Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.
It would of course, be mandatory to display your card on the front of any clothing you're wearing
A capital idea, my good fellow! Perhaps we can even snaz it up a little to make it not so drab. I'm partial to yellow myself. And give them funny shapes? I've always liked that one old western sheriffs wore...
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 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.........
It's only a bad idea if there is a helm. If there's a camera in every room, if everyone can be watched at any time, and if anyone can tune in to any camera at will, that would be fair. If, however, there's a class of bosses who can watch anyone they please, while not being watched themselves, then you have tyranny.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.