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?
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.
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