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Southeast To Start Video Monitoring Flights
NormalVisual writes "According to this article, Southeast Airlines will begin digitally recording everything that goes on during one of their flights. Moreover, they have said they will be retaining the recorded video for up to 10 years. The privacy implications here are worrying, and this sets a bad precedent, IMO." (Southeast is a charter company, not a big scheduled carrier.)
Guess Orwell was right...
When I was a kid, they used to have cameras on our school busses. Nobody was really sure whether they were 'on' or not. The bus drives used to use it as leverage so we didn't screw around.
- tom -
Were they having problems with drunken mile-high orgies?
regarding what you do in public? The other people on the plane may be looking at you. Does that worry you also?
word.
Seems like there will be an awful lot of nice stewardesses on tapes in the boss's drawer, no?
An airline is a private organization. You're free to choose whether or not you fly with them. If you're going to step on board their property, you've got to follow their rules--it's that simple.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Just one more reason to join the mile-high club!
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Huy said cameras wouldn't be installed in the restrooms.
:(
Well so much for www.livemilehighclub.com
not surprised. charter flights are more abused.
i seem to recall a hubbub a while back about "party flights" full of teenagers being taken during spring break turning into big deals.
given that, it's probably in their best interest to record what happens, just for liability sake.
I brainfarted and was emailing someone else at the same time regarding something in the Southeast U.S., and apparently missed it on the preview. Score:-1 (Dumbass) for me. :-)
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
In a plane, what privacy do you THINK you have? In flight voice/data recorders and video monitors have been there for a long time. People are everywhere, and someone could possibly be recording you. You're on a plane to travel safely, and it isn't worth your privacy to allow terrorists any. Don't you want to get to the ground safely? Just keep your laptop screen so only you can see it and it shouldn't matter.
--
1-800-759-0700
Freedoms at the door. Flying isn't a God-given right, it's a damn privelege. When you board a plane, you play by their rules. The public transportation in my city has cameras on all the busses... it's meant to aid in finding those the vandalize or otherwise break the law.
Whining about this is almost as bad as the tool that got kicked off a British Airways flight for wearing a button that said "Suspected Terrorist." When you board a plane, you no longer follow the Constitution to the letter --- it's not the open public. It's either their way, or the Long Island Expressway.
Learn to play by others' rules or until then, STFU.
That is all.
I guess this might motivate nosepickers to stop such an ugly and disgusting habit.
The security on airlines is alittle out of control. I understand people's fears, but the truth is that these extra measures just lull people into a false sense of security.
I travel frequently and have on many cases had my bag searched. Yet after the security check points they would gladly sell me things that serve as a weapon. Glass bottles for example are much more dangerous than my mother's coupon scissors (you know the plastic rounded type, yet still conviscated).
I guess they are counting on face recognition software, but the fact of the matter is that anyone who would be worth recognizing probably has the means to change their face.
Do you slashdot readers feel safer now that they have this extra security?
Rob
Does it really matter if there's a camera on the plane? did you really have any privacy to begin with? you're only sitting in a plane with 200+ other people. And what would you be trying to hide on a plane besides something that isn't suppose to be there? I mean, the only real reason I can see some objecting to this is so the airline can't sell the tape of you having sex in the washroom.
in the bonds, ppka
You KNOW that there will be some crashes that will get recorded and soon or later they will be leaked onto the internet.
We'll see people getting spammed about and cooked as planes auger into the ground or the ocean or buildings.
You know some sick bastards will do this.
I used to work in a TV studio many years ago and there was one camera man that was seriously sick. He kept a personal library of death videos, car wrecks, murder scenes, you name it. I think he probably masturbated to this stuff considering how excited he would get when he got new footage of dead people.
Sad to say it but there really are some sicko's out there...
Think about this analogy:
What if these 'other people' on planes one day decided to carry notebooks and sketchpads,
taking in every detail and keeping it on record.
Wouldn't this bother you?
Those travelling businessmen will be thrilled...
It seems like people have taken to appending that phrase, "the privacy implications here are worrying" to every article they submit. It's a fucking airplane, people - since when do you expect to have privacy?
Christ, talk about a knee-jerk reaction. About the worst this will do is enable a bored technician to watch you pick your nose ten years from now, and the best it will do is help the FBI catch a terrorist (or even an ordinary, everyday criminal).
This space intentionally left blank.
So an airline has said that they will start taping the cabind during flight, to prevent terrorism and other safety threats. Why is this bad? Is this any different from a drugstore or a bank having a surveilence camera running? No, it isn't. Do we complain about those? Not that I've heard.
I know, some of you may say that beeing taped while you're on board a plane is a breach of your right to privacy - but since when is a chartered plane your private area anyway? It's a public area, and when you're in public, you can be seen by others.
That said, I'm not too happy about them storing the video for ten years - two years should be the most, and unless something spectacular happened on the flight (like Elvis materialising and singing 'love me tender'), it should only be released to the proper authorities by the orders of a court. The one exeption to that rule would be if the carrier themself needed to use the video if it had to sue a passenger for air-rage (endangering the safety of the other passangers).
No, installing a few cameras in an airplane wont - as the article points out - prevernt terrists from attemting to take over the plane. But it might just be enought to stop that fatass next to you from getting hideously drunk and suffer from air-rage. And that can't be a bad thing, can it?
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
recording is fine for security e.g. recording violent passengers.
but I see no reason to keep the tapes, especially for 10 years. (plus increased fares for storing all these files?)
also, recording private conversations with no prior good reason and without consent is not acceptable imo.
here in the UK, the data protection act means (IANAL) that you must be provided with a copy of all footage of yourself if requested.
Why the hell not? Wouldn't you want to know if John Q. Public is packing something in one of his turds? Drugs are sometimes smuggled this way. Couldn't a crude weapon be smuggled on board the airplane in this fashion?
Also, a bathroom is a great place to prepare for an attack, since you have the privacy in which to do it.
Yes, I'd think they were nuts, however they're still allowed to do it. As the poster was saying, this goes even further, what the hell right do you have to tell someone not to sketch you or take notes about you while you're on their property.
--- What
So anybody who has "sensitive" information that might be recorded if they have to do mail, reports, or other work, can just play minesweeper for the entire flight.
YES!Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
Strike a blow for the transparent society -- what would it take for an individual to wear a little video cam that would record everything from *his* POV?
You KNOW that there will be some crashes that will get recorded and soon or later they will be leaked onto the internet.
Let's all moon Microsoft. Paint/tattoo "Microsoft Sucks"[1] on your ass. If you are ever spiraling down in SW airlines, moon the camera before the plane hits.
Then it will be all over the 'net. It will be your last (only?) chance to make a difference in the world.
[1] Alternative phrases are "SouthWest Sucks", "H-1B's Suck", etc.
Table-ized A.I.
so when someone crashed a plane into a building exactly what is that tape good for? anyone?
-t
Actually, the article says Southeast. So you're right. It's just a tiny little company.
Van Eck phreaking of all laptops aboard airport flights...Just to catch the brilliant terrorists who will open up their plans for a quick review before carrying them out...
-insert a witty something-
Every time I see an article like this, I'm reminded of another work I consider a landmark - The Transparent Society.
I find it quite amazing that this work in 1996 highlighted so many issues now coming to bear - such as this one - and the article is clearly written.
Here's the first thing I'd change - All audio and video collected by any police organization should be public record 14 days after it was first recorded.
Access to the video in realtime as suggested by the above article (You did READ it, didn't you?) can be used to tactical advantage by criminal organizations - but the 14 day delay would have the same effect of keeping the cops honest without surrendering any meaningful tactical information.
Then, we could expand out from there.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Most airplanes in the US record less than 10% of the flight data they are supposed to, and they want to waste their time with this? When your airplane crashes, the black box usually doesn't have near enough information to figure out what killed you and what they can do to prevent it. That's why it can take anywhere from months to years to come up with a recommendation. In the meantime, for lack of black box data, you get to fly with increased risk. What argument do the airlines use to get away with it? Too much weight.
In Europe, every carier records hundreds of parameters of the flight. After even a minor problem on the flight, the data tape is pulled and analyzed by maintenance. The result is they don't have stupid maintenance accidents like Alaska Airlines did. Stuck rudder? It's analyzed and fixed within weeks, not left unchecked for months.
The only reason they are recording their passengers is to protect them from liability when they handcuff an unruly passenger. It has little to do with increasing your safety.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
The chance of any particular flight having "terrorists" is virtually nil. That can't be the reason that the airline is considering doing it. I see this as a way to check job performance of the airline employees. "See, we have of it right here. You weren't nice enough to customer Joe X." Just like all other forms of workplace monitoring, I suppose, and a CYA against employee-based suits for wrongful termination, discrimination, etc.
Ok, so what's to stop you from slipping a little piece of airplane-trim-colored tape over the lens staring you back in the face? Or a little vaseline to blur things a tad? Or, if you're feeling really nasty, some nail polish, clear or otherwise(it'll permanently bond to the plastic lens.)
Please help metamoderate.
Enough with the privacy issues, I'm wondering how practical videotaping the enitre cabin of an airplane would be. Video with a resolution high enough to make out what every passenger is reading would be huge. And how often would the storage media be changed? Would the stewards have to replace a hdd every time the plane landed?
I've thought seriously about setting up a couple cameras on my car to video tape all the lunatics on the highways in the morning. I supposed I'd be required to but a bumper sticker on my car that says I'm recording, but I'd have to check on that.
...
Personally, I think it's a good idea. They should record what is happening in the cockpit, and the passenger compartment. Though I'm not sure what they're trying to see
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
If they indeed are planning to install cameras, I would like to see them choose the first alternative...beam all videos live to monitoring stations, to constantly monitor the passengers, warn the crew of dangerous activity and take preventive action.
FDRs are basically doomsday equipment, useful only after an incident has occurred, it would make more sense to work towards preventing incidents, rather than plan towards subsequent investigations and lawsuits.
Ofcourse, the costs involved in setting up live broadcasting of video, and the infrastructure to monitor the large number of simultaneous flights/cameras would prove prohibitive.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
This guy is NOT a member of the GNAA and if I see him in on irc.mozilla.org, I will be contacting them as this violates the rules of the mozilla IRC server (its for Mozilla developers only)
So much for joining the mile high club on Southeast.
Question everything.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Sure, it is the airline's aircraft, the airline can do what it wants, and if you don't like it, don't fly on that airline.
And were the airline merely recording the flight, holding the recording a couple of days or so, then scrubbing it, I personally would not have a problem with it - there are many cases of air rage, gross stupidity, and so on that could best be handled with a tape ("You claim the flight attendants were needlessly violent in denying you your drink? Well, let's roll tape... Hmmm, seems you took a swing at them first. CASE DISMISSED!")
But while it is one thing to hold the video for a couple of days, to allow for any complaints or issues a chance to come out, it is quite another to hold the video for TEN YEARS! What possible logic would require a video to be held for ten years in the absence of a complaint?
What, do they expect some flight attendant to remember, after 8 years, "Oh yeah, that Mr. Tuttle in 3A pinched me, made lewd comments, and tried to steal the headphones - let's go get the tape and bust him!"?
www.eFax.com are spammers
City busses have these already. One time I was on the bus and there was a fight. I'm sure they'll use the video footage when the case goes to court.
Call me stupid but I do feel safer being on a city bus knowing shit is being recorded. The same would go for an airplane.
No difference.
They want to get in on some lucrative blackmail. Pays better than transporting people.
yes. awesome. no need for the old polaroid anymore.
meow mitler!
i bet you're the same cscx nig that's shoots his mouth off on fark.
/biatch
that is all.
I hope this means I will soon be able to download movies of Mile High Club members from usenet!
If you book a trip with Apple Vacations, you will fly on Southeast Airlines. Southeast is a subsidiary of Apple.
www.applevacations.com
Do you see a difference between the following two situations:
(1) you are in a public place, and other people can see you
(2) you are in a public place, and video archives of everything you do are stored and accessible, now, for 10 years, but almost certainly, for life
Do you not see a difference?
One is called reputation. The other is something that enables Orwellian nightmares.
There is a certain invevitability that is working here, but all that recommends is that the state not be in charge.
I forget what 8 was for.
Isn't this just a semi-gentle way of easing the public into TIA?
Why ten years?
Feel free to moderate up as needed...
Come visit the worst most stupidest website around!
Hackers, trolls, etc. welcome:
Pajonet.com
All humor aside, this blatant ripoff of our troll.
The guy who is posting this shit is a homophobic religious zealot who has attempted to create fake GNAA rooms in order to divert readers away from the offical GNAA chat room and con them into calling that right-wing propaganda phone line.
The guy who is doing this seems mentally ill - he trashes you if you refuse to belive in the bible and says all sorts of rotten things about black people and gays. Really sad.
Here is a great tip for anyone on there flights. SW has free seating, basically you just sit whereever you find a free seat. why not grab that VERY last seat. The ride is fun, lots of the up and down,up and down. Also, the potty is right there, if you start to get bored, go into the potty, it is like a little office all to your self. The pops and snacks are right behind you too. Getting famished, grab yourself a snack at anytime. I love flying SW. They are honestly the nicest flight crews too. --dan
I can't be bothered to look up the US or British regulations on this, but the relevant section of the Canadian regulations can be found here (under "602.5 Compliance with Instructions"). Anyone who can potentially cause panic amongst other passengers is compromising the safety of the aircraft.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
I would like to offer my opinion regarding the comments basically saying "there is nothing wrong with this, since the planes are their property they can do whatever they want".
First of all, I agree there is nothing illegal about this, but it is not the same thing as "there is nothing wrong". There is more to human interaction than what is defined by laws. Second, planes might be private property but the airlines cannot do whatever they choose. They are using my airspace, polluting my air, irritating my ears, causing me a risk (I know it is small!) every time they fly over me, etc. All of this is OK, because, at least for me, the service they provide compensates for these. However, they do need a licence to fly those planes, and to run their business. If they start invading my rights, their privileges should be revoked, too! Just like people saying "if you don't like their rules, don't fly that airline" I can say "If you don't like acting respectfully, go fly on another planet dammit!".
ato
Is Skyway Communications a Scientology operation? They're in Clearwater, FL., home of the largest Scientology organization.
Dan Gillmore isn't so crazy about this Southeast "innovation".
Lets start takeing cammeras onto the airplane ourselves and lets also use cameras with teloscopic lenses to constantly monitor the CEOs of Southwest after all what if they are "Terrorists." Every one must live in fear. If you dont then something is wrong. That means that the terroist out there are not winning. If an airplane is private property and you dont want to be taped then dont fly with companys that tape you. A boycot is terible things to waste. And when no companys take you seriously then do like me just fly yourself where you want to go. Airplanes are not that expensive if you use them regularly, and you work on them yourself. Lets not be dependent on others, lets take some responsibility and free our selves from corporate airlines. Maby airlines will one day be like busses, and every one will just take their own car.
Faith_Healer -- The antethsis to almost everything, and the worlds worst speller.
The sheer amount of data generated simply prevent them to keep data indefinitly. (At least on quick access storage). Here around we keep passenger RES/TKT data (on tape) for 3 years and only for liability purpose. CKI data (on tape) are kept 180 days. Again only for liability purpose and in normal case nobody read those tape. And seeing how reading one is slow as hell , trust me on that one marketing drone would be totally unable to read one. I find it interresting that they want to keep video data for 10 years, because if there was liability this would be within the few month/first year. 5 or 9 year later ... Well... So I find it strange. But then again I am no marketing/security guy only programmer.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
if someone does commit a big crime on a plane it's likely that everyone will see it anyways.
if they're terrorists they're probally going to kill themselves anyways.
sure it might help get id on those people, but does it really HELP?
seems a little pointless...
Normally I'm in agreement with the privazy advocates however on any public mode of accomdation, whether it be a bus, a train, or a plane I don't see the right to privacy.
I would be in support of limations of the uses for records collected, but as you are in public the government and private concers are, to my understanding, free to keep a record.
I have no
Whining about this is almost as bad as the tool that got kicked off a British Airways flight for wearing a button that said "Suspected Terrorist."
John Gilmore has done more for personal freedoms and liberties on the net than anyone you know. He founded or helped found the EFF, the "alt" newsgroups, the Cypherpunks, and Cygnus Support, the first company that showed that you could make money supporting open source software. Cygnus was later bought by Red Hat for umpteen millions of dollars, but Gilmore was already rich, having been one of the first employees at Sun Microsystems.
He has steadily plowed his money back into causes designed to promote freedom online and in the physical world. He has funded the FreeS/Wan project designed to provide automatic link-based encryption. He's also funded efforts to add security to the DNS. He provided the money for the machine that proved once and for all that DES was insecure. He is presently suing the government over travel restrictions.
As for the button incident, his point is that we are all being treated as suspected terrorists under the current regulations. As long as people put up with that without a protest, nothing is going to change. We should all be grateful that someone with Gilmore's credentials and financial strength is doing something about the increasingly harsh restrictions that all of us face as the government cracks down.
I really don't see how this is going to help them. If someone hijacks the plane, it's not really going to be useful after the fact.
You're already filmed going through customs, then immigration, then at every stage of your trip through the terminal. Your passport is scanned (or entered) into a computer at both check-in and immigration on international flights and Sabre can be consulted for ever more to see if you did or didn't check in for that flight, so your anonymity is pretty screwed anyway.
But is this your privacy being threatened? I think not. You're not in a private place on board an aircraft. In fact, it's one of the least private places in the world, given how cramped together everyone is. It's also a space controlled by a company, used under contract by clients, and so the company sets the rules in that contract. My guess is they could probably have gotten away with not even telling people they were going to do this. I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that there's anything wrong, legally or ethically, with recording the activities of passengers on a flight, and if you've nothing to hide today, why would you want to hide it in the future? 10 years seems a bit excessive, but it makes no difference if its 1, 10 or 100, apart from the cost of maintaining the archives of film footage. Why would anyone care? You can always fly with a different airline.
On a related subject, I flew across the Atlantic on BA last week and they have a CCTV camera recording everyone that approaches the flight deck. I was surprised at the camera at first, but then it occured to me that we're not allowed near the flight deck anyway, so theoretically it should only record the flight crew, assuming nobody tries anything naughty.
Salocin.com
So no more talking company business, or loading your latest sales figures on your laptop screen....
Even having an airline track my reading / music preferences is a step too far with no real security gain.
A case of 'all your data are belong to us'...
In-flight movie watches YOU!
What real purpose can these videos serve? It doesn't seem like someone carrying or planning a hijacking is going to be particularly detoured from continuing his/her planned course of action simply because they are being recorded. The only real application I can think of is as trial evidence (ie. Passenger disturbences, harrassment, etc.). The article states that the FBI could use it to identify criminals, but I would expect that the paper trail leading up to the ticket is a more effective way of tracking a criminal. Beyond that, this is simply fishing for faces. BLH
Posted this as a reply to the wrong comment. My bad.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
"Macintosh computers are well known as the Gay computer due to their homosexual colors and stylings"
Its colours you insensative clod!
has either a 4 or 5 camera system (they use two different systems) that records to hard drives on every bus in their system. They swap the hdds every night and transfer the data to central servers. If I remember correctly, they hold the data either 7 or 14 days- plenty of time for a crime to be reported and the police to make the request for a review of the recordings. Very few of the train stations have cameras yet, but their changing that and will soon be adding camera systems to all the rail cars of the el also.
the systems went in without much fanfare or anyone questioning the setup AFAIK
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
destruction of someone else's property. How about using some common courtesy at some point? Plus, you'd probably be recorded putting something on the camera's lens.
Look again at the shoe bomber when they took him off that plane. He was worked over really well (not well enought, IMO, tho)
Atleast it will make The Black Box series on discovery even more interresting. Not only sound and a simulated crash, now you can see the look on the passengers faces!
...will be a lot more difficult to obtain in the furture (but on the plus side, it will be a lot easier to prove)
And when they quit asking for bailouts every five years and accept no federal or state monies, they can make any damn rule they want. Until then...
Why do you insist on giving a business the same rights as a citizen when they don't bear the same responsibilities? Ever heard of Monsato being put up for the death penalty? Me neither.
It is kind of hard to order me off their property when I'm 15,000ft in the air. So can we at least say the same rules wouldn't apply.
It's not property, it's a service. Terms of service are very much conditional under law. If I don't have to fly on their planes, they don't have to accept my money either.
I think last year around x-mas there was a hubabaloo concerning people walking into stores and videotaping security cameras. Mass panic with store security; when people were doing nothing more than what is routinely done to them.
And since people have been known to die when airlines muff it (a lot more than in terrorist attacks), where are the security cameras on the pilots, mechanics, and ground crew? Why don't they bear the same scrutiny?
"Well", you say, "it's an assumed risk." It's an assumed risk I might be a terrorist. Deal with it.
Terrorism is pretty rare compared to some of the dangerous and stupid things that flight crews do on a daily basis. Talk to any commercial pilot (who trusts you) and you will probably hear stories about a few drinks too many before the flight, pre-flight checks that are cursory at best and my favorite, "I had a rough one last night. Why don't you take over for awhile." Compared to that I think I'll take my chances that someone smuggled weapons on board, thank you:)
They offer a public service, ( i.e. not a 'club' ) and they also accept tax dollars at times..
Therefore they aren't truly a private venture, so they should not be able to discard ones rights of privacy.
This also applies to driving, which many people say is a privilege not a right.. but in the "pursuit of happiness", in today's times, driving is a necessary component. Plus the roads are paid by (my) tax dollars and defined by the government as "public roads".
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The airline is Southeast, not Southwest.
I just thought I'd point this out, before people start changing their travel plans.
All they need to do is combine this new video monitoring with this lip-reading speech recognition program with this walking-recognition software for those trips to the can ... and they'll be all set!
"OK everyone...arms up in the air"
\
look like Groucho Marx?
Looks like he's not flying in or out of the country.
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04973.html - "Suspected Terrorist" button.
http://freetotravel.org/ - inside the US
No Zen is good zen
This is obviously a bogus concept for any number of reasons:
/. who support this sort of thing for "security" reasons will wake up and smell the ruminant evacuation, but I'm not holding my breath.
1) Since they don't videotape the johns, anybody can can do anything in there - including nookie between the pilots/stewardesses/passengers (make up your own combination!), terrorists preparing weapons, criminals smoking dope, etc. So there's no advantage.
2) As someone pointed out, keeping it for ten years is braindead. It's extremely unlikely that any liability or security concerns - or even marketing concerns - could justify that time span.
3) As for processing the video, keep in mind that this stuff is probably going to be digitized and stored where pattern recognization software might be able to process it - if not now, then ten years from now. This means a vast store of videos for Homeland Security to look at and analyze - at taxpayer expense - to no good ends. Or for the airlines - and whoever else they sell the data to - to use for marketing purposes.
4) They ADMIT that the purpose is to enable law enforcement to keep track of criminals! THIS MEANS YOU! This means the tapes WILL BE PROVIDED TO LAW ENFORCEMENT ROUTINELY! Read the fraggim' article!
5) As someone in the article points out, what's the point of keeping tapes of flights where nothing happens? It is obvious that there are ulterior motives here.
6) As for why THEY are doing it, the article says Homeland Security WILL eventually mandate it, so they are starting now. This means the ball comes from Homeland Security's court, but the airline sees a marketing advantage from analyzing all those videos for marketing purposes. This also means that once Homeland Security has mandated it, the notion "if you don't like it, don't fly with this specific airline" is not a viable option for business travelers who MUST fly on business.
While it is obviously true that you have no privacy in public places and should not particularly expect any, there is a difference betweem being inspected by your fellow asshole citizen and being inspected by some marketing asshole or some security asshole you don't know and who may have an agenda and the authority to put your ass in jail based on misinterpretation of some grainy vidcap.
One hopes all the stupid, right-wing, patriotic American dolts on
Morons...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Southeast (the charter company) != Southwest (the low-fare brown and red planes)
What is everyone whining about. We already have video cameras in every other conceivable public place. You can't buy a cherry squishy without the convenience store camera watching. Besides, the airline has valid security reasons, as they mention in the article, such as air rage. I don't want some drunken idiot endangering the plane and then have his case get thrown out because of lack of evidence. And for those of you worried about the demise of the mile-high club, they do mention the bathrooms won't have cameras (that you know about)!
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
To copyright your face ? Then you could charge companies like this a royalty for videoing you.
I couldn't agree more. Especially with the don't like it, don't fly it. That's exactly how you get policies that you aren't happy about changed. If enough people refuse to fly Southeast because of the new policy, they'll realize that it's not in the best interest of their bottom line. Personally, though, I don't see what the big deal is. So they have video of you sleeping/picking your nose through a flight. How does this affect you?
Excuse me, I have a choir and a bunch of tickets to gather together.
>Flying isn't a God-given right, it's a damn privelege
Actually they're heavily regulated and SUBSIDIZED by the federal government. Its not exactly the local 7-11. On top of it they're considered common carriers. Also, that "tool" a founder of the EFF. He may be making a point.
Regardless, I think this is a half-assed effort towards security. Instead of mandating two plain-clothed and armed sky marshals per flight (as Israel's El Al Air does) the industry is working towards 24/7 surveillance. I guess its cheaper to outfit your planes with some cameras than pay for 80,000+ sky marshals through taxes on tickets and losing two seats per flight.
The US currently has 6,000 sky marshals and over 40,000 commercial flights.
The cameras *may* be effective at helping security is some way after the fact, but they are a poor and cheap attempt to provide real airline security. Related: let pilots untrained in security carry handguns. The US and the airline industry needs to realize that security costs money and half-assing it only gives us a false sense of security.
How could some ignorant (aparently Canadian) fucker get "5, Insightful"? The Constitution places limits on government, not private business.
These cameras are not just for terrorists. Violence against stewardesses has been increasing. Passengers have been getting rude beyound acceptable levels. These films can be used for legal purposes and training. Seeing what happens when a terrorist takes over a plane would be very useful for analysis.
Stupid twat.
Calling her views similar to Gilmore's childishness is repulsive. As a black man, I would like to beat some sense into you about the history of slavery. The closest similiarity you could draw would be trying to fight for the freedom's of terrorists.
People like you are closet racists. When you hear of the great suffering of people and the heroic deeds of others, you sit back in your parents' basement thinking of how similar you are. You need a better perspective on life.
I'll be greatful to Gilmore when he comes and kisses my ass. No wait. I still won't. I tend not to care about "your rights online" or "free software" or other shit like that. I think that you all are whining bitches that need to get out into the real world.
As a pround American citizen, I would have been the first to ask him to remove that button.
These cameras are useful for training and for those stupid punks that think they can slap or literally piss on a stewardess in the plane.
Fuck them, fuck you, and fuck John Gilmore too.
Just look to the baseball charter scandals with stewardesses being harasses, slapped, and sexually acosted (some guy pulled his dick out and chased her with it). However, teammates tend to stick up for one another (or face internal punishment).
Considering there are others on the plane besides only your party members, the tapes would be very useful in preventing shit like this.
They can draw and sketch anything they want except for stuff about me. All information about me belongs to me and except for some designated government purposes (like prosecution in a crime or taxes), I should have every right to determine what happens with that information. What I want other people to know about me is purely my decision and nobody else's.
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
Give me a break people. This is not really a problem. Its the same thing as when you walk into a damn wal-mart or any other department store. You have entered an area where someone else holds the cards when it comes to things like that. You have all of those semi-sphere black camera deals in the ceiling. I see no difference... oh oh oh, but wait, they keep the flight recording on file for 10 years... so? I'm sure some 20-some year old beatnik is going to get a real kick out of you picking your nose ten years from now when they decide to go through those archives for no apparent reason. Relax people, they aren't out to get you. Just think, if we had that on 9/11, we could have really known what happened on those planes moments before their collisions, whether or not some passenger overpowered the terrorists in the plane (in the case of the pennsylvania crash) or if they simply forgot how to fly. I think its useful.
This really sounds just horrible. One argument people have used in favor of it is that airline companies are privately owned and therefore have every right to put cameras in their planes. After all you could choose to fly a different airline, or not fly at all. This argument is flawed, for many reasons. First, without knowing who owns the airlines and how they are connected financially, it is possible that the airline industry could comprise an abusive monopoly. In today's political climate, it is obvious that the supposedly publically accountable federal government has not been vigorously engaged in trust-busting lately, to say the least. In this case, the airlines could ALL put cameras on their planes at the same time, without fear that customers would migrate to competing airlines. Second, we don't know how the images taken by the cameras will be used, or why they need to keep them for so long. The companies have logs of who occupies which seats -- this could be used to create a privately owned database of facial feature information on the public. God only knows how this could be abused. Given this unpleasantness, it would come down to a choice between flying and getting monitored and possible having your face captured and logged into a privately owned database etc., or not flying at all. But of course, as stated so eloquently in the Matrix Reloaded, choice is so often simply an illusion created between those with power and those without. The choice of whether to fly or not is most certainly such a choice. The questions are then WHO is calling the shots here, i.e. who has the power, and WHY there is such a need for this monitoring, which as many people pointed out will have little obvious impact on safety. I have a feeling it has nothing at all to do with safety, and everything to do with the creation of a high-tech fascist nightmare.
One of our comp. labs (in an engineering dept. at a state Univ) will be monitored in a similar fashion, The lab does not have a proctor. To unlock the lab door, you have to punch in a unique numeric code. There are approx. 150 grad. students who are provided fresh access codes every semester (old ones expire).
The lab has only 20 PCs, 1 laser printer and a plotter, but we have been having problems with keyboard/mouse walking away, printer abuse, etc.). Thankfully, the rodents have not (yet!) walked away with any of the (expensive!) hardware dongles some of our software requires.
The $20 solution we have came up with is:
Mac G3 (333/beige) + ColorQuickCam (both laying around) + $20 for EvoCam. The camera is mounted at one of the top corners of the room and the Mac is setup in the next room. Sampling every second, we save images as a QT movie. The HD can store about 2 weeks of "movie".
Let's see if we catch any rats.
BTW, EvoCam is, by far, the best of its class (of WebCam apps) on any platform.
cheers- raga
I appreciate privacy, believe me, and I'm very much against TIA, the Patriot Act, and all that other 1984 bullshit, but an airplane is very much a public place, about as public as you can get. I don't get the "private" part.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
However, even if they can't see your face, they still got your seat number, so they'll know who is trying to evade the benevolent all-seeing glare of Big Brother; these refuseniks will be put on the dubious-behavior terror-suspect list and may risk being denied future flight privileges (don't worry, you'll be in good company with thousands of peaceful human rights and anti-war activists.)
People downplaying this new privacy threat as analogous to existing store surveillance cameras are simply ignorant of the potential future data-mining abuse of extended video facial footage matched to confirmed ID. Cash machine cameras only capture a few single frames in bad backlight, and few bank teller cam systems register transaction data or client IDs on the tapes. It usually takes some effort to infer from timestamps who is actually on the picture.
Building good and reliable face tracking metrics requires a broad sample of angles and facial expressions. For this reason the extended duration video capture, matched to seat number and confirmed ID, is of grave concern to those concerne about privacy. I expect this shit to go down well in CCTV-happy Britain, which already employs face trackers extensively.
Does anybody really believe this will prevent terrorism?
It wouldn't have mattered if he had been in the bathroom: one CANNOT set off C4 with a match. And had he been in the bathroom, while the idiot was trying to set off his shoes he would have set off the smoke alarm.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
The new security measures seem more to be just going through the motions of looking like they increase security rather than actuall doing anything. For example at a number of European Airports ( and I think maybe at San Fransico & Los Angeles as well ) once you have had your dangerous nail files etc removed at check in you arrive in the Departure Lounge. In the departure lounge you can buy meals with metal cutlery, knives, forks etc. Any terrorist worth their salt would easily be able to sharpen these weapons to a deadly edge within half an hour spend in the toilet.
"I don't think you'd be looking at the shoe bomber or the plane if he'd decided to pull his stunt in the bathroom instead of from his seat."
This probably explains the "we're not filming bathrooms" statement: probably more close to "we're not claiming to film in bathrooms"
Put the cameras on Hooters Air flights.
A plane goes down and they go back into the records and find someone who sat in a particular seat 9.5 years prior and suddenly accuse him of causing the crash because he tapped his pen against the window 9.5 years ago? But keeping the data for 10 years? This isn't about present-day security; this is about covering your asses. This is to assure that there has been a safe environment at all times in the past.
Now if you could manage to record the actions of people in the cabin 10 minutes in advance, then you'd have something that could keep everyone safe. And even then, there's no benefit to keeping that video anywhere near that long unless you want to blackmail corporate members of the Mile High Club.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
these days there are guns
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
How about videotaping the cabin for a twist! I'm tired of being flown by drunk pilots!