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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..."
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!
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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?
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
1984, George Orwell. (on-line version)
What are the odds on them starting to recruit children from the schools first...?
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?
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.
Speaking of which, browse through this essay on Orwell's 1984 to spot some familiar themes.
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.
...for false allegations made by watchers
Actually I believe this..
I have the ability and software to hook my police scanner to my computer and do VOX recording (actually nothing tricky, I plugged the scanner headphone jack into the line-in on the computer and found some freeware VOX software that will use any Windows installed codec for compression on the fly). Anyway.. During the sniper scare in DC last year I happened to catch a few of the incedents. I learned a lot about human nature listening to these recordings. You would not believe how many people were calling 911 with incedents of white vans cutting people off, speeding, driving erratic, reckless and suspicious after a shooting incedent. For those that do not live in this area, the police basically shut down every highway, exit, and bypass when these shootings happened and it basically shut down the Washington/Baltimore/Northern VA area everytime looking for a white van. It seems that every white van in the peoples eyes was doing something "wrong". Well in northern VA there are thousands and thousands of white vans, it is a booming contruction market here and they are everywhere. Human nature lead those that called to not see things as they really were but tainted by the hype of these crazy white vans, they were absolutely sure they had found the snipers and would stretch the truth to ensure they were heard by the police. IMHO, this was a major reason why it took so long to actually find the real snipers, everyone was so preoccupied with the white vans they saw nothing else that mattered, it turned out to be an old Chevy Impala. I do not believe the average person could monitor cameras or be in charge of determining security risks without too many false alarms. You can only cry wolf so many times.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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."
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).
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
--when there's no real way of ensuring that the system is working reliably?--
What about a webcam on the watchers machine. Someone would be watching the wather to determine if they are doing there job.
Scary stuff. These things can't work in a free sociatey. Pol Pot would have loved this idea.
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.
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 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.
I think what it really showed was what you said.. every system has cracks and determined people will always find a way through those cracks.
All this extra security is there for one reason and one reason only... because it makes people FEEL better. Some guys bring boxcutters onto planes and hijack them and cause a mess... so we start enforcing every arbitrary rule in the book , whether it would have made any difference or not.
People see armed gaurds and silly carry on bag restrictions and think "good the powers that be are doing something". Thats ALL it really accomplishes. People are NO safer now than ever before. However, the truth is they were never in much danger as I still believe you are about as likely to die from terrorist acts as you are to die from say, a lightning strike.
Maybe is a sysadmin thing but I think about security, and after the last time I flew out of logan I thought about those box cutters. I dunno, I am pretty damned sure I could get something comparable on the plane if I really wanted to.
I mean a box cutter? be serious! hell make it out of plastic and then you just need to hide the blades. Do you know how easy it is to hide a razor blade amongst things? fuck bring a laptop and shove the blade into the floppy drive or in the case behind the screen.
Hell fuck it... just train them in proper hand to hand combat. Put a few people on the plane (like they did) with the right training and the boxcutter is just a formality. Give them pens if you really think they need a weapon.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"