Has anyone proposed a set of "marking" standards for surveillance cameras? For example, presenting a law that government cameras be marked as such, that there is an indication of the audience type (eg some kind of "public audience symbol" for a zoo cam), and maybe some kind of RF broadcast URL, or a URL to be posted within 100 feet for more information?
If just a few localities had regulations like this covering government and private cameras, and if they were reasonably well designed regulations, I'll bet it would be a huge privacy benefit that would give people more peace of mind and improve communities.
There will always be some exceptions for whatever Black Ops are going down in the desert, or whatever, but a lot of these needlessly anxiety-making camera-human-sensor-loop systems could probably be brought to an end quickly.
In the UK (at least, in England) all traffic speed cameras have to be bright yellow. (I feel this is caving in to the driving lobby.) There are restrictions in where they can be placed.
We have laws governing use of cameras (RIPA and DPA), a data protection regulator who requires people and companies to register if they use CCTV, and we have a surveillance commissioner who provides some scrutiny of the use of these powers.
>>all traffic speed cameras have to be bright yellow. (I feel this is caving in to the driving lobby.)
If we assume that the primary purpose of a speed camera is to reduce speeding where its placed, then you want it to be as visible as physically possible. A hidden camera does absolutely nothing to slow someone down - they will get a ticket in the post few weeks later, but at the time when they drove past it, it didn't do anything to slow them down.
I think the principle of non-visible cameras is that, by inducing uncertainty about when you might receive a ticket, you encourage law abiding behaviour across the road network, and not just at those sites where you locate cameras. In principle this method can be more cost-effective than using visible cameras, because you need fewer cameras.
Of course, these cost savings are predicated on the relative effectiveness of non-visible cameras. The fact that they are used in some countries is evidence that they might be effective. This also seems to me to lend credence to the idea that having visible cameras is a concession to some other interest group, because, although I can understand why the "driving lobby" would want cameras to be visible (so they know when to obey the law), I am having trouble thinking of an interest group who would want cameras to be non-visible for some non safety-related objective - I am of course open to suggestions.
>>I am having trouble thinking of an interest group who would want cameras to be non-visible for some non safety-related objective - I am of course open to suggestions.
Lived in a small town where non-visible cameras were used years ago - huge amount of fines were given, mostly to people out of town. Few years ago, all cameras had to be made visible - now the main road going through town has 3 cameras, no one speeds through the town again, but the revenue has dropped down significantly(it's probably costing the town money now).
Now the question is - which outcome is preferable to the citizens? One where people speed, but the town is getting a lot of money from the fines, or one where people don't speed, but it's actually costing the town money.
I'm sure if you ask the folks at the local council, they would say they preferred non-visible cameras - their budget back then was huge, at(obviously) expense of public safety.
I'm not sure whether I have followed your example correctly, but interpret it as being that the local population was essentially law abiding, because they knew the camera locations both when they were visible and when they were non-visible, and that the main issue was with out-of-town drivers.
There is, of course, no reason why a local council should not decide to deploy visible cameras in such a situation, alongside a national network of non-visible cameras (you obviously don't need to have both visible and non-visible cameras at the same site). The cost-effectiveness argument still holds, under the assumptions previously mentioned.
>>" I am having trouble thinking of an interest group who would want cameras to be non-visible for some non safety-related objective"
I hate to come off overly cynical, but that almost feels like lack of effort: wanting to repeatedly catch large number of unaware drivers to cause increase in ticket revenue seems like a painful obvious one?
Unless we are not considering the government an interest group in this context but that too seems erroneous...
This case only really applies in situations where speed limits aren't well established. I will admit that I was talking from the perspective of a country where you are tested on common speed limits before you are allowed to drive, and which has extensive signage indicating allowed speed limits. In such a situation people are only "unaware" in the sense that they are knowingly breaking the law, but not thinking they are going to get caught.
I don't know about others, but I for one find myself often at odds with speed limits now that large swathes of London are 20mph as opposed to my stock assumption of 30mph as a lower bound excluding maybe schools.
There are signposts. I should always be aware of them. I am often not, many years of habit + very infrequent city driving these days tend towards mistakes. I am slightly more aware now - but I anticipate several years before i've internalised the new rules fully
I have had similar experiences, though I rarely drive in London. However, I would hope that you would accept that, if you were caught speeding, it would be a fair cop, given the clarity of the signage, the rules, etc.?
The acceptance of the rule of law really seems to be central to this whole speed camera issue. If you accept that your actions are subject to the law then you will also accept the consequences of any transgressions you make, intentional or otherwise; the mechanism of enforcement is simply irrelevant. An individual may want to be excused from consequence for a particular law, on the basis that they disagree with them (e.g. speeding), but that isn't how the law works, and necessarily so.
The speed limit signs are the things that should be slowing down drivers.
The purpose of the camera is to enforce the law. By painting them yellow we're allowing drivers to evade the law: slow down for this bit, keep driving at our usual unlawful too fast speed everywhere else.
It's the exact opposite of what you just said. A brightly painted camera enforces the law - it makes literally everyone follow the rules within its sight. A hidden camera does not enforce the law - it just guarantees punishment, but not compliance. It might make people slow down, but only after they get a ticket - and I'd argue that's far too late. If you have a section of the road where it's absolutely critical to follow the speed limit(near a school for example) then a visible speed camera is a far far far better choice than a hidden one.
I'd love to hear how is it ignorant - it's not the harshness of punishment that is discouraging illegal acts, otherwise we could punish everything by death and have zero crime. The thing that actually discourages illegal activity is the inevitability of punishment - if there is some chance you won't be caught, people will continue to speed. A visible speed camera guarantees punishment - it's a massive yellow sign that says "if you speed on this road you WILL get a ticket". With hidden cameras the message is "if you speed you MIGHT get a ticket" - and that just doesn't discourage enough.
>The speed limit signs are the things that should be slowing down drivers.
Unless you have Orwellian enforcement this is basically not true. People go as fast as they feel comfortable in the conditions. You can't just slap a 50 sign on a highway and expect people to go 50. If you want people to go a particular speed you need to play visual tricks or screw with the traffic flow to make them feel like the desired speed is the speed they should be going. These approaches have their trade-offs but those trade-offs are generally considered to be less bad than the trade-offs from having speed limits that are irrelevant most of the time.
I'd dispute that driving at 38 in a 30 automatically makes someone a "shitty driver" - I've seen some absolutely disgusting driving that never would have been picked up by a camera. Tailgating, drivers using handheld phones, and dangerous overtaking are a few examples that spring to mind.
Of course getting these drivers off the road would be a case of funding police properly (so they can be around to witness these things happening) instead of the easy option of sticking speed cameras everywhere.
>driving at 38 in a 30 automatically makes someone a "shitty driver"
In the parallel universe where all speed limits were set by the highway engineers instead of the people who scream "think of the children" loudly enough you could at least make that argument.
In our universe I think claiming that doing 38 in a 30 with no consideration of context makes someone a shitty driver is pretty laughable and in the same category as "weed is bad because it's illegal."
>Of course getting these drivers off the road would be a case of funding police properly (so they can be around to witness these things happening) instead of the easy option of sticking speed cameras everywhere.
One of these costs money and is set up and administrated by the local government. One of this will be set up for the local government by a private company in exchange for a cut of the profits. Which do you think the government will do?
I disagree completely. The primary purpose should be stopping people from speeding on the road where the camera is installed - and that purpose is achieved when the camera is visible.
Lots of comments in this thread seem to assume that painting something yellow will cause the typical driver to notice it. That is not my experience. The typical driver doesn't notice anything that isn't on her phone. New businesses on her everyday commute sprout fully-formed from the earth, the day that her maps app finds out about them.
Imagine a world where there was some sort of legal apparatus to prevent abuse of these surveillance devices. And then even go further, let's imagine that there's some sort of legal protection for whistle blowers who witness such abuses of power... I can only imagine.
We could write what we thought should happen down, and then assign an elected official along with twelve randomly selected citizens to the task of deciding if any breach had happened.
Do you think secret services don't have enough power (as in monetary, brute force, manpower, etc) to influence that (I'm assuming that secret services would be the interested party there)?
Billionaires, senators and the president all have a lot of power, and they're still subject to the court system. If there was an insutution that became more powerful than the law then I guess it would be a good idea to... Not have it.
Yes, we can have security and privacy. People drastically over estimate the risks from things like terrorist attacks and high crime. Just think about the number of people and hugely vulnerable systems (even existing security is a joke - why not bomb a TSA line for example? Or accidentally carry a gun through, which happens all the time) and how rarely things go wrong. There's just no need for these over the top surveillance machines. Security doesn't stop motivated attackers anyway (see all terrorist attacks since 9/11).
As far as everyday crime goes, I suspect a social safety net would take care of most of it. Most people aren't bad, but they will do bad things when they need help but don't get it. Once you get past that point, the cost of crime is probably less than the cost of trying to get perfect enforcement.
1. Security is usually a knee jerk reaction to something that has happened and rarely correctly addresses the full problem scope, just one specific edge case that was experienced. This typically happens because people over weight the probability of such an event happening to them, due to the short nature of it and lack of control. In contrast to 9/11, you won't see nearly the funding or awareness of some of the largest killers, such as obesity, cancer, US-based violence, alcohol, opioids, etc.
2. Anybody correctly motivated can bypass said security, because it is never well thought out and doesn't cover all possible scenarios. With some time and some know-how, any individual could defeat TSA (or any other Countries) security. At the moment the only benefit is those who seek to terrorize Western society are usually desperate or ill funded.
3. Security tends to lure people into a false sense of security, so people in general are just as secure as they were, because they stop being aware of insecurities. There is a study showing that Countries with and without bicycle helmets have roughly the same number of deaths - the reason being that drivers recognize cyclists without helmets as being more vulnerable, hence going to greater lengths to avoid collision.
To the point, all of these cameras are unlikely to make us more secure. What they will do on the other hand is lend themselves to abuse by government or corporate entities to any extent they think they can get away with.
I have a counterexample to make: Skripal's case. AFAIK the police pieced together CCTV footage from multiple cameras, which allowed to track and identify the suspects. Given that the suspects are likely trained hitmen and the stakes were pretty high, I can only assume that the main reason most crimes don't get solved that way is the complexity of the search. ML is poised to change that.
I'm not sure I'm for surveillance per se, but I do believe painting CCTV as useless and inefficient is wrong. It can be efficient in aiding high-level investigations if applied properly.
I see it as security is about control, and privacy is about removal. Privacy and security aren't mutually exclusive, but they aren't exactly symbiotic either.
It's fair to say an individual would want both security and privacy (for example, as with your home). Like many things, it's about finding the right balance. I'm sure if you look to the extremes of security and privacy you could find a bunch of crazy examples.
The wildcard is the who. That is what throws off the scales, as the security/privacy relationship moves from a micro to a macro level, and suddenly a person's real autonomy comes into question.
If you carry all the time (which most people who carry do, better than just leaving it in your car or something) it becomes natural like carrying your keys or wallet. If you're carrying your handgun in the bottom of a purse and rarely take it out it's even easier to forget.
That sounds defeating the whole purpose of carrying though.
Also, the whole thing is just mind boggling. Forgetting a killing machine (please don't even start the automobile/edc knife comparisons, killing people is the sole purpose of a gun) on the bottom of a purse. There is something deeply flawed in the whole system if that can happen
> There is something deeply flawed in the whole system if that can happen
This is just it. Carrying a gun is so normalised in the US that people are admitting that they forget that they are carrying a device which has the sole purpose of killing or injuring.
This is not ok in my opinion, but apparently everyone is ok with living in an environment where you all believe you need a gun for protection (which, if it's buried at the bottom of your bag, is going to be hopeless). I can't fathom that a person could be happy with this, but there you go.
It's no different than forgetting that there's a fire extinguisher in the trunk of your car. You might forget you have it from day to day but if you need it you're pretty much guaranteed to remember it. A small pistol in a handbag is the same way.
I think most people that carry do forget 59 minutes of most hours or more.
A year or so ago when walking out of a big box home improvement store and guys says to me "you got a knife?", I slowed and turned and thought and said no.
As I thought about how I don't carry knives, they are sharp objects that cut things, possibly including me, and I can't afford the anti-hemophilia factor treatments, and I don't need a knife 364 days of the year or so, so no.
I looked around, seeing the guy holding the tie down string the store provided at the exit, and looking around for something to cut it with. I scanned and looked, and even tried to rub the string on a metal piece that was protruding from the string roll holder itself.
The metal did not cut it. As I rubbed it I noticed the keys in my hand. A key could probably cut it better, and even better than that - the multi-tool I added to my keychain a few years ago actually has a small knife in it.
So then I had to change my assertion, I did have a knife, I handed it over to the guy, he cut his string and all was well.
I forgot I had this weapon, and have before when going to places with metal detectors (which don't care if you take it off your keychain and hide it in the bushes next to the front door ). I forgot I had it a lot, even when asked about it, even when it was actually useful.
I hope it's not that hard to imagine, as we move throughout the days we get so much on our mind about past and future, we, or I at least, often forget what I have in the present, and I try not to be like that.
Ask a head coach of the Dallas Cowboys[0] how easy it is to forget. Granted, this was before TSA, but still. It's not like it was legal before then either.
Nobody is required to demonstrate need to King-Aaron. Your opinions on the policy are not relevant to the practical concerns regarding its implementation.
For the record, I agree with you, but this isn't really an appropriate place to soapbox about it.
Privacy is an integral part of security - one cannot have security without privacy! Witness the various locations (eg the hotel in the article) that treat a small encroachment on their privacy as a security threat!
What has severely muddied the water is the term "security" has been bandied about by governments (and other large centralized entities) to refer to their own security, often at at the expense of our security. In order to sell the lie, we're encouraged to think that their security implies our security, which is obviously bullshit when you look at the positions their various security measures actually put us in - eg bunched up, undressed, split up, and disassembled in the airport groping line.
This is very pronounced at eg a federal building. At an airport, there obviously is a decent part of one's security that corresponds to the government's security.
The real problem, and why drawing the distinction is important even there, is that the government is choosing to do things that may or may not make government/group security slightly better because they/it cannot see a downside. When in reality it/they is hurting all the individuals' ability to take care of ourselves (eg my above description), even with respect to utterly banal threats like theft.
Are we getting safety in return? We’re giving up virtually all our rights to privacy, but are we really any safer than we were in the 70’ies?
Violent crime is certainly down in general, but is that because of increased surveillance? Terror and postal episodes are more frequent, so the surveillance certainly didn’t prevent that. Some surveillance is arguably helping prevent terror without us knowing, but we’re not even having a debate on what works and what doesn’t.
Street cameras in particular seem to me to be a lot more about retaliation and crime solving rather than actual prevention. You still get murdered, but now society catches the killer.
> Street cameras in particular seem to me to be a lot more about retaliation and crime solving rather than actual prevention. You still get murdered, but now society catches the killer.
Catching criminals is certainly a good thing to do. It may also prevent crime since criminals often commit more than one crime if left on the streets. Crime prevention is not the only thing that needs to happen. Compare with firefighters that will both need to prevent fires and put out the fires that happened anyway. There is also the perceived need for justice - "Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done." Cameras will help in this context.
Are cameras really a privacy problem in our GPS-enabled Wifi BLE cellphone tracking device infested world? A world where your face is tracked on every photo uploaded to Faceboo, and your Wifi and bluetooth MAC are logged in every AP you pass on the street and sent to advertisers and security agencies for storage and processing.
Crime prevention can be improved by using machine learning and AI. We may end up with a Minority Report style society. Is the prevention of crime worth the trade-off?
GPS devices are not on themselves active senders, you can choose not to have Wifi or cellphones. You can opt-out to do face tracking on Facebook, its just your friends you have to worry about. MACs can be spoofed.
In short, you can pretty much avoid or conceal all the activities you posted above, not a CCTV installation though. If it is near your home or work, you can definitely forget even trying to avoid it, except for reconstructive surgery.
>> Crime prevention can be improved by using machine learning and AI.
Well, I heard lots of claims to this, but never seen a reasonable POC. Most of these claims turn out to be mere geospatial statistics and analysis. Interesting to do, but it won't give you more information, than your local police precinct already knows (where are the 'troubled' neighbourhoods). Given time, more people (even bureucrats) will develop a bit of scrutiny against "AI solves everything" approaches. At least I hope they do...
I think obviously so. There's a very simple way to illustrate as such. In particular much of the crime that affects us and surveillance attempts to stop is not particularly new. It's mostly people just killing and hurting each other in ways that are centuries old.
Surveillance of society as a whole has increased on a very sharp exponential scale, yet there's been no clear causal connection to a decline in crime. If surveillance was useful, let alone necessary, to a society being made as safe as it could we would have expected to see a proportional decline in crime with some reasonably decent evidence of a causal link. But that is not present, at all. So we're really just submitting to surveillance and sacrificing ever greater swaths of personal privacy for no real gains.
Look up "Surveillance Camera Man" on Youtube. It's really fascinating to see that (not surprisingly) people hate being filmed by someone with a camera. Yet for some reason they don't care about the hundreds of other cameras being operated remotely that line the streets.
People are illogical. If they are in any large city in the world, they are likely being watched by at least 10 cameras over the course of the day, and nobody seems concerned. But, when you have someone holding the camera, all of a sudden they lose their minds. Which one is likely to be a bigger threat to you? A city-wide network of always-on cameras monitored by who knows how many people, or a single rando pointing a single camera at you?
- there are strict laws about what surveillance video can be used for
- surveillance video is rarely abused
- people with video cameras are a whole lot more likely to upload me to youtube and facebook (where I'll stay forever, possibly with nasty comments both by the uploader and commenters)
- while surveillance video will most likely be deleted within 14 days or 3 months or something
I'll happily
- take 10 surveillance cameras
- over one random person pointing filming me
- today
That said, I think there might be too much surveillance. And it might be dangerous in the future.
The person who wants to make a funny video with me is however a more imminent threat.
That is probably why people think there is a difference. But it's completely illogical. How do you think someone is going to "abuse" the footage? You say uploading to Youtube but there's all kinds of potentially embarrassing CCTV footage all over Youtube. Maybe there is some other kind of abuse possible, but you'd never know about it, just like you'd never know if someone is abusing the CCTV footage.
I will let you in with a little secret that 99% of the public is not aware of or refuse to believe. Every guest room in every hotel is equipped with extremely sophisticated surveillance equipment. Yes, every single room!
It is okay if you refuse to believe this because I know it's very difficult to accept. I didn't believe it myself until I saw everything in front of my own eyes. Just keep this thought in the back of your head as a possibility, one day you'll see the truth comes out.
What do you mean by, 'extremely sophisticated surveillance equipment'?
Are we talking about smoke detectors, meters for water/electricity usage, or do you mean things like audio/video capture of your activities throughout the room? I definitely expect there to be equipment to determine if you've been smoking in your room (how else would they know) or doing something to destroy the room.
Who has access to this sort of thing? I imagine there'd be leaks if the regular security guards had access to this, so I'm guessing it must go to some LEO HQ.
I meant video/audio surveillance equipment. My comments are getting a lot of downvotes and I fully expected it. Before Snowden revealed what he had to say, imagine if you had mentioned exactly the same things he said, surely people would have labeled you as crazy.
It's not that every single shadow in existence contains a Vashta Nerada, it's that any particular shadow in existence COULD contain a Vashta Nerada.
Likewise, not every phone on the planet is silently listening to your conversations and recording them for the benefit of the Secret Service (or NSA, or other such organization). The problem is that ANY phone in the hotel COULD be silently recording your conversations. And the probability that any phone might be used for such purposes is definitely non-zero.
Many hotel rooms now have Smart TVs installed, and many smart TVs from companies like Vizio and LG come with built-in cameras. Rinse and repeat the above concerns.
You don't have to go far beyond the recent problems at DefCon to see what will be happening next.
You will never see proof because even if someone has it, they can never publish it for legal reasons, hotels are private properties and they are owned by giant MNCs. That's why I said everyone is free to believe what they want, but just keep the thought at the back of your head as a possibility because I used to be in that position until I witnessed it for myself.
If just a few localities had regulations like this covering government and private cameras, and if they were reasonably well designed regulations, I'll bet it would be a huge privacy benefit that would give people more peace of mind and improve communities.
There will always be some exceptions for whatever Black Ops are going down in the desert, or whatever, but a lot of these needlessly anxiety-making camera-human-sensor-loop systems could probably be brought to an end quickly.