4 ms·

Although part of me can't imagine thinking someone is watching 4 cameras on every car on every train at all times. Having video footage of crimes is useful eve

Although part of me can't imagine thinking someone is watching 4 cameras on every car on every train at all times. Having video footage of crimes is useful even if nobody watches it until after the fact. There are some security cameras in Vancouver which were installed with the explicit promise that footage would be deleted after 30 days without anyone having seen it unless the police get a warrant in the intervening period.

JoblessWonder 11y ago
Agreed. I was just thinking if their justification would be to deter graffiti they would want people to be afraid of being picked up during/right after the act, but I guess it would make sense for them to be worried about someone reviewing the footage later and their picture being passed around to the transit cops.
jheriko 11y ago
its kind of sad. i'd rather there was a promise that the footage was kept indefinitely, but never watched unless there was a police warrant. that sounds much more useful...
- 0xffff2 11y ago
  That sounds like the kind of thing that no public agency has the budget for. Even at relatively low resolution, X kb/s * Y cameras * 60 * 60 * 24 adds up to a whole lot of data accumulating every day. Why store all of that data forever when it's vastly unlikely to ever be used after the first 30 days. Even 30 days is probably generous. How often are police not going to have any idea that a crime was committed in the general vicinity of a camera for an entire month, much less two or three or more?
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  For one, if the data still exists, you can expect its entire history to eventually get datamined via facial recognition because "think of the children" or "we need to identify people's routines so we can spot outliers" or "the terrorists might have taken a train 12 years ago," and eventually used for god knows what else. Not a fan of that idea. And two, can you actually trust the transit people to keep a pile of petabytes of footage secure forever? I certainly don't. So we should assume that the person datamining all of those records will actually be an adversary. Third, who's going to pay for it? Video (or even stills) at a useful resolution take up space.
- jheriko 11y ago
  hard disks are cheap. they are not the expensive part of this at all...

JoblessWonder 11y ago

Agreed. I was just thinking if their justification would be to deter graffiti they would want people to be afraid of being picked up during/right after the act, but I guess it would make sense for them to be worried about someone reviewing the footage later and their picture being passed around to the transit cops.

jheriko 11y ago

its kind of sad. i'd rather there was a promise that the footage was kept indefinitely, but never watched unless there was a police warrant. that sounds much more useful...

0xffff2 11y ago
That sounds like the kind of thing that no public agency has the budget for. Even at relatively low resolution, X kb/s * Y cameras * 60 * 60 * 24 adds up to a whole lot of data accumulating every day. Why store all of that data forever when it's vastly unlikely to ever be used after the first 30 days. Even 30 days is probably generous. How often are police not going to have any idea that a crime was committed in the general vicinity of a camera for an entire month, much less two or three or more?
wlesieutre 11y ago
For one, if the data still exists, you can expect its entire history to eventually get datamined via facial recognition because "think of the children" or "we need to identify people's routines so we can spot outliers" or "the terrorists might have taken a train 12 years ago," and eventually used for god knows what else. Not a fan of that idea. And two, can you actually trust the transit people to keep a pile of petabytes of footage secure forever? I certainly don't. So we should assume that the person datamining all of those records will actually be an adversary. Third, who's going to pay for it? Video (or even stills) at a useful resolution take up space.
jheriko 11y ago
hard disks are cheap. they are not the expensive part of this at all...