Due to the ever improving science of Biometrics, it is now possible for a relatively cheap camera to survey crowds with thousands of people in it and immediately pick out and identify a single face. They are all ready putting these things in public places (beaches, sports arenas, downtown).
Is this over the line? Are we entitled to be anonymous when walking in public?
Scares me a bit. And I don’t even break any laws!!! Well maybe the one about the Matress tag.
DaLovin’ Dj
Well, I have conflicting thoughts on this issue… on the one hand, why do you need privacy in a public area? On the other hand, does the benefit of possibly preventing/detecting a few crimes outweight the cost of assuming thousands of innocent people to be guilty?
I guess, in areas that have higher crime rates, if it can be shown that the cameras have a direct impact on criminal activity, they should be installed.
Well, let me think about this.
For starters, why should we be worried? Is this different from hiring additional cops who are specially trained to spot known criminals in a crowd? In a way cops are doing that already, just more inefficiently. Cops walking their beat are – among other things - checking out people that they pass looking for bad guys that fit some description.
Is it the potential efficiency of the technology that bothers you? Are you worried that this will cause people who have outstanding traffic tickets will be stopped by the cops?
Or perhaps the inefficiency that is the concern? Are we to be worried about false positives?
(I don’t accept SPOOFE implication that everyone the camera scans is somehow assumed guilty any more than the cop on the beat assumes everyone he looks at is guilty.)
So far none of that worries me much. The systems could be limited so that the database of bad guys included only those with felony warrants (no parking tickets), nd I’m sure that a real person would verify any positive hit.
While there is potential for abuse, I can see a lot of good coming from this. Assuming that it actually works, not only will we be able to catch more bad guys faster, we may be able to spot missing children.
So, unless someone can paint a scarier picture, I guess I’m all for it.
It comes down to the Big Brother concept, doesn’t it? As long as you can guarantee that the technology will be used within reasonable constraints, then there aren’t any problems. What happens if extremists gain power? (Make them left-wing, right-wing, religious, atheist - doesn’t really matter - it’s the extremist part that’s the problem, not their beliefs). If the infrastructure is in place, it wouldn’t be too hard to use for corrupt purposes. Is that risk worth the limited benefits that the cameras can provide? If you need the cameras, you’re inferring you don’t have the necessary manpower. If you don’t have the manpower, can you actually make any use of the information the cameras gather for you?
Well, the point wasn’t so much as “assumed guilty” as it was “is it worth the cost”. After all, for these public security cameras to operate, you need maintenance work (every month or so, maybe?), you need people to actually view the tape, etc. It costs money. If you place one of these cameras in a very-very-very-low-crime area, the payoff won’t be worth the initial cost.
Again, if it can be shown that the presence of these cameras helps with crime levels, I would be all for them, in certain circumstances.
All these arguments miss the point. All these cost benefit analyses are useless, since surveillance cameras are going to get so cheap and effective that it will be a grosser violation of our civil rights to try to ban them than to allow them.
I mean, if surveillance cameras are illegal that means that criminals will have them, people with power and influence will have them, but average people on the street will be forbidden them. The only way to prevent abuse of the cameras is to point the cameras at the people watching the cameras.
Sure, Big Brother could be watching you from the corner camera. But you could have a camera at the monitoring station watching the cop who watches the cameras. Of course most people aren’t going to bother watching the cops all day. But the knowledge that they are under constant surveillance will keep the cops honest. How are they going to beat up random dark-skinned people when every move they make is being recorded? How are they going to get their bribe money? How are they going to be able to look the other way when an important person breaks some law?
The fact is that secrecy will be impossible. We can’t prevent cheap omnipresent surveillance. But we can chose what kind of surveillance we get…one way or two way. Making it illegal simply means that we get one way surveillance.
bnorton doesn’t want to be busted for parking tickets, but does want other baddies to get caught.
Tells you something right there, doesn’t it? 
This subject was covered in some depth in another thread. In GD, I think.
Here it is;
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=77121
I still haven’t learned how to that here thingy. 
Peace,
mangeorge
vorfod: If an extremist government takes over this kind of technology will be out in place whether we like it or not. The OP assumes the context of a reasonable government, otherwise the whole issue is moot. With respect to the manpower issue, cameras are a lot cheaper than cops. If your police department had an unlimited budget then perhaps these cameras wouldn’t be necessary, but as a taxpayer, I like the cost/benefit aspect.
Lemur866: I agree with what you say, however the OP was really talking about a very specific type of surveillance camera. These are cameras that are able to scan a faces very quickly looking for ratios of eye to mouth, ear to chin, and other features that it can somehow quantify. It then compares these numbers to a database of known wanted persons to see if it has a match. This is different from a plain old surveillance camera.
mangeorge: “bnorton doesn’t want to be busted for parking tickets, but does want other baddies to get caught.
Tells you something right there, doesn’t it?” I dunno, does it? For the record I don’t have any outstanding tickets. Do you have a problem with the idea of felons getting arrested quickly and efficiently? I don’t see your point.
So, none of this has got me scared yet. Are these the worst scenarios we can come up with? If so I say cameras everywhere!
Given the fundamental (American) notion of “innocent until proven guilty” – which I am interpreting in a roundabout way as “We won’t give you grief until you actually do something wrong” – I think the face-scanning security cameras in public spaces is a bad idea. The very act of having a camera scan someone’s face and then doing a database search/comparison seems like it’s treating everyone as suspects, even when they might not have done anything wrong.
New York City (where I live) has hundreds of cameras watching the streets. It is unsettling, to say the least. You don’t even notice them or recognize them as cameras until someone points them out to you.
It’s that part of it that I find unsettling. What’s preventing some perverted cop from pointing one of those things in my bedroom window? Nothing. No one would ever know.
I say they’re too prone to abuse. Not to mention that people who know about the cameras never forget that they’re there. I’d like to think that I can live in a society where there are public places where I can enjoy a little solitude without feeling as if people are watching me.
rjung: This has nothing to do with the concept of innocent until proven guilty. This is nothing more than technology doing the same thing cops are currently doing only more efficiently. Unless you feel that a cop is violating some fundamental right everytime he glances at a law abiding citizen, then what’s the big deal? What is the difference?
THespos: Once again - the OP is about a specific type of camera that compares facial features against a database of known wanted persons. If a cop pointed such a camera in your bedroom it would probably end up trying to match the features of your butt with a bank robber.
I’m still not scared.
bnorton asked;
It’s more like the cop is asking for your ID every time he glances at you. It’s the constant scrutiny that makes some people uneasy. It’s disingenuous to call this discomfort paranoia. These cameras are more akin to having the cop follow you everywhere you go, watching your every move.
I’m not ‘scared’ of the cameras either. But I am kinda nervous about the ‘slippery slope’.
The camera pointed at THespos’ butt is an ordinary video camera. It’s software that compares features to a database. The butt is displayed next to the face which most closely resembles it.
Peace,
mangeorge
But ubiquitous surveillance will inevitably have some sort of software controlling it. No human will be able to monitor the hundreds of millions of cheap cameras out there. There will have to be some sort of filtering. If we take take the surveillance cameras as a given, which I believe we must, then how can we object to software that identifies individuals?
If people are worried about false positives, I imagine that if false positives are common then the authorities will be forced to improve the software if they don’t want to get sued. This is really nothing more than a cop looking through a surveillance camera and seeing if he recognizes anyone with outstanding warrants. If he sees someone he recognizes he goes to investigate that person. All the software does is remove the human part of the recognition. You still can’t be arrested or imprisoned.
This is no more of a search than a cop looking at you as you walk down the street is a search. And it says nothing about presumption of innocence, since cops don’t have to have a presumption of innocence, only courts do.
Vertical blinds.
I do agree with mangeorge’s (PEACE!!) slippery slope quote/idea/thought, though.
I get a creepy feeling at the thought of putting up ADDITIONAL cameras in public places. Though, if a public location that normally has security cameras (casinos, sporting venues, etc) would install this system, I would have no problem with it.
What would be the result? Camera at Fifth and Main spots hardened criminal. The police now have about a minute to get to that location before the person is out of view. (Think they can get there in time?) In my mind that results in more pursuits and possibly high-speed chases. Dangerous.
Of course, make-up artists and plastic surgeons could potentially make a fortune. (Or a larger one considering the plastic surgeon…)
mangeorge: No, it’s not like cops asking for your ID all the time, nor are these cameras “watching your every move”. Again, don’t confuse the technology brought up in the OP with regular old surveillance cameras. One of these cameras could be watching you commit a murder and it wouldn’t trigger any sort of alarm unless it happened to match one of the faces, even the victim’s, with a known criminal.
Also a cop who wants to peek into someone’s bedroom would not use this technology. In fact he probably wouldn’t use a camera at all. If he’s just looking for thrills he would likely go with a telescope or binoculars - technology that’s been around for, what? - a few hundred years anyway. Should we ban them, also?
Bean Counter: Just because a new technology dosen’t do everything, that’s no reason not to implement it. No one is claiming that this will rid the streets of each and every bad guy. It’s just one more weapon in the police’s arsenal.
Slippery Slope Arguments: For me, these are some of the most unconvincing arguments that can be made. If we buy into every slippery slope argument then we will get nowhere. If however you are going to use this kind of argument at least come up with some specific scenario that should concern us. So far all I’ve heard is a vague warning about possible abuses.
Still not scared.
You will, once they start suspecting you…
And why would ubiquitous surveillance make bnorton more of a suspect than he is already? If he is falsely accused of a crime, then he could perhaps use those video records to prove his innocence.
And how are the cops going to catch a guy just because they see his face in one camera? Well, I imagine they are going to have more than one camera out there. They should be able to track his movements pretty easily, all without getting out of their Aeron chairs.
Sound frightening? Then we need to put cameras in the police station so we can check in on the cops and make sure they aren’t abusing their power. If the cops start harrassing innocent people then we’ll have proof and the cops will be fired.
The cameras point both ways. The cops watch us, we watch the cops.
Specific ‘slippery slope’ scenario, huh? Well, here ya go;
Cameras in public places. Downtown, malls, major avenues, etc.
Cameras in unruly residential areas. Then in peaceful, quiet neighborhoods. Aimed at backyards and patios.
Cameras in homes. Not in bathrooms or bedrooms, of course. Gotta respect folks’ privacy, after all.
Cameras in bathrooms and bedrooms. Felons do use these facilities too, you know.
And if you’re not a felon you have nothing to worry about.
Cable tv can go both ways you know. Ask the Nielson people.
Passive, unremovable ID chips in newborns.
Heh heh.
Peace,
mangeorge
Quoth the FBI agent: “Sorry, we lost the tape.”
