6 ms·

The idea of collecting lots of audiovisual data all over a city without a clear plan of what to do with it seems mad, outright dystopian to me. The article des

by w-m 8y ago

The idea of collecting lots of audiovisual data all over a city without a clear plan of what to do with it seems mad, outright dystopian to me. The article describe how the city suddenly has much more data than what they needed or wanted and that they have to start training their people in data science now. There's no mention of privacy at all. I'd see having too much data ("But it’s like we asked for a cold drink of water and got shot in the face with a firehose") more of a liability and danger for the people of the city than a great opportunity. Public projects should approach problems from the reverse. Figure out what problem you need to solve, then define what the minimal amount of data is that you need to capture. Make a plan how to guarantee privacy and anonymity, and if you have all that, go and put out some sensors. Not the other way round.

kolbe 8y ago
This is going to happen sooner or later. The efficiency gains and extra data to help the justice system come to accurate judgments is far too large. People will ultimately want it. Or cities that do it will ultimately become so well run that they will draw talent and capital from cities that refrain. Cameras and microphones everywhere will win out. What we need to to is change the laws that these systems will enforce. Laws that were once designed to punish people harshly because they’re infrequently applied (like speeding) cannot exist once the enforcement mechanism catches it all the time.
- Legical 8y ago
  > The efficiency gains and extra data to help the justice system come to accurate judgments is far too large That's an admirable way of looking at the US justice system, but not quite how it really works. The system is adversarial, and "the truth" is a narrative advocated by one of the combatants. Given enough data, a DA could choose which facts fit their narrative and present a very convincing "truth" to a jury. Unless defendants have access to the entire dataset and can select their own datapoints to refute that narrative, they're fighting at an extreme disadvantage. Picture a scenario where a person gets murdered, and you're on trial because the only evidence the police have is a smart streetlight log of your car's whereabouts that show you parked in front of a mob-owned business and later in front of the victims house. Your truth is a simple dinner and date with the victims neighbor. The DA's truth is "backed by data". Yes, this sounds far-fetched and may be an oversimplification, but it's important to remember that the justice system isn't programming and access to more general data doesn't necessarily level the playing field.
  - kolbe 8y ago
    That's an edgy way of looking at the justice system, but not quite how it really works. Discovery explains away most of your hypothetical. Why is your account only 30 minutes old? You're clearly an old user. Why the throwaway account?
    - wolfgang42 8y ago
      > Why is your account only 30 minutes old? You're clearly an old user. Why the throwaway account? Why the combative tone, and how are you so certain that Legical is an 'old user' with a throwaway?
      - kolbe 8y ago
        He understands the forum's quoting conventions. He referenced programming. He responded quickly, and got several up votes quickly but few afterwards (i.e. it looks like he extinguished his alt login voting power). Lazy username. He's writing extremist views with no justification designed to undermine confidence in the US. It just hits a little close to what I would expect from a non genuine member.
        wolfgang42 8y ago
        I'm not seeing anything in your explanation that couldn't be explained away as someone who had been lurking for a while and happened to decide to write a comment for the first time around the time the post fell off the front page. Besides, from the guidelines: > Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data. On the topic of "extremist views with no justification," there are a great many people in the US who are concerned about the imbalance of power in the criminal justice system. Handwaving these concerns away with, "it's not a problem, just hire a lawyer who can go through the pile of data during discovery" doesn't strike me as an effective argument.
- w-m 8y ago
  I strongly disagree with this somewhat defeatist view. Every privacy violation can and should be fought vigorously. It's not set in stone that we will ourselves in total surveillance in a few years time. > People will ultimately want it With every big data breach coming to light, more and more people get sensitized about the issues of privacy and needless data collection. People come to see privacy as a quality-of-life issue, and cities that are seen as acting too intrusive could actually be avoided. Just having more raw data does not guarantee that a city will run better in any fashion. The task in the article about clearing the road for firefighters is a good example. The ability to set traffic lights and having a feedback through the GPS from the fire trucks is enough to achieve this task. There's nothing gained by putting a camera on the corner of every street that also watches the fire truck go by.
  - kolbe 8y ago
    > With every big data breach coming to light, more and more people get sensitized about the issues of privacy and needless data collection. Citation needed? That's not my experience at all. I find people getting more comfortable with their image and personal information basically being in the public domain--especially the younger people who have always lived in a social media driven world. We already live much closer to this world that not, anyway. Security cameras are ubiquitous. And every Nest doorbell we add brings us closer to making impossible to walk freely without being monitored. Most people I know will trade safety and security of giving law enforcement access to this data simply to get the benefits of not having their Amazon packages stolen. I admit there's a chance that it doesn't happen, but powerful things tend to win in a battle with ethical things. And this is very powerful. So if I had to dedicate resources to either stopping a powerful thing or fixing laws so the powerful thing isn't extra harmful, I'd pick the latter any day.
    - w-m 8y ago
      So I do live in Germany, where due to recent history, people are a tad more concerned with privacy than the residents of other countries. My statement was about observations in Germany: there was a doxxing/data leak of politicians data over christmas which was in the news for about a week. Today the collection #1 data leak made the headlines of mainstream media. Even if the conclusions often go in the wrong directions, privacy is discussed a lot. You may argue that the situation in the US is completely different, but I'm not convinced. See for example the Apple billboard at CES. Would they have put that up if privacy wasn't interesting to their (potential) users?
delinka 8y ago
> The idea of collecting lots of data without a clear plan of what to do with it seems mad (--slightly editorialized) And yet this is precisely what so many companies are doing now. My current employer has been talking up all the great services we can provide once we have an ocean of data about all the devices we sell. Well, we've begun condensing the vapor into an ocean and yet services (let alone a method of monetizing this data) have yet to precipitate. But let's just keep collecting because Machine Intelligence will ingest the data and save the day!
blacksmith_tb 8y ago
There's plenty of precedent here, there's no reasonable expectation of privacy on a public street in the US[1]. Now, that doesn't automatically mean your argument can't stand, but it becomes a quantitative one - random people snapping your picture in passing are not equivalent to the city bureau of planning feeding all that camera data to ML (unless Google / IG / etc. start picking you out of all those random photos... but I digress). Clearly the biggest experiment of this kind has been in Britain[2], no pesky 4th Amendment there, but the outcome doesn't seem to be entirely positive or negative. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy#Overvie... 2: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-camera-for-every-11-people-in-Britain-says-CCTV-survey.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveill...
- TACIXAT 8y ago
  I get that there is no expectation of privacy in public, but there is a huge difference in someone maybe snapping a picture of me in the background of their Snapchat story, and the city recording my license plate on every block. One may place me at a single place and time, and will likely never see the outside of that person's photo app, the other can effectively track me wherever I go. Legal precedent really has nothing to do with how we feel about an issue.
  - godelski 8y ago
    I would say that one is an accident (snapping someone in the background), or rather there was no real intent. The latter is stalking.
  - blacksmith_tb 8y ago
    True, but we'd need to pass new laws to prevent it, right now it's perfectly legal for the city to be doing it, that was all I meant.

by w-m 8y ago

kolbe 8y ago

This is going to happen sooner or later. The efficiency gains and extra data to help the justice system come to accurate judgments is far too large. People will ultimately want it. Or cities that do it will ultimately become so well run that they will draw talent and capital from cities that refrain. Cameras and microphones everywhere will win out. What we need to to is change the laws that these systems will enforce. Laws that were once designed to punish people harshly because they’re infrequently applied (like speeding) cannot exist once the enforcement mechanism catches it all the time.

Legical 8y ago
> The efficiency gains and extra data to help the justice system come to accurate judgments is far too large That's an admirable way of looking at the US justice system, but not quite how it really works. The system is adversarial, and "the truth" is a narrative advocated by one of the combatants. Given enough data, a DA could choose which facts fit their narrative and present a very convincing "truth" to a jury. Unless defendants have access to the entire dataset and can select their own datapoints to refute that narrative, they're fighting at an extreme disadvantage. Picture a scenario where a person gets murdered, and you're on trial because the only evidence the police have is a smart streetlight log of your car's whereabouts that show you parked in front of a mob-owned business and later in front of the victims house. Your truth is a simple dinner and date with the victims neighbor. The DA's truth is "backed by data". Yes, this sounds far-fetched and may be an oversimplification, but it's important to remember that the justice system isn't programming and access to more general data doesn't necessarily level the playing field.
- kolbe 8y ago
  That's an edgy way of looking at the justice system, but not quite how it really works. Discovery explains away most of your hypothetical. Why is your account only 30 minutes old? You're clearly an old user. Why the throwaway account?
  - wolfgang42 8y ago
    > Why is your account only 30 minutes old? You're clearly an old user. Why the throwaway account? Why the combative tone, and how are you so certain that Legical is an 'old user' with a throwaway?
    - kolbe 8y ago
      He understands the forum's quoting conventions. He referenced programming. He responded quickly, and got several up votes quickly but few afterwards (i.e. it looks like he extinguished his alt login voting power). Lazy username. He's writing extremist views with no justification designed to undermine confidence in the US. It just hits a little close to what I would expect from a non genuine member.
      - wolfgang42 8y ago
        I'm not seeing anything in your explanation that couldn't be explained away as someone who had been lurking for a while and happened to decide to write a comment for the first time around the time the post fell off the front page. Besides, from the guidelines: > Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data. On the topic of "extremist views with no justification," there are a great many people in the US who are concerned about the imbalance of power in the criminal justice system. Handwaving these concerns away with, "it's not a problem, just hire a lawyer who can go through the pile of data during discovery" doesn't strike me as an effective argument.
w-m 8y ago
I strongly disagree with this somewhat defeatist view. Every privacy violation can and should be fought vigorously. It's not set in stone that we will ourselves in total surveillance in a few years time. > People will ultimately want it With every big data breach coming to light, more and more people get sensitized about the issues of privacy and needless data collection. People come to see privacy as a quality-of-life issue, and cities that are seen as acting too intrusive could actually be avoided. Just having more raw data does not guarantee that a city will run better in any fashion. The task in the article about clearing the road for firefighters is a good example. The ability to set traffic lights and having a feedback through the GPS from the fire trucks is enough to achieve this task. There's nothing gained by putting a camera on the corner of every street that also watches the fire truck go by.
- kolbe 8y ago
  > With every big data breach coming to light, more and more people get sensitized about the issues of privacy and needless data collection. Citation needed? That's not my experience at all. I find people getting more comfortable with their image and personal information basically being in the public domain--especially the younger people who have always lived in a social media driven world. We already live much closer to this world that not, anyway. Security cameras are ubiquitous. And every Nest doorbell we add brings us closer to making impossible to walk freely without being monitored. Most people I know will trade safety and security of giving law enforcement access to this data simply to get the benefits of not having their Amazon packages stolen. I admit there's a chance that it doesn't happen, but powerful things tend to win in a battle with ethical things. And this is very powerful. So if I had to dedicate resources to either stopping a powerful thing or fixing laws so the powerful thing isn't extra harmful, I'd pick the latter any day.
  - w-m 8y ago
    So I do live in Germany, where due to recent history, people are a tad more concerned with privacy than the residents of other countries. My statement was about observations in Germany: there was a doxxing/data leak of politicians data over christmas which was in the news for about a week. Today the collection #1 data leak made the headlines of mainstream media. Even if the conclusions often go in the wrong directions, privacy is discussed a lot. You may argue that the situation in the US is completely different, but I'm not convinced. See for example the Apple billboard at CES. Would they have put that up if privacy wasn't interesting to their (potential) users?

delinka 8y ago

> The idea of collecting lots of data without a clear plan of what to do with it seems mad (--slightly editorialized) And yet this is precisely what so many companies are doing now. My current employer has been talking up all the great services we can provide once we have an ocean of data about all the devices we sell. Well, we've begun condensing the vapor into an ocean and yet services (let alone a method of monetizing this data) have yet to precipitate. But let's just keep collecting because Machine Intelligence will ingest the data and save the day!

blacksmith_tb 8y ago

There's plenty of precedent here, there's no reasonable expectation of privacy on a public street in the US[1]. Now, that doesn't automatically mean your argument can't stand, but it becomes a quantitative one - random people snapping your picture in passing are not equivalent to the city bureau of planning feeding all that camera data to ML (unless Google / IG / etc. start picking you out of all those random photos... but I digress). Clearly the biggest experiment of this kind has been in Britain[2], no pesky 4th Amendment there, but the outcome doesn't seem to be entirely positive or negative. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy#Overvie... 2: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-camera-for-every-11-people-in-Britain-says-CCTV-survey.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveill...

TACIXAT 8y ago
I get that there is no expectation of privacy in public, but there is a huge difference in someone maybe snapping a picture of me in the background of their Snapchat story, and the city recording my license plate on every block. One may place me at a single place and time, and will likely never see the outside of that person's photo app, the other can effectively track me wherever I go. Legal precedent really has nothing to do with how we feel about an issue.
- godelski 8y ago
  I would say that one is an accident (snapping someone in the background), or rather there was no real intent. The latter is stalking.
- blacksmith_tb 8y ago
  True, but we'd need to pass new laws to prevent it, right now it's perfectly legal for the city to be doing it, that was all I meant.