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UK's Public Cameras Listen For Trouble
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Nov 25, 2006 02:30 AM
from the can't-get-away-with-anything dept.
from the can't-get-away-with-anything dept.
You're probably already aware of the United Kingdom's large network of video cameras inspecting public places. News.com now reports that they'll be listening for trouble as well. Based on a model in use in the Netherlands, new cameras will be fitted to 'listen for aggressive tones,' such as those used during an argument. From the article: "The system works by putting microphones in CCTV cameras to continually analyze the sound in the surrounding area. If aggressive tones are picked up, an alarm signal is automatically sent to the police, who can zoom in the camera to the location of the suspect sound and investigate the situation. 'Ninety percent of violent cases start with verbal aggression,' Van der Vorst said. 'With our system, the police can respond a lot quicker to a violent situation.'"
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Privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Privacy? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
When I woke up this morning (Score:5, Funny)
They don't have fire hoses attached... yet (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/ne
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Correction - a tiny number of cameras in one or two locations have speakers attached. Also, citing the Daily Hate (or any tabloid really) should only be done as a last resort; you never know quite how much of a bias they've put on their report, depending on what they're currently demonising.
Re:They don't have fire hoses attached... yet (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
The police will soon learn to ignore the "alarms" (Score:4, Insightful)
And at least 90% of verbal aggression ends up leading to nothing that the police can go after. But who knows, maybe they'll have an adjustable tolerance level, or maybe the police will get their kicks out of watching people argue, like a soap opera or watching COPS.
When did aggressive tones become a crime? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Therefore, in the right circumstances agressive tones could constitute assault.
Yes (Score:4, Funny)
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Madness, I tell you!
What would be more accurate and cost-effective... (Score:4, Funny)
Shush!!! (Score:2)
Movie Plot (Score:4, Interesting)
Then, when they want to do something nefarious in a place that happens to be in front of some cameras, they just have someone call a bunch of the phones and all the camera monitoring people will focus their attention elsewhere.
Kind of like starting a fire on one side of town right before you go to rob a bank on the other side.
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cue the typical slashdot indignation (Score:4, Insightful)
hysteria, histrionics, panic, fud... snore...
in every single aspect of life you can imagination, moderation always wins. balance always wins. complexity always trumps simplicity. life is nuanced. it is made of balancing multiple complicated concerns. you can not bludgeon life with an idealistic platitude and expect to make sense or be wise
what are losing attitudes in life? idealism. absolutism. fundamentalism
the absolute adherence to an idea: "privacy above all else" is wrong. as would absolute adherence to ANY ideal be wrong
every single ideal you can imagine, there are scenarios in society where justice and common sense demand that that ideal be broken
so when would absolute adherence to privacy be wrong?
well, how about if you live in a poor crime-ridden neighborhood and you can't even leave your house without being threatend with rape, mugging, and general loutish violent behavior on a daily basis? and guess what? if you lived in such an environment, you would LOVE these cameras
and in fact, that is the case: ask residents of housing projects what they think of these camera systems: they LOVE them. they get a life again. they can go outside again. the thugs get chased out of the public areas
and those who complain about these systems are usually your sort of middle class to upper middle class busy body who is disturbed by the idea of cameras... but not so disturbed about the prevalance of crime, because they don't have to deal with it on a daily basis. in other words, their opinion is formed on a half-truth, formed in a vacuum disconnected from reality that doesn't see all of the factors in play. propaganda is based on half-truths. it's an appeal to emotion, rather than an appeal to reason. "cameras bad! end of story!" the oh-so-wise slashdot crowd falls for it, brainwashed on the topic. a kneejerk, thoughtless reaction
please, slashdotters: try to understand the exact nature of the world you live in. your antithetical, hysterical reaction to these camera systems is an opinion born in a vacuum of any other considerations. sometimes, in life, the choice is between a fuzzy, complex negative, and a slightly worse, also fuzzy and complex negative. not between an obvious negative and an obvious positive. but to register some of your opinions is to see that in your mind, its a no brainer choice between absolute good and absolute evil. uh... no
some of you have opinions about these camera systems that seems to start with the assumption that the british government just likes to put up cameras and spy on its citizens for no good reason. can you possibly imagine a good reason why the government AND its people would want these cameras? or is life a stupid hollywood b-grade movie, where all government officials are nefarious schizophrenic's fantasy life cardboard cutout villains, cheerfully twittering their hairline moustaches, rubbing their hands together, boldly thinking up new negarious plots to remove all of your freedoms for... no good reason at all. just general cartoonish malice. right?
can you imagine that there is actual reasonable problems these camera systems solve? can you imagine that the people installing these systems are actually well-meaning people? can you imagine that those who like these system are actually thoughtful concerned citizens happy with the cameras? no? yes? well: can you imagine a better realistic solution to the problem these cameras are solving because the privacy implications bother you? you can? good!
because now we're constructively engaged in the subject matter, rather than registering your typical lowest common denominator knee-jerk propagandistic hysterical opinion about these camera systems
it's tired. wake up. you live in a difficult world. to actually help and solve its problems just registering your holier-than-thou righteous indignation and unloading your hysteria doesn't actually help anyone. imagine that. address the real problems, and stopping stamping your feet like kids having a temper tantrum
Re:cue the typical slashdot indignation (Score:4, Insightful)
What I can not deal with is the loss of freedom. I don't want to be tracked from point A to point B because somebody thinks they need to know about my whereabouts. I don't need my conversations with another individual recorded, no matter how loud or soft my voice gets. Considering I know more than a couple of students, professors, commanders, etc., who's voice gets EXTREMELY LOUD at times when engaged in a conversation.
I don't need sensationalistic politics or politicians who feel to earn their paychecks they need to introduce some outrageous tracking and monitoring scheme, which essentially now makes the citizens feel like criminals. No society is free of crime, because Man has wants and needs and sometimes in some individuals those wants and needs are larger then others (in a negative way).
To close, you may like living in a "Demolition Man" society, where everything is tracked and controlled. But eventually, such a society will foster members who are soft and weak, and unfit to take care of themselves. And then they will be overrun by someone who's utterly ruthless and without fear or respect of rules and laws.
Parent
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Once privacy was seen as a support for freedom - if you don't know what somebody is up to then you can't stop them. In more
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I don't feel worried about this. They are all public places. I *have* the freedom to do anything which isn't illegal in any of these places, although the responsible body may decide to throw me out in the school or restaurant
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Tell that to all the people in North Korea. Or Saudi Arabia.
Re:cue the typical slashdot indignation (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in London. There is clearly a group of people somewhere hell bent on stirring up paranoia to justify this stuff. London is at no more risk of violence than at any other time in the last 60 years, according to any credible statistics. The number if people being killed by terrorists (Islamic or otherwise) is massively down on what it was (and sure as hell not because of cameras)*. The number of innocent people being killed by armed police is perhaps a bit higher, but still lower than any big city in the USA.
So what has changed apart from the availability of technology that can route backhanders to people with good connections?)
When my parents were school age, their houses were being bombed and they were regularly machine-gunned by Nazi dive bombers while cycling to school. So when I was young, everyone thought it was perfectly safe to go outside and play on building sites or with farm machinery or wild animals, swim in the river, and in fact: Run along and play, don't hurt anyone, don't break anything, and come back when its meal time. Serious crime was reported in the press, but without salacious details, and sexual crime was reported only using long medical terms that most people could not understand, or be bothered to read.
So we played with snakes, climbed over the rubble of bombed houses, dived into the river despite the abandonned prams and bicycles, made home-made fireworks, leapt of garage roofs and played ball in the road, and experimented with drugs and wierd music. Only a few of my friends were injured severely, and none died, except from cocaine! We knew damn well not to fall off roofs of two story buildings, cos landing carelessly of a gound flor roof hurt badly. We knew to be careful with home made explosives, because a friend nearly lost his hand, and we knew how to make and do things with any old stuff that came to hand.
Todays parents are too old to remember this, and have media that tells them about every murder or rape fifty times a day. Children not exposed to minor risk are unable to comprehend that playing chicken with 125MPH trains is a bad idea, that driving a real car is not like "Grand Theft Auto" (especially as automatics are rare here, and there is nothing like a clutch in a computer game) so they steal cars and kill children by accident.
* Terrorism in England mostly means the IRA - a bunch if Irish criminals funded by misguided Americans, and to some extent, misguided Irish. They killed loads of innocent people, and quite a few innocent animals too! This has declined because coverage of other terrorist groups on TV has shown them that Terrorist incidents are massive own-goals in terms of publicity. If the USA made it possible for all Palestinians and Iraquis to have a TV, then terrorism in the middle East would soon collapse. Why do you think the Taliban imposed a telly-ban? Yes I do have friends from the Middle East (on both sides).
Parent
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Interesting, but wrong. They are still blowing up places, a homebase got it just the other day - it just doesn't get reported now. They did mention it in this weeks private eye though. Not a lot has changed in NI, hell, M. Stone tried to blow up their parliament yesterday (which is the strangest thing I've ever seen... why did he do that?)
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Moderation usually wins. Balance usually wins. But complexity is preferrential to simplicity only when the simplicity cannot suffice. Complexity for complexity's sake is a complete mess. Had problems with any bureaucracies lately?
Stick to your guns people (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't mod this guy's argument up. Not only is it filled with straw men (See:" is life a stupid hollywood b-grade movie, where all government officials are nefarious schizophrenic's fantasy life cardboard cutout villains" for one) and emotional appeals (See: "well, how about if you live in a poor crime-ridden neighborhood and you can't even leave your house without being threatend with rape, mugging, and general loutish violent behavior on a daily basis?" for one), but its the same damn argument we hate whe
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what the hell is this for? (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition to not giving us much bang for the buck, there is a grave risk that all this surveillance technology will be used by people to undermine our democracy.
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Yeah but walking around worrying about being stabbed for the rest of your life kinda sucks too, and would affect me far more psychology speaking, than dying in cancer 40 years from now.
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Don't complain, celebrate. Declare a national "Yell-at-a-Camera Day" and get everyone you know to participate.
Oh, this'll cure all societal ills... (Score:2)
KeS
They Dutch model is working different (Score:5, Informative)
Once a certain sound is detected, the camera starts to record, including a previous time span (30 or 60 seconds) from the past. People are even advised to shout when being attacked or witnessing a crime!!
This means, normal day privacy is protected and crime can be fought very efficient. The people living in that concerned district love the system.
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The public opposed to installing permanent video surveillance but on the other hand demanded the police to take actions and make their street/neighborhood safer.
Again, can't talk about the UK situation, but the Dutch case I'm aware of is considering a street that is known as very unsafe. Signs indicate there is camera surveillance and the people living in the street did not oppose installing this solution knowing that it will not be running 99% of the time.
Note, thi
This is surveillance done right (Score:2)
If however the system is operated by computers who work with publicly known and approved heuristics and human operators are only allowed to watch if specific events occur, I am perfectly fine with that.
So how will then handle accents? (Score:2)
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And it will stop what? (Score:2)
Shweet (Score:3, Funny)
$DEITY bless technology.
Help, Mimes! (Score:3, Funny)
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Fair enough (Score:2)
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God, Now we have a potentialy dangerous situation becoming possibly lethal because the cops are lazy, underfunded or streatched to thin. Brilient!
great idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's an extention of it - modern cable tuner boxes have to send some information back to the cable company, so why not just put a little microphone in the tuner boxes? Then the special police software can be fed the sounds from inside your house, and if there is any sound of violent disturbance, they can respond. It's commonly known that rape and murder often occur in the home, and we're finding out more and more that in this new age of terrorism, violent crimes against society often begin in the home as well.
Since not everyone has cable tv, the government can put one of these boxes in everyone's house using the same infrastructure that tracks and enforces the TV tax. They have the customer records and housing database, so it's stupid to let such a volume of government collected personal information go unused.
Think of all the crime we could stop before it's committed! If crime can be stopped at the point when it's still just griping about the government or your boss, then we'll all be safer.
For those who don't THINK about what you read, reference "sarcasm" and "satire", along with "Orwell: 1984".
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With my idea, children won't have to worry about being abused over trivial things like bad grades or busting curfew. As soon as Dad threatens a spanking, the cops can arrest Dad for attempted child abuse. When I was 8, I sure wished the cops would bust in and arrest my parents when I got spanked for mouthing off to my parents when they told me to put away my toys. Why they couldn't have just let me be a smartass brat?
Yea, think about the children and
The British police are ineffective (Score:2)
Our police only care about meeting targets on senior management graphs, they do not give a damn about solving crimes.
This is why a motorist can be caught on camera and fined for going 6mph over the speed limit, yet someone in London who has their car set on fire by vandals has to wait *FOUR DAYS* for any sort of police response.
I'm not saying this is just a police proble
They just need to listen out for one thing: (Score:2)
Statistics. (Score:3, Insightful)
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The British government don't need it, because we don't have a constitution to protect us. That's why they can force ID cards on a public who don't want them and lock people up without charge.
Quite frankly I think it's absurd to see the British people sit back and watch TV while the government remove ancient protections against government abuse that our ancestors fought and died for. But hey, I no longer care, I'm getting out