Slashdot Mirror
Caught Before the Act
bgp4 writes "New Scientist has a report on advances in video surveillance. Researchers in the UK have determined ways to pick out a criminal before he has actually committed the crime." Surveillance systems sound the alarm if you deviate from the routines expected of "law-abiding" citizens and track people from one camera to the next.
Seems to me one needs to block access to their eyes then...
This is a worrying trend that they look to label people before they do wrong. This sound like measure people's ears to tell if they are going to become a criminal, or Jewish.
But they if you know what the computer is looking for, then it will be much easier to spook. Maybe but then I have never tried to nick a car.
Also I can speak for many computing professional.... our normal day to day habits are so strange we would always be getting arrested and hasseled.
(Not that I haven't read the artical in detail, me I am waiting for the paper version!)
Unless its illegal to try to fool these cameras then let's have fun. Pretend that you're about to steal your own car. When the alarms sound and you get arrested show them (ok that's a tough part) its your car. Then sue them for false arrest. Mmmm money making schemes in the morning. Yeah I know sueing is wrong, but in this case probably justified.
-cpd
Now there's a way to watch for those of us who veer too close to the deranged psychopath way of life. Just be sure that you're not an over achiever or a loner, or so says the FBI.
It seems like there's gonna be a lot of things to look for. Buying duct tape, knowing how to connect two wires, walking fast.
That sounds scary! I dont want to be monitored, even if im not doing anything wrong! Have you ever seen the movie Demolition Man? That sounds like a scene from that movie! And who determines whats "law abiding" and whats not?
The day that the people can be stopped and questioned for simply deviating from our ruts in life is the day we have no more freedom. To me it looks like we've gone to "GUILTY until proven innocent". I want to be left alone until I do something wrong, not watched just in case I do. we are not babies. With this system, I'm sure those prying eyes would raise an eyebrow or at least and bump up surveilance if someone made a "legal", yet unannounced trip out of the country. It's amazing how every freedom we have is slow stripped away under the pretense that somehow it's all in stopping crime.
What a crock.
The price we pay for immortality... is death. Narnia The Great Fall
I don't know if this only happens to me, but everytime there is a post on /. referencing an article on NewScientist.com, I find that their server is unavailable. I'd be highly surprised if this is the /. effect at work, considering they are a widely distrubuted and respected publication. I mean, they should be able to afford a good sysadmin and system that can handle a few thousand hits a minute!
In short, anyone got a mirror of this article?
Eric
The implication that one is innocent until "appearing not to be" must cause some concern. My greatest fear, however, is that by using video surveillance to prevent crime, the technology will inadvertantly cut down on the number of "stupid criminal acts" caught on video tape. Perhaps network television can invest in the idea to drum up some more prime time content.
There must be 1,000's of people like me who would run around like a maniac doing things we're "not supposed to" but that aren't illegal just to make security freak out. It'd only be a matter of time before there are enough false alarms that they take the system out.
Echoing what most people seem to agree on - surveillance and crime prevention is a good thing, but who decides what is 'normal' or 'social' behaviour? Some might argue that the practice of monitoring peoples behaviour and then judging them and sorting them based on their actions is not normal! Who watches the watcher?!
I can't see how this would ever make it to active duty. Sure we took away the right to remain silent but are we going to take away the right to commit the crime before you are accused of it?
More seriously this might not be all that bad, sure if you get harased by the police for hanging around in a way the computer thinks is suspcious it would be a bad thing. If however these computers can recognize a bunch of guys in ski-masks drawing up outside the bank and clal th police then we are in a wholey diffrent ball game.
The tone of the article actualy describes something a bit less sinister, more along the lines of using the technology to alert a secrity guard which monitor it might be an idea to look at. I wonder how long it will take the crooks to work out the system though, imagine being able to fake it so the system suggests the guard pay attention to one monitor while you do something nasty on another.
These apply to the car-theft example, but you can fill in the blanks yourself.
1. The system supposes you know where your car is. If you wander in a seemingly aimless fashion, you're picked up.
2. In a car park, there're cars wizzing backwards and forwards all the time. Therefore, you'll be looking left and right quite a bit.
3. You see your car, but you can't find your alarm zapper. You slow down, fumble, not wanting to stand beside the car looking like a tit who can't find his keys.
In all of the above cases, you're framed. The camera's will follow you, and ignore the guy ten metres away who's nicking a porche.
This system is also incredibly suceptible to decoys.
undoubtedly you'll read lots of posts saying this will brand people guilty before proven etc etc etc
Actually, all this will do is direct attention to those who appear about to break the law - and with that everyone else will be ignored.
Security guards aren't usually the brightest lights on the tree, and so - if they can get away with just monitoring those their super computer system tells them too, they will. Just human nature.
Seems the rest of us will be left alone even more.
Besides...they'd still have to witness you actually doing something to be arrested. If your flagged up, but don't do anything then there's no problem - it isn't as if cctv doesn't already watch you right now.
Whoop, I better watch out. Maybe they can tell if I'm a potential threat by things I type. I'd better hide my black trenchcoat while I'm at it...
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
A system like this is probably worth far less than the time invested in creating it. Yeah, sure, right now they can't fool it. But give them credit -- while your common criminal's pretty stupid, thieves are thieves because they are good at what they do. They'll relearn how to sneak and new ones will learn as they enter the ``trade''.
In the meantime, I imagine I'll be setting off lots of alarms. (Poor George, his donuts will go stale.) I suffer from ADD and it's not uncommon that I'll be striding purposefully somewhere one moment and forget what I was doing the next. That's got to look an awful lot like suspicious behavior to a computer.
if we still had guns, we'd need the cameras even more
When contacting lawmakers about these issues or attempting to my express distrust of such systems to people who are content with surveillance, I generally use the following analogy.
Would you be comfortable if every citizen in your home town were assigned a personal police patrolman to follow them through their day and report suspicious behavior? Additionally, considering that digital image analysis is far from infallible, stipulate that your personal patrolman is drunk and spoiling for a fight.
Most people instinctively recoil from such a world. They simply need some prodding to realize that high technology (which they are assured is "their friend") can be used as an extension of the police state when in the wrong hands.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Pretend that you're about to steal your own car. When the alarms sound and you get arrested show them (ok that's a tough part) its your car. Then sue them for false arrest.
Yeah, and then watch them prosecute you on some other trumped-up, bulls**t charge to save face. Remember, John Law doesn't like to be mocked.
Then again, I could spoof my car theft as you suggested, get arrested anyway, then come and sue you for putting the idea in my head and inciting anarchy... Hmm, perhaps there's money to be made here yet!
wcb
This is even a worse violation of civil liberties than the plan to install cameras to locate known criminals based on facial recognition. To quote the referenced article "Once connected to such intelligent systems, closed- circuit television (CCTV) will shift from being a mainly passive device for gathering evidence after a crime, to a tool for crime prevention. But not everyone welcomes the prospect. The technology would ensure that every security screen is closely watched, though not by human eyes. It would bring with it a host of sinister possibilities and fuel people's fears over privacy."
The issue is not about privacy, so much as the essential presumption of innocence that underlies our jurisprudence. To use this technology to prevent crimes before they occur appears to be a noble goal, but as in so many other situations, we must consider the costs of such an action. The ends of reducing crime or preventing suicide cannot justify or be reconciled with this trend toward proactively indentifying "troublesome" elements (as with the tests meant to locate potentially unstable students).
From proactive location to preventive detention is but a small step on a slipperly slope away from the assumption of innocence to the assumption of guilt. What will occur next? Will there be facial emotion detectors that will sense discontent and alert authorities? It troubles me that so many people are willing to give up their freedom in exchange for the illusion of greater apparent security.
--
Flames? Think I'm a karma whore?
"To fool the system, a thief would have to behave as though they owned the car, confidently walking up to it without casing it first or pausing to see if the real owner is nearby. In short, they have to stop behaving like a thief."
... or stop acting like you can't remember where you parked the damn car...
I think that there's only one thing to do. what with all the CCTV cameras in the UK. we all need to go out and look suspicious at the same time. they'le then have the problem of separating out the troublemakers, those on the splendidly named 'care in the community' scheme and the rich but eccentric. should be easy to overload the system. if nothing else they'll be so busy chasing the suspicious looking, they won't have time to deal with people who are acting in a libertarian manner.
Remember this is the UK. the police ask questions (e.g. is this your car?) so there is a small chance of wrongful arrest.
They DON't turn up and randomly shoot people unlike somewhere else that is SO much better.
What's more shocking (to me at least) here is the actual number of video cameras present in London when I was on business there a few months back. I couldn't walk anywhere without being in view of at least one or two or more cameras. For those readers across the pond, how do you feel about this ? Do you notice them ? Am I being paranoid ?
Speaking as a security guard, I imagine many of your fears are too strong. Sure there will be some abuse. But most of the time, I bet the security people will just use it as a way to help decide which monitors to watch. Where I work, we have about 20 cameras, and 95% of the time nothing happens. trust me, it's easy to get bored and miss something. Especially if you're watching camera 2 and someone is stealing a car on camera 10. Most places have people on the floor to watch suspicious characters, and they have training for what is suspicious. I would trust them over this system any day; the human mind is the best pattern processor ever developed. SO good it can find patterns where there are none.
Even so, I do agree that this is some pretty scary stuff; because the margin of abuse is so high.
As the article points out--the point of the software is just to alert a security droid that someone is doing something "out of the ordinary." It's up to the droid to stare at the screen for a few seconds to see if mischief is afoot. Having been a security guard when I was a young man, I can tell you that it will probably take more then a blinking red light on a panel to get most guards off their asses.
No doubt, there will be poor implementations and poorly trained security personnel and this will lead to a few circumstances where folks will be collared "because the computer says you're a criminal!" Picky shoppers who like to take time browsing, picking things up and looking them over, etc. will probably be among the first victims. Nevertheless, used properly, this could be a useful tool.
I'm waiting for a handheld implementation--this system, coupled with a voice stress analyzer and an integrated cattle prod would come in very handy when dealing with salesmen. Hmm...I think I just had a great idea for a Springboard module.
slashdot broke my sig
Looks like you guys could be some potential RIAA lawyers. Sue everybody!
And this is different to computer systems how?
Getting passwords wrong is "normal", but how many of you get an "alarm" to go off is someone gets it wrong several times?
A web site receives connections daily, how many people have alerts to tell them when the connection rate is "strangely" busy?
Your server uses CPU time all the time, but don't many people worry if the CPU is "unusually" high?
People send emails all the time, but wouldn't warning bells go off if it exceeded "expected" usage?
In lots of cases, there are systems to detect "unusual" activity, so long as that is used as a *indication* of a potential problem, and not *concrete proof* of an actual problem, I see no problem with it.
--
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
every week, slashdot takes a step further into analysing hypothetical infringements on peoples privacy.
Can anyone HONESTLY envisage this following scenario?
"Mr J. Doe, you have been brought to this court by a computer-controlled surveilance camera which analysed your actions and thought you were going to commit a crime. how do you plead to the crime you were statistically going to commit?"
ok....
if cameras can "learn" to track peoples actions so that i am less likely to find a knife in my back at an ATM machine, then good for them!.
You Brits really are sheeple, aren't you? If you can't see the dangerous actions of your government under Blair, you really should open your eyes. But then again, its "for the children." One day when all your freedoms are gone and you have no legal means left to oppose it, the only thing left will be to take up arms. Whoops. Can't do that. Don't have any.
The presence of the cameras bother me. I just found out a couple of days ago that the bar where I work part time had a camera in it for a six week police sting.
I wasn't doing anything illegal (just luck really) but doesn't everyone do weird shit when people aren't watching (or you think they aren't). Kung-Fu moves with pool cues, pretending to be a hummingbird, all recorded. The cops must have got a good laugh out of me.
I think that's the point really. How free can we feel if we know we're being watched. When I occasionally ride the subway, I find myself just sitting quietly anymore. In the past I know I would have been up to something weird just to amuse myself. Not illegal, not immoral, but weird and now I hesitate.
Oh yeah, Fuck the man.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Like Maybank and Hogg, Grimson is still struggling to distinguish a meeting from a mugging.
:)
Yeah, and the second order problem is to distinguish mugging from a mom actually giving her son money to buy ice-cream. The last time I checked, AI algorithms were incapable of distinguishing between cats and dogs. So this article should've been called Warning! My grant is about to run out.
Seriously, folks. This is kinda scary. It borders on arresting people with a different skin color for agitating the masses by sitting in the fair skinned peoples section.
--
Una piccola canzone, un piccolo ballo, poco seltzer giù i vostri pantaloni.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Interesting article as it shows that a system is built around basic path movement analysis rather than advanced face/person detection systems can work. Dependant on its use it should not affect personal privacy in public surrounds. Following one of their examples, CCTV's monitoring a car pack have by nature a controller monitoring each camera - either live or on a playback recording ... if anything the latter is more of a privacy infringement that an automatic 'live' detection system (i.e. to wake up the human monitor !) which is impartial to the personal under survailance. If a model exists for movement behaviour , this escapes any possible social/creed discrimination. At the end of the day, what will make you feel more safe in your surrounds, people / CPU's trying to protect you or your property or the 'it infringes my privacy, I'm not interested' , the latter in many cases is overused ... Anyway thats my $.02 up for discussion
The people who invented this should be put under surveillance. Obviously, they have a guilty conscience, otherwise they wouldn't know how guilty people act...
Cleary, the development of this technology could come dangerously close to invading the privacy of every one of us. But isn't that the risk we all take with the advancements in technology? Consider nanotechnology, for example. Let us assume that a nanobot is constructed that uses some sort of triangulation device to give a GPS reading. Suddenly, every citizen and enemy of the state is trackable. Computer systems analyze movement patterns, forming more and more conclusions... et cetera. The implications are incredibly far-reaching.
All new technology is a trade off. This new system of recognizing behavior patterns may make your next plane trip less likely to have a terrorist aboard. Or stop your car from being broken into in a parking garage. We must simply, as a society, decide which is more important to us: our privacy or our safety. But, you might object, we shouldn't be forced to choose. Quite frankly, I couldn't agree more. We, as a community and as a society must not allow corporations to make these choices for us...
This technology is very revolutionary, yet, It seems a lot of people are dissing it. First of all, people are saying that it can easily be fooled. What these people forget is one, this technology is in its infancy so, yes it can be fooled today. But with time and advancement of A.I, these bugs will be worked out. For example, a person is represented as a line in this system, in the future with advancement in image recognition, we will be able to see what a person has in his or her hand. Having a key in your hand doesn't make you a thief, having a crowbar is another story.
;-)
A lot of the people bickering over this, didn't appear to read entire article. You do not get arrested just because the computer sounded an alarm. There is a human being there, when the alarm sounds, a replay of the reason the alarm is sounded is done. This human uses this to verify that you didn't do anything wrong. By the way, you are not "arrested", you are stopped and questioned, there is nothing illegal about stopping someone to question them about a strange activity.
The potential for this is great, Yes, there are fears, that perhaps one day all these cameras will be joined and controlled by one big computer, and it can track your movement from Detroit to London, sure sure. You will not be alive by then, so stop worrying. You watch too much TeeVee.
The most exciting thing about this technology is that it is showing advacenment in image recognition, 3d mapping of real world environments, artificial intelligents and many other interesting computer fields.
Oh yeah, and for those of you thinking you can have fun, by sounding false alarms. Be ready to get arrested, it is simply like sounding a false alarm that their is a fire, or calling 911 and telling them you have a heart attack.
Anyway, If this succeeds, lots of cameras will be sold, so if you have money, keep an eye on companys that make cameras. Or better yet, start such a company.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
I think I can guess how this "technology" is going to work:
If you look and act like a young black male.... you are suspect to being a criminal.
If anyone's unfamiliar with the Frog in the Well math exercise, the basic premise is that every night the frog jumps up three feet and falls back another two -- how many days does it take him to climb out? This seems like what technology has been doing lately. A computer program that can, by washing away all of the complex formulations that had previously been thought necessary, track objects as being persons, dogs or cars is a breakthrough that has applications beyond the early apprehension of criminalistic folk, simply because it provides a new model for people doing research in other, semi-connected areas of computer object recognition to examine. The fact that it its application will be in such a 1984-esque way is disturbing. After watching a good movie, people will be harassed for acting too much like the clever thiefs just witnessed on the silver screen. People suffering from chronic nervousness will be interrogated before they can enter their car -- something I'm sure they will appreciate. People who exhibit behaviour outside of the norm, automobile fanatics, and sufferers of muscular disorder will be on pre-emptive trial. I can't wait for the day when a computer program is written that bases assumptions regarding criminalistic behaviour from the beadiness of eyes. Good gracious! The repercussions of this are terrible too. If this becomes a global standard, people who don't feel like crossing paths with the law at every junction will have to pay careful attention to acting as normal as possible. So long, individuality. I wonder when that poor little Froggie's going to make his way out of the well. -l
According to the text all a thief must do is being "long and low".
"Be a car. Think a car. Then you'll get a car."
First, I have two quotes:
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding" -Louis Brandeis
"They that can give up liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin
I'm not going to use the slippery slope argument, crying, "Where would this stop? Would we have thought police coming to our doors and dragging us off for preemptive rehabilitation? Shall we revamp the calender? Shall it be 1984 forever?"
As persuasive as that argument might be, it isn't valid. A better attack on this kind of crime fighting can be constructed by analyzing the very basis of pre-crime recognition. Who decides what is "normal" behavior? "Normal" behavior definitely wouldn't include looking admiringly at another's Ferrari, walking around to look in the interior. Or maybe reading a bumper sticker. What would constitute pre-crime activity would be completely relative to the culture. It would be a violation of social mores; and in violating these mores by acting "abnormally", we would then be guilty of showing "evidence" of the crime of thinking about a crime. How, may I ask, can I then prove my innocence of a crime that consists of violating some programmer's subjective view of "normal" behavior?
Do we have a right to privacy and a right to liberty (of which the right to privacy is part and parcel) within the scope of public view? Do we only have those rights when we are on our own premises? Or are they universal? If I am an employee, or even worse, a pedestrian in a parking lot, do I have a right to liberty, including by legal definition privacy?
Any legal system that endorsed this crime prevention method is, whether it recognizes it or not, saying "NO!" to every one of these questions.
> Yeah, and then watch them prosecute you on some other trumped-up, bulls**t charge to save face.
...
The one that springs to mind is "wasting police time"
Suppose there's a car thief in the parking lot. He looks suspicious and you call the
cops. Great, what has he done? The cops have no legal right to arrest him, and he
goes free, even if he was goingtto steal a car. Great.
And, as pointed out already, somebody who know what the computer is looking
for and dosen't do it (or, does it, but with no intention of
stealing the car...)
Anyway, I guess we're now guilty until proven innocent, ain't America great *snicker*.
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
Now that the 13 colonies kicked their red-coated asses, India ran them out on their ear, Australia is getting ready to depose the Queen, and there's peace in Ireland, the English have realized they have noone left to oppress and dehumanize but themselves. More power to them, I say. Too long on that rainy island.
All it does after all is flag behaviour that is perceived as abnormal, taking away attention from 'normal' behaviour. So what ? I would be worried more if they started passing laws making it illegal to behave abnormally. But until then ? Why should I care ? These systems look for behaviour patterns, not for identification. So they don't know who you are, just that you are behaving strangely. Who cares, except for some poor dolt watching the video screens in the basement ?
And by the way... They mentioned an example in the article of a future 'George' at an airport, talking to his security computer and detecting a bomb between eating donuts and reading the paper. They then said that only the speech technology in the article wasn't available yet. Well, it is ! I happen to work at a company that makes that kind of stuff.
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
"Ugh, did you see that, he wiped his nose on his sleeve...no normal law abiding citizen would do that!"
:P
"Oh my god, he didn't help that lady up, get the cameras ready!"
Ok, bad examples, but the point is, you can't follow what people do and try to make expectations. Most humans are by desire unpredictable, they will do what they can to be, because it gets them noticed. You can't see certain acts as defining a criminal (other than breaking a law) just because it's not what's expected...otherwise people like my friends and I will constantly have a camera crew after us
An interesting article--suprisingly well thought out, particularly on the part of the doubting inventors. I particularly like the quote, "This is like justifying road accidents because they provide hospital beds." I'm going to end up using that quite a bit.
Alot of the sins that people are about to complain about aren't really ascribable to this automated system--yes, you can track many more people, but the bottom line is that if you accept surveilance at all--video, armed guard, or whatnot--everything from doing cartwheels to loitering with some friends is being monitored.
But as long as a human's watching, it's not truly annoying anyone.
Therein lies the rub. The real problem with these systems is that the "George's"(dumb+cheap security guards, think Half-Life) of the world won't be happy being interrupted by false positives. No matter how tuned these systems get, there will always be perfectly innocuous activities that will trigger the alarms. There will end up being innocuous classes of behavior which cannot be trained *out* of the system, since to do so would be to cause the system to miss too many postive events.
A security shift supervisor can tell a rookie to not bug him about some stupid kid smoking a cigarette instead of catching the bus, but these guy's system will be forced to blare every time someone lights up.
Suddenly, all the human ugliness of sexism, racism, and agism comes into play, and entire swaths of society will be deemed worthwhile to forcibly teach not to trigger the dumb(by human standards) sensor arrays. Suddenly, the limits of the technology drive the law, first unwritten, then made official.
Don't flirt in a certain manner--it causes the sensors to think you're a rapist. Don't laugh too loud while raising your hands--the sensors might think you have a gun. Don't miss your train too many times, or you'll no longer be welcome at the station.
I actually find this tragic--this is a very cool technology that has uses all over the place, from security analysis to environmental monitoring. I think these are the first inventors I've seen who have a grasp on just where their technology might go, and immediately express hope that society as a whole will grapple with what they've done. Is this the model of technological ethics? Honest scientists creating what they can, hoping not that all will be right but that the good will outweigh the misuse, and the abuse will be suppressed by legal means?
Interesting to think about. After reading about the gait analysis technology, perhaps good posture will once again be mandatory...
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Well thanks for the strength of your convictions in posting anonymously ;)
...
....
I don't think Blair has any idea of making the UK a police state - the media runs the country more than the government anyway
... as a side note, we have far far less death due to accdental shootings, children getting hold of guns etc....
... a civilized society has no need for killing tools
Yeah, that's the ticket, let's all wear tails and collars around cities! Furries unite! :-)
That's another way to see things anyway.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
I'm always amazed by American attempts to preach civil liberties to Europeans.
Here in the UK we prefer closed circuit TV systems
to guns. CCTV cameras won't blow your head off, if they're acivated by mistake.
You only need be worried about them if you've broken the law. (Wrongful arrest is an unusal thing in the UK because the police do their job and are accountable for their decisions).
Without the gun culture and a racist/right wing establishment, Europe is a much freer and 'civil' place to live. American freedom seems to be the freedom to do what YOU want, no matter what detrimental effect it has on society as a whole. Although socialism is just as crap, the concept of making a few sacrafices to help the majority is one America should begin to learn.
What has essentially been developed is an automated method of determining abnormal behavior and classifying that abnormal behavior.
Now normally, most of us are against the sort of behavior scoring that classifies kids as potential Hellmouths but let's think this over.
Could we use this tool to find those rotten kids that are always getting others to pick on someone?
Could we use this tool to help find the people who actually have creative ideas in our organization?
Could we use this toll to find the creative misfits? Robert Anton Wilson would have LOVED to use this stuff in Illuminatius. Think of the possibilities.
And if that doesn't work, someone will probably use it to find a date. "According to our cameras, the new intern is very likely to be a slut, Mr. President."
Ken Boucher
No Zen is good zen
War Is Peace
Freedom Is Slavery
Ketchup is a Vegetable
~ /usr/games/fortune
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Dude, you are one sick, sadistic bastard. :)
Fortunately, I have a little corner in my apartment where I could hide from any such viewscreen and write in my journal.
Do you smell cabbage?
Check out AbiWord.
I think that being forced to listen to Celene Dion is outlawed by the Geneva Convention :) And if it isn't, it should be.
What in the hell is a camera going to do for you in this situation? *Maybe* help the cops catch the guy who stabbed you?
Some consolation eh? Being that you're dead and all....
I think all these paranoid delusions are affecting everyones sense of judgement. I seriously doubt that the government gives a flying flip what us normal/even abnormal law abiding citizens do. I think that they are trying ways to crack down on the people who break the law. How many of you had your car stolen? I have, and I hate to say I didnt find that a pleasent situation, I wanted to find that bastard and bend both of his legs the wrong way, many many times. I WANT there to be a way to catch the criminal IN the act, I highly doubt there going to stop you on the side of the street just cause you got long hear and maybe a tattoo. If they did then there would be some seriously large lawsuits going on against the government for breaking civil liberties and serval constitutional amendments. Its not the end of your freedoms, but the end of criminals if it works, if it doenst, they'll scrap the program and try something else. I believe that the government is not some evil entity out to suck our freedoms like a proverbial leech like a lot of you seem to think, sure, there not the greatest in the world, but then who is?
I think it would be useful for such a system to warn a security guard reading /. that someone is walking around my car, perhaps ducking behind it to not be seen. This way the security guard pays attention to the security camera showing the perpetrator breaking into my car and starting to drive away. This way, since the guard is paying attention, he can call the police who can stop the car on the way out of the garage. The thief is arrested, my car is recovered, I'm happy.
/..
This is better than walking up to my parking space seeing my car gone, and finding out the guard wasn't paying attention because he was reading
Now, I don't seriously expect someone to come up to me arresting me for stealing my own car (or a borrowed friend's car which wouldn't have my name on the registration?) when I simply walk up to the car and happen to bend down to examine a tire that might have low pressure or examining a dent in the car from those large SUVs.
After all, the security guards are supposed to be watching the cameras despite any intelligent security system. It's always been the judgement of the security guard what suspicious activities are. I don't think that is changing here. Only the fact that monitoring 10 security cameras becomes a little easier when suspicious activity is brought to the guard's attention.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
This would be easy...
:)
just keep a slim jim in your coat...park your
car in any large parking lot...leave the
keys under the seat.
Goto the mall or wherever...come out...walk t
your car. Pull out the slim jim...open the
door.
Esp at malls where they have a van driving around
the parking lot for security...it should arose
alot of suspicion.
The obvious drawback is you could damage you car
with the slim jim and have to have the locking
mechanism fixed.
Of course...it seems to me these camera
systems would work much better inside a store then
in a parking lot. I mean...stores lose alot
of money due to shoplifting, they don't lose much
except reputation for having a safe parking lot
if your car gets stolen.
Much better to just walk around inside department
stores. Dart your head back and forth alot,
looking into aisles not at merchandise...make lots
of darting hand motions into your pockets etc
Sure it could be a fun way to kill a few hours but
seems rather pointless
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I thought most of the media was government sponsored.
I would suspect that cases of this in the US are much lower than you expect. For instance, did you know that more children died last year as a result of air bags than accidental shootings? More children drowned?
I beg to differ. "Si vis pacem, para bellum"
We really should have seen this coming. Once the use of surveillance cameras became widespread, of course efforts were going to be made to improve their effectiveness.
I spent many years working in a petrol station, and one of my banes were shoplifters. After a while though, you learn to spot them, by their behaviour, hanging around shelves, looking around themselves. Usually, I could deter them with a look, and a suggestive glance at the security cameras. Sometimes though I would realize that they were merely confused, and were searching for a product, and I would then offer them assistance.
The important thing is that they came to my attention because of their behaviour patterns. I then made the decision on how to react. We still lost a lot though, if we were busy and I was too busy to watch. And there were always the professional thieves who would know how not to stand out.
What I'm trying to say here is that this is another example of tools frightening people. While there is potential to abuse these systems, we have to bear in mind that the systems are reporting to human supervisors any 'erratic' behaviour - the kind of thing that the supervisors are already looking out for. This system is simply aiding their job. If you have a problem with it, then it's with the camera's themselves, not the pattern-recognition software. Camera systems are already being used to track suspect individuals who have been picked out by security personnel - a prime example is in Oxford Street, London.
Any abuses will be committed by the human monitors. So our imperative is not to recoil from such systems, but to try to ensure that they are used responsibly, and genuinely with the safety of the public in mind.
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
Sure, the computer tracking makes it easier, but police and security already track people for "supicious" behavior. If you come into this country on an international flight, airport security has the right to pick people out and search them if they "look suspicious". According to the law, suspicious behavior includes things such as "travelling alone", "travelling in a group", "having only one piece of carry-on luggage", etc.
Where I would expect a system like this to be used is for "probable cause" to justify search and seizure.
As far as simple secutiry goes, human security already responds to people who behave in an unusual manner. Who among us has not been followed around a department store by the store security. (Oh, just me? Nevermind.)
-- I'm not evil, I'm
If you brits still had your shotguns
... thus the effects of an abundance of guns in a society? Democracy works through discussion in the UK.
--- Don't suppose *peaceful* protest would occur to you
Suppose the cue stick were to accidentally slip out of your hands while you were kung-fuing it around the bar, and accidentally hit the camera, wouldn't that be funny? ;) If I knew cameras were watching me, I would put on a show. Or I would find some way to play games with them; having a friend come in and pretend to mug me comes to mind. I don't really think this kind of system would work in America, people here are too damn wierd. And you know that within a week of these things going up it would be a game for punk highschool kids to spraypaint them or something. I grew up in a rural area where every kid had a bb gun, these things would have been priority one targets.
Communication is only possible between equals
For thieves, that is. Get ahold of one of these and learn exactly what activities look suspicious (to computers and to security folks). Then perfect your technique so as not to set off the alarm. Kinda like those mannequins with bells hung on them used to train pick-pocketers (well, in Oliver, anyway). Then the security guards are busy watching the poor saps who aren't stealing but look suspicious and you're free to take whatever you want.
if politicians are enabling government to monitor citizenry, the citizenry should be given the same mechanism to monitor government.
:-)
I'm fairly ignorant of the topology of UK government, but let's see a bunch of cameras installed in whatever chambers/halls/offices they use.
I know we could use a few in the Whitehouse
I thought most of the media was government sponsored.
... doesn't make either right... At least air bags aren't made for killing...
--- You are plain *wrong* on that... sorry - it may well be different in the US...
did you know that more children died last year as a result of air bags than accidental shootings?
--- Possibly
--- I respect your right to differ, my view is that your society is poorer for it...
It turned out, later in the book, that everything was (naturally) a hoax. Eyes just irradiated people at random, just so the gov't could cash in on the fear factor to keep 'em in line.
Wish I could remember the book. It was by either Norman Spinrad or James Blish. Might have been "All the Stars a Stage".
I am a man of const int sorrows
I could just see you shooting one of those cameras now. Blam scream (as the shot from the shotgun takes ot the camera and the woman standing in the window next to it) Brits stupid? you couldn't even pick the right tool for the job. If your aim is that bad use a rifle with sights.
Also may I note:
... you rebelled against the (at the time excessive) taxes of the Crown... The monarchy are still here...
1. we did not let our selves be disarmed - it was through due democratic processes that our gun laws are far tighter than the US - something supported by the majority over here...
2. The US didn't not overthrow the monarchy
>>children getting hold of guns etc....
>I would suspect that cases of this in the US are much lower than you expect.
>For instance, did you know that more children died last year
> as a result of air bags than accidental shootings? More children drowned?
Isn't even one to many????
How are they going to be able to follow through on that? They didn't have to send out squad cars because you decided to walk in circles around your car, and you have the perfect right and obligation to do so.
-lx
Wow, we're extrapolating pretty far. Perhaps this might be a concern in the future, trying to enforce anti-racism, or sexism through these types of intelligent security systems. My impression was that this work is intended to find more obvious criminal activities. I understand the concern of privacy issues and using this technology for extreme measures, but I would expect that as this technology evolves, these products would be evaluated on it's intentions and uses, much like this discussion.
How about a slashdot vote on suspicious activities? I don't know exactly what these intelligent systems would be triggered by, but these are my guesses.
I have done the following suspicious activities:
I have never done any of the above. But I would suspect that if you were fishing to unlock your car door with a hanger because you locked your keys in the car, you could easily prove this by showing the keys in the car or your car registration. If you have your hands up, I think it would be obvious to nearby security or police that no one is near you pointing a knife or gun at you. What other simple explanations can you give for the other examples?
I am not expecting these intelligent systems to be programmed to warn of every possible criminal action. But I would expect some simple activities like the above to be programmed to help with security guard's workload and not often give false warnings.
What other thoughts are there?
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
but here in the US it would be illegal to sell or distribute security footage. Do you guys not have laws to that effect?
-lx
"If it's tall and thin it's a person," says Maybank. "If it's long and low it's a car."
The key to subverting the parking lot system?
Stay long and low. Think: "I am a car. I am a car. I am a car...." Make occasional honking noises.
Piece of cake.
If the logic is this unsophisticated on these systems, (and I doubt the expense of true sophistication will allow much of it in the field) they'll never be admissible in court, or any real threat to privacy or security.
~~~Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore, all mortals are Socrates.
"If it's tall and thin it's a person," says Maybank. "If it's long and low it's a car."
The key to subverting the parking lot system?
Stay long and low. Think: "I am a car. I am a car. I am a car...." Make occasional honking noises.
Piece of cake.
If the logic is this unsophisticated on these systems, (and I doubt the expense of true sophistication will allow much of it in the field) they'll never be admissible in court, or any real threat to privacy or security.
~~~Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore, all mortals are Socrates.
There will always be stupid people in a society. Much more people die from auto accidents every year than gun violence. Why should we ban cars? Did you know that over 2.5 million crimes were stopped by defensive gun use (including merely brandishing a weapon) last year. The media never talks about the potentially thousands of lives saved every year by guns.
You'd actually be safe on this charge, although I daresay they'd try to bluff you. There's no law against acting like a dick, a technicality I have regularly had cause to be thankful for. The offence of "wasting police time" is usually used to prosecute people who make hoax alarm calls.
...."
At a demo once, I kept on making bottle-throwing motions as we passed policemen. I got so good at it that one of them fell flat on the ground because he thought he'd been petrol-bombed. Policemen hate this shit. So he pulled me out of the crowd, searched me, couldn't really pin anything. So he tried to fake me:
"Wasting police time is a serious offence"
"Really? Is it? How fascinating! Tell me more
He didn't get that joke either.
jsm
I can see how you would see it that way - but you are not quite right.
The problem here in america is not that we have guns and threfore think in violent ways. When the government in America takes away a citizen's rights for no justifiable reason, if the citizen resists, he meets formidible armed resistance. And the people making up this armed resistance are famous for their brutality, their corruptness etc... And that's just the police. Once we get into the evil deeds done by the FBI, CIA, secret service, etc... in the name of protecting the national fucking insecurity - it's just not a matter of sitting down and talking it out with an institution with that much power - and the gov't certainly doesn't have some moral code that forbids them from resorting to force.
I don't know how it is in the UK - maybe the average citizen really does feel like he is being treated fairly by his gov't, maybe you do get what you pay for with your taxes there, I don't know.
But here, it sure seems all fucked up. If talking worked, it would have been fixed by now.
While I'm impressed, as an engineer, at some of the cleverly simple hacks used to discriminate events ...
... do we really want to dumb down security guards anymore? If security guards are clever and attentive, they might be able to make good use of such a system -- but if they were clever and attentive, who would need such a system in the first place?
In 99.44% of real installations, I see use falling into exactly one of two patterns:
Meanwhile, we catch a few dumb crooks, the smart crooks learn the holes in the system, and everybody gets trained in the subtle paranoia of knowing that deviation from behavior that doesn't readily compute as "law-abiding" will give you hassles with The Man. This does not strike me as particularly healthy for a people who aspire to be free and democratic.
Allright, I'm seeing a lot of comments saying how one shouldn't try to set off false alarms, subvert the system, pretend to steal your own car, etc. I think in such a situation people are obligated to do such a thing if they value their own freedom. Protest and causing a little trouble for a good cause is a righteous thing.
If people want to observe others by such a system, they're going to have to accept its faults. I have every right to act suspicious, behave oddly, or make unexpected moves. That's what makes me human. And if people are going to accept such a system, I think that they are relinquishing some very basic rights.
-lx
You know, you'd think they would have learnedx by now. Particularly after the last school shooting (about which I'm honestly surprised JonKatz hasn't written). Why?
Because the shooter apparently didn't fit any geek profile out there. No amount of profiling, and certainly no computer program could have found him. And that's proof that it doesn't work; you hurt far more innocent people than you catch criminals. In this case, geek profiling caused hardships for thousands of students, and didn't even catch the next shooter.
Part of the philosophy of our justice system is that "it is better to let ten guilty men go free than to punish one innocent man." Yeah, I suppose it shows in the fact that criminals twist our laws around so much to get off for their crimes, but that's not the point. The point is, this sort of profiling should be unconstitutional. I guess that wouldn't hinder its development in the UK (which has no formal Constitution) but still, you'd think they'd have learned from these mistakes too.
Uh, in public places I am careful what I do. Who knows when somebody will walk in. I would only be upset if there were a camera in a private location. I don't know of any cameras in private places. If I found a camera in the bathroom, I would be upset.
But at a public bar, if you enjoy doing Kung-Fu moves with your pool cue, so what? Everybody else in the bar can see you. So what if one extra person sees you?
If you assume you're alone that's your problem. A public place is a public place, whether it's just a camera or a room full of people. If you don't want anybody to see what you're doing, I suggest going some place private.
Now if you were Martha Stewart doing doing a Kung-Fu move or picking her nose and the guard kept the recording and sold the footage to CBS for a prime time broadcast, I'm sure she wouldn't appreciate it. Her audience was the bar, not the world.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
In order for any of that footage that goes on cable to be used, a release has to be signed, or a crime committed. That's why some of the people on cops have their faces blurred.
I think these "real camera footage" shows are even worse than Springer. A friend was telling me of one where a surveillance cam caught a guy in a pinata factory "making love" to a pinata, and he sued for entrapment (they made the pinata look too good not to have sex with).
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Until machines attain telepathy, I place no faith in these devices.
Machines can capture information, manipulate information and display information, but it doesn't care if the bits form a game of JezzBall or kiddy porn. Likewise in the related article.
What if, for some reason or another, I want to walk through a parking lot, or subway, or airport for no good reason? Should I have to think twice before playfully punching a friend on the shoulder in public?
The computer can only recognize the difference in behavior, not intention.
There are reasonable implementations of this technology (the airport scenario, for example). However, I would feel a bit more comfortable knowing a device is scanning for stray luggage instead of how many times I've entered a bathroom or walked down a terminal.
Personally, I'd rather have my car stolen than worry about if my behavior pleases the computer.
What this system does is exactly the same as a human security guard would do: Look around and see if anything needs more attention. The actions triggered by any "abnormal" action are still ruled by the same laws. Carrying a crowbar in a parking lot is perfectly legal. Using it to break into a car is not. In the first case an officer might ask me what I'm up to, but he could never arrest me for it. In the second case he could.
Now I'm as concerned about freedom as any of you, but please: Fight the real dangers, not gadgets and tools.
The real question is not "Can a computer watch the surveillance photos" but "Why are there surveillance in the first place"
"How does the law find determine that someone is a suspect" is a valid question, but "What can they do when they suspect but cant prove" is far more important.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Fair enough, I get pissed off with it as well, and yes, it generally is Americans having a go at other countries, especially England.
when I am waiting for my girl friend to try on clothes at some store, all I can do is either sit there or wander around. Usually the people working there ask me about 5 times if I need assistance with anything, but they soon realize that I am just some poor joe waiting for his girlfriend when she comes out of the dressing room with 45 pieces of clothing in her arms. I would guess if there were some sorta camera system with intelligence behind it, they would pick me off as a weirdo and I would be dragged to the backroom. People should have a right to do what they want in a public area as long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of the people around them. Walking in strange patterns and looking suspicious might just be the way a non threatening person really is.
c7five
... I think at some point we will have to get rid of cars ... the increase of cars is not sustainable & severly damages the environment ... classic example of the best choice for each individual being the worst for society ... and I believe the same is true for your view on gun ownership ...
;)
.... I'm sure a life has been saved by a terrorist once... but I wouldn't encourage every home to have one
Did you know you are about three times more liklely to be killed in a burglary attempt if you have a gun in your house. The media tends not to talk about this either, what the media likes doing is feeding both sides garbage. The media on one hand says registering guns is taking away guns and taking away all our safety and rights and on the other that registering guns will cause crime to stop. Face it the media just likes pissing people off.
Here in the UK, we are introducing mandatory drug tests for all people arrested. You may have done nothing when they arrest you, but they'll soon find out about that joint you smoked at a party last Friday, and then you'll be a known Criminal. Obviously you can't wrongfully arrest a Criminal. The police have used possession of MJ as an excuse to remove computer equipment from politically 'interesting' groups, so now you have to give them the keys for any encrypted data on your machine, or face 5 years. So, are you still innocent?
We lost the right to silence with the Criminal Justice Act 199(5?). This had a clause (amongst others) that said IIRC you could be asked to explain in court any sign, mark or device found on any clothing or footwear(!) you are wearing when arrested, or in the premises you were arrested. Failure to provide an explanation can be held against you in court. I think that just about covers everything.
This is supposed to be left wing government. LOL.
... I don't think people in the UK are as alienated from their government ... but being a far smaller country, the individual is closer to the government. I am sorryt if the feeling about government is so bad in the US. Talking does work, but it takes longer than force... but I believe it to be worth the wait... Also the circumstances constantly change - so society is constantly being readjusted. The Poll Tax issue in the 1980's is a great example of how a m,assively unpopular law was quickly reversed by the (mostly) peaceful protest of the population ... Possibly also an example of how money issues gain more weight than those of "rights" in most democratic capotalist societies - but that is another debate ;)
Certainly agree to this :)
The media tends to feed on driving up anger & misinformation in such disputes...
Wow! These are some very interesting developments! Cool! I wonder if you could apply this to animal supervision?
They kept talking about monitoring humans, but it seems you could use this to monitor animals as well- which also exhibit fairly consistent behaviours.
An automated home attendant to let your dog out to go pee...or open the gate so the cows can come back into the barn.
It would seem a distributed agricultural management system could be made from this technology. Powered by solar cells and running on linux!!
You could have a greenhouse farm in antarctica. One human for every ten farms...or mars...
Most of the others posters worry about issues like privacy and control. I don't worry about stuff like that- cuz I'm not a criminal, I'm just another wildebeast jumping over streams trying to get to work. Besides, you can always move to another country if you think where you are is over legislated and monitored.
We are after all, just beasts herded into our pens...
Gun Truths
If you had the choice of parking in a lot with high-tech eyes watching, or parking next door at the lot with limited security, which would you choose? What if it were in a bad area?
How many times have you seen a car alarm go off, and everyone just ignores it. Car alarms have been so annoying with lots of false alarms, that everyone ignores them. Even if it isn't a false alarm.
The same thing will happen with this system. There are going to be too many false alarms and everyone will begin to ignore the system entirely.
I used to cross the English channel on the Eurotunnel a lot, and I would always be alone in my car, usually quite heavily loaded with all the junk I tended to carry back and forth between home and university.
I used to wear black clothes, I had facial hair (not a lot of it, but facial hair is a big customs no-no). And I had a lot of stamps, visas and stuff in my passport because I'd travelled a lot in obscure African countries and in Eastern Europe.
I used to get stopped all the time, and they'd check the car out thoroughly every time, with a dog sniffing around it, a little vacuum cleaner that would provide samples for analysis by a big machine, people checking the insides of the wheels, unloading all my stuff and so on.
I began drawing up theories as to why I was getting stopped so much, I'd even joke about it with the customs officials whilst they were trying to look important. I thought maybe it was because I was a single male travelling in a car, or because I'd travelled so much, or because my passport was so worn in.
The truth is, the day I decided I wanted to be clean-shaven again, they stopped searching me. Not only at the Eurotunnel, but also in Airports. I have a strong suspicion that most of the "random" checks done at the Eurotunnel are the result of the guy who checks your passport deciding you "look suspicious" and signalling this to the customs folk who then pull you over.
I wonder if they're recruited on their ability to distinguish the difference between someone who wears black and has a beard and whatever they define as a normal person, at a distance of 100 metres, or if it's part of their training package (that my taxes pay for, of course!)
Salocin.com
Guns and burglary facts
Easiest solution, never leave the safety of the chair/sofa/bed or whatever you prefer to sit on at the computer(s). Nerd and proud.
I do believe us Yanks did. The British Crown and Parliament has been a government in exile (from the 13 colonies) for what, 220-something years now? That's as good as it gets (unless you can do them like the Tsar). ;-)
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Please tell me that site is a joke! It has made my whole office laugh!... How can people see such things so black & white? Gun control kills no-one ... guns & those with them certainly kills people...
A country either believes in individual freedom or it doesn't. If you want to believe that the government will always act in your best interest, that's your right. But I think it's foolish. Got a final to go to... Been fun arguing with you.
Gotta go. Been fun.
I think the difference is seeing everyone in society as a part of the government ... that is the basis of democrasy isn't it?
... Oh and I've certainly enjoyed it too!... Good luck with the final!
Gun control was not introduced by "Due democratic" process. It was mob rule imposed by vote chasing, populist MPs. Popular laws are not neccessarily just laws.
Banning hand-guns has had negligible effect on gun crime in the UK. Nobody robs banks or takes part in a gangland turf war with a legally registered handgun.
Yeah, but in the UK it's illegal to carry a slim jim unless you can show a very good reason for it; Trying to gain access to your car is NOT a good reason. Then again the Police could allways arrest you on 'suspicion' or of 'going equiped', both LEGAL reasons for arrest here.
I happen to take the deaths of millions of civilians by their governments VERY seriously.
--- Me too
Gun control is a prerequisite for genocide
--- So are guns, I'd say
I don't understand why everybody keeps being so PARANOID about those SURVEILANCE cameras, LOOKING AT YOU everywhere you go, after all if you're a GOOD CITIZEN, you don't RISK MUCH, as you're not a COMMIE, are'nt you?
I'm really sick of this...
...) or secretely help dictators.
Everytime the old US vs. Europe thing shows up the
"you had a genocide"-thing rears it ugly head.
About 9 million jews got killed during WWII,
but how many native americans are there left
(When the first colonists arrived there were
roughly some 20 million of them)
The Monroe-clause any-one?
You wanna count the numbers of wars? Yeah OK,
so you guys go make war elsewhere (Vietnam,
Korea,
But of course all the wars you fight are for "the
greater good"...
What about crime? The USA have the highest number
of prisoners (in relative and absolute numbers)
of the whole planet.
It's always reassuring for us to hear on CNN that, when one of your "hot-shot" pilots goes breaking some rules and kills 20 civilians (that elevator
thing in italy remeber), "luckily no american
citizens got hurt".
And no we are not technologically retarded,
and we don't all wanna live in "the land of the
free" (In Europe it's not illegal to drink a
beer while walking on the street, in most
countries. Now that's freedom).
When I read this I admit I slightly overreact,
but you've been pushin' this american chauvinism
thing to far lately...
Get of our backs,
we'll stay of yours.
No hard feelings
J.
It was mob rule
... unfortunately it appears to be the most free form of government we have had, so far.....
--- In case you had not noticed democrasy is just the tyranny of the majority
Banning hand-guns has had negligible effect on gun crime in the UK. Nobody robs banks or takes part in a gangland turf war with a legally registered handgun.
--- I dispute your first point - although I would expect such an effect to truely show over many years, not in the short time we have had the laws to which you refer. To the second I would say that the less tools of killing in a society the better - making it less likely that legal guns fall to the hands of criminals (also less likely to be used in domestic disputes, accidentally used by chilred etc.).
I spent $%!# 2 hours wandering around London one night trying to get a !%#% taxi. If they can detect suspecious behavior, I'm sure they could detect taxi-getting behavior and dispatch one.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You have to ask yourself if a premise of "carry a gun or be shot" is better than a level playing field of nobody having guns at all, also it doesn't say much for your law enforcement or justice system when everyone is forced to take the law into their own hands.
Isn't being searched for a gun when you go into any public building more of a violation of your rights that not having a gun at all, this is just an example of innocent until proven guilty.
Having your children tested and screened by the FBI to see if they're a major threat to society, and the presence of security guards, metal detectors and surveillance cameras in schools doesn't exactly come across as "the land of the free", such a hostile environment sounds like a perfect description of a prison not a school where you expect children to learn and develop.
And as for the monarchy, I can't exactly see where that fits into a country having guns/cameras, but I suppose it go's against your americocentric views, so you might as well throw it into the discussion.
Love the coldwar mentality btw.
P.S. This is just another biometric technology, it's use can be for good or bad.
I know that they've had more than their share of troubles with terrorism, but it seems like that they enjoy devising new and thoughtful ways to invade people's privacy and make Orwell's "1984" predictions become real.
I agree with a lot of your sentiments there...
... but I hope in the UK we are saying as a society that we don't want guns everywhere, because of the risks & destablising effect it can have...
... I think that guns & computers etc can all be used for good or bad
I was a security guard in a former life (per-college degree). If we saw someone acting weird, hanging around after hours, fixing a car in the parking lot, etc, we went up to them and started a conversation. "Heh, how ya' doin'?" Is that harassment?
Damn, people catch a clue. Just because a policeman ask for ID or why you're hanging out in a near empty parking garage with a coat hanger doesn't mean he is about to drag you off to jail. He may actually want to HELP you. I've actually had the police to stop and UNLOCK MY CAR FOR ME!! Yes he did ask to see some ID, and he did check the registration. But I'd would've been writing articles to the local paper if he hadn't with titles like "Why do the police aid in car theft?"
We pay the police to monitor suspicious behavior (Why the hell would they monitor NORMAL behavior?). What's the problem with a system that automates the surveillance? How is this different from an old man in a uniform standing next to the entrance to a bank?
Another benefit people here are glossing over. The police prefer to PREVENT crimes. Is it better to catch a criminal, or have a guard walk up right before the crime convincing the guy to move on. Remember, most crime is committed not hardened criminals, but by opportunist. These cameras will be most effective on the latter.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
... and this does not really advanced the field of Computer Vision at all.
Did you read the part about what they use to distinguish a human from a car ? A human is long and thing a car wide and short. OH MY GOD ! What a dumb heuristic !!!
This reminds me of my Computer Vision project in grad school. It could recognize 3 objects; a donut , scissors and a pencil. It worked great, until you gave it a stappler and it would think it was a pencil. Or take a picture of scissors at a very weird angle.
Simplistic heuristics give stupid answers. If they really want to do this (whatever the merits are) they need to get serious about how they recognize and place objects, not implement hacks that only work in very restricted conditions !
- sigs are for wimps.
I fail to see what you Brits are complaining about. It's the status quo, ne?
Look at the stats for drug use, the average cocaine addict is a white male, average convict for cocaine use black male. Black people tend to score lower on iq tests, why? standardized for white anglo-saxon protestants, but WASPs score equally low on iq test standardized on black populations. I hate to burst your racist bubble but psychological studies point to race as useless in predicting behavior
Big Brother is watching you!
Apathy -- The state of numbness of the mind. When you are apathic, you can think.
Of course, the police may (and probably should) question such behaviour in order to determine the true circumstances, and they may advise you not to act like that in the future, but unless there is a law saying that sneaking around in a strange outfit amounts to calling the police, I doubt you can be charged with false alarm.
The idea with the surveillance cameras is that they are to be used for one-way monitoring of what people actually do, not serve as public "videophoneboots" for people wishing to get in touch with the authorities. The surveillance system is to be tuned to the normal behaviour of people, not the other way around. Having a sign saying "Area under automatic surveillance - Please confine your actions to the statistical norm, unless you have criminal intent" would be plain silly.
There are of course special cases, such as a bank, where entering wearing a mask and wielding a gun is a sure way to get the attention of security staff and everybody else. Don't do that, unless you really intend to rob the bank and face the consequences.
I recall someone mentioning a few years back that school kids in some U.S. cities were ordered not to wear certain necklaces or Disney t-shirts to school, simply because those items were closely related with either drug trafficking or gang wars. I would probably agree that the kids shouldn't put themselves at risk by wearing odd outfits in the wrong environment, but it's not like you can prevent people in general from messing with your statistical notion of what different kinds of criminals look like.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"...entire swaths of society will be deemed worthwhile to forcibly teach not to trigger the dumb(by human standards) sensor arrays. ...
I guess we don't really need to wait for this tech to be applied-- dumb sensor arrays are already being triggered to pull triggers, so to speak.
As usual, food for thought.
-"S"HM
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
We should figure out ways to thwart such systems. As long as the technology exists, people are going to use it. complaining amongst ourselves is a waste of breath.
Maybe there's a kind of source attack for this thing. Pick apart it's pattern recognition mechanisms and use them against the technology. We can find ways to randomize our patterns such that it can't keep track of anything, or we can make it think that nothing's out of the ordianry.
Sure, we should be scared, pissed and protesting. We should also be working on "Plan B" in case this stuff does come into widespread use.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Fun alright. Kind of pointless though. These
things are tools, use them well and they serve
you well. That's how I look at it anyway.
_.. .
Good point Tom ... here the use of guns by our respective governments divides us! Ever fancied coming back to live here?
It's amazing to me how many people still brush this stuff off like it's no big deal. Yet the big brother thing really is happening here:
Mosaic 2k: Technology to flag your records if you appear to be the type that deviates from the norm--while you're still in high school.
EZ-Pass: Technology that keeps a database when and where you are drive as you pay tolls.
Digital Wiretapping: Legislation requiring that the phone companies provide the government with the ability to tap up to 1% of phone lines at any given time (in-house--they don't even have to go to the phone company.)
Key-escrow/weak encryption: Government pressuring companies to only provide encryption that the government can break.
Tracking money: Unless you're paying cash for everything, just about every transaction you make is recorded somewhere.
Cameras everywhere: no need to be redundant here
Yet I still see people saying "what's the big deal?" everytime something else is added to the list. Add it up people!
My list is short and incomplete, but the actual list of freedoms and privacies that are being taken away grows almost daily. How you look, what you are doing, where you are, what money you transact, even which information you exchange--all these things governments deem necessary to track.
You could even point to some of these things and say that they don't necessarily violate your rights--but your rights mean nothing to those that would violate them. People talk freely on here about suing police if they violate their rights. Yet I'm sure most of you have never had to attempt it. People think, "yeah, ok, I'll just find a lawyer and we'll go to court and sue them because they were wrong." It doesn't work that way.
Suppose you want to sue a state trooper for clearly violating one of your constitutional rights. First, take about $5000 out of the bank (if you're willing to settle for a mediocre lawyer.) He and the state will send paperwork back and forth for a year or so. Eventually you'll be permitted to drive to the state capital for an audience with an assistant state district attorney who will take a deposition to help determine if the state will allow you to sue (no, you cannot sue a state trooper without the state's permission unless it's not related to his job.) After another year or so, provided the state agrees to be brought to court, you'll get your day in court--or at least in the lobby at the courthouse while the lawyers and the judge have little meetings determining whether it can be settled without making the details of the incident a matter of public record. Afterwards the judge gets to decide whether or not to throw the case out. If you're lucky enough to be allowed your day(s) in court, head to the bank and take out another $5k for when they decide they can finally schedule you in.
Now, over these couple years, the officer knows where you live, your license number, all the details about your car, and if you're job is registered with the state, he knows where you work. He doesn't need a warrant to dig up information on you if he does it on the sly.
Now I'm sure if you have more than a measly $10k to spend on your court case things go somewhat more smoothly than this. The judge, the DA, the cop, they'll all have a pretty good idea how much money you have backing you up and how much trouble you can cause them. But if you don't have the cash, you can quit whining about your rights because you'll just be a mild annoyance.
If you believe that abuse of individuals' rights is rare, then you probably have never had to opportunity to find out how wrong you are first-hand. Many cops are trained in "profiling." This means they know if you fit certain profiles such as soccer mom, drug dealer, CEO, disadvantaged, able to afford a lawyer, not able to afford a lawyer, etc.
Sometimes you see the little guy come out on top in cases like this on TV. That's because it's on TV. When it's not on TV your case is work that everyone wants to get off their desk as quickly as possible. If you've been in a real courtroom you probably know that the courtroom is generally not filled people that are intensely interested in the resolution of *your* problems.
numb
This does indeed seem to be where societies are headed: towards greater and greater surveillance, towards more and more people watching what we're doing.
Is this bad? More importantly, can this be avoided if we do decide it's bad? The technology for pervasive monitoring of the population exists; how long will it be until it's used? Technological genies seldom fit back in their bottles.
A while back, David Brin wrote a book called "The Transparent Society" in which he talked about these issues. His point of view was that such monitoring is inevitable, and once put in place, won't vanish. He argues that we should accept this and instead work to ensure that, if such public monitoring is available to anyone, that it be available to all. If the police can watch cameras mounted on street corners, then the average citizen should be able to see the images from those cameras as well -- and should be able to see the view from cameras mounted in the police station to see what the police are doing. This will make everyone accountable to everyone else, or so the theory goes.
The table of contents and first chapter of "The Transparent Society" are available at Brin's site, for those who'd like to read more.
Regardless, as scientists and engineers begin mounting tiny cameras on little MEMS that can crawl under doorways and through cracks in walls, these kinds of issues will become more and more important.
Sargent
This is the another step on the way to thought police. Remember in 1984, Winston says how you can't even make odd facial gestures because people could be arrested for that alone.
That's what this system is going to lead to. It is so horrible that even after reading 1984 I can't imagine it.
The right to privacy is unbelievably important, and I think someone needs to speak up and stop things like this now, before it's too late, before one of these things is in your home, and if you even think about rebelling they can pick you up before you do.
This is incredibly scary, and I hope everyone else is as scared of this stuff as I am, because if they're not 1984 will come true.
Okay, I don't particularly believe this or meet any these attributes, but I want to bounce this off of ya'll
I don't see anything wrong with total freedom of information. Why shouldn't everyone know that I have a tattoo of a butt on a butt on my butt. I don't care.
I'm too busy doing what I have to do and to old to concern myself that someone might find my lifestyle objectionable, and they shouldn't care if I feel the same way about theirs.
The irrational protection of privacy demonstrated in many posts here makes me wonder "What have these people to hide? Do they want to hide their individuality. Are they afraid that someone is going to see into their world and see that they're wrong or that they do something bad? What?"
There is no right and wrong, and no need for privacy in all reality. It's a false security blanket when you tell yourself that you know something. It helps you feel special if you've got that kiddie porn under your bed or whatever else you do that you want to "protect."
I admit, to have a society without privacy will only work if all individuals and corperations and government entities also have no privacy, then you can see everything, and what you can see you can rationally react to and act against. However, the letting loose of information on the world will make life better in an exponential manner, as wittnessed by open source software.
thank you for your time.
Dan
As soon as I saw the subject on your post I knew it was going to end with something along the lines of 'when you lose all the guns.' Those NRA commercials that focus on the disarming of England are the best laughs I get on the weekends. Good old monkey-buster (and hardcore Democrat until the winds of popularity changed under Reagan) Chuck Heston talking about how it's my 'God given right' to own high powered firearms and how the government will run our lives if we give up our precious guns. They never mention the fact that our government has firepower the likes of which most Americans will never see, much less have the ability (or the will) to fight against. And the 'We did it to England and they had a real army' argument doesn't work either because the English had the same weapons as the Americans at the time, definately not true today.
hmm illegal to carry a slim jim....
now isn't that silly.
All it is is a piece of metal a foot
or so long with a notch at the end (at
least thats the type the police used here
when a friend of mine locked himself out
of his car)
Making a piece of metal illegal to carry seems
just too silly to me. At least its good to
know your lawmakers are just as stupid as ours
here in the US.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Sorry friend, you've been duped.
You don't *suffer* from ADD, you *suffer* from
living in a world full of zombies.
ADD is caused by low levels of the neuro-inhibitor
dopamine. Dopamine reduces neuron activity enabling
people to focus on dull repetitive tasks such
as ploughing fields, accountancy, or schoolwork.
The dopamine prevents the neurons from getting excited
by other trains of thought, thus helping you 'concentrate'.
However, it also prevents creative thought and
blocks out higher brain functions. It gets worse,
dopamine is addictive, so normal people become resentful
when you do something unexpected - you're denying them
their fix.
Healthy, active brains, have low dopamine levels
and find it virtually impossible to concentrate
on these pointless activities. Why should we be able
to concentrate on that crap ? it's not what we evolved
for.
However, given something interesting you can concentrate
better than 'normal' people.
I strongly recommend "ADD, a different perspective" by
Thom Hartmann.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
There is another aspect to consider regarding your rights (as far as US law is concerned) -as alot of people are upset about lost privacy and lost freedom.
If the cameras are monitoring you on private property (say in the parking lot of the grocery store) and they have made an effort to notify the people on the private property (a simple sign) that they're being monitored then your legal rights to privacy are pretty much gone. Its very similar to bank's current set-ups.
If a group wants to monitor the security of their property your rights don't mean much.
This is just something to think about. I'm not saying I support it don't support it. Just wanted to remind you some of our rights disappear on private yet publicly accessed property.
The government isn't going to disarm, and gun control is no more effective than cocaine or heroin control. If we can't keep crack or heroin (which have to be imported) off the streets, why would we think we could keep guns (which can be made in someone's basement with simple tools) away from the bad guys?
It's trite but true - when guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns. And the police and army too, of course. Neither are groups in which I have much trust.
Guns also level the "playing field" - if you're a small elderly person being attacked by a young, large, strong person with a baseball bat, a gun levels the odds real quick.
The fact that other nations with strong gun control have less crime doesn't meant that their lower crime rate is because of the gun control. (I.e., correlation != causality.) There are nations more armed than the US with less crime; Isreal and Switzerland come to mind. There are nations with few guns and horrible violence; about a million people in Rwanda were killed with machetes. Our society's problem with violence lies not in our guns but in ourselves - in our economic, criminal justice, and mental health systems, in our War on (some) Drugs, in lingering rascism, and in our in our cultural acceptance of violence.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Well, he could just eat the Slim Jim(tm) while the police were closing in...
(How many others consider Slim Jims to be prime programming junk food?)
I forgot to ad the word "or" in my second to last sentance.
"I'm not saying I support it or don't support it."
I thought I'd add that correction so there is less of a chance that somebody thinks I support the idea of cameras everywhere and then get massively flamed.
Duke of URL
Well thanks for the strength of your convictions in posting anonymously ;)
...
....
I don't think Blair has any idea of making the UK a police state - the media runs the country more than the government anyway
... as a side note, we have far far less death due to accdental shootings, children getting hold of guns etc....
... a civilized society has no need for killing tools
I've yet to see a civilized society on this miserable mud ball.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Sour Grapes.
Snicker.
I guess this takes us one step closer to 1984.
Even more irritating is the 'positive' tint, the article gives to this application.
I guess If we WANT 1984, that is exactly what
we will deservedly GET. simple.
- ak
Next thing you know we will be forced to put ticket dispensers in our cars. So when we press to hard on the gas it automatically prints out a traffic citation. Just another instance of our freedoms being taken away one byte at a time!
I'm amazed how the whole /. rises as one man against this, ready to fight the oppression, and forever walking to their cars in an odd manner to save the world. Did they really read the article?
It's just some technology to save manpower. Instead of 5 people watching the screens you can have 2 people watching what the system flags as potential trouble. That's all it is. People still make the decisions.
It does not change the constitution, the laws, or the judicial system. You do not have to prove your innocence. It is just a goddam piece of software, for mallocs sake!!
I remember hearing about an incident some time ago in Britain that some guy dressed up in an alien (grey) costume and pretended to be sneaking into his own apartment through the window. The guard monitoring the cameras there supposedly got a good scare because he didn't know what he was observing, of course. I assume that prankster wasn't punished, but I wouldn't be surprised if the guards now moniter him just for kicks.
This is true that the problem is with human nature and violence, it's built into all of us to a degree, however if guns are so readily available it only helps to propagate that violence.
As for outlawing guns, in the US it would leave just criminals and law enforcement with guns because of their previous widespread nature.
However this is not true in other countries, take Great Britain for instance, the police don't carry guns, so there's one of the groups you don't trust gone, as for criminals, guns aren't widespread so not every petty thieve has one. Obviously there would still remain a small number of illegal weapons (still better than the world + dog having a gun).
The crime rate of other "armed nations" to the US is not comparable; their crime rates will be lower because they're only a fraction of the size to the US.
Guns don't offer a "level playing field", that amounts to vigilantism where you have a barbaric society of an eye for an eye without a criminal justice system. As for that old lady, if the criminal had a gun (which he most likely would) the odds are worse!
That might work for you, but I'd rather live in a civil society, thanks.
You have to ask yourself if a premise of "carry a gun or be shot" is better than a level playing field of nobody having guns at all, also it doesn't say much for your law enforcement or justice system when everyone is forced to take the law into their own hands.
Emphasis Mine.
That is a fallacy. The mere fact that the firearm was invented in the first place means that it will be reinvented by the first ingenious person that needs it even if every gun in existance is destroyed today. Criminals DO NOT OBEY LAWS, some people don't seem to understand that. I can, with a few parts from a hardware store and a bag of marbles, build a fully automatic weapon that will put a glass marble through your chest at 50 yards and weighs only 20lbs or so. Outlawing Guns WILL NOT make them go away, they will only take the guns away from the responsible, law abiding populace. You can not 'level the playing field' because criminals will always be able to get guns when they need/want them or to construct the equivelant device.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
This type of survelience is starting to remind me of Norman Spinrad's _Agent of Chaos_.
In the future the hegemony controls everything. In most public places there is installed an "eye and a beam". This is a camera and a radioactive source with a lead plug. If an unauthorized act occurs in range of the camera, the lead plug is popped and everyone in range is killed. (The idea is better that 1,000 subjects be killed than an unpermitted act go unpunished.) It turns out that the computers that monitored the cameras could not catch everything, so they were programmed to go off at random on occasion just to keep people afraid of possibly commiting an "unpermitted act".
We are moving quickly towards that sort of society. The police are looking for more and more "unpermitted acts". Any sort of deviation from the norm is evidence of a possible "crime". (And we all know that anything deemed a "crime" needs to be punished.)
An additional "benifit" to these cameras (to the rulers) is that you have a means to get dirt on anyone. Your political enemies not have to worry about doing ANYTHING in public that might get noticed. Being that cautious 24 hours a day is a terrible stress and will help break the most fervent opposition member.
But remember that this is all being done for your own safety and public good. Go back to watching TV and reading your government provided newspaper.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
"responsible, law abiding populace" ?
I thought the majority of resulting injuries from guns was the result of guns being used against the owners family or friends ?
I thought the majority of resulting injuries from guns was the result of guns being used against the owners family or friends ?
Recheck your statisitics. A large portion of the statistics included in that study are Suicides, and the lack of a firearm doesn't reduce the suicide rate (reference Japan) a vanishingly small # of injuries with firearms occur when they accidentally discharge. And that is FAR FAR outweighed by the # of crimes deterred by the mere brandishing of a handgun.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Sent to letters@newscientist.com:
In reference to "Warning! Strange Behavior" there's a fundamental
flaw in the logic of the security guard example that is systemic
to the entire technology. Specifically, the security guard
recognizes that the behavior of our possible-bomber is highly
suspicious. But his first goal is to apprehend the suspect, where
he should be calling the bomb-squad first. In the type of situation
these systems are designed to prevent, public safety has to be the
number one concern. It shouldn't take a back seat to the system's
desire to apprehend someone who may have done nothing wrong.
Here's another point of view than can not be neglected. Our unsuspecting
would-be bomber may have just received a cell phone call with extremely
urgent news. Perhaps a loved one is in danger. He jumped up, forgot
his briefcase and is running frantically to the situation. No, he's
not going to be perfectly coherent when the guards arrest him. And as
long as you're making huge assumptions about him leaving a bomb in
the airport, then I can assume that because your security guards
falsely apprehended him, he's not going to make it in time. He's not
going to be there to save his child's life who may have needed a blood
transfusion that only he (being O-) could give. Yes, it's a house of
cards in terms of logic, but so is the system you describe. Your system
is just hiding the house of cards inside a big red glowing light that
reads "Arrest That Man!"
The technology in general is scary because it allows organizations
to target individuals when the organization's primary responsibility
is to the public. This technology _will_ be misused. It's too
complicated of a distinction for it not to be. I just hope our
legal systems are up to the challenge that these machines will
impose; I fear that they are not.
Rudy Moore
1. 2.
Have to mention that pot smoking is a crime. So is being a woman of the night (ahh- prostitute aka hooker).
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
As I was reading the comments on this new system, I was stuck by who close in relation this device and the current flap and Napster are, yet how differently people react. Everyone pretty much agrees Napster should be completely legal. It is used to trade illegal MP3s, but that's not Napster's fault, that's the responsibility of the people using it, not the technology itself. Now the situation with this surveillance system is quite similar, except people don't wqant it around because it can be misused. If used correctly, this technology could be a great thing to prevent a HUGE amount of crime, but used incorrectly it could be a tool of harrassment. But it depends on the people using it, not the technology itself. I feel you can't discount technology because of a potential for future abuse, you need to deal with the potential abusers.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Gee, did these geniuses think of a computer program that could monitor outdoor CCTVs for patterns of a person in distress, waving their arms or something?
Hey! Help! I've just been robbed!
But since it was done in an alley where the camera couldn't see, it won't trip the system, and you'll just be waving at a dumb camera, probably thinking your an exuberant teen coming out of the bars after a night out.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Again, your comparisons are misleading, Japan has the whole "honour" thing, if your business goes down, the honourable thing to do is to commit suicide.
Also read up on the previously posts in this thread, your chances of getting shot in a burglary situation is actually worse if you have a gun, not that's suicide of a different type!
The system would train itself on a person's patterns of behaviour and ask them if they were all right if they failed to get up one morning or fell over. If the person didn't respond, the system would issue a distress call to a help centre. Another George would send someone round to help, without even once seeing inside the person's home. in reply to this just as soon as they employ that computer some old person's gonna figure out "if i die for an hour someone comes!" maybe they'll notify my kids and they'll show up too they'd stick them in jail and call them a hacker
David Brin (Author of much amazing Sci-Fi including my favorite novel "Earth") has written a non fiction book called "The Transparent Society" that looks at the use of surveillance technology.
He argues that the war for privacy is already lost, and that all we have to fight for is bi-directional transparency. As is, the government is able to watch you extremely well. You have little or no ability to watch back. There's little real accountability on the part of large corporations and government in the area of data collection and its usage.
It's an interesting read, and I found the arguments very compelling. Perhaps I will write a proper review and synopsis of it's contents if there's interest.
Jonathan
....if alot of time was spent getting the recognition software to where it could tell a Lexus, from a Yugo, and a Hispanic, from Norwegian. All of that time and effort would be wasted if it turned out that the concept was flawed.
This is called a proof of concept (even if that term wasn't used in the article thats what this is). After the concept has been proven, then you have an idea of what traits/characteristics to have your software recognize. And you wouldn't have wasted all that time and effort.
"Lend your ear while I call you a fool" Ian Anderson
Actually, this isn't too far off from the way the government deals with militia groups. The groups have guns which they train with. Most of them don't like the government. That's means and motive. What frequently happens is a government agent infiltrates a group and when the agent hears someone talking trash about the government and mouthing off about what they would like to do, even in jest, they have intent, and the group gets busted for conspiracy. Many of those groups are pretty nutty (and dangerous), but consider the implications.
If you (previous poster) own a gun and if you or someone close to you has been screwed by the man (irs audit, random search, etc) then with your current post to a public forum, you have already come within a hair's breadth of doing everything you need to put yourself in prison for a long time.
In fact, there are militia organizations which are not crazy, they simply believe in the second amendment and believe that if the time comes when we need to take the land back from the government, (we're not there yet) we should be ready. This is not an unreasonable viewpoint considering that the founders of our country were revolutionaries who took the land from the British. They then screwed up with the articles of confederation and had to scrap them in favor of the constitution. They were certainly aware of their own fallability and that the system they created may someday need to be taken down by force. Some people say that this is the real intent behind the second amendment. I'm not sure they are wrong.
However, once an organization like that exists, all it takes is one member getting drunk and spouting off to the wrong person and everyone goes to prison for conspiracy to overthrow the US government. This has happened a number of times, and the bad press that militia organizations get is partly the result of government propaganda. Unfortunately, it is also the result of the fact that many of them are complete lunatics.
pornking
Again, your comparisons are misleading, Japan has the whole "honour" thing, if your business goes down, the honourable thing to do is to commit suicide.
Also read up on the previously posts in this thread, your chances of getting shot in a burglary situation is actually worse if you have a gun, not that's suicide of a different type!
Fine, The Netherlands has a higher suicide rate per capita than the US. And way less guns. Deal.
And your chances of getting shot in a burglary situation will always go up when a gun is introduced, but your chances of preventing the criminal from going about his business goes up far more. And if people are properly educated on how to use firearms, and taught to respect them then you don't have accidental shootings. I grew up in an area where everyone was given a gun of some kind around their 10th birthday, they were taught to use and respect guns as soon as they could walk. We have had 0 accidental shootings in the last 45 years in an area with a population of around 10 thousand people, 99% of whom are armed. We also have a crimerate that is near nonexistant.
The presence or absence of guns has nothing to do with how violent a society is. It's all about education and respect.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
First of all, I guess what you were trying to do there at the end(with the 4 points)was prove to us that you're cool, and that your personal computing habits and hair make you more credible.
Umm.... ok. sure.
Can you really have any idea what the story is with the guy with the beard and army jacket? I know from personal experience that the rights of a suspect are never the first thing on the minds of the cops. They want to make their arrest, and get that promotion, and really, they are hoping you're guilty cuz it makes them look good. It's actually pretty common for police to jump the gun on deviations from the norm.
-Captain SpaZ
She's always wandering around aimlessly looking for the car she's lost in the parking lot while shopping.
Even if you are never convicted of a crime, it is then up to you to PROVE in a court of law that you were innocent in order to have your property returned.
Am I the only one who considers such laws a much greater threat to liberty?
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
No, the bar is occasionally empty and after last call and everyone clears out I'm the only one there. That's when the ninjitsu gets started. I always assumed that I was alone.
Sad thing about the camera and the ensuing arrests is that while they did catch the employee that was stealing thousands, they also caught the poor janitor guy nicking quarters out of the tip jar and charged him too. Poor old guy.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
The Salem witch trials were more the result of "A Big Brother" know as organized religion. At that time the church reigned over every aspect of daily life. And where you could be stoned or pressed to death simply by an accusation by another citizen, because witches were inherently evil and must be destroyed.
This was also a situation where the legal precedents relied on the way witches were tried during medieval times. Frequently if you survived the test (tied-up and dunked in a well) you were guilty, if you died you were innocent.
Very few direct associations can be drawn here.
"Lend your ear while I call you a fool" Ian Anderson
The law makers. 'Law abiding' means abiding by (obeying) the law. In any case, you are already being monitored, they're just talking of devising better tools.
A well spun quote and an impressive author do not make an idea any more true. If you think no one would dare to call Ben Franklin wrong, let me help you out - "Ben Franklin was wrong in that statement, made doublely foolish since he was addressing a body of govenment rather than calling for it to disband" But more to the point...
Privacy being what many consider to be an essential Liberty.
Where? Not 'where does it say that?' I'm willing to grant you privacy as an important liberty (but not nessaccarily essential, since that implies to me that there could be no other liberty that can trump it), but in what locations are you entitled to privacy?
In your own home? Certainly, most would say.
In the middle of the Macy's parade? Certainly not!
In a public park area? You might expect people to give each other space, but you have no right for them not to come across you.
In a commercial parking area where you park your car by the owner's sufferance and know you're on his property?
In a department store outside of the bathrooms and changing rooms?
In an airport?
How on earth could your right to privacy be relavant to survelance cameras in publicly or privately run places that have a vested interest in preventing theft or assault? Help me out, I really don't see it at all.
...will work for Chick tracts...
Only crimes that are detectable can be dealt with by the government (and detectionpossibilities have just been added)
- --------------------
/.-ers, because now criminals will pay you a lott to counter this new technology :->
The government can only uphold laws which they can regulate (and new means of producing evidence have just been added).
Crime will not go away ("if the nerd can have a beamer, so can I").
+ -------------------------------------------------
Crime will be more violent and 'off this world'. This is bad news, because the effect is the same as with crashing cars vs. crashing boeings. The car crash could be prevented but does not significantly add to the feeling of insecurity in society. The boeingcrash will allways tear apart society. In the end heavy crime will (and more frequently) distress society.
This is good news for
nosig today
I will grant that there is a definite Orwellian aspect to this, but lets not all go overboard. What I see here is a program that simply acts like a filter, cutting through the mundane crap of everyday existance and bringing out things that could POSSIBLY need to be noticed. For example, you decide oneday while waiting for a train, that you need to play airplane and fly around the landing for about 5 minutes to pass the time; then a program notes this fact, a brings it up to the attention of some poor person who has the job of going through all of these things, he sees you acting like a fool and laughs, then goes on to the next bit of buisiness... whats the difference between this and some person walking up the stairs, laughing at you and walking away?
:)
The only problems with this come when you get the sort of thought-crime aspect that comes from 1984. And this has only to do with ethics, however, if someone is expending energy already to watch me do really dumb things, then more power to them, now they can do it easier than before. Now I may be wrong, and many people would tell me I'm wrong, but I don't think that anybody would really care if I'm acting like a nut, playing airplane while awaiting my train. Oh no, the caught me acting like a fool... gosh darn.... However, I can also see where this technology would come in handy for voyeurs; I mean, change a few heuristics, and you don't have to put any effort into it at all....
In case you haven't noticed, or aren't old enough to remember, parking lots used to have wider isles to drive down in order for large American cars to make their turns into the slots, which have also gotten narrower. It's not the SUVs fault, it's the individual driver of that particular SUV who doesn't know how to drive it very well. I drive a Suburban, the mother of all SUVs (Please, no "FORD Excursion Is Biggest Now" flame wars. I welcome the competition and hope Dodge will join in again.)and I have absolutely no problems getting into and out of parking spots IF the cars on either side are IN their spots and not on the lines. There are many times that I've seen tiny little cars that park crooked and on or across the lines into another space simply because that driver doesn't know what they are doing.
How about a system that flags poor driving and parking abilities? Taking up more than one space because you can't drive straight takes away another space from a potential customer of a store.(a lost potential sale.)
Oh yeah, Santy Claws does too. He gives you gifts when you are a kidd so he doesnt feel guilty watching you getting jiggy with it in the bathroom.
Or you could look at it like this. Your wife is wandering around aimlessly looking for her car. It sets off the alarm and a security guard shows up to investigate. She tells him she is looking for her car and describes it. The guard the helps her look or calls or assitance in finding it. I've had this happen to me in the parking deck here.
I wandered around the parking deck for 15 mins. A security guard shows up and asks me whats up. I told him I was looking for my car. He calls shack and ask Frank if he can spot a white mustang on the cammra and tells me where it's at. He then walks me to the car. Is he making sure that I'm supposed to be there and not trying to steal a car or really trying to help me? Who cares? The results are the same. I found my car and he did his job.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
LMFAO... I think this is a load of poo... that's all I have to say about that...
John "Twyg" Hyde
My you're a furious little geek today.
Have you thought about maybe taking a few hours off to go visit the park?
Don't bring your Heinlein book along with you. It's already gotten you too wound up.
Go back to reading about utopia in your Heinlein books, I guess.
Or the John Norman "Gor" series, I suppose (utopia unless you happen to be female).
Car thieves aren't all morons.. A few of them might even read slashdot.. :)
How about this? Walk up to your chosen car, wait a few minutes and have a smoke.. If security doesn't show up, you're golden.. If they do, you haven't done anything to be charged with.. Assuming you stick around long enough for real police to show they can't even search for tools without conscent.. "Just having a quiet smoke officer.."
Not to mention, car lots only have video because it's really cheap now.. A big expensive conmputer isn't going to be standard equipment at the mall's lot any time soon..
Fat chance of that happening though, I suppose. In any case this is seriously scary; a real move towards totalitarianism on an unprecedented scale.
While I dislike gratuitous 1984 references as much as the next guy, this seems extremely similar to what's described in the novel. Not only is it illegal to break laws, with these competers it becomes suspicious to look like you're going to break laws. Eventually it'll be suspicious to think about breaking laws.
We need to restrict ourselves to actually punishing people who break laws.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
My life is seldom the same from one day to the next, and that is probably true for many consultants (exception: I can usually be found asleep between about midnight and about 4:30am -- other than that, it varies). To a lesser extent, students live varied lives, and so do some children (those whose parents haven't scheduled every minute of their waking hours), especially during vacations from school.
As an artist, I believe humans have preferred levels of predictability or uncertainty, and seek to increase or decrease routine (or just their attention) in an effort to modify their degree of uncertainty. (Physiologically, social scientists can measure levels of arousal to get at this.) The level desired varies from one person to the next, of course, and over the course of the day (at night when we're ready to sleep we don't want any uncertainty in our environment, at hours of peak awareness, we want more).
Children are highly conservative and greatly value routine precisely because the world is constantly surprising them -- they haven't figured out the overall patterns yet. Retired adults stereotypically want to travel to new places and have new experiences.
Those of us who value a looser public space with plenty of room for eccentricity or personal choice will continue to evolve socially, relying on our new societal consciousness (the 'Net), and will no doubt continue to act in ways to increase the public disorder (or decrease the public order). Those who seek to control others will no doubt continue to use technology to identify and monitor the outliers, but eventually diversity in human society contributes higher survival value, and I believe it will prevail.
Optimal understanding of politics depends on assessing actions along the continuum between controlling others and empowering others.
1 - a high-powered sniper rifle is no match for a tank, if your goal is destructing a building. If the goal is resistance to armed tyranny, it may come out ahead because a rifle is concealable, holds many rounds of ammunition, can be wielded from a high window, etc. There is a reasonable threshold of deadliness which makes civilian arms worrisome to an invader. Ask the citizens of Switzerland, and each of the invaders who have conquered Switzerland lately.;)
2 - Actually, I think you can update the "We did it to England" story with "The Afgans did it to the Soviets." They got some US ordinance, but for the most part it was peristance and random small arms, along with local knowlege.
3 - Parsed a little larger, it's not guns per se to which the God-given right is, but self-defense. It's just that right now, guns are the most appropriate self-defense tools. That's why it was bad / unfair for non-Samurai to be denied sword ownership in feudal Japan. And peasants there were sometimes used as beheading targets, at the whim of Samurai, not all of whom subscribed to the legendary moral codes ascribed to them in comic books.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
- For those of you not following the issues:
- He recently decided those who are in shelters, even if they have young children, must work. Those who won't work, will be removed from the shelters -- and therefore, he said (quite logically, really), their children would be removed from the family and placed in foster care. The courts have issued a (temporary) restraining order, of course.
- He decided to criminalize being on the street (if you look poor, that is), just in time for Christmas. Rosie O'Donnell -- bless her -- took a strong stand against that on her national tv chat show. The mayor accuses her of taking a political stand in this, since she favors probable senatorial candidate Clinton over probable senatorial candidate Guiliani. This will destroy his political career (finally!), since even complete idiots have to now realize how completely mean-spirited and freaky this guy is.
I don't know how anyone can doubt this is a "police state" given that this country leads the world in numbers of persons incarcerated -- especially given that about 1/3 of all African-American males are under the thumb of the "criminal justice system" at any given time. (Yes, we have more prisoners than the USSR ever did!)If you weren't aware of this, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I am an Englishwoman who's lived in the U.S. since my parents dragged me here. Ever since I was about 10 and visited England for a couple of months, I've thought it very odd that in England, with institutionalized censorship, there is very little actual censorship, and in the U.S., where "freedom of speech" is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, most people are afraid to speak out!
I think its related to the way American "authorities" treat Americans: The public is treated as children. (They therefore tend to act like children.) Cf. when the terrorists were bombing London, you could see notices asking the public to watch for dangerous packages and report them; you would never find such requests for help from the public here. Instead, they would pretend there was no danger and hire more and more police types, perhaps adding even more layers of police agencies to deal with such a threat.
I am not worried about the rate of mistakes this system will make. The rate _will_ be negligible, because of future advances in heuristics, neural networks, pattern recognition, and the use of a human being to screen the alarms. It will be nothing to be worried about. Until you decide to buy "Catcher in the Rye", and start hanging around foreign embassies, that is :)
I'm not worried about the concept of "guilty until proven innocent". Well, actually, I am. But my point is this: "They" will just wait till you are actually committing the crime, and have the SWAT team waiting for you, catching you red-handed. No liability, no lawsuits, no fat checks for suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome from reading J.D. Salinger on the front lawn of [insert your favorite governmental agency].
What I _am_ worried about is the effect this system will have on human behavior. As Col. Klink (retired) and Anonymous Coward pointed out, conforming to the norm will be the only "right" way to act. The change in behavior patterns for each individual is subtle. Have you noticed how your behavior, thoughts and mood change - sometimes imperceptibly - when you see a surveillance camera. When these cameras become ubiquitous (through public, corporate and civilian surveillance and individual cameras), people will start behaving "accordingly".
It is impossible to predict the effect Absolute and Total Accountability (tm) will have on people. ATAc (tm) is already proposed by Bill Gates, and They are probably drooling over the concept.
The problem is the almost-neo-Luddite view of having discourse about the implications of a new technology _before_ it is introduced. Of course we are doing it right now, but is anybody else out there? The masses who will be affected by this. Somebody has to come up with the rules, regulations and laws to determine how this technology will be utilized. Will they know and understand all the factors involved and how this affects the society as a whole? Will anybody?
MotorMachineMercenary
to email me, I'm @hotmail.com
--
The beatings will continue until morale improves
The point of this, which most people missed, is to alert security watchmen to potential crimes. If the system sounds an alarm at someone who isn't committing a crime, nothing will happen, it's just a false alarm. I guess too many people are looking 30 or 50 years down the future and "know" that it has to develop into a complete freedom-stealer, but for now it's just a program that will wake night-watchmen up from their naps =P
This reminds me of a Simpsons episode where Chief Wiggum is suddenly awakened. He gets on his radio and says, "I've got a 10-18... Waking a police officer."
Oink. Oink.
No comment at this time
As a matter of fact, security services do have lists of 'suspicious' features and people with those features are always checked.
Looks like George Orwell was only 16 years off when he wrote 1984. Big Brother is watching us!
I think ultimately technology is going to make it possible to track the whereabout and activities of nearly every individual on earth in excruciating detail. Paper money will disappear; it is already only a small part of most people's finances. People's locations will be tracable with electronics they carry such as phones, wearables network via wireless, and their interactions with machines, be it toll booths, ATMs, any purchase they make by electronic media, where they move on the highway will be monitored by traffic control, and so on. Ultimately the technological forces are unstoppable.
The question is, what is the result of this going to be? The question is not so much the data as it is the use of the data. One possible solution is instead of attempting to hide everything is to instead make everything open, and completely so. An overzealous prosecutor would be vulnerable to having the minutia of his life examined just as closely as his investigatorial target. No government official would dare snoop into somebodies taxes because his taxes are just as open.
Abuses of privacy are important because goverment itself maintains the sole power to abuse the privacy. If the entire society was completely transparent the availability of the data would become insignificant.
I wish Slashdot had a bullshit-detection mechanism that noticed when someone was about to submit a bullshit story like this one, and stopped him from posting it.
Why should the company pretend to be a judge or justice system? That far too dirty a job for most people. It doesn't need to be the law, it can affect basic attitudes about people, labelling some as 'undesirables' based on an collection of observed data. A specialist trained in identifying particular behaviour is still a human, whom people will recognize as having flaws and a particular bias (and act accordingly). Its far more difficult to argue with what is perceived as a 'hard fact' coming from a machine, giving all the parties plausable deniability.
Another possible excerpt from a future courtroom "wrongful death suit" drama...
Who could be blamed? The security guard? He's just doing his job. The guys who wrote the software? Hey, they just wrote the thing. They don't tell anyone to go soak down some guy who looks suspicious. Yet systems like this WILL affect attitudes directly, by giving a pre-disposition against certain individuals that follow some sort of logic profile. I find this sort of categorization to be distasteful at the very least... and I've no doubt that the creators of this tool have weighed these very same thoughts throughout the development cycle. If they haven't, then its time for a refresher course in Ethics 101. Maybe it's time anyways.
I do hope that there are people out there who can look beyond the simple PR aspects, the zip-wowie-sho-bang eye glittering geek gadgetry gee whiz angles, and see how things like this can directly affect how we look at the world.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
I know this is a somewhat dated thread now, but here goes anyway:
This morning, as I arrived at Embankment Tube Station (London, UK), I decided to look out for CCTV cameras as I walked to work, just to see how many I could spot.
It's only a 5 minue walk, if that, and I take some of the less well-travelled roads (ie not main roads, but not exactly back streets and alleyways, either). I was expecting to see may be 4 or 5.
I saw 16.
Of these, only one was pointing directly at the door it was meant to cover, away from the street. All the rest took in a fair amount of the pavement (sidewalk) too.
As I said, this is a pretty short walk - it wouldn't have take too many more cameras for me to have been potentially on film the whole time.
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Ha! Thank you! I now feel a little less paranoid.
Salocin.com
>I have a strong suspicion that most of the "random" checks done at the Eurotunnel are
>the result of the guy who checks your passport deciding you "look suspicious" and
>signalling this to the customs folk who then pull you over.
And those who really want to get away with something try very hard *not* to "look suspicious." I can't help but wonder -- as several folks have pointed out in various ways -- if this system of profiling serves to direct the authorities' attention to the poor shmoe unlucky enough to trigger the system, while the professional criminal slides through by looking "normal."