Slashdot Mirror
Chicago Pondering Huge Camera Network
andyring writes "According to ABC7 in Chicago, mayor Daley rolled out plans to install thousands of video cameras in public places across the Windy City. In some ways, I suppose there are positives, as all the existing and future cameras are tied in to the 911 emergency center, allowing a 911 dispatcher to actually watch the area in question when someone dials 911. Dispatchers will be able to control some of the cameras, such as panning and zooming in."
ironically, i got that 'nothing for you to see here, move along' a few times before this story loaded
This is also the mayor that destroyed Meigs Field under cover of night and with police protection to keep people away while he did it.
This guy is a fucker. Underhanded bastard with no concern for the citizens of Chicago.
So what does that mean, I can't have privacy in a public place?
... is not whether such moves are useful. Arguably, almost all privacy-invading programs are in some way.
The question is: do you trust the government (and the people that work for it!) to use it responsibly?
I suppose it will probably also be interesting for, uhm, the "national security" folks too. Great. ;-)
Sort of off topic, but can any Chicagoans explain this Daley family thing? Is this like some dynasty that won't die?
I'm surprised this family is still around and in power, am I missing something as to how great they are or something?
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Caller: Operator, help, I'm being chased! I'm at the corner of 7th and Broad!
Operator: Okay, I see you. Oh wait, hold on, the camera's stuck.
Caller: Forget the damn camera, I need help!
Operator: Maybe if I press this button... these stupid things always lock up right when you need them...
Caller: Help! He's gaining on me!
Operator: Hey Bob, can you come over and have a look at this? Camera 76 is stuck again.
Bob: Yup, we should have a tech out there some time tomorrow.
Caller: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuugggggh!
It sounds like a great idea if used properly, but then again so does communism. Tin hat crew stear clear of Chicago
How will these cameras affect our freedom?
For some good ideas, read some David Brin:
The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?
well, I had thought moving to the US would've let me escape pervasive closed circuit cameras, ah well...
The problem with blanket-covering an area with cameras is that after a while, the criminals simply go elsewhere...
Maybe it's like Go; we place our cameras around the country and slowly force the criminals into one little area and take it over?
About as absurd as thinking cameras will solve crime problems...
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
With the pan/tilt and zoom features, what's to stop a camera from peering into a window? How long until they start adding things like infrared or night-vision? Maybe I'm just speaking for the tin-foil hat brigade, but these questions need to be asked.
This says nothing of the rights of the accused to face their accuser. When one of these systems is used to, say, issue a traffic citation, who's the accuser? You have no witness to the crime. It opens up a whole new can of worms, IMO.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Eventually, they'll be able to tie these cameras into face recognition software-which will mean that anybody with a warrent out for them will have a _very_ hard time anyplace cameras like this are deployed.
I am sure that it will be very comforting to know that when you've been shot/stabbed/assaulted that you'll end up in the police departments Christmas Video and very possibly even get to star in some highly 'educational' Fox 'documentary'.
The perfect dying thought I'm sure you'd agree...
How will that let 911 operators do their job better?
How does *almost seeing* the situation help? I mean, granted, they're probably not going to be the crappy webcam quality cameras we think they are, but still it escapes me how this will actually proactively help an 911 operator help a victim. It might help them after the fact, but not before or during.
-Randy
"Dispatchers will be able to control some of the cameras, such as panning and zooming in."
r ity.cfm?ID=10059&c=111
Yeah. On tits and ass.
(search for breasts)
a la http://www.aclu.org/NationalSecurity/NationalSecu
This is just another case of law enforcement making up (or wanting to) for gross incompetency by using technology.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
This doesn't bother me as long as the cameras are completely public. That is, they are essentially web-cams whose content is recorded. Anyone can review any part of any recording. Anyone can make/keep their own copy of the video. CRCs digital signatures stored as "official copies" in multiple locations, etc. (e.g. some protection against screwing with the images after the fact.)
I like the idea of a transparent society. Let's be as transparent as possible - that is the best way to weaken entrenched power.
But then, I'm the guy who's number one desired feature on my next car is the ability issue tickets around me for bad driving. I want to be able to turn into a cop, only with the paperwork automated. Having full time camera on every inch of roadway is the closest I can get for the moment...
No, I don't value your "privacy" on public roadways. Its a public space. You don't get to be private in public. You have to play nice with the other kids.
I'll take off the flame-retardant suit in a few days. Maybe.
Wanna see people driving around in Salt Lake City? You can see roads before you drive. When you are late for work, you can call your boss and prove that you are in a traffic jam. The technology is going to happen. Personally, I think our best bet is to keep it as open as possible.
I for one welcome our new REPETITIVE OVERUSED JOKE overlords! (Please, for the love of god, don't mod my comment up as funny. That's only encouraging them.)
There are major exceptions: places where there's minimal freedom until cameras arrive. -Joel
A Lens on the World: Musician Peter Gabriel Provides Human Rights Activists With Cameras for the Cause
By Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, Nov 21
For the past decade, activists and nongovernmental organizations all over the globe have taken up video cameras to document injustices in their countries, sometimes risking their lives to bring human rights abuses to light.
Women in Afghanistan used hidden cameras to capture the depredations of Taliban rule and, later, the aftermath of the U.S. military campaign. Garment workers in the U.S. territory of Saipan smuggled a camera into sewing factories where women worked 14-hour shifts under lock and key, often without pay, to make clothes for the Gap and other American retailers. In Sierra Leone, young women spoke publicly for the first time about the rapes they endured during a brutal 10-year civil war. In Burma, civilians who are being forced into relocation camps by that country's military regime are filming the activities of the very army that threatens to kill them.
What these and more than 150 other groups have in common is Witness, a nonprofit group founded by musician Peter Gabriel in 1992 that provides cameras, technical training and distribution support to people whose stories would otherwise most likely go unheard and unseen.
The more than 25 documentaries co-produced by Witness have been broadcast on television, used in network news stories, shown at film festivals and meetings, streamed on the Web and presented as evidence in federal courts, international tribunals and the United Nations. Though only one film has resulted in the filing of criminal charges, many have been used as evidence in war crimes trials or have prompted long-awaited policy changes. Others have simply spurred progress toward collective healing. Nearly every Witness film has illuminated crimes, injustices and crises that otherwise would have been known only by their perpetrators and victims.
Here's what scares me: all of the money rapidly being poured into surveillance today is creating an industry that will (obviously) lobby for more and more surveillance tomorrow. I don't see our freedoms stabilizing; I see the emergence of a business model that relies on stripping away our privacy.
And yes, I know that privacy has been eroding for a while, but it feels like it's getting much worse, much faster, now.
More scariness in Emerging 'Surveillance-Industrial Complex' Is Turbo-Charging Government Monitoring, ACLU Warns in New Report.
I actually wouldn't have a problem with cameras in public places, as long as EVERYONE HAD ACCESS TO THEM. Think about it - if you could see what "they" could see, then it would take away a lot of the privacy concerns. Not all of them, of course, but at least the people being monitored would have access to the same information that "they" do.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
OK, so it might sound 1984ish to have cameras everyone in public. Certainly it makes me nervous. But how is this survailence worse than what the IRS has been doing for the last 20 years at least? The IRS is already entitled to every bank and ATM transaction, every credit card transaction, a record of all the charities you give to, a record of all income you make, and if you are a buisness, a record of everything you spend your money on. All this long before The Patriot Act or 9/11 or George W Bush or the War on Terror / War on Drugs.
Certainly tracking a person's every financial transaction is far more dangerous to democracy - (Did you order those movie tickets to Farienheit 9/11 by phone? The government has a record! Did you donate to the Green Party, or the Natural Law Party, or The Libertarian Party? Who you vote for might be secret ballot, but the government knows who you donated to! Did you fly out and rent a hotel to participate in a protest? The government knows! Pay by credit card for your web server? Don't think your controversial political web blog can't be traced to you!).
You never hear a peep from so called "Civil Libertarians" about what I mentioned above... probably because challenging the complete and total financial survailence of every American means that it would be hard to tax people, and be hard to pay for those expensive government entitlement programs that have so effectivly eliminated poverty, racism, and war (yeah right!).
Having cameras in public places is more akin to having a police officer on every corner. Yes, it can (and probably will) be abused... but people are regularly abused by Police officers without using any hidden cameras. And at least in public places, there is the understanding that you are in public and can't expect total privacy.
It seems to me that people are OK with Big Brother, so long as Big Brother will give us the illusion of "freedom". The government can know everything single detail about your political, social, and economic life. But god forbid they catch you on camera picking your nose or something!
You're *supposed* to stop at red lights, it keeps people from getting killed, that's why they're *red*.
Drivers in Chicago anyway, jeesh...
We have almost saturation CCTV coverage in the UK. It doesn't make a great deal of difference. You just find that all the kids who want to cause trouble are all wearing grey tops with hoods and/or baseball caps. There is not a lot a camera can do when they all look the same, all over town, every day.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Brings back memories of Chicago 1968.
Those of us who watched events unfold on television, can never forget the name Daley or the Chicago Police Force. This was one of the defining events of my generation.
The US pioneered the division between public and private spaces, with different rights in either. The 20th Century came and went, without updating our defense of our rights to accommodate the time dimension of these spaces. While public appearances aren't protected by privacy, we have come to expect freedom from recording without our knowledge or consent. Recording and playback were the major technological innovations of the last century. While our expectations of freedom have developed in that new context, the laws that document, and protect, those rights have lagged. We need to ensure that public information expires after a reasonable time, and can be accessed only through a reasonable process of law. This might be an application of copyright on our public image: our appearance is to be recorded and used only for the specific purpose for which we appeared, like safely travelling to work, or getting a tan at the beach. Otherwise the technology, and our use of it, threaten our freedom more than they protect it.
--
make install -not war
I can't believe the hypocrisy here. If a Republican official tried to do this, it would be the end of privacy...every possible reference to 1984 would be made. But, since it's all done under the watchful eye of his majesty King Daley II, it's "I suppose there are positives".
The last thing Chicago needs is another pet project for King Richard to pour tax payer dollars into...we're still pulling our pants up after Millienum Park.
-R
The audience.
A video only has power if it's publicly accessible. If all the camera feeds go straight to Police HQ where they disappear into vaults forever, they will be, at best, totally worthless and more likely to be abused as others have described.
Dyolf Knip
Excellent point. If the goal is to deter crime, rather than, say, to spy on people.
Let me start out by saying that I'm not at all in favor of this move and I'm not much of a fan of Daley.
But lets clear up a couple of things:
He isn't planning to "install thousands of cameras." He's planning to centralize the monitoring of the existing cameras, while installing "a few hundred" more. Yes, "a few hundred" is vague, but the significance of this move is NOT the installing of these cameras, but rather the centralization. He could have installed those other hundreds of cameras without saying a word. Centralizing them, though, becomes a big deal, because it creates the "Big Brother" possibility. Bottom line: Most of these cameras already exist.
As for Daley himself: There are a lot of replies about Meigs and about all the bullshit Daley pulls. For background on this, read Boss by Mike Royko or read any and all of John Kass's columns in the Chicago Tribune (there is a particularly good recent one about his long-standing "freindship" with Daley) (free reg. req.).
On Meigs: The closure of Meigs did NOT place any further burden on any other airports. Meigs was ONLY general aviation and provided NO long-term parking. Furthermore, Meigs was scheduled to be closed in 2005. I, myself, was sorry to see it go (I have taken off and landed from Meigs only a couple of times, but they were plenty of fun). It WAS shady how he closed it, but you get over that. That's how politics work in Chicago.
Chicago wouldn't be Chicago without Chicago politics. City Hall is corrupt. Corrupt as hell. But it works. And it is a government of the People. Daley is from Bridgeport, a blue collar neighborhood southwest of downtown. You'll see truck drivers, construction workers, factory workers who are better connected than the richest businessmen in the city. In some sense, its the universal equalizer.
Chicago politics are great; great in a neverending-amusement way. But while you can bitch and moan about civil liberties in relation to these cameras (I'll be there right along with you), pay attention to what actually is being done here: The innovation here is CENTRALIZATION, not INSTALLATION.