Slashdot Mirror
UK's Public Cameras Listen For Trouble
You're probably already aware of the United Kingdom's large network of video cameras inspecting public places. News.com now reports that they'll be listening for trouble as well. Based on a model in use in the Netherlands, new cameras will be fitted to 'listen for aggressive tones,' such as those used during an argument. From the article: "The system works by putting microphones in CCTV cameras to continually analyze the sound in the surrounding area. If aggressive tones are picked up, an alarm signal is automatically sent to the police, who can zoom in the camera to the location of the suspect sound and investigate the situation. 'Ninety percent of violent cases start with verbal aggression,' Van der Vorst said. 'With our system, the police can respond a lot quicker to a violent situation.'"
doubleplusungood
I let off some aggressive tones, I would classify the smell as Dutch too. Glad I live on the other side of the planet.
Task Mangler
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/ne
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
And at least 90% of verbal aggression ends up leading to nothing that the police can go after. But who knows, maybe they'll have an adjustable tolerance level, or maybe the police will get their kicks out of watching people argue, like a soap opera or watching COPS.
People are yelling at each other. We better send the police to haul them away!
Mr. Period: Nine is the one that's right by ten!
Nine: One day I will kill him. Then, I will be Ten.
Mandate that every UK resident pay to have a tracking device and microphone implanted in their body. Since you couldn't trust UK citizens to police themselves, outsource the monitoring of these surveillance devices to India.
Sounds like a great opportunity for a denial-of-service attack. The terrorists want to blow up ALL OF LONDON!!! so they take 50 or so cell-phones, download custom ringtones made of people yelling at each other and then tape them up near the cameras in various innocuous locations around town.
Then, when they want to do something nefarious in a place that happens to be in front of some cameras, they just have someone call a bunch of the phones and all the camera monitoring people will focus their attention elsewhere.
Kind of like starting a fire on one side of town right before you go to rob a bank on the other side.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Year after year, technology gets abused more and more, intruding lives of people on greater and greater scale. But since these increments are little, only a handful of people talk or do something about it. The rest of the public just don't care. They keep voting for politicians that pass tigher and more privacy-intrusive laws, and send country's soliders to die for no purpose into God-forgotten countries. Shame! Shame to politicians, shame to irrogant public!
%subj%
"oh the outrage! it's george orwell's 1984! those who seek security over liberty deserve neither! our privacy is totally gone, might as well install cameras in our toilets!"
hysteria, histrionics, panic, fud... snore...
in every single aspect of life you can imagination, moderation always wins. balance always wins. complexity always trumps simplicity. life is nuanced. it is made of balancing multiple complicated concerns. you can not bludgeon life with an idealistic platitude and expect to make sense or be wise
what are losing attitudes in life? idealism. absolutism. fundamentalism
the absolute adherence to an idea: "privacy above all else" is wrong. as would absolute adherence to ANY ideal be wrong
every single ideal you can imagine, there are scenarios in society where justice and common sense demand that that ideal be broken
so when would absolute adherence to privacy be wrong?
well, how about if you live in a poor crime-ridden neighborhood and you can't even leave your house without being threatend with rape, mugging, and general loutish violent behavior on a daily basis? and guess what? if you lived in such an environment, you would LOVE these cameras
and in fact, that is the case: ask residents of housing projects what they think of these camera systems: they LOVE them. they get a life again. they can go outside again. the thugs get chased out of the public areas
and those who complain about these systems are usually your sort of middle class to upper middle class busy body who is disturbed by the idea of cameras... but not so disturbed about the prevalance of crime, because they don't have to deal with it on a daily basis. in other words, their opinion is formed on a half-truth, formed in a vacuum disconnected from reality that doesn't see all of the factors in play. propaganda is based on half-truths. it's an appeal to emotion, rather than an appeal to reason. "cameras bad! end of story!" the oh-so-wise slashdot crowd falls for it, brainwashed on the topic. a kneejerk, thoughtless reaction
please, slashdotters: try to understand the exact nature of the world you live in. your antithetical, hysterical reaction to these camera systems is an opinion born in a vacuum of any other considerations. sometimes, in life, the choice is between a fuzzy, complex negative, and a slightly worse, also fuzzy and complex negative. not between an obvious negative and an obvious positive. but to register some of your opinions is to see that in your mind, its a no brainer choice between absolute good and absolute evil. uh... no
some of you have opinions about these camera systems that seems to start with the assumption that the british government just likes to put up cameras and spy on its citizens for no good reason. can you possibly imagine a good reason why the government AND its people would want these cameras? or is life a stupid hollywood b-grade movie, where all government officials are nefarious schizophrenic's fantasy life cardboard cutout villains, cheerfully twittering their hairline moustaches, rubbing their hands together, boldly thinking up new negarious plots to remove all of your freedoms for... no good reason at all. just general cartoonish malice. right?
can you imagine that there is actual reasonable problems these camera systems solve? can you imagine that the people installing these systems are actually well-meaning people? can you imagine that those who like these system are actually thoughtful concerned citizens happy with the cameras? no? yes? well: can you imagine a better realistic solution to the problem these cameras are solving because the privacy implications bother you? you can? good!
because now we're constructively engaged in the subject matter, rather than registering your typical lowest common denominator knee-jerk propagandistic hysterical opinion about these camera systems
it's tired. wake up. you live in a difficult world. to actually help and solve its problems just registering your holier-than-thou righteous indignation and unloading your hysteria doesn't actually help anyone. imagine that. address the real problems, and stopping stamping your feet like kids having a temper tantrum
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Our lives have become safer than any time in history; what the hell do we need this stuff for? While the occasional murder or terrorist attack is sad and tragic, we could save far more lives by spending this money on public health.
In addition to not giving us much bang for the buck, there is a grave risk that all this surveillance technology will be used by people to undermine our democracy.
We have setup a system similar to this that monitors gun shots in my city. I think anything further than that is too extreme and will waste police attention.
Bryan
"Despite having three leeches attached for the past two weeks, the patient has shown no signs of improvement and is, in fact, becoming weaker. Increasing to four ..."
KeS
The Dutch system, and I could not determine from the article if this is valid for the UK system as well, is continuesly filming but does not store the data.
Once a certain sound is detected, the camera starts to record, including a previous time span (30 or 60 seconds) from the past. People are even advised to shout when being attacked or witnessing a crime!!
This means, normal day privacy is protected and crime can be fought very efficient. The people living in that concerned district love the system.
You're giving them ideas!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Not very well, I suspect..
Once you are in a shouting match, a little speaker 20 feet behind you won't be able to calm you down. Short of having some new content for youtube, this will do little. But as a backtracking system it will be scary...
$DEITY bless technology.
This will just encourage crooks to become mimes. It is one thing to be mugged, another to be mugged by a mime, for godsakes!
Table-ized A.I.
As long as there are going to be cops monitoring public places by camera, this sounds like as good a way as any to tell them where to be looking at any given time. I think this has far more to do with narrowing down the information overload than actual additional surveillance. It would be almost physically imposable for any organization to monitor an entire city, regardless of how many cameras are in place. This is nothing more than a way to narrow that down into something manageable.
That's a great idea!
Here's an extention of it - modern cable tuner boxes have to send some information back to the cable company, so why not just put a little microphone in the tuner boxes? Then the special police software can be fed the sounds from inside your house, and if there is any sound of violent disturbance, they can respond. It's commonly known that rape and murder often occur in the home, and we're finding out more and more that in this new age of terrorism, violent crimes against society often begin in the home as well.
Since not everyone has cable tv, the government can put one of these boxes in everyone's house using the same infrastructure that tracks and enforces the TV tax. They have the customer records and housing database, so it's stupid to let such a volume of government collected personal information go unused.
Think of all the crime we could stop before it's committed! If crime can be stopped at the point when it's still just griping about the government or your boss, then we'll all be safer.
For those who don't THINK about what you read, reference "sarcasm" and "satire", along with "Orwell: 1984".
Our police only care about meeting targets on senior management graphs, they do not give a damn about solving crimes.
This is why a motorist can be caught on camera and fined for going 6mph over the speed limit, yet someone in London who has their car set on fire by vandals has to wait *FOUR DAYS* for any sort of police response.
I'm not saying this is just a police problem, it has much to do with Blair's government forcing paperwork on the police meaning that their in police stations filling out forms rather than patrolling the streets.
But this voice camera idea is there to counteract the fact that we do NOT have enough police patrolling the streets and are therefore not controlling crime.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Now verbal argument... whats next ? Thought crime? Somehow that does not seem so ridiculous now.
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.
They just need to listen out for the sound of happy hardcore eminating from a cheap_but_loud car stereos and then swoop in Minority Report style and arrest everyone under 25 wearing a hoody or baseball cap. ;-)
There's some fairly suggestive evidence out there, from medical types, that the police can save NHS resources by being more proactive in environments known to be associated with violent crime (e.g. where there's a high density of pubs and clubs). Basically, if they get to an incident before it kicks off then injury can be avoided. In turn, drunk casualties don't clog up A&E time and resources. Now you can argue that these cameras with microphones are just another invasion of privacy. But there is an equally compelling case that taking a more proactive stance saves us tax payers money, prevents injury and means the poor people who turn up at A&E with non-alcohol related problems aren't sharing space with rowdy aggressive drunks. I'm all for protecting privacy - but I'm also for reducing harm and, on balance, these cameras benefits might outweigh their costs.
... I love how the people who say that they don't want police cameras watching and listening for trouble are often the same people complaining that there aren't enough police officers on the streets watching and listening for trouble.
NOT!!!
Now that the world knows, guess trouble makers can get the cameras to turn a blind eye, what happens when a noisy argument is just a diversion to get the cameras to look the other way?
So, how many verbal arguments do not lead to violence ? Did they consider that too ? They better had, or they might be dealing with lots and lots of false alarms.
Don't mod this guy's argument up. Not only is it filled with straw men (See:" is life a stupid hollywood b-grade movie, where all government officials are nefarious schizophrenic's fantasy life cardboard cutout villains" for one) and emotional appeals (See: "well, how about if you live in a poor crime-ridden neighborhood and you can't even leave your house without being threatend with rape, mugging, and general loutish violent behavior on a daily basis?" for one), but its the same damn argument we hate when we get from politicians except now somehow its fooling us because it comes from a regular person.
The safest place would be a high-security prison, as always, and policies that make it more and more difficult to exist if you are not quiet, well adjusted, and "part of the system" are bad. This is one of them, becaues now apparently if I get mad I no longer have the right to yell or I get police attention. I guess I better become the type of person that won't be tempted to yell... so I guess I better never get mad... so I guess I better not care about anything too much that I might ever get upset over...
The argument against this type of stuff is never that it is totally ineffective at its stated goal. I'm sure this type of stuff can and will cut down on certain types of crime. Maybe even significantly. The argument against it is that it is a bad trade, and that we need to attack the causes of crime, instead of treating everyone like slaves (I mean I can't yell anymore or I get the police looking at me? Come on.), just because some people still become criminals.
Don't run away from your stance on privacy just because someone points out that some people get hurt because the police aren't allowed to monitor everything. It's called the price of a free society.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
Now I am against the UK model like the next guy. The problem with public surveillance is that humans are operating it. Such a system can be abused in so many ways, from ogling hot chicks, over stalking your neighbour to racial profiling and monitoring dissident activities.
If however the system is operated by computers who work with publicly known and approved heuristics and human operators are only allowed to watch if specific events occur, I am perfectly fine with that.
No such thing. Once you make the police show up at a crime, that hasn't happened, they'll haul you off and charge you with filing a bogus report.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I live in the UK, and without sinking into the realms of denial, I think if I was to take seriously every recent /. story about the UK's new police state, I'd be wearing a tinfoil hat and locked in my basement to avoid the thought police.
... yet.
I'm not suggesting that the UK is in reality some perfect utopia where everybody can do what they wish and we all get along, but on the other hand, these stories about police with 360-degree cameras, or big brother-esque cameras listening out for public disturbances - they all seem to be like an assault on the UK to try to distract a US audience from the fact that they're even deeper in that we are. Even if our cameras are watching us, at least there's no Patriot Act here
Aggressive non-violent behaviour can be classified as :
Behaviour likely to occasion a breach of the peace.
or by the super duper Public Order Act 1986
5 Harassment, alarm or distress
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he--
(a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,
within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Any city or country has a poor, uneducated underclass. I've been in the UK. There's nothing that makes British thugs special as compared to thugs in other countries. Besides, the money spent on cameras could be spent for better education or to develop cheaper manufacturing technology that would keep manufacturing jobs in Britain, thus alleviating unemployment.
-b.
Perhaps it was a subtle dig at the true political orientation of New Labour? See Alan B'stard's defection, for example.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
"you would willing give up freedom for security"
Err, nobody is giving antything up, to stop people setting up cameras would require new laws banning cameras, ( more rules => less freedom. Right? Or did I misread you?).
I live in Australia and recently visited the UK, I drove 3500 miles around the UK & Ireland and my reaction was "what fucking cameras?". The ones I saw were mainly installed in "trouble spots", railway stations, pubs, busy roads, shops, intersections, ect, similar to what we have here in many parts of Melbourne.
Freedom, as Bob Marley put it, is "a state of mind", we live (and die) by the rules and mores we each choose to follow. The basic tools for public security (a "common good") are private weapons, public oversight or some combination of the two. I choose public oversight with tight controls on weapons (as it is here in Australia and the UK), I just don't like the idea of getting shot at by a drunken teenager, nervous pensioner, ect. (BTW: I have been shot at on several occasions).
"But eventually, such a society will foster members who are soft and weak, and unfit to take care of themselves."
This has already happened. Personally I think it happened somewhere between climbing down from trees and living in caves, the bible is a bit more poetic, it says "we ate the fruit of the knowledge tree". Many people belive that taking care of "unfit" members of our species is what seperates us from the rest of the animals, at the very least the behaviour would account for one bite of the apple. Even our most "primative" societies really on specialists, the hunter, the warrior, the toolmaker, the old story teller with no teeth and a bung leg. It's not possible to build a tribe (let alone a civilization) without "the meek" AND "the warrior", just ask yourself: Where the hell are the societies where everyone is self-sufficient? Everyone needs somebody else to feed their supply line, nobody trully "takes care of themselves" but we thrive when we take care of each other.
With all due respect to you and your proffesion, there's an old saying: "to a carpenter everything looks like a nail", the analogy applies equally to other "specialists", including warriors.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
For example, it is wet every time it rains, but that doesn't mean that every time it is wet it has rained. Or, to maintain crime statistics in the analogy, Every time there is a drunk driving accident, someone has gotten in a car. Therefore, should we monitor every home's garage for warning about drunk driving?
I don't have a specific opinion about police monitoring public areas with cameras, but I worry that these cameras (police-controlled cameras) will make their way into restaurants and other semi-public places, and then make their way into private homes to "prevent domestic abuse."
Remember, remember the fifth of November.
Removing the cause of the problem would be simpler than imposing all this control. People are miserable; so they fight and steal and kill. You can not take away the social problems by herding people around a monitored maze. Money spent on surveillance could be used smarter; invested in the population.
Putting up cameras is a lot like pissing your pants to keep warm. And on that note; how about integrating a "smell-o-scope" in the surveillance-system.
[crackling voice on speaker]"WHO FARTED?!? Is it YOU?.., in the grey sweater??"[/]
Guys, the real reason for this is obvious... The guys watching the cameras want audio as well when they are watching people make out/have sex in public. The loudspeakers are just there for them to give instructions as well. "Hey, can you move that leg left, please? I can't see anything from this angle." It'll also sell better on the internet this way.
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
So if you find yourself in trouble in UK, say it's late in the evening and you find yourself surrounded by drunken soccer hooligans who want to assault you. You yell "help!" and nothing happens. Authorities don't care.
But yell "Allah Akhbar!" and the police and the army will be there in minutes!
"As the name implies, you must also be watchful. Peace can be made or broken with a gun, a word, an idea, even a thought. Now, those who work against peace sow the seeds of discontent. They plant false stories, they undermine the public good. It's not because they are necessarily evil. It's because they don't know any better. They're rejected, they're unhappy, and they lash out in the only way they can. So, If we could be made aware of these problems as they occur, then we can find these people, we can talk to these people, we can embrace them again in the arms of society, while, at the same time, protecting society from misinformation and harmful ideas. We're less interested in actions than we are in attitudes. We must help protect society against its own worst instincts. And by taking these bold steps, we will help to ensure a better future for everyone.
I'm proud to be a part of it, and I hope you'll all join me in becoming part of the Night Watch."
Heh.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Wot's going on 'ere then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6D1YI-41ao
Imagine all the running Chapman could have saved...
The cops will spend time looking after "regular" people having arguments, and ignore those pros who, silently, will take out the knives.
Well they could solve that by assigning a police agent to every single webcam out there.
Well this sounds *so* 1984..
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Well that's easy. Allow any law abiding citizen to carry a handgun. Create laws that allow any law abiding citizen to use deadly force in self defense. Prohibit civil law suits by criminals when law abiding citizens defend themselves. Prohibit any civil suit by anyone with criminal convictions.
Bonus: Allow deadly force to protect property, not just people. Your home invasion rate will fall to near zero. Your Yobs will be reformed or dead (and good riddance too!)
Crimes are never commited at the following locations: Gun shows; Police stations; NRA convetions; etc. Crimes are commited at: Disarmed victim zones (schools; post office; your home if you live in a non-free country like the UK; etc.)
Who will oppose this: People who like to hurt and rob others; and... ?
If you want safety, you must first take the safety off. when everyone has a deadly weapon, no one will use it, no crime will be committed. Well, not that survives the first mass self-culling, anyway.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
People don't carry their gun all the time.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
I've read TFA, and nowhere does it say the UK is actually using, or even actually planning to use, these systems. The lead paragraph states that the cameras are in use in the UK, but the body has the suit being quoted as saying "In the U.K., London police also are considering installing the system".
I can't find any mention besides this article of this technology being used anywhere here in the UK (which, granted, might be poor google-fu on my part).
What I see is the CEO of the company that manufactures the tech talking up the fact that the UK police didn't laugh him off the premises.
How about the UK government invests in cameras that monitor /. for dupes. Whenever an "editor" green lights an "article" that is a duplicate, a voice could come on a loudspeaker that says, "Oy! We already 'eard about that a few weeks ago!"
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
I live in Groningen and have a neighboring research interest so I might be a bit biased, but here it goes:
1. In holland all inner cities are watched over by police with camera's. These camera's are actually watched, so if the operator want to monitor you he can. This system increases the number of camera feeds a operator can handle by prioritizing the camera feeds (thus less operators, more people on the street) and he is only shown suspicious camera feeds, not the people having fun. The dutch privacy guard not only allows this system, but also encourages its development as long as the audio signal does not leave the sensor on the street (which it doesn't without proper authorization).
2. On the point of a denial of service attack, the system can make a difference between enacted aggression and real aggression. Recordings of aggression can work, but a cell phone won't produce a good enough quality sound.
3. The statistics on how much verbal aggression leads to physical aggression are interesting, but not for such a system. Police is only send to places that may become interesting, it is then at the discretion of the officer whether or not to act.
4. The operator of the system cannot listen in on any scene (sure technically it's no problem, but it is strictly forbidden by law.). In the Groningen(the city where I live) setup only with a warrant from a judge the audio from a specific incident can be retrieved.
5. The detection doesn't work on keywords or speech recognition, it works on the actual changes in the voice signal due to the loss of control over your speech production system when you are aggressive. This is also why acting doesn't work, it that case you keep control. Accents or foreign languages are no problem.
6. It won't stop some crimes like terrorist bombings, pickpocketing or other silent crimes (at least silent in their preparation), but the system is not aimed at that. And picking a fight while being mute is very, very unpractical so that probably won't happen.
The privacy checks in the system depend of course on correct implementation and correct use by the police. So these two factors should be under constant control.
If I knew of these cameras were installed in my city I would go out and yell profanities at the camera and probably some colorfull gestures to boot. When the cops showed up I would claim free politically motivated speech and would claim that I was merely protesting that fact that such an Orwellian device had been setup in a free land.
Paul E. Bahre
I try to repost stories about what I call the "Technology War" to my blog. Slashdot covers most of it quite well, but there are a lot of disturbing trends in technology being used to OPPRESS, rather than HELP, the human race. It's sad.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
D.C. has much greater crime than the urban areas of northern virginia which are RIGHT NEXT TO D.C. D.C. has outlawed handguns, so only outlaws have handguns (1 murder per day, approximately, and D.C. has been the #1 per capita murder city for several of the past 15 years). Virginia allows concealed weapons. I don't fear the streets of a VA city the way I fear the streets of DC...
A good sticker to put on your back door is one that is a picture of a gun which says "Nothing in this house is worth your life." Home invasions are typically done during business hours in america, nowadays, because people are scared of being shot.
They should be. I have a right to shoot someone in my own house. Technically, I have to be cornered to do so. That can be arranged.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com