I did not realize this was currently feasible, but apparently it is. I just got done listening to the latest episode of radiolab where they talk about using high resolution cameras on planes to take aerial shots of the ground every second.
I recommend listening to the entire podcast, it’s not long and very informative. The tech was first brought into use by the US military to assist in tracking the people placing IEDs. And it worked. When an explosion went off, the cameras recorded the location, but remember there is the ability to rewind the clock backward to see anyone else in that area beforehand, then lock onto that suspect dot and follow them forward. It’s such a simple but astonishingly powerful technique for tracking down crimes and criminals or enemy explosive peddlers.
So, are you OK with this kind of technology being deployed on the US side for police officers?
I am pretty OK with it, but I was never hypersensitive to some police state running wild (because I see a difference living in the US vs Russia and don’t conflate the two). But to some, the power itself is the source of problems, not the people wielding it.
Yeah, I have nothing to hide so I don’t really care who watches me. I even wear my seatbelt and drive the speed limit so it’s not like I expect any men in black to ever show up at my doorstep. I just wish if they are to do surveillance then do it right and make it so every street corner has eyes and the resources necessary to maybe help deter crime a bit.
It’s a bit troubling because of the scope of the surveillance. I’d be ok with it if law enforcement needed a warrant to get access to any particular data.
It sounds ominous, but it sounds like basically what it’s good for is identifying a crime, and then using it to backtrack or work forward to see where people came from or went.
They can’t identify individuals via this method apparently.
It seems to me that you’re wrong on two points. One, you assume the triggering event has to be a crime. Two, you assume that following somebody backwards or forwards cannot identify someone. Even if you can’t see their face, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the guy you tailed back to John Smith’s house is probably John Smith.
I remember this being talked about during the O.J. Simpson trial. Could spy satellite photos have told where the infamous Ford Bronco was, at various specific times? There was even loose talk of asking Russia for their spy satellite photos. (Would they have bothered to take pictures of the rich suburbs of Los Angeles?)
A system like this might have helped capture the two escaped convicts in New York.
As I see it, nothing that takes place under an open sky has a presumption of privacy.
But what about the more subtle presumption of anonymity? If I go to the beach, or a ball game, I’d like to be “a face in the crowd.” The idea that someone could identify individuals and follow them around is…disturbing. There is a chilling effect. I’d be less likely to attend a political parade or protest, knowing that my employer might be able to find out that I was there.
Ideally, there would be some triggering requirement, as for telephone wire-taps. If someone attests that a crime was committed, and the suspect is of such-and-so a description, then there is some value in searching the crowd for anyone matching it. But no one should be allowed to conduct a fishing expedition, just searching crowds and looking for funny business.
(e.g., if someone says, “My wallet is missing,” then scan the tapes of the crowd for pickpockets. But don’t search all crowds, all the time, for pickpockets.)
Why not? Shouldn’t each and every pickpocket be caught? If a cop was nearby and noticed a person stealing your wallet, would you consider that a fishing expedition, or him just doing his job? And if technology multiplies the effectiveness of him catching not just the person stealing your wallet, but everyone’s wallet, isn’t that a better use of his time rather than just standing there eating a doughnut waiting for some idiot who steals right in front of him?
If we get rid of the punishment model then yes. We all commit some sort of infraction now and again - some we don’t even know exists, so we will all fall under getting caught. This however is normal for humans, it’s how we are. So a new system is needed.
Instead of punishment I propose karma. As long as what you are doing is beneficial to society you get priority in things like the fastest routing when we go to self driving cars, your packages arrive sooner, you are forgiven minor tax errors automatically, getting lower interest rates on loans, better seats to events, better cars, less intrusive advertizing, etc. If you are a known baddie, you will just be blocked from so much that you won’t even be able to order a hamburger from McD’s and your own car will refuse you travel.
Well, that would certainly be an interesting experiment, but who decides if “what you are doing is beneficial to society”? I can visualise zillions of endless minor court cases.
But the idea of having official ranks in society, where each promotion gets you more privileges, is an intriguing one. Here’s the Russian version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_Ranks
No, you misunderstood what I meant. They can’t, from the actual video footage, zoom in and say “Yep, that’s Crooked McCriminal. I’d recognize that scar and that bad haircut anywhere.”
The best they could do is to correlate the comings and goings of one of those blurs with say… cops on a stakeout who actually eyeballed who came and went at a particular time.
And yeah, they could use it to try and identify crimes, or for more nefarious purposes, but the main point is that they could track something on the ground, and then correlate it with more known information.
So in the OJ Simpson example, they’d have to watch the footage of when and where he killed his wife, and then trace the blurs and cars forward and backward to some point when they get a definitive ID on OJ as being one of those blurs.
As far as pickpockets go; it would be more interesting in that someone would basically have to report the pickpocketing, then you’d have to try and identify them as a blur in some aerial view, and then try and identify when they got pickpocketed, and THEN follow that blur back to wherever they were, and try and positively identify that person and recover whatever it was to build a case. Ideally, it would be an isolated event, with one person to follow, but if, say… someone pickpocketed you at a music festival, it might be really hard to track people through that kind of chaos.
I listened to that podcast, too. Really fascinating stuff.
I come down on the pro side. As the tech currently stands, I don’t feel the loss of privacy is really that significant, and I think it has excellent potential to significantly reduce crime rates. Currently, it seems like if your house gets broken into, cops don’t even bother trying to do anything about it. This would make the risk of getting caught so much greater that I think almost no one would risk it. Ditto bigger crimes like murder and kidnapping.
I agree it’s not likely to be of much help with pickpockets, but anything requiring a getaway vehicle is going to be pretty simple to solve. I think it’s worth it.
I like Radiolab, I haven’t had a chance to listen to that episode, I’ll try to later.
I agree, it sounds cool but troubling. And it sounds like something that could work well if everyone uses it the right way and no one abuses the information, but if it’s abused it could be very bad.
And right now it might not be able to identify faces, but how long until it will be? I honestly don’t know enough about surveillance technology, but it doesn’t seem like it’s impossible that the “Eye of Sauron” is implemented now, and then in a few years when technology gets better it’s updated with that tech where individual people could be identified. And because of inertia it would be harder to stop it once it’s in place rather than preventing it from going up in the first place.
It sounds like it’s possible to use higher resolution images and in that way gather even more information about objects (I’d guess possibly car make and model), but that the company itself doesn’t want to do that and further compromise people’s privacy.
It seems to me it’s really the best way to unravel big, organized crime. The example of the Mexican cartel, is precisely where this tech would come in handy.
I’d be happier if we could develop AI to track, rather than humans. I’d be happy if there were laws regulating the tech that made DAMN sure no one outside law enforcement could access it for any reason, that law enforcement could only use it for certain serious crimes, and that there would be oversight OUTSIDE law enforcement, to make sure it’s not being abused in some way (tracking protesters, for example or only being used in black communities, etc).
Anyone have any info on the MExican cartel they spoke about? What happened to it as a result of this tech, or the people involved int he police officer’s murder?
I’d be super-concerned about this, personally. Not so much because “OMG the cops are watching me !”, but the potential for political abuse is immense. Suddenly the sitting mayor/governor can know every dirty little secret about their challengers - live boys, dead girls, mistresses, meetings with this or that lobbyist, people from their own side that get approached discreetly… the potential for blackmail is immense, and the strategic edge alone would be something Nixon would have *eaten *people for.
To say nothing of NSA-types - who, it’s pretty much a given, are going to be able to tap the *hell *out of this system nationwide.
The trouble is that total surveillance also involves pictures of you picking your nose, Joe scratching his nuts, Jane looking down Jack’s shirt, etc. It involves pictures of Mrs. Jackson smacking her kid above the ear for misbehaving: should that be sent forward for investigation for child abuse? Jill over there adjusted her bra, and a flash of breast was visible for a tenth of a second: public indecency? Why, look, the clerk at the hot dog stand short-changed a customer: call in the fraud squad?
Who watches all the video? Who do you trust with that power? How many observers can a city afford?
A policeman, surveying a crowd, doesn’t have a camera, and is also not likely to know the names and home addresses of everyone in the crowd. The technology to follow people, either backward in time via recordings, or forward via drones, takes away that anonymity.
It would prevent/solve a lot of crimes if everyone were required, by law, to wear an ID badge on their shoulder, with their full name. You couldn’t rob a bank, because we’d know your name.
Is this a good idea? It is, in some ways, a similar approach, as it destroys commonplace anonymity, which most of us take for granted.
Which is why you’d need a lot of oversight and transparency in how the system is used, and limits as to how it ca be used. There definitely couldn’t be “watchers” just scanning for stuff, even AI. That information is dangerous.
Once a crime of a serious enough nature is reported, a quick warrant can be issued, and THEN AI or a person is allowed to look at that area at a particular time frame to discover what happened. Nothing that isn’t pertinent to that particular crime could be recorded or evaluated or used against anyone.
I don’t know if there’s a legal principle along these lines, but I think there ought to be a distinction between investigatory acts that police must do themselves versus what can be automated by technology. For example, if a cop wants to follow you in his police car to see where you go, I think that’s a perfectly legitimate thing for police to do without a warrant. But if the police want to use GPS in some way to automatically track all of your movements, I believe that becomes such an intrusion into someone’s life that it ought to be overseen by a court.
Same thing with a person being out in public. Yes, someone walking down a street could be observed by a cop. I’m even willing to say that mounting a CCTV on a street corner to keep tabs on street crime is a fair thing to do. But to automatically collect the movement of perhaps millions of people as a precautionary measure that could be used to investigate crime at some later date? I think it goes too far. The idea of allowing the data to be collected, but require a court order to query or analyze the data, is interesting. But ultimately, I tend to think that such a massive collection of data is probably unwise, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on.
See if this helps you place your finger: Imagine the system able to watch comings and goings at an abortion clinic or a known gay bar. And the Republicans just got elected.