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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?'"
As part of efforts to instil a sense of transparency into the CCTV society, a special couple of days were undertaken by the camera operators in the Welsh capital Cardiff. Under the scheme members of the public could come in and watch CCTV operators at work.
I've seen a conference paper based upon the insight this scheme provided. The conclusion? CCTV operators are presently trained to concentrate on those people that aren't moving; standing still is regarded as suspicious.
I don't know what impact this new technology will have on this practice.
Why not go the whole hog and have microphones attached to cameras or embedded in street lights?'"
Why go through that kind of expense when cell phones can already be used that way? Cell phones are always in hearing range and can be programmed to be on when they look off. The cameras would increase coverage, but again private "security cameras" will do the job in all the places people care about if access is granted by law to government. Soon enough, people will want cameras in their "smart" houses to turn on and off lights and listen for commands. As long as non free software is used for this, the coverage will be complete.
Quiet, casual voice, "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness."
Love,
Big Brother
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I've long realized that I recognize people I know well from a _distance_ more by how they move than by the shape of their face or other more 'normal' visual cues. It probably comes from evolving in an area where predators moved differently from prey.
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Certain conditions (neurological) can be diagnosed via abnormal gait. So maybe this could be useful, maybe they could have the police go up to an old person crossing the street and let him know the system shows he may have parkinson's.
It's a good thing, one step in the road towards in home diagnostics in the toilet and in-home/shower MRI scanners.
-Johan
I have social anxiety, whenever I go to a store (rarely) I get all jumpy and paranoid. Sales people are always watching me, probably thinking I'm going to steal something
This is one reason I'm sure I'll never fly, I'd be way freaked out at an airport.
Oh well, if this ever comes to the states I guess I can become a complete hermit.
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"Imagine for instance that security officials are looking to see if there are any of 10,000 known criminal/terrorists at the superbowl. That's not gonna be done by looking at everybody's faces. But automated walk recognition might be a really nice option."
OK, and let's say the technology is just fabulously better than it seems like it will ever get, and matches people correctly 99.99% of the time. Using such a fictionally wonderful system to search for your proposed 10,000 profiles of criminals/terrorists, every single person you check will be a match.
Scanning for a large number of profiles by any error-prone mechanism is utterly worthless.
how come the brits say "go to hospital"
and the americans say "go to THE hospital"?
Why don't the brits use an article there?
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
How about we go back to the way the police used to work, where they patrolled the streets and deterred or stopped crime in the first place?
Or maybe you should go back to the way society used to work, where people were allowed to defend themselves against attackers and criminals, and were even allowed to carry weapons around for this purpose?
Unfortunately, today in the UK, you'll be prosecuted for attempting to defend yourself in any way against a criminal, especially if you hurt him, or even just threaten him.
I'm sure someone who's been violently mugged or raped will be really happy to know that the police caught them afterwards.
Yep, and when the criminal is convicted, and serves a very short prison sentence for a brutal rape and is then released, he can go and do it again. Lovely.
The First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eight amendments have been enormously eroded, if not entirely wiped out.
The Ninth and Tenth amendments have been seriously degraded.
But don't worry, you still have the right to arm yourself and refuse quarter to foreign troops.
If you need information on how these have been eroded, google around for information on things such as free-speech zones where the government has decided that it can not dictate the content of free speech, but that they can dictate who exercises it, when they can exercise it and where they exercise it. Also see the censorship of certain scientific and political releases for partisan reasons.
Also look into how your right to no search and seizure without probable cause has been eroded. How we have done away with many instances of due process, cruel punishment and the right to face your accuser.
And as to why people don't seem to care? Ask ten random people, in person, to list the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights. I bet only half will name more than four.
Why don't the brits use an article there?
Hey, it's their language...
Do you "go to bed", or "go to THE bed"? "Go to hell", or "go to THE hell?" etc.
As a counter argument, why do (some) Americans say "I'm going to the mall; you want to go with?" Go with what, bells on?
In every single one of them you will wait for 7 hours before being admitted and after that receive letters from the local health authority which ask "are you dead, and if you are not yet have you sorted yourself out so we can stop bothering".
I got so pissed off from these that I have answered "No, despite your best efforts, I am not dead yet, and I have not sorted myself out, so you can forget the idea of removing me off that waiting list". Got an letter boiling of righteous indignation in return and had an appointment made for me next month.
The consultant looked at me, ticked me off the list off so El Presidente Antonio Bliar-US-Arseholus can claim the shortening the waiting lists for the last elections and showed me the door. Fake examination for sake of waiting list reduction only. The problem is still there.
Welcome to the NHS, the best showcase that it is possible to make a health system more expensive than US while delivering lower quality care than a third world country.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I worked on gait recognition a little a few years ago. It's not about spotting people's attitudes or thought by their walk. It's based on the theory that gait is a biometric, like a fingerprint. This has yet to be conclusively proven.
You then measure the gait of an individual comitting a crime (in the case where footage does not reveal the face clearly) and use it, fingerprint like, to identify suspects.
This is not 1984. This is not big brother.
What IS big brother like is the proliferation of cameras, regardless of the recognition techniques behind it.