7 ms·

It's also trivially easy to regulate. Mandate that all cameras recording public spaces record to encrypted storage. The key is in possession of the judicial sys

It's also trivially easy to regulate. Mandate that all cameras recording public spaces record to encrypted storage. The key is in possession of the judicial system. It can only be decrypted and examined with a warrant, with probable cause, as you would need for wiretapping or raiding a home or searching someone's computer.

adolph 5y ago
All that seems trivial to type but less than trivial to implement.
- dunefox 5y ago
  So?
the_pwner224 5y ago
> The key is in possession of the judicial system. It can only be decrypted and examined with a warrant, with probable cause, as you would need for wiretapping That's how you end up with the NSA and CIA being inside every single camera in the country :)
- vincnetas 5y ago
  Including your phone ;)
- antris 5y ago
  As if they aren't already.
  - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
    are they? or is this baseless speculation
    - A_non_e-moose 5y ago
      No quite baseless, more like speculation with established precedent, motive and opportunity.
    - antris 5y ago
      Snowden leaks
      - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
        did the snowden leaks say they were in every camera
        antris 5y ago
        For practical purposes, yes. The leaks showed how NSA has built a multi-layered data harvesting-archiving-searching machine that works not only through compromised hardware (including cameras), but also big company infrastructures, phone/email/SMS/internet browsing records and content, fiber optic cable tapping, hacking, installing bugs, spying and more. If the camera itself is not bugged, it likely is harvested at another step at some point and nothing's more clear that if NSA wants to see what a camera sees, they are able to tap it if needed. Sure, untapped cameras exist, but it doesn't really make a practical difference. The NSA will still have your information if it wants, and likely already has most of it.
        vngzs 5y ago
        I don't know how long the records persist, but presumably for things like video surveillance footage the decay period would be quite fast. For full-text contents, less speedy but still fast. I can only truly envision long-term collection and storage of metadata - and even then, it's a big question how much is feasible and reasonable to store indefinitely. It's likely that for your security camera footage to be accessed you would have to be targeted. It's likely that such targeting would only affect footage in the future or very recent past. But I'd grant that pervasive attackers can probably capture exponentially-decaying single video frames from millions of cameras if they were appropriately motivated, and those single frames could go back quite far. The real problem here is the existence of such a system creates a kind of panopticon [0], with chilling effects not only on activity and discussion contrarian to the current administration, but also any future administration that may have access to electronic surveillance records. Without knowing how long records are kept, it is quite plausible that a future authoritarian state will misuse past records to target civilians. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  You can regulate the NSA and CIA too, if you really want.
  - lp0_on_fire 5y ago
    Tell that to John Kennedy.
  - the_pwner224 5y ago
    In theory, yes. In practice... no, unfortunately. The people of America seem to be fine with it. Actually, as another commenter mentioned, they probably already are doing it. It would be stupid to think otherwise.
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      >> If you really want > The people of America seem to be fine with it. The people don't care that they're being watched. That's the main lesson I took from the snowden leaks. I think most people might even like it because they think it means there will be less crime.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Those agencies both monitor and retaliate against members of Congress. The NSA and CIA regulate government, not the other way around.
    - zip1234 5y ago
      The NSA and CIA are both foreign focused. The FBI is internally focused within the US.
      - throwaway19937 5y ago
        Both agencies have a long history of illegal domestic surveillance. The NSA's warrantless surveillance program (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(2001%E2%80%932007) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(...) and the CIA's Operation CHAOS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS) are two examples of this behavior.
aspaceman 5y ago
Now explain that to a lawyer. They won't get it. Trust me.
brk 5y ago
Hardly sounds trivial, and how would you ever enforce or manage that? Also, that is totally counter to the current (US) laws that basically state you can record video (not audio) of any publicly viewable areas freely. What you propose would require massive changes to essentially any camera that has any part of its view covering an outdoor area, and probably many indoor areas (malls, etc.). Also, face recognition typically runs on live streams to build indexes, so encrypting storage would not do much. You'd need to implement something like an HDMI-style encryption to control what devices/processors/whatever can connect to a live video stream from a camera to try and control exactly how the streams are processed.
- exo762 5y ago
  > Hardly sounds trivial, and how would you ever enforce or manage that? Spitballing. Enforcement: make distribution of CCTV video undisclosed via court order criminal offense. > Also, that is totally counter to the current (US) laws that basically state you can record video (not audio) of any publicly viewable areas freely. This is irrelevant, because scale changes nature of things. Single photo of your person is just that. 24 photos per second for every second of your life is a total surveillance. Law was clearly about recording usage that does not amount to surveillance. > Also, face recognition typically runs on live streams to build indexes, so encrypting storage would not do much. Encrypt the stream on the camera itself. Storage is cheap.
  - brk 5y ago
    >Spitballing. Enforcement: make distribution of CCTV video undisclosed via court order criminal offense. The same way gun ownership laws have curbed the illegal gun ownership/use problem? Or, do we just keep stacking laws endlessly hoping one of them actually works? >24 photos per second for every second of your life is a total surveillance. Sure but we're nowhere near that point, or likely to be at that point. Also, almost nothing records at 24fps, 15fps is more common. >Encrypt the stream on the camera itself. Storage is cheap. In most cases and camera and recording/viewing software come from different companies, so you'd still need some kind of key management system.
karmicthreat 5y ago
If someone throws a rock through a window, why shouldn't it be legal to run the surveillance through facial recognition? A crime was committed, we have a pic of the perpetrator.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  Because recognition is incredibly flawed and biased and leads to false accusations ruining lives and costing people tens of thousands of dollars
  - karmicthreat 5y ago
    True, it should not replace an eyes on review of matching suspects. But is a useful tool to reduce the pile you need to go through. Really, facial recognition just isn't getting weighed properly judicially.
  - zo1 5y ago
    Everything is flawed and leads to false accusations, even something ridiculously black and white like electronic bank records. Witnesses, intoxication, bias, outright lying, guilt, etc. All evidence has flaws and potential bias. One need only look at all the false imprisonments that have happened over the years due to various bits of "evidence" to see that. Instead, we should take the opposite approach: Invest heavily in this tech, and lightly-regulate glaringly bad aspects of it. E.g. For facial recognition, we can put down laws that punish unfair punishment of suspects. Or if we find employers that misappropriate facial recognition developed to record hours worked on the factory floor to punish them for chatting or going to the bathroom too many times, and we don't like that, then we regulate that. We really went down the wrong path here somewhere, applying a black and white approach to things instead of just riding the in-between strategically and fairly. That's how we move forward as a society instead of legislating ourselves into irrelevance.
  - tomschlick 5y ago
    Facial recognition should never be considered evidence. It is a clue. A way to sift through tens of thousands of possible entries and narrow it down to 5 for a human to review. We need the legal framework to ensure its not used as evidence by itself, but the investigatory tool is very useful.

adolph 5y ago

All that seems trivial to type but less than trivial to implement.

dunefox 5y ago
So?

the_pwner224 5y ago

> The key is in possession of the judicial system. It can only be decrypted and examined with a warrant, with probable cause, as you would need for wiretapping That's how you end up with the NSA and CIA being inside every single camera in the country :)

vincnetas 5y ago
Including your phone ;)
antris 5y ago
As if they aren't already.
- VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
  are they? or is this baseless speculation
  - A_non_e-moose 5y ago
    No quite baseless, more like speculation with established precedent, motive and opportunity.
  - antris 5y ago
    Snowden leaks
    - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
      did the snowden leaks say they were in every camera
      - antris 5y ago
        For practical purposes, yes. The leaks showed how NSA has built a multi-layered data harvesting-archiving-searching machine that works not only through compromised hardware (including cameras), but also big company infrastructures, phone/email/SMS/internet browsing records and content, fiber optic cable tapping, hacking, installing bugs, spying and more. If the camera itself is not bugged, it likely is harvested at another step at some point and nothing's more clear that if NSA wants to see what a camera sees, they are able to tap it if needed. Sure, untapped cameras exist, but it doesn't really make a practical difference. The NSA will still have your information if it wants, and likely already has most of it.
        vngzs 5y ago
        I don't know how long the records persist, but presumably for things like video surveillance footage the decay period would be quite fast. For full-text contents, less speedy but still fast. I can only truly envision long-term collection and storage of metadata - and even then, it's a big question how much is feasible and reasonable to store indefinitely. It's likely that for your security camera footage to be accessed you would have to be targeted. It's likely that such targeting would only affect footage in the future or very recent past. But I'd grant that pervasive attackers can probably capture exponentially-decaying single video frames from millions of cameras if they were appropriately motivated, and those single frames could go back quite far. The real problem here is the existence of such a system creates a kind of panopticon [0], with chilling effects not only on activity and discussion contrarian to the current administration, but also any future administration that may have access to electronic surveillance records. Without knowing how long records are kept, it is quite plausible that a future authoritarian state will misuse past records to target civilians. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
hutzlibu 5y ago
You can regulate the NSA and CIA too, if you really want.
- lp0_on_fire 5y ago
  Tell that to John Kennedy.
- the_pwner224 5y ago
  In theory, yes. In practice... no, unfortunately. The people of America seem to be fine with it. Actually, as another commenter mentioned, they probably already are doing it. It would be stupid to think otherwise.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    >> If you really want > The people of America seem to be fine with it. The people don't care that they're being watched. That's the main lesson I took from the snowden leaks. I think most people might even like it because they think it means there will be less crime.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Those agencies both monitor and retaliate against members of Congress. The NSA and CIA regulate government, not the other way around.
  - zip1234 5y ago
    The NSA and CIA are both foreign focused. The FBI is internally focused within the US.
    - throwaway19937 5y ago
      Both agencies have a long history of illegal domestic surveillance. The NSA's warrantless surveillance program (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(2001%E2%80%932007) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(...) and the CIA's Operation CHAOS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS) are two examples of this behavior.

aspaceman 5y ago

Now explain that to a lawyer. They won't get it. Trust me.

brk 5y ago

Hardly sounds trivial, and how would you ever enforce or manage that? Also, that is totally counter to the current (US) laws that basically state you can record video (not audio) of any publicly viewable areas freely. What you propose would require massive changes to essentially any camera that has any part of its view covering an outdoor area, and probably many indoor areas (malls, etc.). Also, face recognition typically runs on live streams to build indexes, so encrypting storage would not do much. You'd need to implement something like an HDMI-style encryption to control what devices/processors/whatever can connect to a live video stream from a camera to try and control exactly how the streams are processed.

exo762 5y ago
> Hardly sounds trivial, and how would you ever enforce or manage that? Spitballing. Enforcement: make distribution of CCTV video undisclosed via court order criminal offense. > Also, that is totally counter to the current (US) laws that basically state you can record video (not audio) of any publicly viewable areas freely. This is irrelevant, because scale changes nature of things. Single photo of your person is just that. 24 photos per second for every second of your life is a total surveillance. Law was clearly about recording usage that does not amount to surveillance. > Also, face recognition typically runs on live streams to build indexes, so encrypting storage would not do much. Encrypt the stream on the camera itself. Storage is cheap.
- brk 5y ago
  >Spitballing. Enforcement: make distribution of CCTV video undisclosed via court order criminal offense. The same way gun ownership laws have curbed the illegal gun ownership/use problem? Or, do we just keep stacking laws endlessly hoping one of them actually works? >24 photos per second for every second of your life is a total surveillance. Sure but we're nowhere near that point, or likely to be at that point. Also, almost nothing records at 24fps, 15fps is more common. >Encrypt the stream on the camera itself. Storage is cheap. In most cases and camera and recording/viewing software come from different companies, so you'd still need some kind of key management system.

karmicthreat 5y ago

If someone throws a rock through a window, why shouldn't it be legal to run the surveillance through facial recognition? A crime was committed, we have a pic of the perpetrator.

netizen-936824 5y ago
Because recognition is incredibly flawed and biased and leads to false accusations ruining lives and costing people tens of thousands of dollars
- karmicthreat 5y ago
  True, it should not replace an eyes on review of matching suspects. But is a useful tool to reduce the pile you need to go through. Really, facial recognition just isn't getting weighed properly judicially.
- zo1 5y ago
  Everything is flawed and leads to false accusations, even something ridiculously black and white like electronic bank records. Witnesses, intoxication, bias, outright lying, guilt, etc. All evidence has flaws and potential bias. One need only look at all the false imprisonments that have happened over the years due to various bits of "evidence" to see that. Instead, we should take the opposite approach: Invest heavily in this tech, and lightly-regulate glaringly bad aspects of it. E.g. For facial recognition, we can put down laws that punish unfair punishment of suspects. Or if we find employers that misappropriate facial recognition developed to record hours worked on the factory floor to punish them for chatting or going to the bathroom too many times, and we don't like that, then we regulate that. We really went down the wrong path here somewhere, applying a black and white approach to things instead of just riding the in-between strategically and fairly. That's how we move forward as a society instead of legislating ourselves into irrelevance.
- tomschlick 5y ago
  Facial recognition should never be considered evidence. It is a clue. A way to sift through tens of thousands of possible entries and narrow it down to 5 for a human to review. We need the legal framework to ensure its not used as evidence by itself, but the investigatory tool is very useful.