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In NJ, Higher Tech Lowers Crime
crimeandpunishment sends along this snip from an AP story carried on Skunkpost.com: "High tech means low crime in a New Jersey city that has used an arsenal of advanced technology to sharply lower one of the highest crime rates in the nation. And now East Orange is poised to become the first city in the country to take high tech crime fighting to a whole new level ... surveillance cameras with sensors that can be programmed to identify crimes as they unfold."
This is clearly a well thought-out plan. Why, what could possibly go wrong?
What we really need in NJ are cameras that can be programmed to identify political corruption as it unfolds. Oh wait, we already have them, they're called 'regular cameras pointed at our politicians'.
While there are proponents and doubters for such systems, real world application and testing of these technologies are probably the only way to improve them. Is it a waste of money, as some detractors claim? I wish I knew. Perhaps analyzing the crime statistics and costs related to them in contrast to the monies spent would give a clearer picture. Then there's the factor of "a life saved... is priceless" - in which such systems (the existing one, and the "smart" one) may be crucial in saving someone's life; for instance, a mugging victim who was stabbed and left for dead in a deserted street where they otherwise would not be spotted until they had bled to death, or in assisting the police in arriving at the scene of a fight before it gets out of hand and a life is lost.
Either way, such systems will at least help expand and mature this particular area of computers, in a way beneficial to areas other than crime prevention and fighting. It will surely help with any system that is required to interact with human beings (robotics, AI, action and identity sensing systems, various medical systems that are or will be tasked with monitoring and determining the state of certain patient groups in hospitals and institutions, etc).
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
A the most watched nation on earth, we're familiar with this path in the UK. Expect issues, as seen at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/17/birmingham-stops-spy-cameras-project
[citation needed]
Privacy and freedom are more important than a few lives. After all, what is the point of living if you have to do it under constant control and observation? I'd rather be dead.
From TFA:
The results have been startling: Violent crime in East Orange has fallen by more than two-thirds since 2003, according to state police statistics.
...
Jose Cordero was hired as East Orange's police director in 2004 after overseeing the New York Police Department's anti-gang efforts. Crime in East Orange had dropped off after the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 90s but then rose dramatically in the early 2000s as gangs began to put down roots.
It seems more likely to me that Cordero himself is the reason for falling crime rate rather than any high tech stuff (which just tends to move crime to other locations). I'm suspicious because, for example, in the UK where there is massive investment in surveillance cameras, my understanding is that they have found that they are mainly useful for providing evidence for prosecuting the criminals after the fact, and even that is only in something less than 25% of the cases.
Besides the oft-quoted Ben Franklin line, I do believe giving a government too much power in watching the populace is dangerous for liberty. Should the legitimate need arise to break a law or subvert the government, corrupt individuals will have power to stop people even more easily.
On the fliip side, the ubiquity of increased surveillance available to the PUBLIC as well as to the government (they are two different things) might prevent the government from getting away with the shit it does now.
I have to throw in a quote: "With great power comes great responsibillity." I don't think the government has enough of the latter to justify the amount of the former it possesses.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1
Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Privacy and freedom are more important than a few lives. After all, what is the point of living if you have to do it under constant control and observation? I'd rather be dead.
What part of the fact that cameras are already in place did you miss? And what privacy is being invaded on a public street where there is no expectation of privacy (except by idiots hiding under AC status here instead of posting under their account). And what freedom is being infringed by this system? The "freedom" of criminals to commit crimes? Remember, the system does not act on the event in person. It points it out to a human being who then decides what to do... just like as if the human being (cop) saw it in person.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
So I lived in the mission area of SF for a while earlier this year. This place was bad - post the 21st street or so. A friend of mine was mugged & beaten badly at 24th and Mission (where Bart is) at 9 in the evening.
Last year they started installing cameras all around (very visible effort - you could see cameras all around you) - and the crime rate (atleast the mugging rate) went down immediately. Everyone here agrees that the drop in crime can be attributed to the street cameras. This opinion is also shared by business & hotel owners whom I know and meet.
I do think nothing can improve Tenderloin though.
detection != prevention
They are actually charging users with much higher crimes by adding up all of their purchases. I've had friends that have been charged with their entire years worth of purchases in a single case.
Rather than charging on a single offense for purchasing a small quantity of heroin in Jersey City. They are waiting until the charge can be trumped up to 6 months of their use. So instead of being charged with purchasing a single gram (bundle)... they are being charged with purchasing 400grams over the course of 6 months to a year, bringing long prison sentences to habitual users.
The high charges are definitely a deterrent for users, though I hardly think these charges are justified.
Logic?
England has millions of surveillance cameras with little detectable effect on crime.
The cameras make it easier to arrest people, but we already arrest more people than the system can handle. Arresting more, makes no difference.
There are levels of the assumption of privacy. On a public street I expect that anything I do might be photographed, but I don't expect that any party is keeping an extensive enough set of recordings of me to plot all my movements and my daily activities.
Even though photography in public in general is legal and violates no rights, it's unclear whether a systematic campaign to photograph such a huge swath of someone's activities that you can extract overall patterns of behavior does. If a private person did this they might be prosecuted (rightfully so) for stalking.
The incarceration rate is more important to me than the "crime rate." Are there more people in prison as a result of the high technology, or are less people in prison? Just because we become more efficient at catching criminals it doesn't mean society is safer, it all depends on what we consider to be a crime at the time and how we sentence it. The technology doesn't really help one way or the other unless we have sane laws.
What is more important is how many of your friends and family will be locked up because of all the increased surveillance?
Crime rate is a very vague standard of measurement. They didn't say violent crime. They didn't say which crimes. They just said the crime rate is lower which could mean anything or nothing at all. It doesn't mean murder is lower, or rape is lower, it's no different than saying the economy is growing even if its a jobless recovery.
The incarceration rate is too high, and unless this technology can lower the incarceration rate while helping to reduce the rate of violent crime I don't see how this technology will help us. In fact it may make us all into criminals and give the police the power to arrest anyone for any reason.
Any casino
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
The campaign of John Edwards lives on.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
I totally agree, but if the detection rate is high enough, then people start to behave differently and you do not need prevention programs because most people are just too afraid to do anything that goes against what the governing people define as the law.
That was the point I was trying to make. You may call that irony if you wish. I am not saying surveillance, police state and totalitarian regimes are the way to go.
Go talk to some people who have lived under a totalitarian regime. I was just trying to draw a parallel between a city under high surveillance and totalitarian regimes, a little irony doesn't hurt sometimes. ;-)
As well, note that we are not talking about surveillance similar to what is done in the U.K. We are talking about detecting crimes in progress and gun shut detectors that would trigger immediate intervention from the police forces.
What happens in case of a false alarm ?
Police now has a valid reason to go into your place. They might find something to bring charges in your place that is unrelated to the alarm. If they don't, well you still get the idea they may come into your place anytime even if you didn't do anything wrong. The scare tactic begin to take place.
I had police rushing into my apartment because they said they received a 911 call coming from my apartment. Of course this was B.S. They searched my whole place to make sure I didn't hide my dead girlfriend in some closet. They said that I had to let them in, that they didn't need a search warrant because of the 911 call. They finally left without even excusing themselves for disturbing me.
I called the phone company the next day about this and on the same day they had somebody in the telephone pole in my backyard. They phoned back saying that they found the problem and that they were sorry about that. I also had noticed dropped packed on the DSL link on that line so I believe there was indeed a problem with the line ;-)
Police do take advantage of false alarm to conduct random searches because they can do so without a warrant. I told the police many times that there were no 911 call made but they just wouldn't believe me.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Lowering the violence rate, lowering specific types of crime which have victims may make us safer. Lowering the "crime rate." usually raises the incarceration rate which often lowers the income of families making them even more desperate and likely to commit crimes in the future.
Lowering the crime rate is a way to increase the incarceration rate and win political points. It's not going to make anyone safer to for example make massive arrests of drug possession, or to arrest thousands of prostitutes, but thats usually the kind of crime they go after because it's easier. They'll probably go arrest a bunch of small time pot dealers, and crackheads, maybe some prostitutes, and say they lowered the crime rate in the city.
Bigots have to worry about becoming criminals twice.
And on the voters who voted for this crud. Surveillance will be abused for political gain and really thats the only reason any of these politicians care to lower the crime rate. You don't see any of these politicians trying to create jobs as a way to lower the crime rate bu they don't mind building prisons and putting cameras everywhere?
So you wouldn't see anything with effectively having a cop in each street corner? The words "police state" come to mind... how long 'till facecrime?
Dilbert RSS feed
Real high tech would be identifying crimes before they unfold. :P
The real problem is the anti-precog startup next doors.
Dilbert RSS feed
As if all the wrongs of mankind can be layed at the feet of religion.
All? Certainly not. A great multitude of wrongs certainly can be traced to religion without any question on the matter. Numerous past and ongoing examples of wars, torture, terrorism, bigotry, genocide, and more are so frequent as to cause despair.
As if, if there were godless people, they wouldn't just find another belief system or philosophy to justify doing the same things.
Perhaps but at least it wouldn't be because of mythology.
This type of surveillance technology wont catch a sophisticated white collar criminal. This technology wont catch organized criminal mafias. It wont catch anyone but the dumbest criminals. This is designed to win political points by making the neighborhood look like it's safe when it really is more dangerous than ever. The police get to look like they are doing their job when they arrest hundreds of prostitutes and thousands of drug dealers. This technology is not going to stop any of the gangs, mafias, or white collar criminals. This technology will only be used to harass the dumb poor. If you are poor and dumb, you better be scared.
Religion effectively turns otherwise sane people into what I like to call supermaterialists. Suddenly, a rock or a cave or other geographic location becomes worth more than the resources it can provide. Suddenly a drawing of a religious figure is enough to kill over. Suddenly you think there's an invisible person who will "sort things out" if you decide to kill a bunch of women and children.
Religion introduces nothing but tools to conquer reason in order to get ignorant followers to go along with whatever plan it's leaders have cooked up. It's why the all the nations who have clung to fundamentalism are in last place in pretty much every metric you can think of, and why America is quickly headed in the same direction.
Can't wait until the next time I am in New Jersey and do the "did I forget my wallet in my car?" pat-down in public, I will probably be sitting in the county jail overnight on suspicion of mugging.
I'm glad to see someone throwing out an out-of-the-box idea on how to prevent or neutralize crimes before they actually happen, but now instead of dealing with a crime after it's been committed, you get to watch it unfold while it's happening. Perhaps a bit more video evidence to look at on law enforcements side, but what does this do for Joe Americana and their privacy rights? You know this network is going to get used for more than it's initial intention. Unfortunately, bad apples spoil the whole pie sometimes and no one wins.
There are levels of the assumption of privacy. On a public street I expect that anything I do might be photographed, but I don't expect that any party is keeping an extensive enough set of recordings of me to plot all my movements and my daily activities.
So, what you are saying is you dont own a cell phone?
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
This is nothing. My startup technology detects crimes BEFORE they unfold.
In Soviet Russia, crime detects YOU!
Cameras stop cheating, not crime. With hundreds of full time security guys walking around, you don't need cameras to quell violence. The only analogue to NJ would be if you put 2 cops on every street corner.
How do you detect a gun shot cheaply and with triangulation?
Could it be via a cheap device called a microphone? Strange how its now "gunshot detection" like its some optical device.
If they can listen for gun shots, they can listen for voices and create a nice 'part time' state voice print database.
Welcome back to COINTELPRO version 2.0 down every large street.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'm sorry, but I completely disagree with your sentiment. If there was a problem with your line that caused a 911 call to be made, you cannot fault the police with following protocol. How can they know that it was a problem with your line that caused the call to take place? How are they to know that you didn't do something to your girlfriend that caused her to call 911, only for you to hang up the phone before she could do or say anything? In that case, it is perfectly logical that they would conduct a search of your apartment in order to ensure that you didn't do something further to her because she tried to call for help.
I mean, why should the police believe you that there was nothing wrong? Because you said so? Sorry, not a good enough reason. Had something actually happened, and they simply left because you said there was some kind of mistake, and a body was later found, the public outcry would have been enormous.
The police just can't win. We expect them to do their jobs, but when they do do their jobs, people get angry because they might be a bit inconvenienced. I just don't understand it.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
I am an SVU cop posting to Slashdot from work right now. I am currently recording a man raping a woman in a dark alley. This is his fifth victim that we know of. We're not going to move in until he's gotten to 20, or until he stops.
Seems that the appropriate response would have depended entirely on the contents of the 911 call. If there was specific, actionable information in the 911 call, then that would be one thing. If the caller said "Help me, my boyfriend is beating me and I can't get away." it seems reasonable to enter without the owner's permission. If the call was simply a hang up, or a call for a non-criminal emergency, then there should be no reason for the police to enter without permission. In many places, 911 calls are a matter of public record. Seems like it would be reasonable for the GP to find out exactly the contents of the call. If the police were unreasonable or acting outside of policy, then it would be reasonable to complain, and seek appropriate restitution.
That's the problem, because in a city with gun shot detectors, crime in progress detectors and what not, you will end up with more and more false alarms justifying the police to act without a warrant.
At the limit, in an a city under hyper-surveillance, you may as well forget about the police needing a warrant in any case.
Also, I never said the police didn't do job and I remained polite with them because I was understanding what was happening. Funnily enough, if I had told them to go to hell, they probably would have broken into my place and arrested me for disobeying police orders.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
There was no content, only a callerid shown on the dispatcher console.
The defect on the line was causing it to go on-hook/off-hook randomly. The way rotary dials work is just the same.
1) Go off hook for 1 sec.
2) Quickly go on-hook for 1/10 to 3/4 of a second nine times.
3) Stay off-hook for 1 sec.
4) Quickly go on-hook for 1/10 to 3/4 of a second one time.
5) Stay off-hook for 1 sec.
6) Quickly go on-hook for 1/10 to 3/4 of a second one time.
7) Stay off-hook
There you go, you have just called 911. Of course there will be no content but police will show up at your place if you do have enhanced 911 where the dispatcher sees your callerid/address.
The police then thinks you hung up the phone before your now dead girlfriend had a chance to say anything to 911. They will search under the bed, closest, look in the bathtub and look for traces of fighting or violence.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
As a criminologist I have to say this interpretation of the relationship between crime and incarceration is... well... not supported by the evidence. The relationship between incarceration rates and crime rates is loose at best and this has been demonstrated both in cross national studies and in longitudinal studies of the United States and other western nations. For example, in the United States incarceration rates have risen dramatically and consistently in the last 40 years while crime rates have fluctuated considerably. The factor that has the biggest impact on the incarceration rate is actually changes in sentencing strategies. Changes in sentencing strategies are often only loosely related to crime rates, if at all, however.
Whether a lowering of the crime rate corresponds to an increase in safety depends on which crimes are being reduced, of course, but typically a reduction in crime rate corresponds to a reduction in violent and property crimes.
Now, padding arrest rates with drug possession/prostitution arrests may be political posturing, but arrest rate is not the same as crime rate.
and circular ones.
Only fools confuse the two.
I responded to a quick swipe at religion with a quick swipe at dismissal of religion.
I did not believe in God as a child. However, now I have reasons sufficient to convince myself, but they are contingent on things I've learned over the course of my life. I do not believe I could deliver a convincing explanation of my beliefs to someone who has had different experiences from me.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Cameras don't prevent crime; they make it easier to convict. They do not make anyone safer.
Whether a lowering of the crime rate corresponds to an increase in safety depends on which crimes are being reduced, of course, but typically a reduction in crime rate corresponds to a reduction in violent and property crimes.
Now, padding arrest rates with drug possession/prostitution arrests may be political posturing, but arrest rate is not the same as crime rate.
So tell me what exactly is the "crime rate"?
If it's not measured or correlated with the arrest rate, is it the conviction rate? How do we measure the crime rate?
X number of crimes per Y population in Z area = crime rate
You know how many people gave their lives to create that freedom? Now we should throw all that away to save *one*....?
No sig today...
Yea, I bet the Gestapo and MVD or Ministry of Internal Affairs would have loved it.
Why, what could possibly go wrong?
Loss of freedom.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
No problem. If it violates our rights, it'll recognize that as a crime in progress, and turn itself off.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
They finally left without even excusing themselves for disturbing me.
This is the problem.
I've had the cops called on me once. I had a man show up at the gate of my patio wearing a ski mask in 50-degree weather. I greeted him with a handgun. Turns out it was my elderly and somewhat demented neighbor, and when the police officer arrived, he asked what happened. I told him. He wished me a good night and left. That's both good police work and good public relations.
If you're going to toss someone's house, a simple "We're sorry to have bothered you, but we do have to check these things" costs only about five seconds' time and really does go a long way toward making someone feel better about the fact that gang of armed men just forced their way into his house and tore the place apart.
Stop white collar crime, and blue collar crime will solve itself.
The statistics are even worse than those figures imply. According to stats recently released by London, the surveillance camera capital of the world (I did not find the article, but it was just a couple of months ago), the number of crimes solved using cameras equated to one crime annually per 1,000 cameras. Note that does not even specify "major" crimes, just crimes. It is likely that the average crime solved saved less money than that single camera and the person or people required to staff it cost, and that doesn't even count the other 999.
MAYBE this system is different. But if it's like many of the other "high-tech" systems that have been tried in recent years, if I were them I would be awfully cautious. As the guy in TFA said, it is very likely that if the system is sensitive enough to actually detect crimes, there will also be so many false positives as to render it useless.
High fives and stopping to talk to a friend on the roadside are now potential crimes?
This sentence no verb.
The most atheistic nations today have the highest suicide rates (these are those enlightened nations always mentioned here as being so wonderful..we all know which ones those are). They may have a lot of material wealth, but have little regard for anything else, mass alcoholism and drug addiction is the norm in those nations, and has been steadily rising year after year over the last several decades now.
Citation needed -- if you're not even going to name the countries, you don't have much credibility. Also, have you estimated the size of the systematic error due to reporting differences? If you're going to wave your hands and invoke statistics you'd better have some numbers to back them up.
The largest mass murders in the 20th century were done by the officially atheistic and socialist/communist/collectivist nations (USSR, China, Nazi era Germany, and today North Korea, by far the most oppressive regime on the planet).
Did I say that atheists were always perfect? Besides, Hitler's regime wasn't adverse to religion; he alternatively used Christianity and Germanic neopaganism for his own ends.
Your examples would be more meaningful if three of the four weren't Communist, which just happens to combine state atheism with state repression.
And these Communist regimes replace loyalty to a false religious ideology with unblinking loyalty to the Party, which is just as bad in exactly the same way.
In your list of repressive regimes, you forgot Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the various Southeast Asian military dictatorships, fyi.
Your metrics, the ones you insist make you "superior", leave a lot to be desired when you leave out and dismiss as so trivial to not mention, the mass murder of close to 200 million people, and the mass unhappiness that comes from pure empty materialistic life.
"Materialism" means two things. There's the philosophical idea that the material world is all that there is, and that's not "empty". (I study that material world as a particle physicist, and it's very complex and beautiful.)
Then there's the common use to mean "obsession with material things"... and that has nothing to do with atheism; actually, most of the atheists I know are less concerned with possessions than the average religious person.
Atheism in and by itself is not any sort of "cure" for mass assholeness.
No, it's not. It's prevention, in the long term: in a rational world, assholes are more quickly called out and shouted down.
Or perhaps he doesn't carry it everywhere. If I were doing something shady I certainly wouldn't.
So if we detect more crimes wouldnt it raise the crime rate?
Their "protocol" -- and the law in most states -- does not allow them to go busting in to a place without at least trying other means first.
Once I was sharing the rent of a house with someone else. Occasionally, she would get so drunk she was completely out of her head. (Believe me, when I learned that I did not stay there voluntarily, but for a while I did not have the money to move out.)
One night she was arguing with her boyfriend (no physical fight involved), and threatened to call 911 (nobody knows why, this was one of her out-of-the-head moments). She picked up her cell phone, messed with it a moment, then put it back down. Unknown to us, she had dialled 911 then hung up.
A little while later (not very fast, sad to say), there were 4 policemen at the front door. I answered the door, and one of them said "Did someone dial 911?" I said "Oh, shit. Yes, I think someone did. Just a minute, I will go get her." And started to close the door.
One of the policemen put his hand on the door and said "I would like to come in and talk to her." I said, "I will go get her, you just wait here." And I closed the door. Went and got her, told her the police wanted to talk to her. She let one of them in, and he interviewed her. In the meantime, the other officers, still outside, proceeded to badger me: "Why didn't you let us in?" "What are you afraid of?" "What have you got in there you don't want us to see?" Etc., etc.
I just smiled and told them "Nothing personal; it is a matter of principle. You got to talk to the person you came here to see. You need not concern yourselves with anything else." I closed the door and went to bed.
While I still lived there, there were several instances of the police coming to the house. All of them were due to her and her boyfriends... the police have never come to my house before that or since.
They would say things like "We had a report of domestic abuse. We are required by law to interview the alleged victim." I would say, "Wait here, I will go get (him/her)," and do that. Then he/she would go OUTSIDE to talk to the police. Only in a couple of instances were any of them allowed inside, despite their pleas (which were often lies): "We are required by law to come in and check out the situation." "We have to come in and talk to her." Etc.
In ANY of those cases, if they had tried to break in unannounced, they would have gotten shot.
Who watches the watchers?
Any system that can be abused will be.
Falcom
Should there be a Law?
To anybody who is curious about just what exactly are their rights in such situations, I highly recommend this video: A Citizen's Guide To Surviving Police Encounters
And this one (two parts, also about 45 minutes: Don't Talk to Cops
Why don't we focus on the incarceration rate and seek to lower it to as low as possible? Why don't we seek to decrease the arrest rate for victimless crimes? Anybody have an answer that isn't racist, sexist, or elitist?
Ah but those are the reasons we have victimless crimes, because of elitism, racism, and sexism. Oh, and religion.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I am not sure what state you are in, but in most you would not have been obligated to let them in (despite their claims otherwise). You could have simply told them that there was some kind of error, and no 911 call from your apartment. Not that they would automatically believe you; they are trained to be suspicious in such circumstances. But even so, that does not give them a legal right to enter your home. They need more concrete cause than just that.
You were lied to, and you believed them, and so you got shafted.
Footage analysis software seems to be getting very well tuned. There was some footage of the riots after the Lakers game that was released to the press not long after it was shot (about 30-60 minutes after the recorded incident). The released still retained the "trouble spots" that were much lighter than the surrounding areas. The footage was urban night footage of a LARGE crowd. Dispite all of the "noise" in the crowd, the highlighted area instantly drew focus to exactly what needed to be paid attention to. Although such highlighting is only marginally helpful when viewed on a single frame, I could understand how it could aid someone watching the frame live, at 30+fps.
As far as crimes go, it seems like some would probably be easier to identify than others. An assault for example is probably fairly easy to train a computer to detected. It just has to locate two objects of about a similar size, spending too much time in close proximity to each other. In fact I'd bet that most of algorithms are probably spacial and time sensitive. Ie. Blob of X size stays in Y predetermined area for Z amount of time.. send alert. That might be the case for a burgular or security system.
What do you guys think the practical limits of auto-detection are, given the computational power available to security companies, and/or the government? Are there any experts in sensors and robotics and signal analysis around?
I thought about not opening the door just to see what would happen but I decided against since I had nothing to hide. This is the very type of reasoning we have to be careful about and that could potentially lead to a police state.
I agree with you that they might not have dared to break in if I didn't open the door.
The fact that I was alone in the apartment didn't help. If there had been 10 persons saying; no problem here officers, they might not have asked to come in. Anyway, the cops were just doing their jobs. Cops are mandated to apply the laws and to follow guidelines stated by their superiors. If not happy with it, don't complain to the cops but to people who make laws and instruct cops how they should behave in given situations.
That was the whole point of my posts. Public awareness is the only thing that can save us from tending to a police state. The day everybody says: "I have nothing to hide, so I do not mind being randomly checked or checked because of a technological mistake", we are fried. ;-)
It doesn't take a great brain to figure out that civil liberties tend to go down as technology arise. We have to be aware of this phenomenon, it is irrefutable.
I just gave an insigthful example with my 911 example. Enhanced 911 was supposedly put in place to protect people. For example, somebody having a heart attack and who is unable to speak could still be saved due to the dispatcher seeing his address on his console. But in my case this "technological advancement" infringed on my civil rights.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
How do you define "victimless crimes" exactly?
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
I certainly agree with that; however I take the default position that while I may have nothing to hide, I also have no cause to allow someone to rummage through my private stuff without legal cause. My mother told me the same thing: "If I have nothing to hide, why should I mind?" I told her: "The fact that you are not doing anything illegal or to be ashamed of, does not justify giving someone else permission to stand by your front window and watch everything you do." I am sure most people would agree that would be disconcerting. And for good reason: people (in the U.S. anyway) have an aversion to surveillance, whether they have anything to hide or not.
MY point was that your civil rights were not violated. You consented, and by doing so waived your rights. Those are two very different things.
I recommend you watch those videos I linked to above.
...that 25years ago, we all saw that the surveillance states of the Eastern block were an abomination not worthy of a free society...
Now, we create surveillance society V2.0 here in the west...
As Brandon demonstrated when he was head of the NYPD, what really works is detailed, fast-turnaround monitoring of what cops are doing by top management of the department. Brandon introduced COMPSTAT, which is a combination of a statistical quality control system and a map-based event tracking system, with meetings every morning to discuss what happened in the last 24 hours.
It's not so much about technology as it is about not dropping the ball. COMPSTAT is about top management noticing that there's been a burst in complaints in some area, but arrests haven't gone up to match. It's about making sure that information about gang activity developed on second shift gets passed on to third shift. It's about noticing that some crook went free because the officer who was supposed to testify didn't show up in court. Police departments without strong management tend to do the same thing every day rather than responding to shifts in what the opposition is doing. That means they have a lot of guys driving around but not accomplishing much.
Cops tend to hate that kind of management at first. But after a while, the better cope get to like the feeling that they're on top of things and winning.
So if a group of Pirates attacks a group of Ninjas how will the system categorize the crime?
maybe but to truly detect the CCTV system must not only cover all areas but all citizens have to be easily recognizable by the system and their location easy to store and retrieve.
Crimes that involve consensual activity between the participants. Like prostitution. There is no victim as long as all parties are willing to engage in the transaction. Possession and use of drugs are also victimless. This is not to excuse criminal activity as a result of impaired mental function from drug use, any more than legalization of alcohol excuses vehicular homicide as a result of driving drunk. It's a pretty easy definition to follow.
I love when there are surveillance cameras watching surveillance cameras. Since the cameras where being stolen.
In Rochester, NY we have run Shotspotter for a very long time now. There are sensors at all major intersections that "listen" for crimes, and can "learn" what crimes are being committed just by sound and video. The shotspotter system here knows when a gun shot goes off, or what type of vehicle related accident has occurred.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
Got it. I suppose this is as opposed to a stabbing or something where someone clearly didn't want to be involved.
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
Pretty much.
Who watches the watchers?
Any system that can be abused will be.
Falcom
Yeah, I said that in an earlier post... but the thing is, this (article) is about computerizing the detection of problems and such. The cameras are already there. If anything, this may reduce some of the abuses, or at least mean that humans are monitoring less of the stuff until informed by a computer that something needs to be viewed.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Cult of Personality. It's called that for a reason.
That said, the problem with Communism - and Scientology and other cults - is that they are new cults, and haven't yet have a chance to drop their more antisocial aspects. Memes are like viruses: they adapt to their host, and go from causing potentially lifethreatening illness to causing a few sneezes to even helping their host along in a symbiotic relationship. It's evolution in action.
Unfortunately, atheism doesn't make the world rational. Most high-noise atheists are every bit as irrational and ignorant than high-noise theists. This is quite understandable: human processing capacity is limited by the brain size, which is limited by the width of a woman's birth canal, which is limited by the depands of bipedal locomotion. In other words, most people are getting far more percepts than they can really process, and end up with very superficial and vague understanding of things like logic. The modern world is making things worse, since the Internet and other high-capacity communication mediums increase the amount of incoming data.
The real solution is not adherence to any particular ideology, but boosting human brain capacity through technology. But then again, if humans are boosted, the amount of incoming data increases... aaargh.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It's not surprising that it took a while, since your roommate called from a cell-phone. Yes, they do get a "more-or-less" location based on the phone's GPS, or tower position, but they don't necessarily get a really accurate location. In this case, those cops may have had to go door to door to find out which house the cell-phone was actually in. Yes, I know you said that your roomate was the one who owned the phone, but owner address is not normally part of the data that 911 gets.
Even fishier. Unless the cops were being particularly lax, they would not just say "Okie dokie" when you closed the door on them. The fact that you SAY it was your roommate that made the call is irrelevant. The fact that she says she's the one who made the call is irrelevant. You've now admitted that the call came from your house, and they have no way of knowing who made that call, or that the person who made that call isn't tied up in your bathroom with a gag in their mouth. Even if they did believe you that your friend was in fact the person who made the call, your insistence that they shouldn't come in would probably make them think that the call was made during a "domestic disturbance", and that you hadn't had time to clean up the broken glass/furniture/whatever. For all they knew, you'd terrorized your roommate into lying that everything was fine, when in fact you'd been punching her in the stomach until they showed up.
Unlikely. Again, unless you got some really lax officers (who may have, just for fun, gone door-to-door looking for that phone, even though they had no interest in investigating the call), at this point you'd get the choice of cooperating or trying on some new silver bracelets.
So, so far, what you've described is that a call went to 911, the police responded, you made them suspicious by insisting that although the 911 call came from your residence, you don't want them coming in to confirm that there was no crime. At this point, I'd probably expect the police to demand entry, and if it turns out there's no actual problem, say good night and go home (unless you really try to piss them off, in which case you may get a cite for disorderly conduct or obstruction). If you then have further complaints, I'd expect that they'd plead exigent circumstances, exempting them from the need to have a warrant to search the premises, which ultimately is how it'd get written up.
And then you'd wind up dead, and we wouldn't be reading your posts on
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
The cameras are already there.
I don't see where TFA says cameras are already there, the only reference I found as to when they were installed was this: "Other upgrades followed, among them a wireless computer system for all patrol cars; video surveillance cameras in high-crime areas; a virtual community patrol system for residents to report crimes via text message; a grid showing patrol cars' locations, and a gunshot detection system that tracks the source of shootings." Video surveillance cameras were installed as an upgrade.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This part that you quoted:
"Other upgrades followed (past tense, already happened)... video surveillance cameras in high-crime areas"
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
This part that you quoted:
"Other upgrades followed (past tense, already happened)... video surveillance cameras in high-crime areas"
Not quite. Followed "come after in time, as a result ("A terrible tsunami followed the earthquake")". Another use as a verb is "to bring something about at a later time than". The cameras came after in tyme.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Huh? Context.
"Other upgrades followed" some event that already happened
That means that those upgrades already occurred, as in future tense from the event indicated, but at the present moment, the event(s) that followed are past event(s). C'mon, I've read your posts, and know you are more than smart enough to know what I was saying.
Regardless, the statement means that the cameras were already installed, even if after previous events - which was the point of our original little thread divergence.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
"Other upgrades followed" some event that already happened
Except you missed some, "Other upgrades followed, among them a wireless computer system for all patrol cars; video surveillance cameras in high-crime areas;"
Regardless, the statement means that the cameras were already installed, even if after previous events - which was the point of our original little thread divergence.
No it doesn't, it means they were made after not before.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Ah... I think the problem here is you are misreading the article - or I need more coffee.
The article says that surveillance cameras are already installed (after other changes). It then goes on to say that the city
"is going a step further by becoming the first in the country to combine those systems with sensors..."
Future tense... "is going a step further" - not "went a step further"
and...
"East Orange police say the overall system can trim response time to mere seconds."
Not "has trimmed..."
But there's more. I actually decided to read other articles on it. The surveillance cameras started being put in place on or before 2003. The "smart camera" system is newer - and yes, installed and apparently in use (contrary to the poor wording in the article I quoted). But regardless, in place AFTER the 2003 camera rollout.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Unfortunately, atheism doesn't make the world rational.
No, it doesn't. But it's a prerequisite for a rational world.
This is quite understandable: human processing capacity is limited by the brain size...
Maybe in an absolute sense, but the efficiency of that processing can scale wildly. We have the same brain size as did our ancestors from thousands of years ago (roughly), but consider just how much better we have become at all sorts of processing. As just one example, we have turned the analysis of uncertainty into a very precise science and can now combine a huge number of measurements that, by themselves, have little value into statements like "It is 99.7% certain that X is better than Y." (I refer, of course, to the modern science of statistics. As just one example of how far we go these days in quantifying uncertainty, see http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.2211.)
Whereas in medieval times artisans trying to build a cathedral had to go by rules of thumb and intuition (which they were quite good at, but the things still fell down regularly), we now have come up with precise ways of measuring the strength of materials and our buildings only very rarely fall down now due to design failures.
It's like bubble-sort vs. quicksort: even running on the same CPU there is a lot of room for improvement in algorithms, and that's what the development of human culture buys you. And we're not done yet.