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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

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.

draugadrotten 8y ago
> 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? The only way to win is not to play.
- maze-le 8y ago
  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...
- ataturk 8y ago
  In my opinion, the street cameras are totalitarian. Look how China is utilizing mass surveillance and then ask yourself are the alleged reductions in street crime worth the massive harm done to an open society? The first stages all seem so benevolent, then you turn around and in a couple of years you have a government that completely turns on its people and murders them wholesale the way China is doing right now. It's evil and it is sick. We might better just have the street crime.

draugadrotten 8y ago

> 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? The only way to win is not to play.

maze-le 8y ago
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...
ataturk 8y ago
In my opinion, the street cameras are totalitarian. Look how China is utilizing mass surveillance and then ask yourself are the alleged reductions in street crime worth the massive harm done to an open society? The first stages all seem so benevolent, then you turn around and in a couple of years you have a government that completely turns on its people and murders them wholesale the way China is doing right now. It's evil and it is sick. We might better just have the street crime.