Slashdot Mirror
Eye In the Sky For City Crime Fighting
Tiger4 writes "The mayor of the City of Lancaster in the Antelope Valley of southern California is considering a high-definition video flying platform to aid in crime fighting. The aircraft, would circle the city constantly, able to zoom in on activity spots instantly. 'You never know when you are being watched or followed. It would be stupid to commit a crime. You see it with such detail,' said Mayor R. Rex Parris, who took a ride last week in a camera-equipped airplane with pilot Dick Rutan. 'I have every hope that Lancaster will be the first city to deploy it. I've never been so excited about anything.' Dick Rutan is the same pilot who flew around the world non-stop in the Voyager, custom built by his brother Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites in Mojave." The aircraft is nothing special, a garden-variety Cessna or the like, but "the camera is an example of technology developed for and used by the military making a transition to civilian applications, Rutan said."
Outlaw roofs.
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
Seriously, though, the whole idea is wrong on so many levels it's not funny anymore. Privacy aside, couldn't they at least use a platform that's better suited to long-term surveillance, such as a small (drone-sized), unmanned airship?
...never do anything stupid, so the Mayor pointing out "It would be stupid to commit a crime" is a really excellent example of how compelling the case is for using this sort of surveillance technology.
If politicians and police were honest about this they'd be doing a controlled experiment on these deployments, putting out these systems in ways that varied both in space and time that allowed them to determine whether these things had any effect on quality of life amongst the citizens, which is the metric that matters.
Instead, they are content to make stuff up, and the average person is so relentlessly anti-empirical that they have no idea what they are missing.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Ask your friendly neighborhood drug lord.
The next version of the plane is then going to be armed with 20mm cannons. Why just watch crime when you can stop it dead?
The camera is an example of technology developed for and used by the military making a transition to civilian applications, Rutan said."
When you have the Military controling civilian security, the civilians become the enemy. This would normally just be a gross overstepping of the government, but to use it as a "transition" for EASing military is just crazy. Things are different in the Military. The rules, norms and expectations are completely different. You can't just take an MP out of the fleet, give him a badge and a gun, and expect him to take a squad car around the block with out incident.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
For a moment I thought I knew where that was. Are there any place names America didn't steal?
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
1. Someone to know the crime is happening and thus record it, send cops over, and prevent it.
2. No blind spots(good luck on a roaming platform. Last I checked, buildings still are 3d and thus will cause blind spots.
3. The criminals not to take the most basic of all precautions to hide there identity(sky masks aren't exactly hard to make or buy.).
So, in conclusion, it looks like some dumb ass company built this device and decided to market it to whatever sucker they could find. World keeps on turning.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
I wholeheartedly agree. On the condition that the loop includes a trip above the Mayor's house and that all video feeds are released to the public.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Just remember what else trickled down. Drone aircraft for military use were originally unarmed, observation only craft. When they started mounting Hellfires and 25 mm cannon, there were a few debates about the legal niceties, but it basically just happened.
Who is John Cabal?
Awesome. The local private pilots are gonna love it when their Cessna 172's start being shot at for no apparent reason.
only outlaws will have umbrellas.
Slashdot: news for Apple. Stuff that Apple.
They either plan around it (unlikely) or commit impulsive acts when the opportunity arises. They also don't always commit their crimes out-doors, or in cloud-free weather. They also don't ever expect to get caught (if they did, that would be a deterrent - it isn't).. So while keeping a plane in the air (and presumably a control room staffed, to watch the spy cameras) and a mechanic on standby to refule it and maintain it, might sound like a good idea - and may even impress the voters the chances of it reducing crime are small.
Luckily for the mayor, it's impossible to correlate one act of crime prevention with any movement in the crime statistics, so whatever happens (short of someone stealing the plane), he, she or it will be able to call the initiative a success.
I do have a feeling though, that this plan was not exactly thought out. Any sale to a gullible official - who isn't spending their own cash yet comes out with statements like "I've never been so excited about anything" sounds like exuberance has got the better over common sense. I would expect that the money earmarked for this plan would be far better spent on orthodox police patrols: more officers, more man-hours and maybe even a few public awareness campaigns. Not as sexy, but far more effective.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Not one seemed so keen on going to school or on avoiding the police. Actually, going to prison was part of the networking with other thugs and the reputation building. So yes, there could be an investment of millions on cameras that can even see through the £5 hooded clothes but I don't think it will be much of a deterrent.
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized"
davecb5620@gmail.com
If the video feed was open to the public, it wouldn't be long before there would be clips of the mayor's butt crack showing up on youtube, as he bent over to work in his garden, or the city council folks walking their dogs and letting them take a dump on neighbor's lawns, or local fatcat businessmen passed out drunk in their back yards, all the local cop cars on patrol making illegal left turns at stoplights, etc.
The spy in the sky program would end pronto then.
When you move out of your parent's basement, you'll find the world a bit less black and white and that Brave Words (while free and easy to make on the 'net) cost money and are sometimes hard to implement.
Here's part of the problem. We should be innocent unless proven guilty, not until proven guilty.
This fallacy presumes that we're all guilty, and it's just a matter of time until someone catches us. We need to stop referring to it as such.
This whole country is being turned upside-down by very subtle, un-noticed changes in our vernacular. We need to stop that.
As demonstrated by one Gordon Freeman as he fled City 21 during the unrest in the early 2000s, these surveillance drones are particularly susceptible to blunt force attacks. Alternatively, subway tunnels and fast waterborne craft also make it difficult for the drones to follow and/or record.
If people stopped acting all crazy, this sort of thing wouldn't be suggested in the first place. As usual, it's the group of kids in the corner of the playground who ruin it for the rest of us.
Military definition of "warning shot" duly noted 8-|
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
because here in Atlanta when police protecting the mayor scanned the plates of a car visiting her son and found the car stolen the policeman doing got into trouble and the police were prevented from doing future scans.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I was stationed at Edwards Air Force Base from 2001 - 2003. After the burgs of Rosamond, Mojave and the tragic-comedy of California City, Lancaster-Palmdale was the closest form of civilization to the base - just a 35-mile drive from the back gate!
While there I formed the theory that Lancaster was used as a checkpoint during the Okie migration of the Great Depression (see "The Grapes of Wrath" for further details). If you were halfway decent-looking, you were allowed to cross the San Gabriel mountains. If you were a freak of nature, you stayed in Lancaster.
Seriously - I never saw so many ugly people in one place in my life.
What?
I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind
And I don't need to see any more
To know that
I can read your mind.