Video Surveillance Identifies Threat Patterns

Ponca City, We Love You writes "When the 2008 Olympic Games kick off in Beijing next year, organizers will be using a sophisticated computer system to scan video images of city streets looking for everything from troublemakers to terrorists. The IBM system, called the Smart Surveillance System, uses analytic tools to index digital video recordings and then issue real-time alerts when certain patterns are detected. It can be used to warn security guards when someone has entered a secure area or keep track of cars coming in and out of a parking lot. The system can also search through old event data to find patterns that can be used to enable new security strategies and identify potential vulnerabilities. IBM is also developing a similar surveillance system for lower Manhattan, but has not yet begun deploying that project. "Physical security and IT security are starting to come together," says Julie Donahue, vice president of security and privacy services with IBM. "A lot of the guys I'm meeting on the IT side are just starting to get involved on the physical side.""

Comments

What we all need

[Xiph]

Ahh, finally more survaillance, and computers to monitor the cameras.

Pattern recognition to identify threats, before trouble occurs.
Soon come the day when, we can finally arrest people, before they realise that they're going to do something criminal.

Re:What we all need

[phantomcircuit]

Lets be real here.

The police try to find patterns in activity already, but it is far less effective for a relatively small group of people to look for patterns than it is for a computer with many cameras.

This is exactly what is already happening but faster.

When you are in public, you are in public.

Re:What we all need

[base3]

I would much rather have a surveillance system like the one the article describes in place than an armed national guard member on every corner.

Ah, but the "armed national guard member" doesn't have a perfect memory and because of resource limitations, can't really exist on "every corner." But an "armed national guard member" can be dispatched to round people up either in real-time or after a review of the video. I'd rather that ubiquitous surveillance be as obvious as that, so that maybe the sheep get a little outraged and the "you don't have any right to privacy" and "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" apologists don't end up getting the world they want.

Re:What we all need

[try_anything]

When you're in these places, you're in public. You're not in the privacy of your own home or anything like that. You're on public streets. By going out into public you've already given up a certain amount of anonymity de facto.

That makes perfect sense in the world of twenty years ago and the world we still mostly inhabit, but pervasive electronic surveillance threatens to change the meaning of statements like these. If you want to maintain the same rhetoric, make sure the words mean the same thing -- i.e., stop surveillance from de facto changing what it means to be in a public place versus a private place.

If you accept that "public place" means "a place where a detailed, permanent record of every action is captured and archived by the government," then you should rethink whether we want to have any "public places" at all. By that definition, perhaps only congressional chambers, courtrooms, jail cells, and the immediate vicinity of police officers should be public places.

Re:What we all need

[EaglemanBSA]

...and on some level, that's called profiling, and it's illegal. The grey area here is a wide one with steep, slippery slopes. I'd like to think we have the capacity to exist in a world where I don't have to be inside my home in order to not be on camera, but I think too many people mistake surveillance for safety.

Re:What we all need

[RagManX]

WTF? How is profiling illegal? You have car insurance? Your rates are determined by profiling. Did you/are you/will you go to college? Admissions are based on profiling. Have you ever been asked to make a donation to some organization? You were probably selected by profiling. Have you ever taken prescription medicine? The medicine most likely to be effective for you was determined by profiling.

Yes, there are cases where profiling is illegal. But in and of itself, profiling is *not* illegal. At least, not in America. But then, I don't know where you live, so it might actually be illegal where you are.

Re:What we all need

[EaglemanBSA]

I wasn't referring to selling insurance, I was referring to being investigated/arrested for bits of data picked off automatically by a computer. Of course, profiling is useful for determining insurance premiums and whether or not you're MIT material, but when it comes to determining whether or not you've broken the law, it's a different story.

Re:What we all need

[badasscat]

Maybe what people are proposing is, get this: we need to redefine what 'public' is.

I think the problem is we are redefining what public is.

20 years ago, there was no expectation whatsoever that being in "public" meant your every move would be tracked by government officials potentially hundreds of miles away, and then stored for all time. That's not what "public" meant. People had an expectation that yes, anybody who was around you could potentially be watching you, but that kept it a relatively level playing field because you could pretty easily identify any threats to your privacy and avoid them if you like. If you were walking down an empty side street and needed to quickly adjust your belt because your pants were too loose, you could look around and do so without fear that cops are watching ready to jump you for "reaching for a concealed explosive" or even "intent to expose oneself in public" or whatever other nonsense law they can come up with.

That is the expectation we have always had for what "public" means - yes, you can be watched, but only by those around you, and that means that you can easily watch them back. Being able to be watched - and recorded - by someone many miles away is not what "public" means to me or anybody else. That's an intrusion, just like any other. You are being watched by people who are not there. And you have no idea what they're thinking or doing, even while they can watch your every move. It's a completely one-sided relationship where the other side has all the power. That's scary. And it's the exact opposite of what "being in public" is all about.

We don't need to redefine what public means, we need to take back its original meaning. Nobody should be allowed to watch a space that they do not own (ie. a public space) without being physically present.

Re:What we all need

[robably]

When you are in public, you are in public.

When being in public entails having your every move watched and recorded and profiled, that's more like being on private property, or a prison.

This is exactly what is already happening but faster.

Beyond a certain point, making something bigger or faster or stronger in just one aspect pushes it over a line to where it becomes something very different - spin a propeller and it turns around, spin it fast enough and you suddenly have powered flight. The connection of cctv to powerful computers is not just the same as before but faster, it becomes something very intrusive and powerful. Whether you care about it or not you should be aware that a lot of other people do care, and it would be preferable if the world was not changed to make it intolerable for them to live in.

Good *old* IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just like the old days, IBM looking for ways to "enhance security" and help the good old boys at the Department of Homeland Security (or, as the Germans called it, Schutzstaffel (S.S.)).

The important thing is, just like they had no idea their technology was helping make the holocaust more efficient and were just making a buck, it's completely unimaginable that the Chinese might continue to use it to crack down on dissidents afterwards.

Re:so, are there any stats

[explosivejared]

Did the article make a point of saying this was an anti-terror tool specifically? No, because it has a very real application. Instead of fighting whatever fantasy threats politicians throw at us, this is designed to curtail the very real problems of mugging, assault, theft, etc., that occur in high traffic urban areas.

Guys security is good. Raping the constitution, disregarding human rights, and doing a number of other unsavory things to attempt to get it isn't. However, something as common sense as this is good. This is nothing more than a mechanism for security to expand their field of vision and cut out the noise (perfectly behaving citizens) to the signal (criminals). We can all agree that some security personnel is needed in high traffic areas right? So you have two choices. One is a very inefficient system of large groups of personnel, physical checkpoints, etc. The second choice is to reduce personnel footprint based on optimization from technology and better tactics. I know which choice I would choose.

This is such bullshit

[nbauman]

a sophisticated computer system to scan video images of city streets looking for everything from troublemakers to terrorists. The IBM system, called the Smart Surveillance System, uses analytic tools to index digital video recordings and then issue real-time alerts when certain patterns are detected. IBM's computer scientists must be getting paid quite a bit to endure the humiliation of making claims that every knowledgeable person knows are false.
These systems have been tested before, particularly in England, where Thatcher's government paid a shitload of money that could have been used for something useful, and the only useful thing they got out of it was well-designed studies that demonstrated that these screening systems don't work.
Here in Manhattan, we had a video monitoring system set up in the labyrnthine Columbus Circle subway station for a couple of years. It also had no effect on crime. (Nor did it have any effect on the cops beating up innocent people, who happened to be black.) The City took money that could have paid for more police (hopefully honest ones) and spent it on video toys instead. Duh.
Now we're getting these digital cameras all over NYC -- even though we have good data from England, from our own pilot programs, from the Atlanta Olympics, and elsewhere, that they don't do what their promoters claim. What it demonstrates is that a huckster can sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of useless digital junk to unscrupulous politicians accountable to a hysterical public and campaign contributors as long as it has blinking LEDs and they say the magic word "terrorism."
I challenge anyone to cite any scientific evidence, any pilot program -- not some security "expert"'s opinion -- that there are any computer "patterns" that can identify "troublemakers" or "terrorists".
Stop and think. The London suicide bombers walked on the subway with backpacks full of explosives. Innocent people go about their business on the subway all the time wearing backpacks. What pattern is there that a digital camera could spot?
The only good news in this story is that we Americans are finally ripping off the Chinese for a couple of hundred million dollars, which is good for the balance of trade. This is known in economics as the broken window fallacy.
Maybe we could sell them the Brooklyn Bridge too -- oh, wait, they already own it.

Re:I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords

[DarkOx]

Don't forget its humans deciding what "patterns" are suspect in the first place and its that the machines will be searching for, this does nothing to reduce human bias. It might even enhance it, given that a small group of people will likely be tasked with developing those patterns, as a opposed to a much larger group of independantly(or at least more so) minded security personal.

If a human gets it wrong, with some luck hopefully his partner, or commander may get it right and make a better choice. No it does not always work like, people become victims of social pressure to do bad things and make poor choices, but there is still a humanity there which at least can over come those things some of the time. That's why we have heros folks, most people are not but a person at least has the potential to be a hero, a machine does not.