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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?'"
I wonder if it can identify silly walks.
"Maggie call Aquaman!!!"
The first Ministry of silly walks?
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
Already done :-( I don't know about sleepwalking into a surveillance society.
I think we're running towards it with open arms at the moment.
http://tinyurl.com/2vbx8g
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
A way of identifying all those people who soil themselves!
I believe it's safe to say that using someone's gait to determine their relative guilt/innocence, ranks right up there with dumping a woman in a river to see if she's a witch.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Why not go the whole hog and have microphones attached to cameras or embedded in street lights?
Don't give them ideas.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
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.
Not terrorism, facecrime... Or in this case, gaitcrime.
Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
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.
What's under yellowstone?
This is one of the biggest problems I see with current governments' agendas to implement mass surveilance and other technology security measures - an almost total lack of cost-benefit analysis that demonstrate a clear need to implement the technology. For many of these cases there are clear privacy concerns, the potential for abuse of the system, and encroachment of liberties, and in addition there are the projected costs of implementing the systems - costs for hardware, software, infrastructure, agencies, staffing, etc. Most of the time the monetary estimates run into the billions, and that's before the usual reality of budget and schedule overruns, unforeseen implementation problems, contractor cost inflating, etc etc. And yet to balance all these costs, projected and real, there is usually not much more supporting argument than "it fights terrorism/crime/think of the children". Rarely with any sort of hard data backing up the plans, rarely with in-depth studies of test cases, or even analysis of how similar systems are working in other countries where they have already been implemented. This whole idea of "trust us, it's for the better" is infuriating coming from our chosen leaders.
And what about if the system doesn't provide the expected benefits? When was the last time a huge security program was dismantled when shown to not deliver what was promised, or even evaluated for success? (programs like Carnivore and Total Information Awareness continue on in other guises even now) Too often there are earmarks, kickbacks (monetary and political) and whatnot tied into the whole process so supporters are even less likely to admit failure when a program is still personally lucrative in some way. None of the funding for these mass surveilance and automated security measures seem to have any sort of merit-based budgeting built in. It ends up being a huge political fight to close useless programs, meanwhile the costs - monetary and liberty - continue to pile up, restricting freedoms and draining our public coffers (or in the case of the US continuing to pile onto a mountain of debt that cannot possibly be repaid without massive negative consequences). Our representatives in government need to be held accountable to hold these programs accountable! There need to be provisions, milestones, evaluations and hard-set sunset clauses that force these programs to deliver or die. And there needs to be more scepticism upfront with regard to the promised benefits that have little to no factual backing, and more than that, the coefficient placed in front of the value of infractions of liberty needs to be increased! The practice of implementing Security Theater programs with no accountability to success has got to stop. We're stepping on freedoms and spending like a drunk with no proven returns, how is that good public policy?
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Really, if the Bad People (TM) want to make modern society grind to a halt, all they have to do now is start to leave shopping bags and other, random containers lying around in public places. It would be pretty effective in making this kind of technology useless, and quite a drain on the system, if you get enough volume of bags being left behind in random public places.
Sometimes the most simple things can bring to a halt the most complex of systems. No need for anything dangerous, society will bankrupt itself trying to oversee and purify itself.
In an airport situation, I could see the cameras tracking you from the checkin counter to your gate. As soon as you identified yourself to a person or kiosk it would know where you should be going and watch you if you strayed. It would also notice things like people who meet and talk but did not arrive together or leave together. On city streets it would look for cars and people, and start to build correlation databases (i.e. Mrs. X's son always visits on Sundays).
Get used to it. The technology is only going to get smarter, and eventually the street lights will know where you are going and change accordingly. When you deviate it will issue and alert and require you to file a report.
I personally have no problem being watched as long as I can watch back. It would be interesting to know where the politicians are at 2 AM.
Why stop at every streetlight? Lets just mandate implants for everyone, and a worldwide sensor network, and get it over with.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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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Surely this is an actual, real world example of thought crime being punished? No longer do you actually have to comit a crime - simply acting like you might comit some, thinging about it, planning it in some way, or suggesting it to others is now a crime.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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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I wonder how hard it would be to come up with a player device to simulate gunshots?
Would be interesting to have a few friends in different parts of the city...some maybe across the st. from each other, and fire out gunshot sounds. Heck, make it interesting...mix up the reports, like a few 357 magnums, maybe a 50 cal Desert Eagle, some shotguns...for real fun, get one full auto here and there.
I can't imagine at this point, there is a law against playing gunshot 'sounds'....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Why should that matter?
... and crime keeps happening at the exact same rate it ever did.
If the crime keeps happening at the same rate, how can you possibly justify the expense of the system?
Suppose the cameras and the prosecution bear out 100% capture and conviction rate
What have the cameras bought you in terms of security, if you're still just as likely to be mugged walking down the street?
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
"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.
The problem is you'd need a powerful stereo and big-ass speakers to simulate the sound of a gunshot.
But if you could do it, go all out: make it play machine guns and explosions like it's a battlefield. Then watch the National Guard deploy, since that's too much for the SWAT team to handle.
Bear in mind that the people selling these cameras are skilled professional salesmen, but the people buying them are local politicians, which requires no special education or training.
If the crime rate goes down when cameras are installed, the sales pitch will be "cameras reduce crime". If it goes up, the pitch will be "more cameras are needed to combat rising crime".
The expense will not be an issue, so long as it is only a small proportion of the money raised by taxes for other things. And if anyone raises the question of value for money, the salesman can simply ask "do you want this to be the only community that does not protect its citizens with cameras".
The trick was getting the first few cameras installed. After that, I can't see how their spread could be stopped.
[quote]
0 406nypdflips.htm
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/april2006/16
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.
Why would you want to do such a thing, just to fuck up an attempt to detect & prevent crime which is new, effective, and AFAIK has virtually NO negative consequences for civil liberties, privacy etc? (So long as they're sited by an algorithm running on data about gun crime, rather than (say) ethnicity or income levels.)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
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.
I didn't know that it is so easy to create a new universe
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Would be interesting to have a few friends in different parts of the city...some maybe across the st. from each other, and fire out gunshot sounds. Heck, make it interesting...mix up the reports, like a few 357 magnums, maybe a 50 cal Desert Eagle, some shotguns...for real fun, get one full auto here and there.
I can't imagine at this point, there is a law against playing gunshot 'sounds'....
Why go through all that trouble? Just put a sign with a couple of blinking LEDs somewhere, then sit back and enjoy the panic...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.