coucils. Why not broadcast the feeds from local CCTV systems onto cable tv networks. There would be less likelihood of there not being witnesses to a crime committed, and there would be witnesses to any misuse of the cameras, ie. peeping through residential windows, spying on girls in the street etc.
They put up cameras in our public transportation system. All of a sudden, the kids stopped wreaking havoc in the trams and buses. The public transportation system saves money on maintenance, and we get cleaner transportation units and exist on videotape for a few days. I think it is a rather fair deal, at least until they start using the footage as evidence in otherwise unrelated cases.
So, indeed, cameras protect, but not against desparate and truly malicious individuals. However, if they prevent some petty crimes, the police will free more resources for dealing with the big stuff. At least that's the intention...
Stop the brainwash
In the UK where public and private owned CCTV cameras are everywhere already, reports into how well they work indicate that camera operators are likely to target just young males of visable minorities and engage in voyerism of attractive women.
I don't have the link, but there was a good article in the NY Times I think about this, around 2001.
Some Camera to Watch Over You is a related Wired article.
No, a cop shouldn't be able to ask you anything if there is no reason to. I carry a newspaper clipping in my back pocket that proves this point - a man was awarded $6,000.00 (the incident occured the 4th of August, 1997 at 11:30pm) when a cop (Jean-Francois Rivard) stopped the music curator of McGill U (Rejean Mongeau) and asked to see ID, without probable cause, then arrested him when he refused.
Maybe you like living in a police state, but here in Canada, we still have the right to tell the police to "fuck off" when they act illegally. And I do mean, "fuck off". The courts have also held that the police do not have an inherent right to be treated politely when they are overstepping their bounds, and that words like "fuck off" and "shithead" are to be expected in such situations.
If you think this is too extreme, consider what you'd do if someone who wasn't a police officer tried to do the same (detain you without cause).
So a thousand home computer users will be able to download still images of an airplane that's about to strike a nuclear reactor. Yeah, that's useful.
I am an American, and I agree with what the parent post said too. I'm also not a coward.
Hohoho! Read the post well! I was saying most people believe... etc. - which I think is ignorant as well as bad for the reasons you described, because if an induvidual'd try to that, they would mind, even though the person I was replying to was saying you don't have a right to privacy in public places. Easy now, we're on the same side her. :) That, and.. I definatly do not live in a police state (man, pot is legal here :P), and I like it. :)
Yay! Godwin's Law!
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
Internet + Wireless Cameras = Cheap Porn =)
Last I looked, stalking was illegal. If you make a habit of following someone around, you are not just violating their rights, you are committing a criminal code offence (section 264 of the Canadian Criminal Code - or try google for representative laws in other jurisdictions).
Even sitting outside in a car and maintaining a watch on someone's activities through their front window is illegal. I know one guy who got arrested for doing that - his explanation that it was his house, and he was spying on his wife banging some other guy, didn't cut it before the judge. He was still violating the rights of 2 people who had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
About 2 years ago some cameras were installed in the 'dangerous' places in Warsaw (the capital of Poland), for a huge amount of money. A few weeks later it occured, that a women was killed under the eye of a camera. The film was recovered later and helped to check what has happened but ... the man watching the camera picture just missed the whole happening.
...how about installing security cameras in the Congress and making citizens watch for "suspicious activity"...
oh wait, it's called CSPAN, and nobody watches...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Last July we had a small fire on the closest ridge visible in this view. It was started by lightning on a small rocky outcropping, and burned just one tree. When the wind was blowing west, some of the smoke was just barely visible in the webcam. Unfortunately it was not enough to be noticeable in a single frame (a review of time lapses showed the smoke however).
So we've been wrestling with some way to automate detection of potential smoke. This is a very difficult proposition, because the potential for false positives is very high (due to fog/clouds, blowing snow, and blowing pine pollen which every summer creates these very cool clouds of greenish-yellow dust that blows off trees).
One thing that's clear from the incident last July, single frames may not be enough for our volunteers to watch. So I have written a simple perl script to build short-term timelapses (last 30 minutes) which can be reviewed periodically. Using libwww I can periodically pull a frame from wireless cams with built-in web servers (this is all a work in progress, we have just three cams so far and I have work to do before the fire season starts again!)
I honestly and completely believe that Charlize Theron is a threat to my homeland. I will watch her home day and night if I have to! That is my dedication to this country!
I also believe that most terrorists do their planning in bed and while taking a shower, so rig the cameras accordingly. Also, I'm going to need them to be zoom-capable so that I can intercept messages she may be writing.
Should the time come when I need knock out gas and a full insertion team, I'll contact you.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Looking for an interesting job?
Want to help make your country more free?
Then join the Ministry of Love! No prior experience needed. Apply at a branch near you:
New York Times
Washington Post
LA Times
any local CNN office
The Ministry of Love. Making history since... well that would be telling wouldn't it?
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
I know, this is getting out of hand!
First these things monitor banks, then goverment facilities, then army bases, now it's going to be airports? highways? What next? My asshole?
</sarcasm>
Seriously people, get a grip. Being careful of Big Brother wiretapping your vocal cords and crying foul over tame ideas such as this one are two different things.
-Rabbit
This presents a society where anybody anywhere is expected to monitor their neighbors and report on them to the authorities.
This encourages mistrust among the people. It promotes unquestioning submission to authority.
Totalitarianism is invariably presented as "security". It's not.
"They that can give up essential liberty, to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"--Benjamin Franklin
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
>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
perhaps u r thinking of japan, where kids are explicitly taught: "the protruding nail gets hammered down."
unfortunately, conformity is an innate human failing, exacerbated by our rampant materialist society, hollywood, advertizing...
overcoming human nature's less-desirable traits is why we invented religion, isn't it?
Does anyone see the parallels in history with that? East Germany needed to protect its workers paradise with a wall and land mines.
People spying on their neighbors and turning them in to authorities.
Soviet Russia and it's satellite states "protected" by electrified fences, watch towers with armed guards.
Now tell me if history repeats itself.
Why doesn't anyone ask these geniuses what the hell their schemes would have done on 9/11 to stop forty or so nearly unarmed men from crashing those airliners?
What is the use of all these expensive, intrusive systems, other than to watch US?
You know what would be funny, if your white protestant teen neighbor on the other sie of you thought it would be funny to get the new black people in town in trouble by defacing your car.
Do you get a reward for turning in your neighbour? How much for a family member? What about your spouse?
Garbage in, Garbage out. You're telling me "unsophisticated" "security guards" will have the power to turn anyone they don't like into the US authorities.
Need I remind you that these people will not be "arrested", but will be treated like the folks at camp x-ray - threats to national security.
This is a fucking witch hunt and the US gov't is trying to
I'm also American and I have to say I agree. I mean hell, regardless of how much security we put into place, things will still slip into the cracks. There will be possible holes in the system etc.
Its like security on the internet. All you can do is make it so hard and time consuming to crack, that the person gives up, but if you have the resources (a large linux cluster for example etc) and time you can break any encription.
I think what the events of 911 showed is that we really didn't use the security we already had in place. Now that has changed. What more can we do? Should we have to change our way of life out of fear?
Hey Fox, you look like a Stand Up Guy. Could you do me a favor and watch over this Hen House for me? Thanks a Bunch!
I can now get paid for watching all those suspicious foreign women undress
I hate my sig
I've heard they are using computers to recognize faces of criminals at airports, ect. Couldn't a sophisticated computer program replace a mob of "Unsophisticated users"?
I hate my sig
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it make more sense to use motion detectors where there's not supposed to be any movement?
I'm trying to stay reasonable, but do you know what RTFA means?
There isn't supposed to BE any movement where these cameras are/will be. Therefore, when there is motion, it means something may be wrong.
>It sounds like a more efficient system would be motion detector/camera pairs
That's exactly what they are trying to do.
A lot of people will bitch and moan about security features being like an Orwellian nightmare... but mass, random worldwide surveillance like this is actually IN the book 1984. I'm sure it will be effective, but should we implement it knowing full well the consequences of its misuse?
Voodoo Girl is the bomb!
> I'm talking about your moral rights
Please excuse my shortsightedness, it's just that when people talk about rights they have or think they have, they are usually talking about laws.
We then get into an even stickier situation, as I don't believe there is any absolute moral truth. I believe, given certain circumstances, that bringing about the end of a human life can be moral, probably even a "good thing." There are many, many, people that would disagree.
But of course, that is off the subject, so I leave it at that.
> The right to privacy has been affirmed, and was essentially created by (afaik) the Supreme Court.
But do you have anything to back that up? Any names of people involved? I don't need case #s or anything, I can find that myself if I have a little info. I believe that we SHOULD have the right to privacy, but what we should have and what we DO have are entirely different.
I believe this system is designed to be deployed in areas where people do not normally go and/or during hours when people should not be present. Thus the presence of any human being in the image would be out of the ordinary. The proposed system isn't designed to monitor pedestrian foot traffic on the street corner or at the shopping mall during business hours. It might be very useful in watching over hundreds of miles of oil pipeline and power transmission lines running through the wilderness, the shores of water reservoirs, and our wilderness/rural borders with Mexico and Canada. It may make surveillance cheap enough to put into places that it was too expensive for in the past. Global time differences would be an asset (e.g. allowing people in other parts of the world to monitor sites during late-night hours).
I agree with you.
... for a while.
If people feel they are being treated fairly, they will not act against you. However, you could use the exact same argument about allowing Germany to invade Austria in pre WWII times. Germany sure felt treated fairly and peace was preserved
The problem is that there's a huge gap between how the US administration feels they treat the world and how the rest of the world feels treated. Although lobbyism is certainly a problem I think anyone can appreciate that Bush - no matter his levels of stipidity - doesn't wake up every day thinking "Today I'm gonna treat some anonymous Muhammed really badly, so I can buy his oil for cheap".
No, the US administration feels they are doing the best they can and if I push aside my fears of being an etnocentric ass, I honestly think the Western World wishes the best for everyone else.
I think the real question is: Does the people living under a despotic rule feel badly treated because they are or because they have corrupt governments telling them they are? No matter how much your everyday life sucks, nothing beats a scapegoat (again look at pre WWII Germany).
If the case is that these areas breed terrorism because of misinformation about our true intent then surely the only right thing to do is to change their leadership. We will get no where by apeacement towards dictatorships. Although the US was no bleached hero during the Cold War, it is hard to rule out that their decision not to follow an apeacement policy towards the USSR landed results. Would West-berliners have been more or less free if the Allies had pulled out?
However, if the people of the Middle East feels badly treated because truly they are, then it is up to us to change our ways.
Once you've found your own answer to the question "Are we trying to do good or bad?", you will have found the answer to what we should do about dictatorships around the world.
The last thing we need is more material for Fox reality shows! Stop it now before it's too late!
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
A slight inaccuracy in the article: Due to fiscal constraints, the challenge phrase has been changed. It is now "Welcome to Burger King, may I take your order?".
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
If I recall correctly, it was Neil Stephenson who proposed a system like this at Computers Freedom Privacy 2000. His idea was that home users would set up cameras pointing at various areas they were concerned about (e.g. an alleyway) and that a collaborative community of users around the world would take turns watching for suspicious activity.
Suppose you're one of these freelance watchers. How many times are you going to want to look at a picture of a deer or a racoon or a cloud before you quit? How much will your response time lag when you realize that odds that you'll spot someone is infinitessimal.
This is different than other security camera networks today. Many cameras (like convenience stores) just collect evidence to be used after a crime. Actively monitored networks (casinos, theme parks, public areas) have continuous activity that can help alleviate the boredom to some degree.
... somebodies watching me...
Only 'flamers' flame!
I can't believe some of the things that I am reading here... First, let me say that I don't necessarily agree with Mr. Walker's idea that adding cameras in these areas will actually increase security. Cameras (for the most part) are forensic tools. They are tireless eyes that capture everything for later review. I don't think that adding these cameras with a bunch of bored homebodies watching is going to protect me from a terrorist attack. I would prefer to see actual guards partolling the perimeter of the mentioned "targets." Also, please learn some more diverse literary references. I am tired of the same old 1984 reference everytime the government does something. It is old. As for this whole "Big Brother" idea. It is pure paranoia. This is a private venture by an entrepreneur attempting to make money. Pure and simple. I would agree that Mr. Walker is attempting to make money from people's fear of being terrorized, but I don't see any deeper threat than that. This venture doesn't even appear to have government sponsorship at this time. Third, NO ONE IS SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE PLACES MONITORED. You can bet your ass that if I ran a company that had power plants, sensitivie areas, dangerous chemicals, etc. I would have a secure perimeter. I would have a big-ass fence with razor wire, armed guards, dogs, flood-lights, and yes, even cameras. I wouldn't pay some dope $10/hour to sit on his fat ass at home watching the cameras, but they would be there. Finally, who cares? I honestly don't give a damn if the government wants to take pictures of me walking down the middle of Fifth Avenue. I have no expectation of privacy in a public place. I am in public. I expect that there will be other people there and some may even be paying attention to what I am doing. Therefore, anything I want to remain private stays in my home or somewhere else where I can reasonably expect privacy. I think this new proposal, in and of itself, will be largely ineffective except to provide forensic evidence AFTER something has happened. I think money could be better spent on other measures. It is fascinating to me, however, how some people find conspiracy in everything. I certainly have skeletons in my closet that I want to stay there, but I don't see the FBI knocking on my door because they saw me walking down the street.
And how about focusing some of this energy towards an increased awareness of our international activities? Ever wonder why we're being targeted by these people? Check out thisBBC journalist
Two more questions about this...
First, if the system is supported by businesses who will "gladly pay to for the service to reduce their insurance costs" (paraphrase of article), what happens when the system fails? What happens when they go back through the records and find out that photos of a terrorist carrying a bomb into the building, was sent to 3 users, all of whom ignored it?
Who will be sued? What will it do to the insurance benefit of having the system installed at a power plant? And, if the insurance benefit is reduced, who will be interested in supporting the system?
Second question. What if businesses refuse to pay for it? What if, five years after the installation, they say (with some justification) "This system is protecting the citizenry, as well as our particular businesses. The taxpayer should shoulder some of the cost." (another version that would work: "Our local electric utility company is fighting against bankruptcy. In order to avoid going out of business and yet still protect the people, we will need the state to pay for the Terrorist Watch system for the next few years.") It seems very likely that this would happen. Once the possibility is put forth, businesses will continue to push to have the government pay more and more. And, since businesses are more organized then people, the government will eventually be forced to assume the entire cost of running the system.
I've got my own "US HomeGuard Prototype" working here, every now and then there is a false alarm but I'm ready for any sneaky bastard trying to infiltrate my perimeter. Maybe I could get some of that 40 million that Walker is looking for to do his prototype...
The best protest of ubiquitous video coverage was something I saw on TV a few years back. A gentleman in England (where most public places are being videotaped) was stopped while walking home from work, just outside his flat, because the police thought it was suspicious that a guy would be walking around that late at night. Of course he hadn't done anything wrong, so they let him go.
As it happened he worked in a costume shop, so a week later he walked home as a 7 foot tall alien (complete with horns, antennae, and a tail). It was really funny watching 6 police cruisers stop and interview this alien walking the streets of london...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
just reading that last line ALONE, I would have to say yes.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Unless there is some kind of authentication system you can't automate this will just be free money like those "watch ads for money" thing. And of course if you have to authenticate that you are actually watching then you will get kind of bored of this really fast, this is dumb, people won't do it, they'll just leave the window up while they are sleeping or whatever, even if they have to find some way to fake they are not idle.
Because, sometimes they just have to touch the stove.
-YY1
Im going to be the first to 'patrol' the showers in the sorority houses. Help me 'work' for only $20/month!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
[sarcasm]This can't be a bad thing. It creates jobs! How can you not like something that creates jobs? A 800 billion dollar tax cut creates jobs, so we must like it. This surveilanece network will create jobs, too. If you're against this, you're against the economy, and the american people.[/sarcasm]
$8.95/mo web hosting
However, logic is thrown out the window when you deal with terrorists who are willing to die for their cause. They could care less about evidence, as they plan on being dead anyways...
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
I don't seem to remember any webcams in Ted Kaczynski's cabin...?
Education is the silver bullet.
Sure, maybe at first it will only be those places, but...
On the other hand, if someone in New York is being paid to watch the Hoover dam, a few thousand miles away, who do they call?? or do they just e-mail the relevant authorities, who are trying to wade through 100s of SPAM messages....
And further more, if I don't trust the people who are trained properly by the government (the police, and all the TLA agencies) Why in the fuck would I want to trust someone who used to work fast food?? I have a beard, and that right there is enough for some people to be wary of me. I've never been to more than 5 states here, much less ever left the country for anything, but hey, I've got a beard, and I'm from the mountains, so I must be dangerous eh??
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
- The US can become just like the USSR. Oh, they didn't bother with the Internet, they just had people watch each other directly.
- It goes great with current economic policies: people lose their jobs, then the government hires them to do this. Again, just like the USSR.
- You can pay them even less if you stick them in prison first. Prisoners are already doing customer support for your airline tickets--why not have them watch you, too?
- Surely, Walker has patented this, so it's a great example of entrepreneurial spirit.
The idea of having lots of people watch lots of other people has been around for a while. Brin explored it in his book Kiln People. It may happen the way it is described in Kiln People: people deploying private web cams and making the images available.As a government-paid activity, it doesn't have a prayer. Just hiring, screening, and supervising the people involved would be a major undertaking and the system is open to abuse.
The eternal mantra of totalitarianism and fascism: "we need more government powers, more secrecy, and more government/industry collaboration in order to 'protect' the citizen; otherwise you could be killed."
Yes, freedom comes with risks: people can somewhat more easily move around bombs, germs, and other bad stuff. That's not been invented on 9/11, it's been there since the beginning of human societies. You have to accept those risks if you want a free society.
Statistically, terrorism is not going to kill you or me. And whatever terrorism level there may be is more effectively reduced by a combination of simple security measures, international development, and more careful foreign policy. Most likely, what is going to get you is that SUV you are going to collide with, your lack of decent preventive medical care, or the heart disease or cancer you get from your bad nutrition.
Or we could perhaps just grit our teeth and accept that we live in a world in which we face a number of risks each day, and not give up our freedoms and privacy in order to combat just one of them.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
So, this will be sent to a panel of three watchers, huh? Will they suppress the minority report?
The parallel is not exact (far from it), but I bought / read the short story yesterday and was thinking how far ahead of his time PKD was (as usual) in describing such systems. Walker's system (as described) is closer to Orwell I suppose, but the 3-watchers bit jumped out at me.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The second season episode "In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum" features the creation of an earth government agency called "the Ministry of Peace (nicknamed "Minipax" by its employees,) with the alleged goal of helping reduce internal tensions among the EA's [Earth Alliance] populace. Its first visible action was to establish a program called the Night Watch, paying people 50 credits a week to wear black armbands and report suspicious people to the authorities so that troublemakers can be reformed before they disrupt the peace." (quote from above link).
I was watching that particular episode last night, and the quiet, subtle way it was introduced and promoted scared the shit out of me. I can't help seeing parallels between the Night Watch and this new "US Home Guard".
"The shadows have come. The shadows have come for us all..."
(Mod -1 Babylon 5 fanboy)
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
The problem is that this indoctrinates the general public into the idea that "being a fink is a public service". Being a fink is not a public service. It's being a fink.
In a general sense, the proposal really says to the public "Here, we want you to get into the habit of monitoring folks for this particular crime and reporting it to us.
The "target market" of this program is the schoolyard fink who tries to improve his status with the administration by reporting "Johnny said a cuss word.".
I understand that this proposal only suggests that we recruit the general public to watch over certain sensitive areas.
My concern is that the qualifier "certain sensitive areas" will quickly be dropped.
This is the TIPS program in sheeps clothing. "Bend over; I promise I'll only stick the tip in." Slippery slope, and all that.
I do have to say, though, that the name "HomeGuard" describes the program spot-on. If you're a B5 Fan.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
The interesting thing will be when we can throw some good pattern recognition software, then cut out the distribution system. Then you have a cheap and marginally effective deterrent. I can see these going up everywhere in a decade or 2.
I think that everyone knows that the terrorists really hate our democratic system of government. Thus it is logical to presume that they will soon be targeting our public officials. What we really need, then, is one of these webcams in every public official's office!
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Yet another attempt to divert public funds into private pockets.
But at least it will let more people be able to keep on eye on Boo Radley
The only thing I'm high on is love...Love for my Son and Daughters. Yes, a little LSD is all I need.-Marge Simpson
How different is this from what they do now in Europe? I remember the last time I was there seeing government cameras around every corner.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
Just wait for this to go from "voulantary" to "you're un-bushian" to "mandatory". Wait until the drug companies find a "anti-terrorist" drug [really just "pot" in a pill!] to give us all. Then we can drug everyone-terrorists will be those thinking [different is terrorism because we're scared!] Then at last, When the biotech companies find the "terrorist" gene we'll all be in luck. Only the rich, powerful, or non-us citizens will have it! [but we'll have our bio-engineered, cloned, & brainwashed soilders to defend us!]
They probably won't target everywhere, but areas of suspected subversive activity and suspected enemies of the state. Imagine directing that array and being able to use it to scrutinise someone you don't like.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? means "Who watches the watchers?"
And, aside from being cool 'cause it's latin, the most significant thing about the question is that its been around for millenia, and we still don't have an answer.
Yeah we do...the watched watch the watchers.
This is called a representative democracy.
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/cases/conlaw.ht m
You can find information about many rulings regarding the right to privacy on various issues. Basically the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed with it's rulings that people have a right to privacy that is IMPLICIT in the constitution, not spelled out.
Personally I don't remember any such implication in the constitution myself and find the Supreme Court's ability to amend the constitution without going through the full process a bit annoying but sometimes I guess it is useful.
>http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/cases/conlaw.h tm
> You can find information about many rulings regarding the right to privacy on various issues.
Okay, that's a good link, but do you have any links that have cases that aren't about sexual privacy, as that is all that was there related to privacy. Those cases all appear to be "privacy of information," such as homosexuality & contraceptives -- basically keeping your personal life to yourself. These have little to do with "property privacy," ie not being spied on.
No two people have exactly the same racial characteristics, so segregating people by race is very difficult.
Behaviour is not racial, so integration is quite possible.
> Yet, I see no huge overarching "war on speeding" for example.
Actually, there is. it's just not as popular because more voters speed than blow things up.
However, the main idea is the same. There is no clear causality between speeding and accidents (although there may be correlation) but speed limits are relatively easy to monitor and enforce so, since most motorists tend to break them at least occasionally, they became a convenient source of income for the police. Think of it as a selective "road tax".
Some interesting pages are:
- COUNTERACT THE MYTH.
- Speed Limit Fears: Lying with Science.
Say hello to Big Brother!... ... ... Then smash that fucking camera in!!!!!!!!!!!111
What I was establishing is that a right to privacy has been affirmed by the supreme court in numerous cases to the point that the existance of such a right doesn't even began to be a substantial issue to debate. What that right covers is and I suspect always will be in debate.
h tm
But since you were incapable of browsing that site further yourself. Here is a direct link to supreme court decisions by topic. The second one under privacy hits closer to home... you can read plenty under privacy if you wish.
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/cases/topic.
> But since you were incapable of browsing that site further yourself
Since you are incapable of not being an ass... It's not that I couldn't browse the site, I did.
The search engine seems about worthless for me, since I don't know what to look for. Searching for "privacy" returns so much noise that finding the pertinent ones requires wading through all this crap that's impossible (and unnecessarily long) to read. That's why I asked for specific cases to begin with. I'm obviously not a lawyer or PolSci student.
Also, There is only so much I can find on my own, since I don't know dick about supreme court cases, not to mention that they are nearly impossible to read and retain anything useful. It's all legalese bullshit and long words. Not that there's anything wrong with long words, I understand most of them, but they intentionally use big words where shorter, more common ones would work just as well. That keeps the common people from understanding, just like the Catholics originally used only Latin so that the people needed priests to interpret it.
woah boy, calm down there ;)
I agree with you about the legalise... you know something is wrong when most legal documents have sections which redefine the words used in them and there are whole law dictionaries that have special definitions for almost every word... some differ entirely from the true oxford definition.
In any case, hope that page pointed you to some cases that were more along the lines of what you were looking for. I'd suggest reading the first couple paragraphs to get an idea what the case was about then googling the case to find articles and such that give better plain english ideas of what is going on in them.
> I'd suggest reading the first couple paragraphs to get an idea what the case was about then googling the case to find articles
Aha, now that is helpful. Thank you very much, and sorry about jumping on ya', I've was real tense last week, anticipating my best friend's wedding.