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Cities Worldwide Spent Over $3 Billion Last Year To Peep On You (cnet.com)
The world market for security equipment in city surveillance surged past $3 billion last year and won't be slowing down anytime soon, a research report by IHS Markit said Wednesday. From a report: State capitals and major cities have been spurring rapid development of city surveillance market in recent years, mostly to help police forces maintain public safety and reduce crime, the researcher said. Demand has surged for video content analysis, like facial recognition, as well as for things like body-worn cameras and services for police officers. IHS Markit estimated the city surveillance market will grow at average annual rate of 14.6 percent from 2016 to 2021. China is the biggest market for security equipment in city surveillance, taking up a two-thirds share, and it will also be the first country to widely use facial recognition in city surveillance projects, according to the researcher. More than 10,000 smart cameras are expected to roll out in Shenzhen city this year.
The nature of government is such that you are being forced to pay for your own breach of privacy.
Translation: the world needs a good, hard recession to slow things down, maybe bankrupt a few governments. The only thing that made the US think about reducing prison sentences, drug legalization, etc, is that states could no longer afford it during the Great Recession.
Peep is probably not the word they intend, they mean monitor/spy/track/control.
It's even more intrusive when you consider that most people have an always on, personal tracking GPS/locater in their pockets and purses all the time.
Governments like the communists in China don't seem to understand: The more cameras they install, the more actual criminals will improve at hiding, and the more the average citizen, minding their own business, is made miserable. Even if they implanted GPS, cameras, and microphones on everyone, cradle-to-grave, criminals will find ways to circumvent it all and do what they want to do anyway. Meanwhile, again, the average citizen has more and more of their basic human rights taken away, more and more of their privacy destroyed (until there is none), and the more and more miserable their existence becomes. When will they stop? When people start committing suicide en masse, because the Afterlife has to be better than the Hell they're living in? I feel sorry for the average Chinese citizen. Before too long, farm animals will be treated better than they are.
That's a feature, not a bug.
I am ok with video surveillance only with these protections:
- Non-exclusive access. If the police or any government agency can see the video feed, then the feed must be made public and everyone gets to stream it.
- Cameras only in public spaces
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Indeed, we dare not put a price on the value of a human life. Freedom and liberty, however, are worth more; they cost quite a large number of human lives.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Middle ground: somewhere like Costa Rica. A neutral country can be much less worried about things like terrorism, and its economy can be a lot better due to lack of military spending waste.
Now I know what I'm worth....
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I see graffiti on bridges, signs, etc. but has any of this surveillance stuff get any of this as it occurs? Any arrests from video footage? Just wondering.
mfwright@batnet.com
Is something like that, a wearable that blinds the cameras but not the human eye available or a viable option these days?
Is there a way to build an analagous "faraday cage" optically around you so that cameras can't really capture your image very well?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
groceries are as little as $125/month/person (USDA's estimate), but that does not include preparation costs. But let's say that's our lower bound of $1500/year/person.
Volunteer organizations often claim that it costs less than $2/meal. Assuming a person has 3 meals a day that's $2190/year/person.
Salvation army estimates it costs them $20-$30 to feed and shelter a person for one night. So up to $11k/year. Homeless shelters that charge in Honolulu are taking $70/month and L.A.'s Skid Row charges $7 a night (equivalent to $210/mo), which is believed to be below both their total cost.
So for argument's sake, let's say that it's $2k + $11k to feed and house someone. or $13k/year.
$3B means we could have helped nearly 231,000 people. Sounds like money wasted on surveillance that could have improved life for residents of a city as well as removed the major complaint of homeless causing problems or being an eyesore.
The cameras are mainly pointed at the neighborhoods around gated communities and the property of prominent business owners in the best parts of a commercial district. These cameras are not pointed at industrial areas or poor residential areas where you're likely to find people tagging bridges.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Could be worse - I misread the headline; thought we were paying for the privilege of getting peed on.
Yep, and once rights are LOST you never really stand a chance of getting them back.
And worse, once you allow things like this...well, the old saying is:
"What one generation accepts....the next generation embraces...."
And as far as the police go....do keep in mind, it has been established by many a court verdict, that the police are NOT, in fact, responsible or culpable for your protection against crime.
They are only there to try to solve crimes that have happened, and charge people with those crimes, but they are under no legal obligation to come to you aid or prevent or interact in a crime that you have in progress on your person or property.
Remember that....when you are anxious to give up any of your rights, or your privacy which allow you freedom, and the ability to defend you and your families' lives.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The trouble is, there are a lot of people, many of which are quite young and have little real life experience, that are actively fighting to remove the ability to protect yourself and your family.
I've not see such a large movement to, voluntarily in the US, remove and lose rights.
Once they are gone....they are GONE.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Latest estimate is that 54% of the world's population lives in cities. That's over 4 billion people. So $3 billion spent on surveillance works out to less than 75 cents per person.
Of course most of that spending is skewed towards developed countries. But even there, the OECD accounts for about 18% of the world's population, or 1.37 billion. 68% of them live in cities, or 930 million. So $3 billion represents about $3.20 per OECD citizen, or 0.017% of the average OECD government spending of $18,496 per citizen.
I have never heard of any crime stopped, or the perpetrator caught via these.
Just the old anecdotal, friends with cars broken into under cameras in parking lots or people mugged in areas with cameras in cities.
The actual effect is never mentioned. Does it reduce crime significantly? Is it all just security theatre?
$3 billion on 'look how much we spent on making you safe!'
I've looked into it some and you need a lot of IR power to do it. Basically you want something that really messes with he metering on the camera which takes a lot of light. For something like a vehicle and ALPRs (automated license plate readers) it seems doable but for a single person you many need to lug around a fairly sizable battery that is capable of 10s of watts of continuous output. For cars 100s of watts of continuous output is nothing
Time to offend someone
Well, could start with the car.
Do you by chance have any links you could share?
Thanks in advance!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Too many people just don't get this. Very well stated.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Yes I do. When I first wondered if it would be possible to do such a thing I did some searching and found the following 2 posts from someone who had puttered around with it some:
post 1
post 2
My takeaway from that is that he was gong for more of a flare effect which he did sort of achieve but only with modifying the plate which would likely result in other legal issues. In the tests he did he was still operating in the 10s of watts range which isn't that much power. Instead my thought would be to throw the exposure off of the camera and massively underexpose the plate. To do this you would need to have a draw in the 100s of watts and have it be over a larger area near the plate. Also the LEDs to use looks to be these ones. Working in IR also has the advantage that many states have resigned their license plates so that they are easier to read in the IR spectrum as the cameras used for ALPRs are IR cameras. Also keep in mind that covering your license plate with anything may be illegal in your state as it is in Minnesota and that there may be vehicle illumination laws which apply but that doesn't appear to be the case in MN as they only cover visible light. But from what I can tell pumping out half a KW of IR in front of and behind your car in MN isn't illegal (IANAL) so long as the device doing it doesn't cover the license plate.
Time to offend someone