A Billion Surveillance Cameras Forecast to Be Watching Within Two Years(wsj.com)
wsj.com
A Billion Surveillance Cameras Forecast to Be Watching Within Two Years
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-billion-surveillance-cameras-forecast-to-be-watching-within-two-years-11575565402
103 comments
> specifically politicians and law enforcement officials
How about known criminals. More cameras owned and controlled (for real) by individuals is enough. I have heard about massive improvements in public safety in places where people have Ring, or similar things. I'm not too keen on Amazon being an operator, as unfortunate as it would be if they were judged for things they don't do, it'd be worse if it turned out to be a genuine dragnet.
Nonetheless, I'm not anti surveillance, provided it's up to individual and business location operators to disseminate or not (except by subpoena). I plan on installing more surveillance cameras.
How about known criminals. More cameras owned and controlled (for real) by individuals is enough. I have heard about massive improvements in public safety in places where people have Ring, or similar things. I'm not too keen on Amazon being an operator, as unfortunate as it would be if they were judged for things they don't do, it'd be worse if it turned out to be a genuine dragnet.
Nonetheless, I'm not anti surveillance, provided it's up to individual and business location operators to disseminate or not (except by subpoena). I plan on installing more surveillance cameras.
And that bullshit is what they use to argue for it as well. It's not just a camera, that's the whole point. How the tech can be abused needs to be understood and relevant laws need to be implemented like yesterday.
[deleted]
I like the idea, but isn't it forbidden by law, by the state itself?
Not only the politicians themselves could be monitored, but also their families, children, life partners…
Though, it could create two worlds. The area around the policitian's houses, that would be clean of cameras, and the others, infested by cams.
Not only the politicians themselves could be monitored, but also their families, children, life partners…
Though, it could create two worlds. The area around the policitian's houses, that would be clean of cameras, and the others, infested by cams.
[deleted]
What do you expect the average person to do about it?
In the end we have psychopaths owning democracy and until this is resolved (which it might never be) expect more of the same.
I like your idea about surveillance of the surveillance, I’m sure there are already millions of places this happens. Imagine what Google knows about Trump?
In the end we have psychopaths owning democracy and until this is resolved (which it might never be) expect more of the same.
I like your idea about surveillance of the surveillance, I’m sure there are already millions of places this happens. Imagine what Google knows about Trump?
If a site/service is built to do this, the average person just shares footage. The "psycopaths" that own democracy can't get reelected if their activites are plotted on a map, their license plates tracked to show where they spend their time, high dpi cams from long distance being used to read their lips. Their associates being subject to the same level of scrutiny as well. Essentially, what I am saying is they don't care about the people so let's make them care about themselves
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What you're saying resonates with the plot of the movie "The Circle".
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> analyze their mood,associations,behaviors,etc.
That is a good motivation to practice Zen mindfulness meditation.
That is a good motivation to practice Zen mindfulness meditation.
I gave a talk on "Deep Neural Networks for Video Applications" at the GDG DevFest conference last weekend [1]. It's crazy how powerful computer vision is and how relatively easy it is to apply to video streams. It's not perfect but you can absolutely replace a human watching video in most situations / use cases, for example:
* identifying vehicles & reading license plates * identifying people and tracking them across cameras * identifying products on the back of trucks * counting people in queues or getting in/out of vehicles / stores * detecting suspicious activity / shoplifting
Generally you don't even need to completely eliminate humans watching footage, you can just present the human with cases detected by the object and let the human decide whether it's a true positive / what to do.
It's scary but useful technology because there's no way humans can watch all the footage being produced by a billion cameras...
[1] https://speakerdeck.com/alxcnwy/gdg-devfest-2019-deep-neural...
* identifying vehicles & reading license plates * identifying people and tracking them across cameras * identifying products on the back of trucks * counting people in queues or getting in/out of vehicles / stores * detecting suspicious activity / shoplifting
Generally you don't even need to completely eliminate humans watching footage, you can just present the human with cases detected by the object and let the human decide whether it's a true positive / what to do.
It's scary but useful technology because there's no way humans can watch all the footage being produced by a billion cameras...
[1] https://speakerdeck.com/alxcnwy/gdg-devfest-2019-deep-neural...
Strongly reminds me of "A Scanner Darkly" [the movie, at least] -- where the human scanners have to watch thousands of hours of surveillance video [which they do at increased speed until they spot something notable]
I disagree that identifying people and tracking them across cameras works well. If you have high res cameras and facial recognition then maybe.
Yeah sufficient resolution is definitely an issue.
I'm not suggesting you can use models in all situations or an all current setups, just that it's possible (and surprisingly easy) to use models to automate a lot of analysis on video.
A lot of current commodity $100 cameras are good enough resolution for many use cases but of course you do need sufficiently high res video and good enough lighting conditions.
You also don't necessarily need to do facial recognition to track people. I'm nervous of the privacy implications of all this surveillance tech but it's possible to do useful tracking (e.g. I've worked on a project counting people to prevent over-filling busses which is a big issue in Africa) without needing to use facial recognition. In the counting case, you don't need to recognize people to count them and can do edge computing on quite low resolution video so that the raw footage never leaves the device (only computed count statistics).
I'm not suggesting you can use models in all situations or an all current setups, just that it's possible (and surprisingly easy) to use models to automate a lot of analysis on video.
A lot of current commodity $100 cameras are good enough resolution for many use cases but of course you do need sufficiently high res video and good enough lighting conditions.
You also don't necessarily need to do facial recognition to track people. I'm nervous of the privacy implications of all this surveillance tech but it's possible to do useful tracking (e.g. I've worked on a project counting people to prevent over-filling busses which is a big issue in Africa) without needing to use facial recognition. In the counting case, you don't need to recognize people to count them and can do edge computing on quite low resolution video so that the raw footage never leaves the device (only computed count statistics).
> detecting suspicious activity / shoplifting
This one seems hard to do right. How do you avoid false positives / negatives?
This one seems hard to do right. How do you avoid false positives / negatives?
You present them to a human. Cory Doctorow has written some fiction about it lately. It's called Affordances I think.
Yep - you don't need to avoid false positives / false negatives, you just need to reduce the search space from watching 30 cameras' video feeds at once (impossible for 1 person) to watching these clips that have a high probability of being shoplifting (possible for 1 person).
On the subject of tracking, does anybody know of any current -on-the-market- security cameras that also do passive air / radio sniffing on things like WiFi and Bluetooth?
Imagine an appliance brick and mortar shop that gives users free WiFi. In the middle of the night, masked intruders burgle the place and steal $50,000 worth of goods. In addition to logging the (fairly useless) footage of masked people stealing stuff in the dark, the system also recorded some Bluetooth / WiFi beacons. If sufficient "fingerprinting" information can be collected from this data, it could become possible to look backwards for clues to who these users were in earlier collected data (say for example, when the assailants had previously scouted the store during the daytime making a plan).
Imagine an appliance brick and mortar shop that gives users free WiFi. In the middle of the night, masked intruders burgle the place and steal $50,000 worth of goods. In addition to logging the (fairly useless) footage of masked people stealing stuff in the dark, the system also recorded some Bluetooth / WiFi beacons. If sufficient "fingerprinting" information can be collected from this data, it could become possible to look backwards for clues to who these users were in earlier collected data (say for example, when the assailants had previously scouted the store during the daytime making a plan).
Well, you can sniff wifi with any network card and driver that support promiscuous mode for the wireless standard you're interested in. For bluetooth, I have used the Ubertooth One [1]. Unfortunately the range is pretty short with this device... Radio sniffing in general is done with software defined radio (SDR). Three pieces of hardware I have used for this and can recommend are the RTL2832U [2] (ultra cheap, can honestly say its some of the most fun I've ever had for 20 bucks), HackRF One [3], and the USRP B200 [4]. I like using GNU Radio for signal processing.
I mention these because this type of equipment is very easy to acquire and that, even if there are no companies out there currently offering what you're suggesting, doing this type of radio surveillance (DIY or otherwise) would be fairly easy. Heck, you can even do really high res Van Eck phreaking with the USRP B200 quite easily [5]. You could look at the criminal's twitter feed if he was scrolling through it. :P
[1] https://greatscottgadgets.com/ubertoothone/
[2] https://www.rtl-sdr.com/
[3] https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/one/
[4] https://www.ettus.com/all-products/UB200-KIT/
[5] https://github.com/martinmarinov/TempestSDR
Edit: grammar & wording
I mention these because this type of equipment is very easy to acquire and that, even if there are no companies out there currently offering what you're suggesting, doing this type of radio surveillance (DIY or otherwise) would be fairly easy. Heck, you can even do really high res Van Eck phreaking with the USRP B200 quite easily [5]. You could look at the criminal's twitter feed if he was scrolling through it. :P
[1] https://greatscottgadgets.com/ubertoothone/
[2] https://www.rtl-sdr.com/
[3] https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/one/
[4] https://www.ettus.com/all-products/UB200-KIT/
[5] https://github.com/martinmarinov/TempestSDR
Edit: grammar & wording
Replying to myself because I thought I should add that in no way do I think it would be ethical to use or building such a surveillance system. Especially one that employs Van Eck phreaking.
Just a game of cat and mouse, if that kind of thing became widespread, crooks would just leave their electronics at home while casing a potential site.
Most of the criminals are not _that_ careful. Among a group of 5, one might forget or have a reason to hide his phone from others because his child is sick and he is expecting a call, for example.
Would it matter though? When my house was burgled, the cops didn’t do a damn thing other than file the report. It’s seemingly not worth their time since “not enough money” was involved. We knew pretty well who did it as well. They only caught up with him once he did some very obvious things at grocery stores.
Wouldn’t that be the most amazing and scary hardware security startup, I briefly looked into adding that capability to my security system but didn’t find anything. I know mall some clothing stores have had that tech for years, for marketing purposes.
This exact scenario happened in July: https://gizmodo.com/automatic-wifi-login-helped-police-id-te...
mac addresses are randomized to prevent this. every store would want to do this for customer analytics otherwise
I've come to accept the notion of no privacy in public spaces, as long as individuals retain the right to surveil everything too, and to publicly release our videos about police misbehavior and everything else we catch on camera.
The balance of surveillance power between government, corporations, and the public must be maintained.
The balance of surveillance power between government, corporations, and the public must be maintained.
Yes, however.. the sad, frustrating and unfortunate thing is that police agencies 1. don't maintain their records very well and 2. police agencies use tons of tactics to prevent the public from getting access to its records. So the public's access to use police agencies' own self-monitoring to create conditions of somewhat reciprocal privacy is stymied by intentional resistance. Often times the only way forward is through very time consuming law suits.
That said, if you want to know how to help out, you can start by submitting public records requests for information on your local law enforcement agency. There's so much to do!
That said, if you want to know how to help out, you can start by submitting public records requests for information on your local law enforcement agency. There's so much to do!
What I meant is that an individual's ability to use their own portable camera (in phones, etc) to film anything happening in public spaces, including police misconduct, should never be infringed or made illegal.
That's the ultimate against counter police misconduct 1) happening and 2) being hidden/obscured/obstructed by police agencies as you describe.
That's the ultimate against counter police misconduct 1) happening and 2) being hidden/obscured/obstructed by police agencies as you describe.
>to film anything happening in public spaces,
I was tracking the progress of some activists who decided to action in this respect, Peaceful Streets Project (http://peacefulstreets.com/), in Austin a few years back. The police started getting super pissed at all these people filming them while doing arrests in public to ensure proper procedure.
At some point the police came up with some ordinance saying you had to be 50 feet or some other ridiculous distance away from an officer engaged in duty, I think.
Anyway perhaps some of you can stop talking theory and take action like the PSP has done. Be forewarned that getting on the police's radar is not going to be fun, depending how high they are on the thuggish crony scale. You might even be arrested for interfering with an officer's duties and find yourself in a byzantine justice system that will make you hate it forever.
I think the efforts of the PSP did eventually result in the Austin PD wearing bodycams so that all their activity on the clock is recorded. There's a little cottage industry in making such wearable devices such that they hold up to the scrutiny of chain-of-custody and other legal concepts behind securing evidence and all that jazz.
If enough people do it, it can work. The hard part is getting to that tipping point to convince enough people to do it without real fear of reprisal or complicating their lives.
I was tracking the progress of some activists who decided to action in this respect, Peaceful Streets Project (http://peacefulstreets.com/), in Austin a few years back. The police started getting super pissed at all these people filming them while doing arrests in public to ensure proper procedure.
At some point the police came up with some ordinance saying you had to be 50 feet or some other ridiculous distance away from an officer engaged in duty, I think.
Anyway perhaps some of you can stop talking theory and take action like the PSP has done. Be forewarned that getting on the police's radar is not going to be fun, depending how high they are on the thuggish crony scale. You might even be arrested for interfering with an officer's duties and find yourself in a byzantine justice system that will make you hate it forever.
I think the efforts of the PSP did eventually result in the Austin PD wearing bodycams so that all their activity on the clock is recorded. There's a little cottage industry in making such wearable devices such that they hold up to the scrutiny of chain-of-custody and other legal concepts behind securing evidence and all that jazz.
If enough people do it, it can work. The hard part is getting to that tipping point to convince enough people to do it without real fear of reprisal or complicating their lives.
That's excellent, thanks for the link. It's great when citizen surveillance results in police wearing bodycams. It both protects the police from false accusations and protects citizens from misconduct. Of course that assumes, as you point out, the chain-of-custody and securing evidence are effectively addressed, but overall it's a net improvement.
The "I have nothing to hide" defense of public or private space is great unless you are on the run from domestic or other types of violence. Then, you will want the right not just to be forgotten, but to be hidden.
"Public spaces" are where the hoi polloi live and occasionally commit crimes. It's deluded to think persistent surveillance of them by individuals represents some kind of rough balance of power with government & corporations.
I'm pretty sure most people live in private dwellings.
Wealthy and powerful people tend not to walk the streets in the same way as regular folk, in much the same way they don't do their own grocery shopping or stand in line to buy movie tickets.
Privacy or not, wealthy and powerful people by definition do not live the same way as regular people. They always have advantage over regular people.
Do you ever leave your private dwelling? Are you not "living" when you do so?
Government and corporations are working together against the public. We see this over and over again in US society. Through this lens, a clear pattern emerges from disparate issues like Citizens United and the Patriot Act to tax cuts, education, labor laws and healthcare. Meanwhile, citizens squabble about identity politics and culture wars too much to notice or care.
> Government and corporations are working together against the public
That sounds like fascism to me.
The division within the public is by design, and highly effective. I'm not sure how it can be combatted. The closest "solution" that comes to mind is to be able to out-meme and soundbite the oppressors so that the public has easily digested messages of unity.
That sounds like fascism to me.
The division within the public is by design, and highly effective. I'm not sure how it can be combatted. The closest "solution" that comes to mind is to be able to out-meme and soundbite the oppressors so that the public has easily digested messages of unity.
So I’ve had this (perhaps naive and not novel?) idea for a while and am curious what people think. What if it were required by law that all surveillance video is “anonymized” in real-time via computer vision software? In other words, use an image segmentation model like Mask R-CNN to cut out or blur each person appearing in frame. Violent/criminal behavior can still be detected in real-time either via software or by human operators (you don’t need to see someone’s face or skin color to determine if they’re e.g. committing a violent act).
If a crime is committed and the video is needed as evidence or for identifying the person(s), then the archived video can be “unmasked” via court order or other process. There is some precedent for this, relating to when US citizens incidentally appear in foreign phone calls collected by intelligence agencies (see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmasking_by_U.S._intelligen...).
This way, there is a reasonable level of privacy preservation (=anxiety reduction) for people innocently going about their lives. It also limits opportunities for abuse, like stalking and discrimination. The effectiveness of surveillance systems as a crime deterrent and source of evidence is still maintained under this policy. That is, it’s basically a Pareto improvement—no one is made worse off, while many are better off.
If a crime is committed and the video is needed as evidence or for identifying the person(s), then the archived video can be “unmasked” via court order or other process. There is some precedent for this, relating to when US citizens incidentally appear in foreign phone calls collected by intelligence agencies (see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmasking_by_U.S._intelligen...).
This way, there is a reasonable level of privacy preservation (=anxiety reduction) for people innocently going about their lives. It also limits opportunities for abuse, like stalking and discrimination. The effectiveness of surveillance systems as a crime deterrent and source of evidence is still maintained under this policy. That is, it’s basically a Pareto improvement—no one is made worse off, while many are better off.
Check DeepPrivacy, a project that does automatic face anonymization.
https://github.com/hukkelas/DeepPrivacy
https://github.com/hukkelas/DeepPrivacy
I think people's freedoms and rights are going to live on through social and legal regulation, not banning or countering surveillance technology itself.
E.g. with an existing technology known as firearms, it's not socially 'OK' or legal to just go up and randomly shoot someone with such technology, but technically you could do it, if you really wanted. There's consequences to it though.
So we need consequences for violating people's privacy or using their information in a way that is abusive or unfair to their human rights.
Radical transparency of disclosure such as what insurance companies know about you that they feed into their business will have to be legally mandated. (How about an open-source algorithm too?) We will need new frameworks by which data collected on you and used against you MUST be disclosed, because otherwise it could be total abuse and fake. We know China is already in that territory.
The world of deepfakes is going to make 'deniability' a major opposing force of surveillance as well.
We have an interesting future ahead of us.
E.g. with an existing technology known as firearms, it's not socially 'OK' or legal to just go up and randomly shoot someone with such technology, but technically you could do it, if you really wanted. There's consequences to it though.
So we need consequences for violating people's privacy or using their information in a way that is abusive or unfair to their human rights.
Radical transparency of disclosure such as what insurance companies know about you that they feed into their business will have to be legally mandated. (How about an open-source algorithm too?) We will need new frameworks by which data collected on you and used against you MUST be disclosed, because otherwise it could be total abuse and fake. We know China is already in that territory.
The world of deepfakes is going to make 'deniability' a major opposing force of surveillance as well.
We have an interesting future ahead of us.
What would be great is if judiciaries only treated video as admissible if it was cryptographically watermarked in tandem with a globally distributed blockchain-style rolling checksum, to resist tampering (deepfakes or just plain old timecode manipulation). Combine that with a licensing scheme, as a condition of using the global checksum service, that guaranteed by law access to video by any party captured on said video — i.e. scenes & events in public areas would be required to be made available to members of the public, on request; or video of private areas would still have to be shared with any subjects that it captured, if it were to be introduced as evidence.
Timestamping doesn't prevent fakes, it just means you have to create the fakes ahead of time instead of being able to generate them retroactively.
I'm actually OK with this future. I think it's inevitable. But what to me is the choice of whether the cameras watch everyone, or just certain classes of someone.
There was a scifi novel many years ago, forget the name, where everyone's glasses were constantly live feeds. The author posited that crime went down, but also transparency amongst the powerful/elite climbed as well.
There was a scifi novel many years ago, forget the name, where everyone's glasses were constantly live feeds. The author posited that crime went down, but also transparency amongst the powerful/elite climbed as well.
The powerful/elite can simply avoid public places and deal behind closed doors. Seems unlikely that it will increase transparency amongst that group.
> He was holding a small device in his hand, the size and shape of a lollipop.
"This is a video camera, and this is the precise model that's getting this incredible image quality. Image quality that holds up to this kind of magnification. So that's the first great thing. We can now get high-def-quality resolution in a camera the size of a thumb." ...
"But for now, let's go back to the places in the world where we most need transparency and so rarely have it. Here's a medley of locations around the world where we've placed cameras. Now imagine the impact these cameras would have had in the past, and will have in the future, if similar events transpire. Here's fifty cameras in Tiananmen Square." ...
"There needs to be accountability. Tyrants can no longer hide. There needs to be, and will be, documentation and accountability, and we need to bear witness." ...
ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN
-From "The Circle" by David Eggers
"This is a video camera, and this is the precise model that's getting this incredible image quality. Image quality that holds up to this kind of magnification. So that's the first great thing. We can now get high-def-quality resolution in a camera the size of a thumb." ...
"But for now, let's go back to the places in the world where we most need transparency and so rarely have it. Here's a medley of locations around the world where we've placed cameras. Now imagine the impact these cameras would have had in the past, and will have in the future, if similar events transpire. Here's fifty cameras in Tiananmen Square." ...
"There needs to be accountability. Tyrants can no longer hide. There needs to be, and will be, documentation and accountability, and we need to bear witness." ...
ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN
-From "The Circle" by David Eggers
Great news for me! here in NZ art performance of any kind is protected and may not be recorded without an appropriate license.
I've publicly declared the rest of my life to be "performance art" and look forward to a continuing stream of license income from people who have illegally recorded my performance without permission .....
I've publicly declared the rest of my life to be "performance art" and look forward to a continuing stream of license income from people who have illegally recorded my performance without permission .....
Will it look like this?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Building...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Building...
So the number of cameras will increase 30% by the end of 2021, the rate of population growth is 1.08%. if we can keep this up it won't be long before we have as many cameras as people, however, and here's the kicker, since the cameras are tied to locations and not to people it means that not every person will be under constant surveillance!
Surely some intrepid politician will see how unsustainable and just plain wasteful such a situation is and, in cooperation with some tech company, push for the development of some sort of mobile monitoring solution tied to every human being.
Surely some intrepid politician will see how unsustainable and just plain wasteful such a situation is and, in cooperation with some tech company, push for the development of some sort of mobile monitoring solution tied to every human being.
> mobile monitoring solution tied to every human being
Like a, um, handheld, networked device required for modern lifestyle and work, backed by major corporations like Google and Apple?
Like a, um, handheld, networked device required for modern lifestyle and work, backed by major corporations like Google and Apple?
hey, that's a great idea! if only every one had one of those we would be well on our way to a more sustainable surveillance state!
Damn, when I read 1984 I was like what a sweet tech setup Winston has in his pad. What a modern city!
So blessed to be living in an era of unimpeded technology deployed for our benefit.
So blessed to be living in an era of unimpeded technology deployed for our benefit.
Who will interpret the 9 trillion hours of resulting video then? Every person in the world would have to spending three work shifts a week watching and evaluating it.
THE MACHINES.
See:China.
It will all be tied into an increasingly centralized system and we will be taken into cybernetic hell or utopia depending on the controller(s) intention(s) or maybe regardless of them.
True story.
See:China.
It will all be tied into an increasingly centralized system and we will be taken into cybernetic hell or utopia depending on the controller(s) intention(s) or maybe regardless of them.
True story.
If you look at other surveillance states, most of it will be automated, and for populations you truly want to repress, an actual person will watch their video feeds.
Many (most?) of the cameras out there only have the recordings looked at if a crime is reported, some motion sensor is tripped, or some other condition.
A friend of mine opened a business, and he was required to have a security camera to make things convenient for the police. The law specified VHS as no one had bothered to update it, but he just burned them a DVD the one time they asked for a recording.
A friend of mine opened a business, and he was required to have a security camera to make things convenient for the police. The law specified VHS as no one had bothered to update it, but he just burned them a DVD the one time they asked for a recording.
These are not a real problem. The bigger threat is automated facial recognition throwing false positives and having swat teams mow down innocent people because a computer said they were criminals.
Who needs to mow them down? Getting denied a credit card, product returns, plane tickets or FAANG accounts will be bad enough, but permitted because “nobody has a reasonable expectation of those”.
Don't worry, automated swat teams will eliminate the need to mow down, merely resulting in arrests
You don't even need false positives. Just identifying more people who have warrants out will cause innocent people to die. Every time an AI gets a hit and calls the police the public is at risk. The police are simply not professional enough to be expected to rush into a situation where they have no knowledge other than there's someone there they want to arrest and not have an unacceptably high chance of leaving death and destruction in their wake. Calling the cops more because we have AI doing it will result in more death regardless of the accuracy of the AI. If cops could be trusted to show restraint swatting wouldn't be a thing.
Over 99% of my dashcam footage goes unreviewed. But that last 0.1% or so might really come in handy.
Some of the computation will move to the edge others will be centralized on cloud.
It's not the 70s anymore. China has invested a lot in facial recognition and as soon as your face appears on the camera it will be tagged and your location at that time will be stored in a database.
Computer vision systems will tear through this video like it’s nothing
is this bait
It's inevitable that in 20 years every living person on this planet will have it's location tracked in real-time.
All kinds of crime will become impossible. Today the police doesn't have resources to spend on stolen packages, bikes or small time muggings.
But with permanent tracking and AI it will be trivial to backtrack any interaction.
And it will be impossible to disable the tracking. Even if you don't have any tracking on you, unless you are literally invisible you'll be tracked through millions of other peoples cameras each day.
Something like Google Street View, but in real time will also exist.
All kinds of crime will become impossible. Today the police doesn't have resources to spend on stolen packages, bikes or small time muggings.
But with permanent tracking and AI it will be trivial to backtrack any interaction.
And it will be impossible to disable the tracking. Even if you don't have any tracking on you, unless you are literally invisible you'll be tracked through millions of other peoples cameras each day.
Something like Google Street View, but in real time will also exist.
> All kinds of crime will become impossible
This will never be the case.
The constraints are currently on the resources available for police to find the suspect. While prolific surveillance will make finding the X "persons of interest" easier + faster + more reliable, the constraint would then be on identifying other evidence and the court/prosecutor system to process plea bargaining and/or jury trials.
Additionally, jails and the resources concerned with jailing are very expensive (VERY large outlays and high upkeep) in the current high-cash-bail environment.
This will never be the case.
The constraints are currently on the resources available for police to find the suspect. While prolific surveillance will make finding the X "persons of interest" easier + faster + more reliable, the constraint would then be on identifying other evidence and the court/prosecutor system to process plea bargaining and/or jury trials.
Additionally, jails and the resources concerned with jailing are very expensive (VERY large outlays and high upkeep) in the current high-cash-bail environment.
It's possible that a high enforcement rate with diminished penalties would be more effective than the current approach of rare enforcement and harsh penalties. Hardly anyone thinks that it's "worth it" to pay a fine for dumping trash on the side of the road. Dumpers just assume -- cynically but correctly -- that the chances of being caught are negligible at present. Or for another example, consider people who don't come to a complete stop before making a turn unless they know that the intersection has a camera. They're not incapable of following the rules of the road, or undeterred by penalties. They're just not going to follow the rules unless the rules are consistently enforced.
> Hardly anyone thinks that it's "worth it" to pay a fine for dumping trash on the side of the road. Dumpers just assume -- cynically but correctly -- that the chances of being caught are negligible at present.
I know it's not the point you were trying to make but people dump trash because it's easier/cheaper than getting rid of it the "right way". Where I grew up there was one scrap place that only took non-ferrous metals and the towns all charged $20-$50 to dispose of it at the dump (scrap metal is usually something you get paid for, not pay to get rid of). Likewise washing machines and refrigerators and whatnot adorned highway rest stops and the ends of dead end roads. Then a real scrap place that took ferrous metals opened up and not only did the existing dumped stuff vanish but you never saw one again.
Point is that there's a class of petty crimes that are like video piracy, people wouldn't do it if the "right" thing was cheap and convenient enough.
I know it's not the point you were trying to make but people dump trash because it's easier/cheaper than getting rid of it the "right way". Where I grew up there was one scrap place that only took non-ferrous metals and the towns all charged $20-$50 to dispose of it at the dump (scrap metal is usually something you get paid for, not pay to get rid of). Likewise washing machines and refrigerators and whatnot adorned highway rest stops and the ends of dead end roads. Then a real scrap place that took ferrous metals opened up and not only did the existing dumped stuff vanish but you never saw one again.
Point is that there's a class of petty crimes that are like video piracy, people wouldn't do it if the "right" thing was cheap and convenient enough.
I agree with you. It's also a relative matter of cheap and convenient. If it's a consistently-enforced $100 fine for dumping and $50 to dispose of it properly, hardly anybody is going to dump illegally. Even if their trash is bulky and worthless (like a soiled mattress) rather than bulky and useful, like scrap metal.
My state raised its littering penalties 16 years ago:
https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/2003/07-31/215440_fin...
Up to $1025 for throwing a cigarette out a car window. Up to $5000 if you dump more than a cubic yard of trash!
But I still regularly find roadside cigarettes and even spot drivers tossing them, because it's still rarely enforced. It's a huge roulette wheel with an unreasonably low chance of ever landing on 0 and an unreasonably high penalty if someone ever does. I think that we would get much better compliance overall, without the risk of occasionally ruining a low-income person's life, if the cigarette-littering penalty were only $20 but most incidents could actually be penalized.
My state raised its littering penalties 16 years ago:
https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/2003/07-31/215440_fin...
Up to $1025 for throwing a cigarette out a car window. Up to $5000 if you dump more than a cubic yard of trash!
But I still regularly find roadside cigarettes and even spot drivers tossing them, because it's still rarely enforced. It's a huge roulette wheel with an unreasonably low chance of ever landing on 0 and an unreasonably high penalty if someone ever does. I think that we would get much better compliance overall, without the risk of occasionally ruining a low-income person's life, if the cigarette-littering penalty were only $20 but most incidents could actually be penalized.
In the not too distant future, we may see proactive arrests based on an AI determined probability of committing a crime e.g. minority report.
The best way for governments to get society to their surveillance nirvana is one shortly-lived, outrageous privacy violation at a time. The same way you eat an elephant.
Regarding jails being expensive, isn't this a result of the profit motivation for incarceration that remains in many states (in the US particular, but also abroad)?
"The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports."[1]
[1] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-uni...
The best way for governments to get society to their surveillance nirvana is one shortly-lived, outrageous privacy violation at a time. The same way you eat an elephant.
Regarding jails being expensive, isn't this a result of the profit motivation for incarceration that remains in many states (in the US particular, but also abroad)?
"The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports."[1]
[1] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-uni...
Additionally, new sorts of crime will be enabled with new technology. As well as new means of evasion.
You can think of various ways to fast track justice for small crimes, similar to small claims court. You don't need a jury trial for an obvious bike theft.
But you don't even need to get to this stage. If you have 99% conviction rate, people will just stop doing crime, starting with the ones for which crime was just a marginal thing anyway (maybe even for the adrenaline rush), and as a result you'll have even fewer crimes to prosecute. It's a positive feed-back loop.
And you don't need to put people in prison. Something like China's social credit is coming everywhere. Steal a bike, you pay double for everything.
But you don't even need to get to this stage. If you have 99% conviction rate, people will just stop doing crime, starting with the ones for which crime was just a marginal thing anyway (maybe even for the adrenaline rush), and as a result you'll have even fewer crimes to prosecute. It's a positive feed-back loop.
And you don't need to put people in prison. Something like China's social credit is coming everywhere. Steal a bike, you pay double for everything.
You make a compelling case, and at first it's terrifying, but then I know we humans are always terrified of change no matter what it is (e.g. 'music is dead' at the arrival of recorded sound), and also I wonder if we overpraise the 'natural order' of human behaviour as opposed to future potential worlds.
I am a freedom-fighter, yes, and I hate conformity, yes, but the current evolutionary survivalness of humans is also very ugly. (E.g. the selfish drive to steal a bike.) I don't have a solution, just thinking openly.
I am a freedom-fighter, yes, and I hate conformity, yes, but the current evolutionary survivalness of humans is also very ugly. (E.g. the selfish drive to steal a bike.) I don't have a solution, just thinking openly.
> If you have 99% conviction rate, people will just stop doing crime
You should take a look at DAs conviction rates sometime. Federal conviction rates are 99.8% in the US.
You should take a look at DAs conviction rates sometime. Federal conviction rates are 99.8% in the US.
I’m not sure what the denominator is there, but it’s not all crimes committed.
It's all criminal cases that went before a judge.
Japan's conviction rate is 99.9%. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c05401/order-in-the-c...
That's because they only arrest guilty people.
> If you have 99% conviction rate, people will just stop doing crime
Do you have any information to support this claim?
Do you have any information to support this claim?
> While a stolen bike probably isn't that valuable, what matters is that in most places, there's basically no chances that you will be caught.
> And I'm not kidding about the absence of enforcement and low risk of stealing bikes. Here's a NYT journalist filming himself stealing his own bike in New York City to see how people who see him will react. You gotta see this to believe it. He even uses powertools and does it near cops.
https://www.treehugger.com/bikes/underworld-economics-what-h...
> And I'm not kidding about the absence of enforcement and low risk of stealing bikes. Here's a NYT journalist filming himself stealing his own bike in New York City to see how people who see him will react. You gotta see this to believe it. He even uses powertools and does it near cops.
https://www.treehugger.com/bikes/underworld-economics-what-h...
Not if the justice system refuses to act.
The thief in this article has been caught multiple times and still continues to this day. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/steal...
The thief in this article has been caught multiple times and still continues to this day. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/steal...
> All kinds of crime will become impossible.
All kinds of minor things will become a crime.
The automated systems will be too rigid, as they are stuffed to the brim with rules and regulations to enforce without fair human judgment.
You accidentally drop your handkerchief, or the wind blows your cigarette butt from your hand? Bam.. littering, $50 fine and your credit score goes down a notch.
Freedoms will be diminished. You are in a hurry, there is no traffic at all and your destination is 50 yards away. Do you cross the street? You can't. That's jaywalking, $100 bucks fine. You'll have to walk a mile and use the nearest traffic light. Oh, and your credit score is lowered for being late at an appointment.
All kinds of minor things will become a crime.
The automated systems will be too rigid, as they are stuffed to the brim with rules and regulations to enforce without fair human judgment.
You accidentally drop your handkerchief, or the wind blows your cigarette butt from your hand? Bam.. littering, $50 fine and your credit score goes down a notch.
Freedoms will be diminished. You are in a hurry, there is no traffic at all and your destination is 50 yards away. Do you cross the street? You can't. That's jaywalking, $100 bucks fine. You'll have to walk a mile and use the nearest traffic light. Oh, and your credit score is lowered for being late at an appointment.
> All kinds of crime will become impossible.
I would bet essentially any amount of money that this will not be the case.
The risks of fascism will be greatly amplified, but the risks of crime will remain the same, with only a few minor changes to which crimes are committed, to whom, and how.
I would bet essentially any amount of money that this will not be the case.
The risks of fascism will be greatly amplified, but the risks of crime will remain the same, with only a few minor changes to which crimes are committed, to whom, and how.
Nobody can watch all these, I don't get it.
VideoAI, give me the names of every face seen within X blocks of [riot, business, person of interest's home] between Y time and Z time.
Proximityai, give me the names of people who were in the x blocks between y and z time using WiFi and cell connectivity.
At least with Proximityai, you don't show up if you leave your cell phone at home when you go to a protest.
What if everyone just starts wearing masks?
The trick is that you don't have to watch it for the data to be useful.
I doubt they will be watched by people. Most likely, algorithms.
I just don't know how to scare society enough. Maybe use this techs explicitly against specific demographics. Abuse it against democrats and republicans. Track and publish analysis of every trump supporter, bernie sanders supporter,minorities, I don't know just hit everyones sensitive sweet spots to show them "we can do this legally!!" Because the people that will profit from this will certainly not make their practice public enough to be visible by lawmakers and society at large.
The tech is moving magnitudes faster than the law.
Essentially use it against them in a very hostile way to force them to take this seriously.