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Smart Cameras Detect Crime, Erode Privacy
MattSparkes writes "Smart surveillance systems could identify crimes as they take place, if a computer vision system developed at the University of Texas goes into production. The system is capable of classifying behaviour as friendly or violent. In the past there have been attempts to spot unusual behaviour, but this required subsequent user classification. These new systems may keep us more secure, but is it worth sacrificing our privacy for? And will we see false positives, where police cars screech to a halt beside hugging couples?"
A computer vision system developed in the University of Texas in Austin, US, can already tell the difference between friendly behaviour, such as shaking hands, and aggressive actions like punching or pushing.
Just because someone pushes or punches someone else, doesn't mean it isn't friendly. Would be flicking off a friend be considered an aggressive act?
Let's leave this sort of shit to human judgment instead of relying on cameras all the time. We really don't need to be going down this road.
Did anyone think of those annoying little camera-like things in Half Life 2 when they read this? I'm sorry, but having some algorithm deduce whether or not my behavior is acceptable is over the limit.
Many people already automatically trust the machine since "it's the machine." To them, it can only fail when it's broken, not be broken by design unless it's a home electronic device. Kiss your liberties goodbye. This will make the red light cameras look like nothing.
Do people really have an expecation of privacy while in a public area? Should I expect to be able to walk down the street with my dick hanging out of my pants screaming "FREE SPEECH! FREE SPEECH!" at the top of my lungs and not expect any repercussions?
If they were getting put up in your house yes, but is it reasonable to have an expectation of privacy on the street? A tourist can snap pictures all day long and that doesn't erode privacy.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
...that the use of these cameras would ONLY be for personal protection, and not used for any other purposes, than there would be a lot less concern.
:)
However, as well all know, this is not the case, and the potential for abuse is huge.
P.S. I love the built in spell check on Firefox 2.0.
Sugapablo
Hopefully this will trigger an analyst to watch the video to make a decision on how to proceed (video that would otherwise be filtered out of the system) rather than automatically trigger some sort of real-world action. Thus once the cameras are up and people are watching this system can only help privacy (the existance of the cameras and watchers in the first place is a different battle.)
The presentation of this is pure FUD.
Without even needing to RTFA, I think we can say with high confidence that "detecting crime" is an AI-complete problem. That is, any system capable of detecting crime must also have the full intelligence of a person in order to make the complex ethical/legal judgments involved. This implies as well that the system will likely have all the accompanying quirks of personhood, including (but not limited to) a favorite baseball team and a strong desire to be on American Idol.
Thus, we can conclude that a) the supposed system is 95% bunk, and b) anyone who eventually invents such a system for real will win the Nobel Prize and be immortalized in human history.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Problem is that people get frantic and excited about things and its even hard for a human being to read the situation sometimes. I mean if a girl yelps as a guy is picking her up off her feet, is it an abduction or is it playfulness with a gleeful squeal? If two guys are rushing into one another, it might just be horseplay. One of the funniest things I remember from my college days was when one of our buddies toppled a friend of ours into the bushes when they were both drunk. Many would see this as violent, but nobody got pissed off about it... Now you could point to the glorious AI... You can tout AI all you want, but have you ever seen how long it takes to RAISE a child; to teach it language and context and everything that goes into being a member of a society... There are thousands upon thousands of hours of love (or hate) that go into this teaching of people about what it is to be human and to be alive? Sure, you can teach a computer to look things of semantic nature up, but eventually after all those dictionary searches a computer MIGHT be able to surmise that if you unplug it that it turns off and it may never be turned back on again. Now ask that SMART computer if it cares. It'll never understand what care means because it doesn't get hungry or sad or scared and so it has no ability to sympathize with a living thing.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
"He's written a good thing in that manuscript," Verhovensky went on. "He suggests a system of spying. Every member of the society spies on the others, and it's his duty to inform against them. Every one belongs to all and all to every one. All are slaves and equal in their slavery. In extreme cases he advocates slander and murder, but the great thing about it is equality. To begin with, the level of education, science, and talents is lowered. A high level of education and science is only possible for great intellects, and they are not wanted. The great intellects have always seized the power and been despots. Great intellects cannot help being despots and they've always done more harm than good. They will be banished or put to death. Cicero will have his tongue cut out, Copernicus will have his eyes put out, Shakespeare will be stoned--that's Shigalovism. Slaves are bound to be equal. There has never been either freedom or equality without despotism, but in the herd there is bound to be equality, and that's Shigalovism! Ha ha ha! Do you think it strange?
y /d72p/chapter13.html
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/d/dostoyevsk
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
How can it be a free society when there is ubiquitous surveillance and police presence? How can people be free when they are afraid that any abberation in behavior will bring police action upon them?
You don't have arrest and prosecute to squash free speech and free assembly. You just have to have persistent police investigations and police "harassment".
Why would you even want to live in a society like that?
(From the article submitter)
These new systems may keep us more secure, but is it worth sacrificing our privacy for?
If government imposes these cameras on me, I will NOT refer to it as a "sacrifice" on my part, and I will NOT be told that somehow I asked for it. I NEVER gave my consent for government to spy on me. But wait, you say, if I remain on the land I was born on, then I have already volunteered my consent to any law the collective wishes to impose on me, past, present, and future!
Wrong. The "social contract" theory claims that citizens volunteer themselves to be subject to coercion by "not leaving". This is absurd. A person cannot volunteer to be subject to coercion, any more than you can force a person to volunteer. The two modes of human interaction (voluntary association and coercion) are opposite and mutually exclusive -- that is, in fact, what gives them meaning.
Really, I'm getting sick of hearing about how decisions made by the power elite are somehow decisions that "we" put on ourselves. A person who makes a voluntary choice doesn't NEED to be coerced.
Why do people not get it?
Cameras in public DO erode privacy.
With cameras, it's possible to see, record, and play back everything that happens in whatever area is covered by the camera. This is a vastly different concept from having police standing there - a police officer is a visible person, can be interacted with, and can only see while being seen.
As a human, I should be able to have the expectation that my comings and goings are invisible to the government unless the government makes an active expenditure of effort under appropriate court supervision based on the concept that there is probable cause to suspect I've done something illegal. They should NOT be able to say "oh, let's watch that one for a while" and they should not be able to watch so many people as easily as this technology would allow.
It's an interesting research project, but it should NEVER leave the lab.