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Briton are 95% comfortable with massive surveillance. Here's a true story, a few years ago I was supervising a diver training session at a swimming pool in Lon
by gaius 9y ago
Briton are 95% comfortable with massive surveillance.
Here's a true story, a few years ago I was supervising a diver training session at a swimming pool in London, it was closed to members of the public at the time. My locker was broken into, my phone, tablet, credit cards, car keys and bizarrely a load of Mexican money I happened to have in my wallet was stolen, as were a couple of other lockers. Thank God I hadn't driven in that evening, I'm sure the guy walked around all the local streets pushing the button and seeing if any cars lit up. That was the most annoying thing to get the car re-coded, I easily bricked all the devices and cancelled the cards, no activity was detected on them. Insurance replaced them. No idea what he wanted with or did with the pesos.
Anyway, the thief was caught on several CCTV cameras, should have been an easy job for the popo to pick him up, but actually, CCTV footage is next to useless. All you could tell was that he was 6-ish feet tall and approximate ethnicity. So I don't mind the pervasive surveillance, because it doesn't work anyway. I guess I am vaguely annoyed that taxpayer's money is wasted on any of it deployed by the government, but that's all. Maybe it at least has some deterrent effect, but this guy clearly wasn't bothered by being caught on camera at all, so probably not.
- linkmotif 9y agoThe answer is face recognition.
- gaius 9y agoI saw the CCTV footage - impossible.
- goblins 9y agoCurrent quality for the majority of CCTV is probably not good enough for facial. May be gait recognition is more feasible.
- Spearchucker 9y agoThere's an interesting article in last month's Economist. They show resolution that let's an operator recognise a face a mile up the road. That was in Islington.
- icc97 9y agoIf it doesn't work then it should be taken down. It's even worse, it means the police know it doesn't track criminals and so just want to track regular people. It tests the water of how much the population is willing to be under surveillance. Like boiling a frog you don't notice how much surveillance there is until it's too late.
- goblins 9y ago>It's even worse, it means the police know it doesn't track criminals and so just want to track regular people. The police knowing is really beside the point, local government (councils) own and operate the public space CCTV, the police will and do make use of it. The problem is quality and with quality is identification. If no one knows the person on CCTV there's not much to be done.
- icc97 9y agoThe point is that regular folk don't hide their face, so they're easy to be tracked. But criminals know just to hide their features. Maybe it's just paranoia but I neither want to have to hide my face nor worry about getting spotted in the wrong place at the wrong time by accident.
- goblins 9y agoThe police by the very definition of their job don't go around "tracking" regular folk. Only those that are doing or have done wrong. Seriously the police have better things to do than watch people on CCTV who aren't doing anything wrong. Not to mention the various laws and regulations that prevent the police doing just that. Councils on the other hand are a different thing.
- mhb 9y agoLike boiling a frog In 2002 Dr. Victor H. Hutchison, Professor Emeritus of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma, with a research interest in thermal relations of amphibians, said that "The legend is entirely incorrect!" He described how a critical thermal maximum for many frog species has been determined by contemporary research experiments: as the water is heated by about 2 °F, or 1.1 °C, per minute, the frog becomes increasingly active as it tries to escape, and eventually jumps out if the container allows it" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
- lurker456 9y agoThat's not proof it doesn't work. If you ran the GCHQ and you had a way to track everyone, would you let it be used to solve petty crime ? Much safer to use it sparingly.
- secfirstmd 9y agoThe Security Service has access to all publically paid for CCTV cameras in the UK. Motorways, airports, city centres etc
- achamayou 9y agoWould you not? It would make you pretty popular for one thing, and much easier to get funding next year.
- mrexroad 9y agoClearly the answer is to upgrade several million cameras to 4K, 60fps, IR at night models. Then all can do facial recognition, APNR, etc.
- joshvm 9y agoOne of the arguments for mass surveillance is that you could hand over to another system if the suspect goes off-camera. So in this case, presumably they knew exactly what time the thief left the building and, provided everyone talks to each other, you could figure out where he went next. Ultimately you might be able to determine where the suspect lived or transition to a camera where better footage is available. Problem is that while we are watched en masse, most of these systems are separate. I'm not arguing that we should have this capability, but this is the obvious use-case. The quality of CCTV footage (or lack of) is well known. How many times have you seen a news report with a blurry photo of a suspect and a plea for information? This is vague proof that mass surveillance is ineffective unless you throw serious manpower at it. This is what happens in the case of serious terrorism cases, where the police can wave RIPA around and subpoena footage from everyone, but presumably tracking between cameras still requires a lot of manual intervention (and therefore money). Catching a locker thief isn't worth it.