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My first thought was: how is NYC not on this list since it has cameras on every block, and has for decades. And then I saw this: "Atlanta was the only place in

My first thought was: how is NYC not on this list since it has cameras on every block, and has for decades. And then I saw this: "Atlanta was the only place in the U.S. to crack the top ten, with 15.56 cameras per thousand residents." So they are looking at cameras per 1000 residents. This seems like the wrong way to count. If you point a camera at a block, you see everyone on that block whether there is one person or 10. They should compute it as percentage of public area that is under surveillance, I think.

sandworm101 7y ago
What matters more than the number of cameras is how/if the cameras are integrated. I don't much care that the local gas station has cameras tied to a 30-day DVR. I expect that. I don't expect them to be connected to facial-recognition AI, networked to the national police, and be feeding my movements into a citizenship score system that will impact my future job prospects.
- theobon 7y ago
  While not networked to the national police I expect that many commercial security cameras do have facial recognition to identify suspected thieves and VIPs along with tracking movement habits through the store which is shared with advertisers and product manufactures to justify cost for higher profile shelf space.
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    >> tracking movement habits through the store My understanding is that was a passing fad a few years ago. It was hyped by some startups but commercial users found it less than helpful compared to traditional metrics. I met a grocery store consultant (a real job) at a security conference. He said they used cameras to deal with traffic issues (even load between aisles) and predict cashier/customer ratios. They had abandoned the face/eye-tracking tech. Eye-level shelf space is better. They don't need an algorithm to keep telling them that.
    - scarejunba 7y ago
      They don't need CV for this. They can use beacons embedded in smart devices to tell which part of the building you're in. Worked with one of these guys.
      - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        They need cameras for theft. Tossing a person detecting algorithm on top is basically free (especially if you don't need it to do fancy things like track faces).
- r00fus 7y ago
  How would one calculate that score?
  - baddox 7y ago
    Investigative journalism.
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    Parked too far from pump -1. Didn't check air pressure in tires -1. Drove too quickly -1. Yawned too much, driving while tired -10 points. Did have correct national flag in rear window +1. That is all easily within current AI abilities.
  - godelski 7y ago
    You can ask Alibaba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhima_Credit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhima_Credit
- ynniv 7y ago
  Well, Atlanta has integrated over 10,000 cameras and 200 pole mounted automated license plate readers. The per capita statistics are distorted by the relatively small boundary of the City of Atlanta, but there are still a lot of cameras. [https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/programs/operation-shield/ https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/programs/operation-shiel...] [https://www.muckrock.com/foi/atlanta-325/2018-vigilant-data-sharing-information-48670/ https://www.muckrock.com/foi/atlanta-325/2018-vigilant-data-...]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sweezyjeezy 7y ago
Yeah, it also conflates private/publicly owned cameras. As someone who lives in London, I think we get unfairly portrayed as a surveillance state, because really the vast majority of cameras are inside shops and businesses, not on the street, and not connected to any central databank. I personally don't find cameras like these troubling. Once you get out of central London, most streets don't have cameras on them.
- dymk 7y ago
  And besides, you'd need a public walkway license to look at the walkway, and then a camera license to use the camera, and then a license license to display the license... (I'm joking, but the covert surveillance and public scaremongering that London did to enforce TV licenses was a little absurd.)
- Semaphor 7y ago
  > I personally don't find cameras like these troubling. It’s interesting to hear this difference. Here in Germany there are often cases where the courts forbid fake cameras because they "create an atmosphere of surveillance".
  - filoleg 7y ago
    Berlin has made that list too, though.
    - Semaphor 7y ago
      It’s not as if cameras are illegal here. You just need to have good reasons for them and have a very narrow area it surveils. For example many of those fake cams getting forbidden were from landlords and residents sued. Now if there were good reason like many break-ins in the area, the same landlord would have been allowed to have a real camera there.
- Tomte 7y ago
  The one time I was in London fifteen years ago, it felt like 1984. I was sitting in a bus and there were at least five or six TVs showing several camera perspectives. Including one directly at the back of my head, which showed some early signs of balding. It was the most unpleasant bus ride I have ever had. London is nuts.
burnte 7y ago
I agree with your assessment. I'm in Atlanta and I'd be hard pressed to say I see too many cameras outside of roadway cameras, which we have LOTS of. I'd wager road cams make up a very health proportion of the cameras counted by this article. Pedestrian cameras, not so much.
- chucksmash 7y ago
  Note the population figure for Atlanta though: 501,178. They're only counting cameras and people within the city limits, not the area that most people broadly call "Atlanta".
evandev 7y ago
Even when looking at raw camera numbers, Chicago has 35,000 vs NYC's 11,000 cameras.
- omarhaneef 7y ago
  Ah, interesting. I suspect they mean the wider NYC area. Manhattan itself is just shy of 34 square miles, and I think it is probably more surveillance dense per square mile than any other place in the US, but that may not apply to the wider NYC area.
_iyig 7y ago
As you suggest, NYC is intensively and effectively surveilled by the NYPD. The first bit of Steven Rambam’s talk at HOPE 2016 covers this in detail, starting around 3:30: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FHwl6AyL6js https://youtube.com/watch?v=FHwl6AyL6js
hammock 7y ago
NYC is still not on the list by # of cameras. If you read the rest of the article you see Chicago is #1 in that category, with 35,000 total cameras.
- devmunchies 7y ago
  the point of the parent comment was that the # of cameras doesn't matter. New york is small but dense. a single camera on a busy corner will see more people in a day than multiple cameras somewhere else.
lurker458 7y ago
Even better would be the amount of seconds each person is surveilled during their time in public space. Summed as an absolute number, and as a ratio of the total time they spend in public space. A camera in a busy street or at a chokepoint is worse (or more effective, depending on your viewpoint) than one in a cul-the-sac, even if they cover the same amount of space.
Spooky23 7y ago
Seriously, this is dumb. NYC alone gets 60M visitors. NYPD has a well integrated and pervasive intelligence system. I’m sure Atlanta is no slouch, but the money spent by NYC just dwarfs anyone who isn’t the Feds.
Bartweiss 7y ago
I saw a "best cities for public transit" list recently that had Reno, NV up near the top. Which was obviously baffling, and sent me to find out why. I eventually found that one of the major factors was "miles of transit line per capita and another was something like "annual mileage per transit vehicle" (possibly per-capita?). The goal was to evaluate density of coverage and frequency of arrivals. But that completely neglected population density, so it ended up rewarding cities for urban sprawl. This feels like the same type of mistake, where per-capita count neglects both population density and total coverage. There's a massive difference between every shop having its own camera (even if police access them) and something like London's Ring of Steel, where the camera layout and even streets have been designed to maximize coverage and identification rate in the most populous areas.
mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
Good point, I think it's even more complicated though. Consider not only how many cameras there are and where, but also to what level of detail they are able to see, who has access to what they see, and as mentioned elsewhere ITT, the other systems that they are connected to. e.g. a grainy CCTV cam in a convenience store is a single camera, as is one in a Gorgon Stare surveillance plane, but those do not generate equivalent amounts of surveillance.
Infernal 7y ago
Agreed. By the per capita metric my pants have 2000 cameras per 1000 inhabitants.
baby 7y ago
you're talking about number of people covered, but area covered might be an even better metric. I think the number of cameras per 1000 capita is actually a good metric, it's easier to calculate and it probably is doing a good job on average.
godelski 7y ago
They also say > Chicago had the highest number of individual cameras amongst U.S. cities, at 35,000. So we at least have an upper bound. Actually if you dig in you can find a spreadsheet [0] with all the info. NY has 11k cameras total. If you sort it by just number of cameras NY ranks as #38 (as opposed to #58 by cameras/1k people) Also digging in, they don't have data on LA. Though they do mention that there are 300-400k private cameras. Though the top 3 cities (all in China) have well over a million. What's also interesting is the correlation between the crime and safety indices. Some of those cities have low crime indices (under 20 is good, above 60 is high[2]) and high safety indices (higher == better). The correlation is really off here. [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bKBFiVXNzrgtW95j66Tpcj2OYmL-Gj-mKxvVvEN8aI8/edit#gid=979494433 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bKBFiVXNzrgtW95j66Tp... [1] https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surveilled-cities/ https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv... [2] https://www.numbeo.com/crime/indices_explained.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/crime/indices_explained.jsp

sandworm101 7y ago

What matters more than the number of cameras is how/if the cameras are integrated. I don't much care that the local gas station has cameras tied to a 30-day DVR. I expect that. I don't expect them to be connected to facial-recognition AI, networked to the national police, and be feeding my movements into a citizenship score system that will impact my future job prospects.

theobon 7y ago
While not networked to the national police I expect that many commercial security cameras do have facial recognition to identify suspected thieves and VIPs along with tracking movement habits through the store which is shared with advertisers and product manufactures to justify cost for higher profile shelf space.
- sandworm101 7y ago
  >> tracking movement habits through the store My understanding is that was a passing fad a few years ago. It was hyped by some startups but commercial users found it less than helpful compared to traditional metrics. I met a grocery store consultant (a real job) at a security conference. He said they used cameras to deal with traffic issues (even load between aisles) and predict cashier/customer ratios. They had abandoned the face/eye-tracking tech. Eye-level shelf space is better. They don't need an algorithm to keep telling them that.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    They don't need CV for this. They can use beacons embedded in smart devices to tell which part of the building you're in. Worked with one of these guys.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      They need cameras for theft. Tossing a person detecting algorithm on top is basically free (especially if you don't need it to do fancy things like track faces).
r00fus 7y ago
How would one calculate that score?
- baddox 7y ago
  Investigative journalism.
- sandworm101 7y ago
  Parked too far from pump -1. Didn't check air pressure in tires -1. Drove too quickly -1. Yawned too much, driving while tired -10 points. Did have correct national flag in rear window +1. That is all easily within current AI abilities.
- godelski 7y ago
  You can ask Alibaba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhima_Credit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhima_Credit
ynniv 7y ago
Well, Atlanta has integrated over 10,000 cameras and 200 pole mounted automated license plate readers. The per capita statistics are distorted by the relatively small boundary of the City of Atlanta, but there are still a lot of cameras. [https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/programs/operation-shield/ https://atlantapolicefoundation.org/programs/operation-shiel...] [https://www.muckrock.com/foi/atlanta-325/2018-vigilant-data-sharing-information-48670/ https://www.muckrock.com/foi/atlanta-325/2018-vigilant-data-...]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sweezyjeezy 7y ago

Yeah, it also conflates private/publicly owned cameras. As someone who lives in London, I think we get unfairly portrayed as a surveillance state, because really the vast majority of cameras are inside shops and businesses, not on the street, and not connected to any central databank. I personally don't find cameras like these troubling. Once you get out of central London, most streets don't have cameras on them.

dymk 7y ago
And besides, you'd need a public walkway license to look at the walkway, and then a camera license to use the camera, and then a license license to display the license... (I'm joking, but the covert surveillance and public scaremongering that London did to enforce TV licenses was a little absurd.)
Semaphor 7y ago
> I personally don't find cameras like these troubling. It’s interesting to hear this difference. Here in Germany there are often cases where the courts forbid fake cameras because they "create an atmosphere of surveillance".
- filoleg 7y ago
  Berlin has made that list too, though.
  - Semaphor 7y ago
    It’s not as if cameras are illegal here. You just need to have good reasons for them and have a very narrow area it surveils. For example many of those fake cams getting forbidden were from landlords and residents sued. Now if there were good reason like many break-ins in the area, the same landlord would have been allowed to have a real camera there.
Tomte 7y ago
The one time I was in London fifteen years ago, it felt like 1984. I was sitting in a bus and there were at least five or six TVs showing several camera perspectives. Including one directly at the back of my head, which showed some early signs of balding. It was the most unpleasant bus ride I have ever had. London is nuts.

burnte 7y ago

I agree with your assessment. I'm in Atlanta and I'd be hard pressed to say I see too many cameras outside of roadway cameras, which we have LOTS of. I'd wager road cams make up a very health proportion of the cameras counted by this article. Pedestrian cameras, not so much.

chucksmash 7y ago
Note the population figure for Atlanta though: 501,178. They're only counting cameras and people within the city limits, not the area that most people broadly call "Atlanta".

evandev 7y ago

Even when looking at raw camera numbers, Chicago has 35,000 vs NYC's 11,000 cameras.

omarhaneef 7y ago
Ah, interesting. I suspect they mean the wider NYC area. Manhattan itself is just shy of 34 square miles, and I think it is probably more surveillance dense per square mile than any other place in the US, but that may not apply to the wider NYC area.

_iyig 7y ago

As you suggest, NYC is intensively and effectively surveilled by the NYPD. The first bit of Steven Rambam’s talk at HOPE 2016 covers this in detail, starting around 3:30: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FHwl6AyL6js https://youtube.com/watch?v=FHwl6AyL6js

hammock 7y ago

NYC is still not on the list by # of cameras. If you read the rest of the article you see Chicago is #1 in that category, with 35,000 total cameras.

devmunchies 7y ago
the point of the parent comment was that the # of cameras doesn't matter. New york is small but dense. a single camera on a busy corner will see more people in a day than multiple cameras somewhere else.

lurker458 7y ago

Even better would be the amount of seconds each person is surveilled during their time in public space. Summed as an absolute number, and as a ratio of the total time they spend in public space. A camera in a busy street or at a chokepoint is worse (or more effective, depending on your viewpoint) than one in a cul-the-sac, even if they cover the same amount of space.

Spooky23 7y ago

Seriously, this is dumb. NYC alone gets 60M visitors. NYPD has a well integrated and pervasive intelligence system. I’m sure Atlanta is no slouch, but the money spent by NYC just dwarfs anyone who isn’t the Feds.

Bartweiss 7y ago

I saw a "best cities for public transit" list recently that had Reno, NV up near the top. Which was obviously baffling, and sent me to find out why. I eventually found that one of the major factors was "miles of transit line per capita and another was something like "annual mileage per transit vehicle" (possibly per-capita?). The goal was to evaluate density of coverage and frequency of arrivals. But that completely neglected population density, so it ended up rewarding cities for urban sprawl. This feels like the same type of mistake, where per-capita count neglects both population density and total coverage. There's a massive difference between every shop having its own camera (even if police access them) and something like London's Ring of Steel, where the camera layout and even streets have been designed to maximize coverage and identification rate in the most populous areas.

mandelbrotwurst 7y ago

Good point, I think it's even more complicated though. Consider not only how many cameras there are and where, but also to what level of detail they are able to see, who has access to what they see, and as mentioned elsewhere ITT, the other systems that they are connected to. e.g. a grainy CCTV cam in a convenience store is a single camera, as is one in a Gorgon Stare surveillance plane, but those do not generate equivalent amounts of surveillance.

Infernal 7y ago

Agreed. By the per capita metric my pants have 2000 cameras per 1000 inhabitants.

baby 7y ago

you're talking about number of people covered, but area covered might be an even better metric. I think the number of cameras per 1000 capita is actually a good metric, it's easier to calculate and it probably is doing a good job on average.

godelski 7y ago

They also say > Chicago had the highest number of individual cameras amongst U.S. cities, at 35,000. So we at least have an upper bound. Actually if you dig in you can find a spreadsheet [0] with all the info. NY has 11k cameras total. If you sort it by just number of cameras NY ranks as #38 (as opposed to #58 by cameras/1k people) Also digging in, they don't have data on LA. Though they do mention that there are 300-400k private cameras. Though the top 3 cities (all in China) have well over a million. What's also interesting is the correlation between the crime and safety indices. Some of those cities have low crime indices (under 20 is good, above 60 is high[2]) and high safety indices (higher == better). The correlation is really off here. [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bKBFiVXNzrgtW95j66Tpcj2OYmL-Gj-mKxvVvEN8aI8/edit#gid=979494433 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bKBFiVXNzrgtW95j66Tp... [1] https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surveilled-cities/ https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv... [2] https://www.numbeo.com/crime/indices_explained.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/crime/indices_explained.jsp