Slashdot Mirror
Some Baltimore Residents Are Lobbying To Bring Back Aerial Surveillance (theoutline.com)
A local group in Baltimore argues that a plane providing real-time surveillance of the city will dial down police brutality. From a report: A piloted plane would fly over the city, capture images from 30,000 feet in the air, and use a computer program to stitch the photos together for a real-time, by-the-second portrait of what's happening on the ground. With access to all 911 dispatches, which provide information about the the time and place of a crime, local analysts could track the dot-like people and cars at the scene of a crime forward and backward in time until they arrive at a house or address. With a permit from the city of Baltimore, this surveillance system could access videos from street cameras and cross-reference their aerial data with precise, on-the-ground footage.
The analysts would then compose a PowerPoint report with visual data and a written explanation regarding the activities of all possible suspects or witnesses, and they send out five copies of that report via thumb drive: two copies go to the Baltimore police (one for an investigator, and one for evidence storage), and if the case goes to trial, two copies are given to the city prosecutor, and one copy is given to the defense. All of this could occur in just a few hours. Baltimore residents argue that a system like this is the only solution for a city grappling with high crime rates and a systemically corrupt police department.
The analysts would then compose a PowerPoint report with visual data and a written explanation regarding the activities of all possible suspects or witnesses, and they send out five copies of that report via thumb drive: two copies go to the Baltimore police (one for an investigator, and one for evidence storage), and if the case goes to trial, two copies are given to the city prosecutor, and one copy is given to the defense. All of this could occur in just a few hours. Baltimore residents argue that a system like this is the only solution for a city grappling with high crime rates and a systemically corrupt police department.
whenever its footage is "needed", it will be conveniently missing or cameras or recording servers discovered to have been 'broken' at the time of whatever incident the footage is needed from.
The solution to a systemically corrupt police force should be the reformation of the police force, not some multi-million dollar project to watch all activity in the city and beget from, dare I say it, corruption itself. Plus, where would that end?
I hope "the citizens" all declared their personal interests in such a project. As if.
...PowerPoint.
Don't know why, that made me laugh. New method of capital punishment: Death by PowerPoint.
What a fucking mess.
Too many cops
Not enough cops
Not arresting criminals
Arresting too many minorities
Oppressive Police Presence
Not enough police presence.
It seems like the minority communities rationally understand that the police are a force for good, keep order and protect the innocent. But they just can't wrap their minds around the fact that in doing so, their friends and family members who are the perpetrators of the violence are going to be arrested and sometimes killed when they draw down on cops.
Their Tribalism will be their end.
First of all, when story starts with "A handful of Baltimoreans are willing to try anything to stop their police force from killing them", you know you're looking at the standard far left anti-police hit piece.
Second, the story has all of the far left talking points. Namely utterly ignoring who is committing the crimes, complaints of racial profiling based on the fact that clear majority of criminals in this community fit a certain race profile, accusations of "Hitler, uncle Tom" pointed toward black people who dare to disagree. And really novel and strange beliefs on part of people complaining, such as suggesting that they can't tell race from high above, so it's ok to conduct surveillance from there as opposed to street level, which is apparently racist to do.
The only thing I got from the story is that people behind the complaints are not the sharpest tools in the box, and that far leftist dogma is alive and well in their circles, and crying wolf in old ways apparently got old, they had to invent new talking points, such as the fact that camera surveillance on ground level is just racist and cannot be trusted, because [bigotry and corruption], but camera far in the air can be.
I guess they never looked into resolutions and ability to see colour of those aerial cameras they're looking for.
If they want constant aerial surveillance, use a constant aerial observation platform. A collection of lighter-than-air craft with high resolution cameras can record the entire city constantly and at much lower per-day energy costs than spyplanes.
Use some combination of course-correction and semi-strong tethers to maintain position. With the size of modern cameras and communication options, each skyeye only needs a few pounds of payload, which can be padded to minimize risk when the lift portions fail..
A handful of Baltimoreans are willing to try anything to stop their police force from killing them, and one technologist is only too happy to help.
So a small group of people wants to decide this for everyone else? Also how much you want to bet they're white and perhaps also upper-middle-class or higher? Also what if the Balitmore P.D. is overwhelmingly racist and will conveniently not pay any attention to, or just coindicentally not have any recordings of areas where police brutality allegedly is occurring? TFA also says there's ground-level surveillance cameras all over the place already, both owned by the city and by private parties/businesses. Really sounds to me like 'more surveillance' isn't the answer.
It's the lobbying group the 6 folks who want this set up. I bet if you did some digging you'd find they're not just after security. If I had to guess they run a company that fuels the planes or something. Every time I see something like this that no sane person would want I find a PAC behind it looking to line their pockets.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
First off I'd point out that Baltimore is a city of about 620,000. Not the biggest city, but it's more than big enough that trying to provide areal over watch to watch the watchers, so to speak, is going to be increasingly expensive. Not to mention the fact of how hard it is going to be to try and use a 'computer program to stitch the photos' of still pictures from 30K feet up in the air. Assuming that's even technologically possible and good enough to be used in a court of law. Not to mention the idea of trying to fly in bad weather or at night, and most digital cameras don't work very well at night, especially when your moving.
No, I think this entire plan was cooked up by some activist group that doesn't have a single clue about what they're talking about. But if they're really concerned about police brutality then I would suggest lobbying the BPD to use mandatory body cameras. That's a far more feasible plan than trying to do areal surveillance of the police. Of course I don't really think they'll go for that... because it turns out that those body cameras sometimes end up being used in court to justify the actions of the police against bad actors. There's been a handful of incidents where someone get's pulled over by the cops, make up a wild story after the fact about police brutality, only to have their claim completely disproves when the body camera footage is released.
So the people are willing to be surveilled/tracked wherever they go in the hopes to reduce police brutality. Ben Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty.....
Instead of flying airplanes over the city, why not a fleet of drones? Seems that would be cheaper, better for the environment, and have better coverage.
The whole ideal of trying to blanket the city with 24 hour camera coverage is stupid, not to mention all the privacy issues it would entail. But if you are going to do something stupid, lets at least be smart about it.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Didn't anyone there see the movie Eagle Eye.....
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1...
If the local PD is corrupt, vote out the Council and City leadership, fire the Police Chiefs and get accountability back. Creating a surveillance state is the antithesis of freedom. Otherwise, just like Democracy in the Middle East, you end up throwing out that which you want most.
... is this?
The end game is creating a revenue stream.
Any bullshit on the part of the surveillance company is just a parallel argument of type, "What about the children?" when the actual objective is to sell data to any and all takers.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
...we need cops to walk about, but then have an armed paramilitary force armed to the teeth to fight crime? Sounds good to me.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
So long as the Constitution Stands, the notion of hate speech is nonsense.
to quote an American President:
"You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.”
That's freedom. The moment you silence someone, labeling their words or ideas as "hate" is the moment every single person whose died for the Constitution, has died a meaningless death - ending in the death of the promise and the idea of Freedom itself.
Is it not a sign of utter despair that you have to fall back to a measure like this?
Is it really so hard to have a police, like in Europe, that is there for the citizen, and not for its own purpose?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Corruption in the Baltimore City Police Department is absolutely endemic. I can understand citizens wanting more accountability and to root out the corruption but something like this needs to remain in the citizen's (not the P.D.'s) hands. If it remained outside the control of the state, I could see it being useful.
The system being described fits under the category of Wide Area Persistent Surveillance. This requires far more than a single 5 gram camera carried by a simple drone. Perhaps a few hundred 5 gram cameras with onboard storage and data processing to geo-locate each image and stitch them together in both space and time - or at least store all the relevant data to allow all the data fusion to occur on the ground. Also, operating such a system at 30,000 feet is not practical as high-altitude clouds will often obscure the ground, and at over 5 miles range the optics needed to discern details would be impractical on board an aircraft smaller than an airliner. These types of persistent surveillance systems typically operate much lower.
These systems capture and record everything, and I mean everything, that moves. Nobody that lives beneath such a system will have any privacy. Keep in mind that image data from airborne sensors is often fused with ground sensors, making The Minority Report more of a documentary than a sci-fi thriller.
If a society has problems with crime and corruption, monitoring every detail with such a surveillance system will certainly be entertaining, but it's not likely to actually solve anything, and might lead to even more hilarity.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
Here is how you know these people have no idea what they're talking about. They want all that information from 50 different angles (not even thinking about the privacy implications of that) distilled in a 5-slide PowerPoint animation. And who is going to pay for those "analysts"? I'm sure you can raise some taxes for that. And I'm sure they won't be partisan at all. Perhaps you can get some leftist group to do it.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Maybe Baltimore residents should spend more time lobbying for people to stop breaking the goddamn law... the rest will fix itself. Yes, there's some asshole cops out there who go too far... but let's be honest, it's not like they're just randomly abusing soccer moms and, if we're being honest, I'm not overly concerned with how nice cops are to the shitheads that can't follow the law. Wasting money to try and punish police isn't going to stop any crime or improve conditions, all it's going to do is make the leo's who are out there for the right reasons get sick and tired of being second guessed and go find other work... leaving more aggressive assholes who joined for the wrong reasons on the streets. The solution is to focus on curtailing the endless crime wave throughout the city that necessitates so much policing.
from a few years back!
Baltimore is not suffering from crime - which is an abstract concept. Baltimore is suffering from black people.
Of course this type of system has huge Public Safety benefits, and being against Public Safety is political suicide.
But then a phenomena rises ... not sure if there is a term for it so I will coin one for this post ... "Crimesolver Creep".
Either it happens secretly, with no public information released, or you just wait for some crime where extending the scope would have "prevented this heinous act". There will always be such an example, if you wait long enough ... it's the nature of crime, basically. So the Police ask for the scope to be expanded, or they just do it and wait for some Privacy Nutjob (not really my words, but essentially theirs) to find out and complain publicly about it.
As always, it's difficult to impossible to put the Genie back in the bottle. And then it becomes Big Brother Frightening.
This leaves the only reasonable option, which accounting for "unintended consequences of change" means you say no right off the hop.
...the criminals that turned that city to a cesspool instead of targeting the police. Better yet, if people don't want the police in their communities, then those communities can be "no response zones" that are off limits to all public services. Seems to be what they're asking for in some of these places. Let's give it to them.
Bring in undercover state and feds to pose as new "criminals".
Offer city police all kinds of different payments and see who accepts. Who says no and reports the bribe.
Capture every offer using surveillance. The police station, in the police car, via the cell phone. Any new offer of cash could be a trap.
Make it so every bribe offered to police "could" be from other under cover law enforcement.
That results in a good police force over time.
Map out all crime in the city and get the good police to enforce exisiting laws.
Give good police the surveillance, GUI maps, software, facial recognition and voice print collection they need to disrupt all crime.
Crime goes down. People return to invest in a great low crime city.
Jobs are created by the private sector again. People want to move back to a clean and safe city.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Of course I don't really think they'll go for that... because it turns out that those body cameras sometimes end up being used in court to justify the actions of the police against bad actors. There's been a handful of incidents where someone get's pulled over by the cops, make up a wild story after the fact about police brutality, only to have their claim completely disproves when the body camera footage is released.
They don't see it that way generally because body cams do correlate with a decrease in accusations of police misconduct, so most of the people complaining about the cops still want them.
It's funny watching their spin on it though. The decrease in accusations against police is spun as "See they work! Cops don't commit as much crime when they're being watched!". Of course an equally likely explanation is that the rate decreases because many false accusations of misconduct don't get made when people know they're being recorded.
Either way, body cams are a good idea.
just another case of a company lining it's pockets with taxpayer dollars. I figured as much.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This article is all over the place, starts with trying to stop crime but ends up claiming crime isn't the problem, it's police corruption, so is this to stop crimes or stopping police corruption? Because there's simpler ways to stop police corruption.
Piloted plane? Is this 2003? A team of automated drones doing wide circles would be much cheaper than even one piloted plane and provide better footage in real time 24/7. Cost of a plane with maintenance, fuel, paid pilot, etc would cost a fortune in comparison.
And what about cameras? Why drones? Yes a drone could cover a wider area than a camera could, but they're also susceptible to weather, higher failure rate, battery replacement, etc. A few cameras with microphones could even triangulate the location of where shots were fired. Drones don't pick up sound so they could not do that. And with 1080p wifi cameras selling for as low as $25 now days you could have dozens of cameras for the price of a decent drone so really drones are too expensive too if the goal is to capture video over a wide area.
And we see shootings in front of cameras all the time, I don't know if cameras actually reduce time or just increase arrest rates.
I like the idea of decreasing crime, I just don't think these people know how to go about it since they're suggesting something as silly as a piloted plane with a camera attached when there are much better alternatives.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Post is BS. They were using a Cessna 172, something that can't get up to 30,000 without say mother nature taking it up there. Even then the pilot would soon be dead from hypoxia.
They were at 3,000'. Some PDs are using drones to do this now. Even in rural areas.
Don't do the crime if you can't do the time (in the theme from Baretta, 1970s cop show)
Put cameras on cops... well that didn't show what we wanted... lt's do fill in the blank. Couldn't be the criminals are criminals, could it?