Scotland Yard Chief: Put CCTV In Every Home To Help Solve Crimes

schwit1 writes Homeowners should consider fitting CCTV to trap burglars, the country's most senior police officer declared yesterday. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said police forces needed more crime scene footage to match against their 12 million images of suspects and offenders. And he called on families and businesses to install cameras at eye level – to exploit advances in facial recognition technology.

Comments

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, Orwell did write that tyranny in UK would come in the guise of nationalism and security

Re:Seriously?

[Albanach]

Then again, Orwell did write that tyranny in UK would come in the guise of nationalism and security

Well, he isn't apparently suggesting the police or state should be able to place a camera in every home, just that it's a smart idea for a homeowner. Personally, I'd have thought that for anyone willing to pay for a home security system this would be a no brainer today. There's countless wireless enabled camera systems that are obviously going to be useful in the event of a burglary.

That said, it's a short term fix. As burglars become more aware of the presence of cameras, they'll start wearing a mask just like folk robbing stores and banks where CCTV is expected already do. Once outdoor cameras become more prevalent, they won't use your driveway to park. There might be a small deterrence factor that would encourage an opportunistic thief to go next door if they can see cameras outside your house, but equally you might just be advertising that you have stuff worth stealing.

Re:Seriously?

[Firethorn]

That said, it's a short term fix. As burglars become more aware of the presence of cameras, they'll start wearing a mask just like folk robbing stores and banks where CCTV is expected already do. Once outdoor cameras become more prevalent, they won't use your driveway to park.

Both increase the 'costs' of burglary though. A mask is generally hot, a pain in the but, and outside the home signals that you're up to no good. Having to park elsewhere increases the distance you have to carry your loot, not necessarily a big deal for jewelry, but if you're trying to steal big screen TVs and other heavy or bulky goods, decreases your haul capability significantly. Plus, well, hauling stuff a longer ways increases the chances of the neighbors calling you in. You look less like a moving/delivery company.

Increased expense, lower haul, should reduce the amount of robbery,

(Note, I like playing opposing force in exercises)

Re:Seriously?

[AmiMoJo]

This isn't about making your home more secure. For that you just need reasonable locks and the remember to use them when you go out. Most burglary is opportunistic, doors or windows left open.

This is about two things.

1. Make the facial recognition database more acceptable to the public. Hay, it might solve that crime you were a victim of but we couldn't be bothered to investigate! Don't worry, it's only bad people on there... Well, a few million innocent people too, but if you have nothing to hide and don't go around robbing houses...

2. Make the police's life easier. Investigating domestic crime is a hassle and takes officers away from revenue generating speed traps and more interesting work. The police are also fairly shit at solving this kind of crime, especially things like domestic violence. Cameras, paid for by victims, would really help improve their stats.

Re:Seriously?

[ubrgeek]

> A mask is generally hot, a pain in the but

You do know the mask goes on your other head, right?

Re:Seriously?

[roc97007]

So, you get a david cameron rubber mask and you buddy gets a genuine Prince of Wales rubber face thingy.
Happy robbings on cctv.

Yyyyyyes, true, but in all fairness, going at least by the frequency of robbers caught in the US because their faces were captured on PC webcams, robbers tend to be idiots. At least, a significant number appear so.

Re:Seriously?

[WeeBit]

"That said, it's a short term fix. As burglars become more aware of the presence of cameras, they'll start wearing a mask just like folk robbing stores and banks where CCTV is expected already do."

In my area cameras are everywhere. Placing the camera is just as important as the camera you buy. Many try and think they out witted the camera just to find out they didn't and went to jail anyways. In my area alone which is a diverse neighborhood price wise etc, we have had many burglaries solved, and a home invasion because of a camera carefully placed.

"encourage an opportunistic thief to go next door if they can see cameras outside your house, but equally you might just be advertising that you have stuff worth stealing."

Not true ! Don't underestimate the stupidity of a thief. Advertise cameras regardless if you have them or not. Advertise live feed online also. It makes no difference around here. Born stupid is always stupid.

They showed footage of a burglar looking for a ADT system pad, and what the guy should of been doing is looking for the cameras. Another came to the front door in all their glory and knocked 30 minutes before a home invasion with his buddy's. After spraying two cameras out front which were wired he never thought there may be a camera or two that was not wired.

Re:Seriously?

[Firethorn]

At least, a significant number appear so.

Most petty criminals are idiots. They commit high-stakes crimes for petty rewards.

As for the AC, I'm not saying that the camera can't be defeated. I'm saying that it adds 'expenses', IE makes committing a successful burglary more difficult/less rewarding. You have to remember to bring the masks. You have to make sure they fit. Rubber masks tend to be hot, restrict vision, and collect sweat. A T-shirt over the head may not defeat modern facial recognition. Covering your license plates is a cop magnet during the crime. Wearing cheap obvious masks tends to attract attention, while an expensive good one that looks like a real person other than you, at least at moderate distances, tends to be expensive enough that you don't want to dispose of it after 'every' job. Matter of fact, if you wear a mask enough, I'm sure they can pull DNA evidence off it today.

Currently burglars count on either not being caught on camera, or there being so many petty criminals that the police can't match their face with the camera footage.

Lead the way

[Tolkienite]

I'm certain he'll lead the way and will soon post details of the system he installed in his own home and other relatives.

Life Imitating Art

[Prototerm]

Repeat after me: Orwell's 1984 is *not* an instruction manual!

Great idea

[waynemcdougall]

Why not just make cameras a compulsory part of every TV, and then ensure that the TV can never be switched off?

Seriously?

[Greyfox]

Do these guys even listen to the words that come out of their pie holes when they open them? Or do they just have some mental disorder that causes them to just spew out a constant stream of consciousness? Or are they just some unread cronies of some MP? In any event, they might want to run their ideas by some better-educated underling before opening their trap in front of the press. You know, someone who can go, "Wot, like 1984? Bloody 'ell that's a terrible idea!" (For some reason my idea of a "better educated underling" is John Oliver doing a Charles Dickens parody.)

RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire article was about putting the camera you have in the proper position to get a face shot, which they can match to mug shots. They get too many videos of the top of the head, and that doesn't solve the crime. He was not asking that everyone provide a live feed from their house.

Re:RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Hook. Line. Sinker.

Re:RTFA

[TheCarp]

There was a hilarious local robbery that my wife and I watched the video footage of. I don't know if they actually got caught but, 3 men came in to steal a safe. They, of course, wear hoodies and visored caps. They look down.

One of them deftly moves directly under the camera and starts trying to smash it from below...fails....and turns to get a better look....giving his face right up straight on to the camera, after which he smashes it good.

Re:RTFA

[SeaFox]

He was not asking that everyone provide a live feed from their house.

No, we'll just install those cameras (that today are IP-based) and tie them in to the in-home recording device over our router -- which is connected to the Internet.
But that's okay. There's no way to get into the router from outside -- certainly not through a government-mandated backdoor.

Re:RTFA

[BarbaraHudson]

Maybe the good Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe should be "encouraged" to volunteer his home as the test bed. And use lots of cameras - those Brits just love their security cameras, you know. "A camera on every corner." So, put them in the corner in the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen (so we can all watch them ruin a good piece of meat by boiling it to death and then some), the kids rooms, the garage, etc.

You know - practice what you preach or stop preaching.

Re:RTFA

[jez9999]

Maybe the good Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe should be "encouraged" to volunteer his home as the test bed. And use lots of cameras - those Brits just love their security cameras, you know.

I'm British. I swear to god we're not all like this. Some of us absolutely do not want to live in a surveillence state and assholes like ACPO and "the head of Scotland Yard" are terribly unrepresentative of public opinion, in general. There are, however, a core of authoritarians who see no problem with removal of privacy. Just not most of us.

Re:RTFA

[roc97007]

> So, put them in the corner in the bedroom

Because nothing deters criminals more than a naked, pale 57-year-old British guy.

With black socks and garters. Oh, man, now I'll never get that image out of my mind.

Re:RTFA

[rmdingler]

Then it will become more common practice to cut lines to the places they will rob, if there is a live feed.

Skilled burglars have been cutting power and phone lines for years, since alarm systems have been in relative widespread use since the 90's. Many homes that report intruder alerts over land lines are easily defeated in this manner, especially if the loudspeaker in the attic can be disabled.

The new systems that report via wifi are still somewhat neutralized by the power outage throwing a main disconnect at the electrical feed, although they may report the power outage as an alarm trigger.

I'm sure people wouldn't want that in their bedroom either. There was enough of a fuss about the Kinect always being on. There is no sinker here.

An alarm system company was out in force in our town a year or so ago, knocking doors and offering the wifi thermostat with the whole house protection system. It came with a door keypad entry system, internet accessibility, and a free camera you could place wherever you wanted.

An attractive gal pal of mine had the complimentary camera in her bedroom... the sales rep had recommended installing it there and it never occurred to her what a poor placement that might be. So yeah, maybe there's a sinker...

Re:RTFA

[Obfuscant]

The "CC" in CCTV originally stood for "Charge Coupled", as in "Charge Coupled Device" - the sensor in the camera.

CCTV existed when the "sensor" was an orthicon, so no, "CCTV" does NOT stand for "charge coupled TV". The CC stands for "closed circuit", and always has.

What the fuck

[scumdamn]

is wrong with the comments section. We installed cameras around the house and ran the cables through the attic to the DVR in our closet. Houses in the neighborhood have been broken into and a car was stolen two doors down. We hope that having the cameras will deter crime and if they don't, we'll at least have footage. Our neighbor has a camera and it was very useful in catching some kids that burned down a bush in front of our house.

What the fuck is up with the kneejerk reaction to an article that is just suggesting that you try to get the bad guy's faces rather than the top of their heads? That sounds like good advice.

Re:Clickbait title

[nehumanuscrede]

In a country where Law Enforcement can jail you for not handing over encryption keys on demand, I don't know how comfortable I would be on having any recorded footage that could also be subject to the same line of thinking in the future.

Eg: Hand over your CCTV footage to prove you were home last night or we put you in jail.

Not to sound TOO tin-foil hat here, but I tend to view anything that Law Enforcement says these days with a bit of apprehension / suspicion.
Regardless of how well it sounds at the time.

Wrong author.

[hey!]

You want Kafka, not Orwell.

The problem with what he's suggesting isn't the cameras; it's the development of the biometric database based on any kind of casual contact with the police. The reason that's a problem is that we really don't know how unique our biometric id is.

Take fingerprints. Folk science claims that everyone's fingerprint is unique; in fact we use the word "fingerprint" for cryptographic hashes of data which are vanishingly unlikely to be duplicated. And using traditional police methods, we can for practical purposes act as if they are. But if you start amassing a vast collection of fingerprints of people you have nothing particular in common (as we did after 9/11), it turns out that some people do in fact share fingerprints with identical characteristics. In the 2004 Madrid bombings, an attorney named Brandon Mayfield was identified as a suspect because his fingerprint was a close match one found a bag of detonators at the crime scene. That, and the fact that he was a Muslim convert, was enough for the FBI to be confident enough to arrest him, and leak his name and the potential charges against him to the media. It turns out that one of Mayfield's fingerprints was nearly identical to that of a known terrorist Algerian. The ability to match some biometric to a sufficiently large database greatly increases the probability of a false positive match.

In the ordinary course of investigation there's a kind of implicit Bayesian process which gives us greater confidence in a fingerprint match than a fingerprint dragnet of everyone in the world would. We check the fingerprint of suspects who we have other reasons to think are involved in a crime, or who have in the past been arrested and convicted of a crime. This narrows down the pool of potential matchees from "everyone in the world" to "people who we have some shred of reason to think might be involved", and that's a much smaller pool.

So what are the chances that there are people walking around out there with the same facial recognition biometric id as you? Very likely higher than casual testing would suggest. And what if the system tags you as a match? Does that prejudice the rest of your chances with the justice system?

It's even possible that there are people out there who look enough like you to fool a family member. My brother once saw a man in a Philly restaurant who was a dead ringer for our father, who'd died surrounded by his family ten years earlier. It was creepy.

How 1984 got it wrong

[MillionthMonkey]

"Check this out, comrade, it's like I have my own exercise instructor!", announced Winston to his comrade Syme, as he turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. "You can dim it, so It saves electricity when you're asleep!"

The instructress had called them to attention again. "And now let's see which of us can touch our toes!' she said enthusiastically. 'Right over from the hips, please, comrades. ONE-two! ONE-two!..."

"Oh I hate this one, he whispered to Syme. "It sends shooting pains all the way from my heels to my buttocks and often ends by bringing on another coughing fit."

"But have you installed the Newspeak translator app?", asked Syme. "It's so cool, you just speak English to it and it translates what you say into proper Newspeak!"

"Oh, that sounds awesome!" said Winston. "Can I download it from the Ministry of Plenty's app store?"

"Ha ha, no!" replied Syme. "It comes preinstalled as part of the operating system! You couldn't uninstall it even if you wanted to."

"Wow!" exclaimed Winston. You mean I have it already, then? So I don't need to waste time looking for it."

"You work at the Ministry of Truth, Winston!" laughed Syme. "I would expect you to know these things already." He paused for a moment, then asked, "Did you see the prisoners hanged yesterday?"

"I was working," said Winston indifferently. "I shall download it and watch it later, I suppose."

"A very inadequate substitute," said Syme. His mocking eyes roved over Winston's face. "I know you," the eyes seemed to say, "I see through you. I know very well why you didn't watch the live stream of those prisoners hanged."

"Smith!" screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. "6079 Smith W.! Yes, YOU! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! THAT'S better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me."

A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and--one could not say gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency--bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.

"THERE, comrades! THAT'S how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again. I'm thirty-nine and I've had four children. Now look." She bent over again. "You see MY knees aren't bent. You can all do it if you want to,' she added as she straightened herself up. "Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what THEY have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade, that's MUCH better," she added encouragingly as Winston, with a violent lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent, for the first time in several years.

"I'm impressed, Winston," said Syme. "If you'd told me you could touch your toes before you got this thing, I would have said that's such bullocks." He then silently nodded at the screen. "You think she really has four kids? She looks kind of hot for 39."

"I heard that!" screamed the instructress. "I'm flagging your numbers and adding you both to the Ministry of Love's follow list!"

When it suits them...

[seoras]

I installed an IP Webcam in my mothers family home which is in the remote Scottish Hebrides.
A local "entrepreneur" with "links" had been damaging boundary walls to try and get a through road to land he wanted to develop on.
I set the camera up, inside the house looking out over our property, for security and as a deterrent.
We had the police come round and demand that it be removed.
We refused and luckily their timing was unfortunate for them as my uncle was present in the house when they turned up.
He happened to be a court judge who, after identifying his profession, ended their demands with "Officer, I don't think so...".
Some time later someone, in the night, painted the window in front of the camera.
We also had a council notice served on us for re-errecting our wall.
Apparently we needed planning to repair it even though the wall had been there for a few hundred years.
That too got chucked out of court.
I've seen and experienced too much of corruption at government level to trust a single thing that comes out that claims to be in our interests.
Orwell was right and, sadly, will be proven so.
"I've got nothing to hide" is sticking your head in the sand.
"Security" is only being used to subvert us for the benefit of the hierarchy.