Slashdot Mirror
New Privacy Threat: Automated Vehicle Occupancy Detection
An anonymous reader writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation is warning against a new potential privacy threat: cameras that look inside cars and try to identify how many people are inside. This technology is a natural combination of simpler ones that have existed for years: basic object recognition software and road-side cameras (red light cameras, speeding cameras, license plate readers — you name it). Of course, we can extrapolate just a bit further, and point out that as soon as the cameras have high enough resolution, they can start running face recognition algorithms on the images, and determine the identities of a vehicle's occupants.
"The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), a government umbrella group that develops transportation and public safety initiatives across the San Diego County region, estimates that 15% of drivers in High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes aren't supposed to be there. After coming up short with earlier experimental projects, the agency is now testing a brand new technology to crack down on carpool-lane scofflaws on the I-15 freeway. ... In short: the technology is looking at your image, the image of the people you're with, your location, and your license plate. (SANDAG told CBS the systems will not be storing license plate data during the trial phase and the system will, at least for now, automatically redact images of drivers and passengers. Xerox's software, however, allows police the option of using a weaker form of redaction that can be reversed on request.)"
"The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), a government umbrella group that develops transportation and public safety initiatives across the San Diego County region, estimates that 15% of drivers in High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes aren't supposed to be there. After coming up short with earlier experimental projects, the agency is now testing a brand new technology to crack down on carpool-lane scofflaws on the I-15 freeway. ... In short: the technology is looking at your image, the image of the people you're with, your location, and your license plate. (SANDAG told CBS the systems will not be storing license plate data during the trial phase and the system will, at least for now, automatically redact images of drivers and passengers. Xerox's software, however, allows police the option of using a weaker form of redaction that can be reversed on request.)"
So it's not really redacted. It's like all those PDF's that redact text with a black box. The original footage still has to be there and the government will keep it.
If you want to enforce HOV lanes, enforce it, have a cop pulling people in the HOV lane over. Automated camera systems are easily defeated in court (they were sitting in the back seat and I have tinted windows, they were giving me a blowjob, reflections, ...) and cost more than hiring actual officers (small (~10 camera) systems are reported to have a final cost in the area of $1-5M/y)
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Beyond the privacy problem, a key issue here is the problem of false positives. The system claims a 96% accuracy in detecting people in passenger seats, which is a huge error rate for sending people fines. A policeman can actually stop you and look in the car, which they have to do before writing a ticket.
The problem is that such fines are expensive to contest (you have to take time off work, show up to court etc). Many people will just pay. This is not a criminal prosecution situation where "presumption of innocence" in the legal sense is relevant, but the principle applies here too: you should hold the government to a high standard of proof here.
At first glance, all of these technologies are implemented solely for the purpose for bring in more money to the government.
But I'm sure I'm not being at all cynical enough and probably a bit of Tin Foil Hat theory wouldn't be inappropriate.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"SANDAG says the current test system is not storing license plate numbers" Well DUH, that's what the NSA's giant datacenter in Utah is for! SANDAG / Xerox may not be storing this, but no one said they aren't just passing along all this data to someone who will. And the FBI claimed Stingray never existed either...
I wonder how accurate it is in detecting non-adult profiles. In WA, the HOV lane counts total people, with no requirements on age. This means that a baby sleeping in a carseat counts as a 2nd occupant. I agree with others -- I'm all for HOV lane enforcement but the false positives around automated detection just sound too sketchy.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
No - just fool the cameras. I bought me a few sex dolls, inflated them and now they are occupying my car. To the 'normal' pedestrian it looks as if the car were fully occupied and I love the faces of the people once they realise what sits in there ...
Works also with motorcycles (sidecars are unbeatable !) - just enjoy the faces of the bystanders when they realize what they are seeing. And it's completely legal ;-) (at least in my corner of the world !)
The sum of intelligence on a planet is constant. Nowadays we have more people. When classic goes away, so do I. Copy
...will it detect when my passenger is a corporation?
It's a good thing the taxpayers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to solve this incredible problem we all face every day... Oops, there goes another (cancer/malaria/etc.) victim.