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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
oh please...
we are talking about video surveillance here, not thought crimes.
From the UK perspective and London in particular we've been through the threat of terrorist attacks for years, and if anything has actually returned normality back to us it was the ring of steel and the video surveillance that came with it.
Post-IRA : we have found the surveillance useful. Anyone here remember the Pipe-Bomber who set off the bombs in Soho, Brixton and the East End? It was only because we managed to get the picture of the bomber (who left the bomb in a bag in Brixton market) in the National Newspapers that we were able to halt what was an attrocious attack on ethnic minorites.
Obviously I can't speak for other readers in the US, but the impression that I'm geting is that you guys are living in a Police State similar to that of the former Soviet Union - come on... tell me this isn't true?
The camera with AI attached to it is an aid to law-enforcement. You can't blame the camera and/or AI for the problems you're having with your law-enforcement.
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
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
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?
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
They simply need some prodding to realize that high technology (which they are assured is "their friend")
:-) But to the average person, it means someone sat down in front of a magic box, typed the command "design perfect frying pan", and this product is the magical result. (I'm surprised they didn't also proclaim the pan to be "Internet ready" and "Designed for Windows98")
This is actually a big problem that needs to be addressed. The average person today views computers (and technology in general) as some infallible sort of black magic.
While those of us who actually work with computers understand the huge potential for error with a system like this, your average technologically illiterate judge or juror is VERY likely to be perfectly satisfied with a statement like "The computer said so."
Just take a walk around your local Wal-Mart and see how many packages boast that the product inside was "Computer designed." I once saw an infomercial for a frying pan that was supposed to have been "Computer designed." What does that mean? Most likely, it means someone drew a picture of it in MS-Paint.
As we move into a world that becomes more and more dependant on computers every day, it is crucial that we eliminate some of the mystique around them.
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.
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