Movement Sensors a Less Invasive Alternative To CCTV

holy_calamity writes "Researchers at Mitsubishi say cramming buildings with movement sensors, not cameras, is a safer and less invasive alternative to CCTV. They covered their office building with 215 low-cost sensors to watch over their colleagues and show how it works. A video shows how a user can see people's movements on a map of the building in real time. Data from the sensors is much easier to handle than video footage, and it can easily be searched." The Surface-like UI is pretty neat too.

Comments

Re:50/50

[martin_henry]

...could be easily hacked into, or disabled, or misdirected. Unlike a camera?

Effectiveness

[Woundweavr]

I'm all for privacy, but lets be real. There's no way that motion sensors provide comparable data to video. Tracking movement, while still invasive to privacy, is just short of useless in terms of security. You can't tell if someone is shoulder surfing, or taking that framed picture of Chuck Norris off someone's desk, or judo chopping their boss from motion sensors. Indeed, the identity of the person on the screen is unknown as well. If two people walk towards each other and pass each other in the hall, that would be essentially identical to them walking up to each other and turning around - identity obfuscated.

Interesting tool for traffic analysis, sure. Alternative to security cameras? Not so much.

Actual video footage is far better for tracking...

[Assmasher]

...and identification purposes, and is also easy to search. The author is either unfamiliar with modern surveillance or chooses to ignore the realities of video analytics.

Energy saving

[esocid]

"It has large implications for energy savings," Ivanov adds, saying that heating or air-conditioning use could be informed by the data."

This is one thing I've always wondered about. Why in the hell do office building needs to keep the lights on 24/7? I'm not sure if it has something to do with how the power grid operates, but if not then motion sensors connected to the lights and AC would be a great idea imho. Lower (or raise) the temp a little to save energy, and shut off most lights when the building is not in use.

Re:I agree.

[daveime]

Yes, I can just imagine the investigation into the theft of some office supplies.

Management : "Who did it ?"
Security : "Well, we've narrowed it down to anonymous blobs #1,#245 and #777"
Management : "Your P-45 will be ready in an hour"

Re:50/50

[PlatyPaul]

Well, since they're likely to be using IR sensors, all signs point to no.

It does, however, mean that you can mess with them using a blowdryer, cranking up the building temperature, reflecting sunlight on it, or fiddling with the direction of the heat ducts nearby. Other measures exist for alternate detector types (like using a white noise generator to mess with ultrasonic devices).