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

Better link:

[choas]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VvDxDGiFa8Q

Re:Better link:

[kshade]

Bravo, a first post with a youtube link and no Rick Astley!

I agree.

[aleph42]

It may seem like a bad idea at first (cheaper == more sensors), but at least this will force them to *really* anonymise the data, and only keep what they need for the security part.

So probably more sensors, but less abuses.

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:I agree.

[aleph42]

Quick reminder of the situation:

CCTVs are progressing in a lot of place meeting little to no resistence over privacy concern. But once the police have their hands on a video feed, they can:

1) Track *all* registration plates automatically (right now in London, you couldn't do a 100m in your car without the police nowing it).

2) Soon track you based on face recognition, which seems to be very actively researched. Add this to the fact that certain shooping-mall already forbid you to wear anything on your head (so you can't hide your face to the camera), and you are in for a real Orwellian nightmare.

And of course, it's always possible for them to place the camera for one purpose, letting public opinion completly unaware of what is really done with the feed later, when a new technology is discovered or put into use.

To those who will say I'm being paranoid, or that they have nothing to hide: tell that to the activists who were arrested right before crashing a republican convention, as a result of months of police surveillance (the following link is for the guy with the dot-printer bike; can't find the other one right now: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/10/bikes-against-bush-a.html )

An other (now publicly admitted) example is how phones of pacifists were tapped during Viet-Nam.

And of course now there is the Church of Scientology:
- "I've got nothing to hide"
- "Then you've never had the gut to piss the COS"

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.

Cool, but not perfect

[PlatyPaul]

1.) You can't tell activity without a paired set of video cameras (i.e., legitimate night access by staff versus corporate sabotage). From TFA:

Users can select a certain path on the map - for example from the office drinks machine to the front door - to call up motion and video data from the path at a particular time and reveal who used the route. [emphasis mine]

So, you still have video cameras around and constantly capturing - this just narrows when you'd be looking at them.

2.) You can't tell if that snake of moving lights is one person or more than one (i.e., someone piggybacks on a legitimate user's door swipe and is effectively invisible as long as they're close enough). So, you can't tell if you should be looking at that video or not. Maybe human heat signature detectors instead?


It's a nice concept in general, and I support it, but I wouldn't call it an "alternative to CCTV".

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:Actual video footage is far better for tracking

[Jhon]

Actually, I think this would complement video quite well. You use this system to see WHATS happening -- click a button -- and see WHO is making it happen.

Alien

[MadUndergrad]

Did that video remind anyone else of that scene near the end of Alien where they're crawling around in the tunnels on the Nostromo? I kept waiting to see a much faster moving dot closing in on the guy...