22 ms·

San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

• scarejunba 8y ago
  Excellent stuff. This is the future: universal surveillance with auto-detection of crime. It's going to be very nice. We can't fight dictatorships by disallowing this tech. We have to fight it elsewhere. This is a good thing.
• BubRoss 8y ago
  How does anyone who lives in San Diego get to see the live camera and data feeds? Surely a city in the US didn't create a public surveillance network that takes the information and makes it private.
  • reaperducer 8y ago
    It depends on the state. In some states many government video feeds are considered public documents. The problem is that you're usually not allowed to tap in live, you have to file a paper request and then pay for duplication of the video. In Houston, when Transtar (the local transportation management agency) first put up its network of traffic cameras it worked out a deal with one of the local TV stations (KPRC, I think) to provide it with exclusive access to the video. The other stations pointed out that in Texas, Transtar video was considered public records, and so Transtar had to allow every TV station use them, as long as they ran fiber to the agency's headquarters to pick up the feeds. So KPRC's "exclusive" advantage evaporated within a month or two.
  • themark 8y ago
    It sure seems like it. https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2019/feb/20/san-diegos-street-lights-spy/ https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2019/feb/20/san-diegos-s... "...when a request under provisions of state public records law was sent to the city on January 3 to obtain data generated by a single so-called smart streetlight installed on a Market Street light pole, the response was repeatedly delayed. “The City has to conduct a search for records, examine records, consult with another agency, or compile data in order to determine whether it has disclosable records,” said a January 11 message. “Pursuant to Cal. Government Code section 6253(c), the City needs to consult with multiple departments having substantial interest in the determination of the request or among two or more components of the department having substantial subject matter interest; such consultation shall be conducted with all practical speed. Therefore, the City is taking a 14-day extension in which to conduct this consultation. We will notify you on or before January 25 whether the City has disclosable records." Come January 25, the city said it still wasn’t prepared to turn over the records.”
  • VectorLock 8y ago
    Surely you didn't think they'd make it open and available to the public did you?
  • abeppu 8y ago
    When cities/states rolled out wide license plate reader networks, wasn't the resulting data also shared with many government agencies, but not accessible by the public? I'm sure the justification for not allowing that data to be public is "well, if we let people access this data, surely it would be immediately abused." And I'm sure that's true. And it's also true that the data is immediately abused when shared only with government agencies.
  • loteck 8y ago
    I'm bummed that of all places on the internet, no one on HN has pointed out that the answer to your question is the city has an API you can query to obtain the public data collected by the sensors. Not the videos though.
• dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  "I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here." When this system was announced these were exactly the concerns that were voiced and they were dismissed with "nuh, uh, we're enlightened, that stuff doesn't happen here." Even many here dismissed those concerns with similar logic. The idea of being able to make minor improvements by mining city data was too good to pass up. Yet here we are. The data has not been used to improve the city but it has been used to empower the police state. This is exactly what the naysayers said would happen.
  • mintplant 8y ago
    This article is about San Diego, not San Francisco.
    • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      Did SF not roll out a similiar system? I recall lots of discussion on the topic of all the improvements to public services (ha) that the data from these lights would enable.
  • bilbo0s 8y ago
    ??? Did you realize that the city in question is San DIEGO? (Because your post seems to be about San FRANCISCO.)
• ralusek 8y ago
  Did the citizens request it?
  • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Request what? The surveillance system? No. That said many on HN where strong proponents of it when it was announced because it was marketed as providing data the city government could use to make improvements.
    • bilbo0s 8y ago
      Improvements to what? Serious question.
      • blackflame7000 8y ago
        Traffic congestion by studying the build-up of traffic at certain lights
        • decebalus1 8y ago
          I call bullshit. Pneumatic road tubes have been around for a while to gather data about traffic flows.
          • blackflame7000 8y ago
            Cameras can be at every intersection all the time and can adapt in real-time to emerging traffic patterns (ie a ballgame ending and a stadium of people hitting the road at once) as well as traffic changes over time from environmental changes
            • mastox 8y ago
              Why can't pneumatic tubes do this?
• rhokstar 8y ago
  Since the introduction of cameras used at intersections to penalize stop light violators (made famous by a former mayor who ran a red light while getting a blow job from his mistress), San Diego has always been experimenting with surveillance technology especially thereafter. Those intersection cameras have been minimized from county wide implementation at its height. Being a border city and a major military hub for the Navy and Marines, surveillance technology being developed by businesses here have been a response to these types of organizations' needs and challenges. I could see backlash as this surveillance tech permeates the county and extreme edge cases are brought to the surface to be used as weapons for curbing implementation.
  • bogomipz 8y ago
    >"Being a border city and a major military hub for the Navy and Marines, surveillance technology being developed by businesses here have been a response to these types of organizations' needs and challenges." The border already has border security and military bases already have existing security. What specific "needs" and "challenges" does San Diego currently have that are not fulfilled by those existing systems and requires the deployment of all pervasive surveillance throughout the entire city?
    • rhokstar 8y ago
      The constant need to do a task cheaper and faster.
  • BrandonMarc 8y ago
    Which mayor was this?
  • chiefalchemist 8y ago
    > "Those intersection cameras..." Fun fact: Intersection cameras have been proven to cause more accidents, as more people slam on their brakes to avoid a ticket then coast through the light.
    • Not_a_pizza 8y ago
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• blackflame7000 8y ago
  I live in San Diego and frankly, I hate the new lights because they simply aren't as bright and there are fewer of them. I can't run outside after work during the winter because the streets are dark now.
  • trhway 8y ago
    With modern LED the small battery powered headlamp I have on a headband is like a headlight of the cars of the past :)
    • 01100011 8y ago
      Headlamps can be dangerous because the shadows are in the same plane as your vision. I gave up using them for hiking because they didn't help me see drop-offs. You're better off with a light in your hand or on your waist.
      • username223 8y ago
        After spending hundreds of hours hiking by headlamp, both on- and off-trail, I disagree. Sometimes it helps to hold your headlamp in your hand if you're running, but at a normal walking pace, it's not a big deal.
      • fbonetti 8y ago
        Just get a headlamp that can be angled down.
        • usrusr 8y ago
          Does not change the fact that the light source is very close to the observer, and to make it worse higher than the observer. Both are quite bad for detecting the structure of the ground.
          • zaroth 8y ago
            Where would you want the light to fix this? Somewhere else you could wear it on your body? Torso, thigh, ankle?
• segfaultbuserr 8y ago
  Big Light is watching you!
  • renholder 8y ago
    BUT HER WATTS!!!!!
• pie_hacker 8y ago
  I find it frightening that local governments in the U.S. are installing microphones to spy on their citizens in public.
  • Shivetya 8y ago
    it is more frightening how quickly citizens of most countries willingly give up their privacy and freedoms to their government over the promise of a cookie or promise of keeping other people away from the same cookies. politicians in the West excel at exploiting fear and jealously to obtain more authority, divide and conquer. The US would only end up in dictatorship through court packing or a moral authority faction taking over; by moral I do not mean religious. pretty much look at countries where politicians declare a group of haves to be illegal or unjust and you get the idea.
    • toomanybeersies 8y ago
      > politicians in the West excel at exploiting fear and jealously to obtain more authority, divide and conquer. I don't think that's a trait unique to politicians in the West, and in fact I'd say that Western politicians tend to exploit fear and jealousy less than those in the developing world. You've got ethnic cleansing going on in Myanmar, ethnic and religious conflict in Kashmir, and the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers and users in the Phillipines, to name a few instances.
• mark212 8y ago
  This blog post is highly misleading and inaccurate. Access to the video is very limited and subject to strict protocols for use in investigations. And the audio recording capacity isn’t live because the City has no use for it. The SD Reader isn’t a very trustworthy source. Here’s the U-T’s extensive piece on the topic: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sd-san-diego-street-light-sensors-camera-for-law-enforcement-use-20190319-htmlstory.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversatio...
  • noja 8y ago
    Are there video camera and microphones installed city-wide on streetlights or not?
    • mark212 8y ago
      No, there aren’t. This is a few hundred cameras and it’s mostly downtown. San Diego is the eighth largest city in the US and this is a tiny fraction of the city. Evaluate it on the merits, but be clear about what’s really going on.
      • another_comment 8y ago
        >> No, there aren’t. This is a few hundred cameras and it’s mostly downtown. Wrong. I've seen these from Pacific Beach to Imperial Beach. That is around 40 miles from North to South. They are _everywhere_. You can spot them by the black antennas sticking out the bottom of the light fixture. Source: I've lived in San Diego for 50 years.
        • mark212 8y ago
          that's a different system. They don't have cameras.
      • loteck 8y ago
        This is factually incorrect. There are currently over 3000 cameras live on this system, with the goal to increase to over 4000. You can see them all here: https://cityiqmapsd.herokuapp.com/ https://cityiqmapsd.herokuapp.com/
• username223 8y ago
  Wow, GE doesn't even bother with euphemism: > In short, CityIQ transforms a city's lighting infrastructure into an all-knowing, data intelligence network. -- https://www.currentbyge.com/cities https://www.currentbyge.com/cities "Hey, cities, want to install our Panopticon?" At least BriefCam took the time to encode their site in PR-speak: > BriefCam is the industry’s leading provider of Video Synopsis® solutions for rapid video review and search, real-time alerting and quantitative video insights. -- https://www.briefcam.com/company/about/ https://www.briefcam.com/company/about/
• SEJeff 8y ago
  If you're into citywide streetlight sensor networks, Chicago undertook a huge initiative dubbed the "Array Of Things": https://arrayofthings.github.io/ https://arrayofthings.github.io/ It was specifically designed to not have cameras however, to assuage privacy advocates.
  • lexicality 8y ago
    That very clearly has both cameras and microphones. It claims the data is local to each node, but you've only got their word about what firmware is running on each node.
    • SEJeff 8y ago
      Sorry, they claim it can't be scraped by the city. I guess we'll see :/
• cronix 8y ago
  Here's a few more: https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/05/22/amazon-sold-powerful-facial-recognition-software-to-the-washington-county-sheriff-and-gresham-police/ https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/05/22/amazon-sold-pow... https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predictive-policing-tool-new-orleans-nopd https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predict...
• shittyadmin 8y ago
  Maybe this will be viewed as too anti-social, but has anyone considered doing laser based attacks on these? Lasers seem to be able to damage camera sensors fairly easily and permanently and as they operate in the visible light range should be hard to block. Could make a system like this prohibitively expensive to operate.
  • unstatusthequo 8y ago
    Until they arrest and fine you for damaging government property... The way to fight this is with votes or in courts, which may not be effective in short term but doesn’t land you in jail.
    • pugworthy 8y ago
      Neither votes nor courts enabled this - governments just did it, and will just do things like this without asking (nor sometimes checking). The challenge in a way is how can we ever vote for or fight against (in court) things we don't even know exist sometimes?
      • rrix2 8y ago
        Present legislation for public surveillance accountability (or vote for people who will) like Seattle did https://www.seattle.gov/tech/initiatives/privacy/surveillance-technologies/about-surveillance-ordinance https://www.seattle.gov/tech/initiatives/privacy/surveillanc...
      • lvs 8y ago
        Courts and legislatures could stop it or regulate its use. The heart of the legal question is what aspects of domestic surveillance might be seen to violate 4th amendment protections. Thus far, "the right of people to be secure in their persons" has not been interpreted by courts in a manner that would constrain or limit surveillance in public places or the use of catch-all checkpoints. That could change with the right test cases, particularly if harms can be established.
• maxxxxx 8y ago
  It's just a matter of time until we have country-wide full surveillance. It will be the perfect tool for anyone who wants to create a dictatorship. The thought police and the telescreens in 1984 will look primitive and weak in comparison. I think there is no way around it. Add to that drones to keep the population under control and there is huge danger we'll have a pretty bleak future.
  • panic 8y ago
    This sort of defeatism isn't helpful. Surveillance technology doesn't sprout up from nothingness; it's built on a culture and a political/economic environment which can be changed.
    • maxxxxx 8y ago
      This isn't defeatism. I just think there is a wave coming that's really hard to stop and I don't see anything in the current political structure that's willing to stop it.
      • nosuchthing 8y ago
        Just because you're not interested or motivated in changing something, doesn't mean it can't be changed. City and state level political change is very malleable.
        • 50656E6973 8y ago
          Federal power trumps state and local
          • nosuchthing 8y ago
            Marijuana legalization is proof of the contrary
            • 50656E6973 8y ago
• zzzcpan 8y ago
  This is what so sad about tech, it gives those in power unprecedented abilities to control the population. Essentially heading back to slavery through technology with no way out for the slaves anymore.
  • ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    It also gives tech workers unprecedented abilities to fight it. Software engineers need to take social responsibility for what they create.
    • maxxxxx 8y ago
      But you know they won't. There is a lot of money to be made in going along. Heck, I probably wouldn't refuse big money from google for a few years. Maybe after having enough money I would eventually turn into a freedom activist, but who knows?
      • ams6110 8y ago
        Would you have helped to build Auschwitz if you got paid enough money?
        • maxxxxx 8y ago
          I am from Germany and a lot of people did help. They were ordinary citizens before 1933, then they supported mass murder until 1945, then they became citizens of a democratic country. History has shown repeatedly that most people will follow brutal dictatorships and only a few will resist. I don't know what I would do and neither do most of us without being in that situation.
        • gambiting 8y ago
          There's a quote by Polish nobelist Wiesława Szymborska: "Tyle wie­my o so­bie, ile nas spraw­dzo­no" Which translates roughly to: "We only know as much about ourselves, as we've been tried" During WW2 there was a lot of atrocities committed by people against their own. Not just Nazis against Poles or Jews, but Poles against Poles, Jews against Jews, Ukrainians against Ukrainians....etc etc. People who were given a choice to either hunt and kill their own, or have their families killed. Nazis frequently got the native population to do the most evil stuff(for the promise of being left alone in exchange), even documenting it on film and photos to show it back in Germany as "look at those barbarians killing each other". Basically we don't know what we would do in case of extreme adversity until we actually face it. I personally wish with all my being that my test will never come.
• maxaf 8y ago
  Has anyone else read the novel Golden State by Ben H. Winters? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39599913-golden-state https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39599913-golden-state He describes an extrapolation of our world's recent history, one in which "reality" is captured for posterity by omnipresent cameras. Citizens record the details of each day by taking written notes of encounters, in addition to stamping pages of their day book with "conversation stamps". These stamps establish the presence of a person in the company of another, thus allowing "reality" to be pieced together later on. In short, citizens of the Golden State consider reality precious, and go to great lengths in order to record & preserve the events of each day, however minute they may seem. Ben Winters is a great author, one of my favorite sci-fi craftsmen. He had me hooked throughout the novel, in no small part because I kept alternating between two emotional extremes. On one hand, I was abhorred by such systemic invasion of privacy. At the same time I saw obvious benefits that stemmed from systemic, society-fracturing lies having been banished from the Golden State universe.
  • stordoff 8y ago
    As someone who has OCD related to this ("Citizens record the details of each day by taking written notes of encounters" could almost describe me), I'd be interested to know if he addresses the downsides that could result from this. You become more worried about capturing the moment, so you can't live _in_ the moment. It's almost self-defeating -- because you are worried that if you have this interaction, you will forget to make a record of it, you end up not having the interaction at all (you limit interactions to things that will fit in short term memory). Regardless of how highly you value reality, you end up missing out on it, losing the very thing you valued in the first place.
    • maxaf 8y ago
      I'm familiar with the feelings you describe, but the Golden State's citizens appear to be unconcerned with this. The book's timeline is preceded by unspecified terrible events which have destroyed the old world. These events are said to have been triggered by lies, and it's this terror of repeating past mistakes that keeps citizens in line.
• sonnyblarney 8y ago
  The most shocking thing is that this could happen apparently without any public discussion or awareness. There is simply not enough crime in most US areas to justify this. This should only be allowed in hyper-specific scenarios wherein there is an evident need: airports, borders, very high crime areas, international conferences, maybe around Capitol Hill and White House etc.. And it should be marked / publicized.
• macawfish 8y ago
  How long is it gonna be before somebody majorly abuses this system? And how would anyone be able to tell?
  • Not_a_pizza 8y ago
    Which are you honestly more worried about? Someone abusing the system to know where you are when, or not having a system in place when some lawless asshole decides to start doing very nasty things to people and/or property? Repeat after me: Ever single hierarchy has abuses. Build a society that has more than one person, and I'll show you a society where someone takes advantage of something more than they probably should, either legally or ethically.
• DigiMortal 8y ago
  New Zealand arrests individuals that violate their censor laws. And NZ is considered western and advanced.
• mullen 8y ago
  Life long resident and native born San Diegan here. This is not meant to be sarcastic or dismissive but this is the City of San Diego we're talking about. City of San Diego has a pretty good history of being completely incompetent. No matter what nefarious intent that you might think the City has, they are way to incompetent to do any of it. This type of system is only useful to non-idiots.
  • dsl 8y ago
    > No matter what nefarious intent that you might think the City has, they are way to incompetent to do any of it They already (incompetently) shared access to real time licence plate scanning with federal agencies.
  • renholder 8y ago
    >This type of system is only useful to non-idiots. So, everyone that isn't the City of San Diego, which is pretty problematic, when you think about it.
• crazynick4 8y ago
  > "..disparately impact communities of color." Just want to note, to be fair here, the "communities of color" have next to or no active cameras installed (according to the map in the article). That said, this is sad but not surprising.
• exabrial 8y ago
  One of the rare times I would condone the destruction of property and make it expensive for the city to operate these things. The US government has 0 authority to monitor its citizens without a warrant.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• bitL 8y ago
  ctOS from Watch_DOGS at its infancy... Should be fun soon! I liked one scenario they had for self-driving car crashes and the dilemma who should be killed in the event of an unavoidable accident. Car quickly retrieved the social score of each probable victim from a ctOS database and optimized crash setup to do the lowest harm to subjects with highest social score. No more car occupant vs external person nor owner vs manufacturer legal responsibility dilemma. Sounds really prophetic. Can't wait to see it in action! /s
• sroussey 8y ago
  5G and it’s need to remake all the light and utility poles in the city will bring the cameras and microphones. It’s a compelling use case to a government, regardless of privacy implications. Microphones are used in a lot of places to figure out and triangulate the location of a gunshot. Cameras can track cars and people automatically. Not sure what to do about it though. Maybe multisig with community leaders and police with a court available as an override? Just spitballing. Everything has a negative unintended consequence.
  • komali2 8y ago
    >Microphones are used in a lot of places to figure out and triangulate the location of a gunshot. Apparently, those don't work too well. Spotshotter works in principle, but police departments are getting as low as 50% false positive rates, and can't really do anything if they do get reports of gunshots anyway - they turn up and the shooter is gone. https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/After-Too-Many-Shots-Missed-Fall-River-Mass-Ends-Deal-with-ShotSpotter.html https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/After-Too-Many-Shots-M...
    • village-idiot 8y ago
      Former Chicago resident here. The spotshotters were a very effective way to determine what neighborhoods you didn’t want to walk through at night.
      • onion2k 8y ago
        You'd hope that would lead to more public investment in education and services in those areas to alliviate crime and make them safer, but somehow I doubt that's what happened...
        • village-idiot 8y ago
          We’re still talking about Chicago, right?
        • shard972 8y ago
• mnw21cam 8y ago
  Empty page over here. What's the story?
• lstroud 8y ago
  If this has been created by government agencies, then the data should also be public. Once the data about what politicians are doing and saying becomes public, the program will end. :)
  • mfoy_ 8y ago
    That's not how it works, as history has shown us.
• JohnFen 8y ago
  Note to self -- don't go to San Diego.