Mind How You Walk - Someone is Watching

mrbluze writes "The Telegraph has an opinion article about the future of the extensive CCTV network in the United Kingdom. Automated analysis of how and where people are walking or otherwise moving, and what objects they carry or leave behind, flags the attention of security staff. This is meant to preempt a crime and make suspects identifiable even by gait. The technology is of questionable public benefit since street crime has not decreased despite the presence of CCTV. 'An airport camera can be programmed to know what a departure hall should look like, with thousands of separate movements. A single suitcase left for any length of time would trigger an alarm. This technology was developed for use in hotels to alert staff to a breakfast tray left outside a room. Soon, it will be coming to a street near you. Why not go the whole hog and have microphones attached to cameras or embedded in street lights?'"

Comments

May not be a bad thing

[abhikhurana]

This technology has been around for some time now and has been tested successfully in many instances. Contrary to the impression this article gives, the technology came from US and Israel, where it was successfully used for border surveillance and also for protecting airports and railways, infrastructure crtical for teh working of a company. This is reflected in the companies working on this technology, namely Object Video, IoImage etc. But lately UK has become very active in this and like with most surveillance technologies, it has surpassed the rest of the world but the applications that UK is looking at are not all 1984ish. One of the biggest applications which is being looked in UK is to alart the CCTV operators when a car parks in the hard shoulder for more than say 5 minutes and automatically alert highway patrols. This is potentially very useful. I am not sure about the rest of the people here but I have spent hours on the roadside with a punctured tire in really cold weather on more than one occasion (on for those are wondering why I didn't use the spare, try changing a driver's side tyre with all the big trucks passing within a feet or so of you and you will know) and I think it would have been great if help had come sooner. So like all technology, the technology itself is not bad. But you can use in both constructive and destructive way.

Re:Big Brother alive and well in the UK

[superbrose]

What good is having CCTV and microphones when the punishment does not fit the crime?

A friend of mine was attacked in a pub for spilling someone else's pint of beer. Despite apologising, he was punched in the face and had to go to hospital, where he received numerous stitches.

Upset about the whole event he sued his assailant - the outcome: No fine, no social work, but simply a Warning.

How is this going to deter anyone? Who cares about being filmed and convicted of some crime or another, if there is no proper punishment?

Brooklyn, New York

[israel_zayas]

[quote]
NEW YORK - Along a gritty stretch of street in Brooklyn, police this month quietly launched an ambitious plan to combat street crime and terrorism.
But instead of cops on the beat, wireless video cameras peer down from lamp posts about 30 feet above the sidewalk.

They were the first installment of a program to place 500 cameras throughout the city at a cost of $9 million. Hundreds of additional cameras could follow if the city receives $81.5 million in federal grants it has requested to safeguard Lower Manhattan and parts of midtown with a surveillance "ring of steel" modeled after security measures in London's financial district.
[blockquote]

For more read: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2006/160 406nypdflips.htm

Then watch as the lack of police presence attracts criminals to the open:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqNfXg1nE3k

But of course, if this system where to be fool proof, crime would have be enforced.

Re:Gaitcrime!

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you read the book, the moral is that the state wins. "If you want to picture the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." (from memory, that's the last line of the book, but it's years since I last read it.)

Nope, it's more depressing than that.

"He loved Big Brother."

The State doesn't just win by crushing its opponents. That's too easy. It wins by converting its opponents.

That's what was meant by the Inner Party doctrine that "Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"

It's not enough for the Party to merely kill Winston. Dissidents must be made to love Big Brother, or the Party will eventually collapse from within. Winston isn't defeated by his torturers, he is cured by them.

20 years ago, the sort of people who said "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" were dirty filthy rotten Commies. 10 years ago, they were spineless wimps who might say something like that in private, but never in front of a "man on the street" news camera. Today, they're the norm. 10 years from now, they'll Outer Party members helping to make the world a safer place.

Re:More costs, no gauranteed benfit

[RowanS]

When was the last time a huge security program was dismantled when shown to not deliver what was promised, or even evaluated for success?

When I was in the UK I worked on some projects to evaulate the performance of CCTV installations in Cambridge. The evaluations were sponsored by the Home Office (i.e. national government) but each project was local (run by city councils). The gist of the findings was that CCTV initially reduced crime, but then people forgot it was there and crime rates rose again. Having a video record of crimes did make it easier for the police to catch and prosecute criminals.