Surveillance Cameras Get Smarter 186
kog777 writes to mention that the IB Times is taking a look at where surveillance camera technology is headed. Soon researchers tell us that cameras will be available that not only record, but are able to interpret what they see. "The advancements have already been put to work. For example, cameras in Chicago and Washington can detect gunshots and alert police. Baltimore installed cameras that can play a recorded message and snap pictures of graffiti sprayers or illegal dumpers. In the commercial market, the gaming industry uses camera systems that can detect facial features, according to Bordes. Casinos use their vast banks of security cameras to hunt cheating gamblers who have been flagged before."
Gunshots (Score:5, Funny)
Can they tell the difference between gunshots and recordings of gunshots played back on people's mobile phones? I think we're about to find out!
Re:Gunshots (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gunshots (Score:4, Informative)
You're probably right that a cellphone wouldn't be able to do it but building a decent facsimile thats easy to hide wouldn't be hard. You'd probably get arrested though for defrauding police. You'd have to be more innovative, maybe incorporate your sounds into a song then play it over a boom box and say that you were just listening to music.
Re:Gunshots (Score:4, Informative)
It would be very hard to realisticly duplicate the decibel level of actual gunfire on a boombox. The sounds you could get, but not the volume. And IANAL, but as far as I can tell, playing sounds of gunfire isn't illegal (unless done with intent to commit some other crime perhaps), but discharging a firearm is. If playing gunfire sounds was illegal, gangster rap would have been over shortly after it started in the 80s.
Re:Gunshots - way above threshold of pain (Score:3, Informative)
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Apropos to nothing ... but, apparently, the record for a car stereo is in the 177db range according to this. [cnn.com]
Certainly, no normal stereo is that loud. I also intentionally went to the extreme end of things. But, there's always somebody out there who is trying to go way beyond anything sensible (even if it's not so much an identifiable series of sounds).
I don't think that detracts from y
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Nah, more like a loud, ill-defined noise -- they're not really generating anything which would be called music, or a tune, it's just a big brrraaattt sound which they measure for intensity.
:-P
You use a large amount of power, for a very short discharge, and then after the smoke clears and you've probably damaged a few $k in parts, they decide who won.
A very odd competition indeed.
Cheers
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Something else that I hadn't thought of is that it says the cameras detect gun shots. It doesn't say whether these cameras have microphones or not. You'd think so but what if it actually just detects flashes? Then it would be way easy to fake gunshots,
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Follow the links in those posts for more information.
Just play some gangsta rap! (Score:2)
NWA's "gangsta gangsta" isn't the best example, but it's the first I could think of.
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Not that I think any of this will ever become a real life issue. I'm sure the penalties for any such efforts will be over zealous and disproportionately high, so I suspect no one will find it a good risk.
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Straight into the air? You mean perpendicular? What was the little girl doing hanging upside down above his head while he was brandishing a firearm?
Re:Gunshots (Score:4, Insightful)
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Maybe the government shouldn't be finding new and exciting ways to do less work and employing less real people? IMHO, as soon as they start tracking us with these cameras we should start making loud gun shot noises as we shoot the lenses out.
Take back your personal freedom and stop listening to the "but you are in public!" bullshit. If they aren't willing
Re:Gunshots (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather be watched by algorithms than by humans. Humans are woefully fallible and (worse) in denial about their own fallibility. Humans are tribalistic asshats who lose objectivity if you are different than they are -- or if you aren't different.
Of course the advantage of human surveillance is that humans are so expensive that we won't pay for enough of them to watch everyone. That fact affords me the room I need to break laws in moral ways. We'd never program the surveillance computers to grant the same leeway.
Of course that would have the further advantage of eventually getting all those stupid laws undone. The only cure for a bad law is to enforce it on everyone, as only a surveillance society could do.
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Um, I'd rather live in the IT police state where everything is recorded and nothing much ever looked at rather than the police state that has actual cops everywhere. Let's be honest. Police aren't meant to stop violence or protect anyone. Police are meant to clean up afterwards, fill out their paper work, and do something to ma
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Sure, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about electronic police officers looking at EVERYTHING.
Re:Gunshots (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd rather have cameras watching me any day so I can potentially use the footage (possibly along with other footage) to prove my innocence should any questions arise.
Ubiquitous private and public cameras mean the death of privacy, so I want as level a playing field as possible.
I live in a quaint little rural town. Given the choice between Bubbas eyewitness testimony or video footage, I'd feel much more comfortable going to court with pictures of truth.
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Of course, when you take into account the interests of the people who own the cameras... and how accidents and losses are bound to happen sometimes...
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You've made a critical error. There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt. Sooner or later, those omnipresent cameras will record enough of your lack of innocence for you to regret their presence. It's just a matter of time.
Re:Gunshots (Score:5, Insightful)
Surveillance is not the answer, it doesn't make a difference if there are too many criminals to monitor. Gun laws (as Americans will say, right to bear arms etc) are not the answer. This has lead me to believe that there is no answer. We have to be politically correct remember. Don't discriminate against trolls, they're people too.
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Combine UK surveillance with the harshest US punishment and incarceration rates, and make every prison look like Parchman.
Prison should crush prisoners and utterly break their will because they are bad humans who have nullified their value to society. They can be an ex
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Yes, we're far ahead when it comes to CCTV, and 95% (okay, arse figure there, but it's not controversial) of the population really don't care about this and are quite happy with them being there. I've previously posted how CCTV has
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Actually, I think some prisons are already doing this...
Doubt it. (Score:5, Informative)
Most speakers can't accurately reproduce a gunshot, because they can't move enough air at one time to create the pressure wave. They play something that's more of a "boom," when in reality a gunshot is a sharp "crack" (followed by reverberations / reflections from the room or surrounding objects). Not being able to play the initial 'crack' very well, they over-emphasize the reverberations.
A 'gunshot sensor' would probably be a microphone or microphone-like device that was purposely de-sensitized so that it only received particularly loud, sharp sounds. You might be able to fool it with something explosive (like dry ice and water in a soda bottle), or where there was a significant release of pressure (car backfire), but most sound-reproduction systems wouldn't cut it -- they don't move that much air at once. Even with things like backfiring and explosions, you could probably filter them out if you wanted to, because I doubt they're the same when you really look at the waveforms (I suspect that the high pressure escaping from the small aperture of a gun's muzzle makes a very distinct sound from a car backfiring through the 1-2" muffler), even though they sound the same to a person, because we're not good at discriminating very loud, sharp sounds.
OT: I wonder what a nearby lightning strike "sounds" like to a microphone with the capacity to accurately measure the maximum amplitude of the sound?
Re:Doubt it. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want a pistol shot, use a rifle.
If you want a rifle shot, use a shotgun.
If you want a shotgun blast, use a Howitzer.
Re:Doubt it. (Score:5, Funny)
Crap, I need a Howitzer recording... anyone got a spare atomic weapon?
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Nobody seems to hold a significant patent on these techniques, so a number of companies make acoustic and radar, etc. gunshot location systems. The interesting thing about the military ones is that instead of pointing a camera at the shooting, they point a howitzer. Much more effective, IMHO.
Car Stereos (Score:2)
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It is true -- a thumper stereo can set off even a very advanced gunfire detector... but in a different way than you are thinking:
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resistance is futile (Score:4, Interesting)
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Surely that is sarcasm?
While we have an obligation to allow flourishing technology we also, IMO have a great obligation to make sure the technology is protected from tyrrany as well.
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For instance, if a camera is smart enough to pick up a car accident and notifies appropriate parties (towing, cops etc) timely and accordingly, wouldn't it be bettter?
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Transparent Society (Score:2)
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Also if you think that the government is making a ton of money off your speeding tickets then go to court with them and fight it. Your $120 fine will not pay the DA, Judge, court reporter, bailiff, admins etcs
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Counter surveillance is a big issue on this. Once we get to the point where we can see everything a politician is doing and has done. I was attacked by a security guard and charged with assault although I did nothing, even in defense. Luckily it was caught on camera and the charges on me were drop
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It's not the tool that determines the use. In a free society, tools like this can have a net positive effect, so long as the public has equal access to the information generated.
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Re:resistance is futile (Score:5, Informative)
1. Standards of Law will have to change. As it is now, if people were recorded 24x7, and held accountable for everything done, everyone would be in jail and or have racked up millions of dollars in fines. So what would this do? It would have to make laws that are much more relaxed, lenient and reflect actual intent of evil or harm.
2. punishment would have to be adjusted to actually reflect the crime. Would this also be able to change things like drinking and driving laws? Right now they are so out of control, if you have been drinking and the cops go to pull you over you have about equal consequence if you are to pull over and cooperate as you do if you flee from the police, and are picked up much later after the alcohol has left your system, but if your recorded history shows that you don't drive any worse after having a beer at the pub, but after 3 your driving habits change would this make the legal limits individualized and appropriate rather than blacked and abusive as they are now?
3. In a fully monitored society, what would be the justification for things like anti-gun laws? If Big Brother always knew what you were doing and could see that you grabbed your rifle and are now climbing the clock tower and stop you before you could do anything, how could they say that you can't own any gun you want? If I enjoy taking a fully automatic machine gun to the range and blasting off some rounds, big brother nows I like doing this and watches me ever time and tracks to see if I deviate in an attempt to go shoot up a school and stop me before that could happen. Fully monitored societies could actually be more free.
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1.) What that other fellow said above me-- it still takes people and money to enforce. Now it just means that there's a ready grab-bag of minor infractions ready as a weapon whenever the people-in-power have someone they want to pick on.
2.) Person A doesn't mind "safe" drinking and driving, but is vocal for tougher legislating on pornographic access. Person B is wanking off at the computer right now, but when he's done, he's back to sendi
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This is what I am looking for. Fighting against having cameras everywhere is a losing battle. I am looking for the things that need to be faught for in a society that is under constant surveillance.
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Actually, in some states in the U.S. you're better off refusing to take a breatalyzer or field sobriety test. In Illinois, the penalty for refusing is a six month suspension of your driver's license while a first time DUI conviction will get you up to one year in jail, a o
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For the average Joe on the street it won't make much difference in this case, unless you get shot, then the paramedics may turn up a bit sooner.
It's the behavioral recognition systems that have the good features, they can tell the difference between someone pacing up and down talkin
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Forget false positives, what about security officers who now only look at whatever it is the system highlights for them? I can easily see such a system becoming a crutch and a excuse, "Well, the computer didn't signal anything was wrong..."
The Wii is amatuer to what a camera system can do (Score:3, Interesting)
To me, the arcade died off because home technology caught up. These VR rooms will be the resurgence of the arcade when they become a reality.
Re:The Wii is amatuer to what a camera system can (Score:2)
Until I can sit back on the couch and poke claudia schiffer for $19.95 an hour, I could give a flying fuck about your immersive VR.
Prior to that I'll stick to VR simulations of car driving and 'mech combat.
Re:The Wii is amatuer to what a camera system can (Score:5, Funny)
Well, there's kind of a line between the sleek elegance of the Wiimote, and just flat-out looking like an idiot.
Re:The Wii is amatuer to what a camera system can (Score:2)
I think that tracking is the least of the problems faced when trying to implement VR, and really, is one that has already been solved and is used frequently in film and game production.
You're mostly correct about why the arcade died, but the only way to replace it is to come up with something that is just as no
ObjectVideo (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to intern at ObjectVideo [objectvideo.com]. They're a DARPA spin-off. I got to sit in the cubicle with all the PhDs and watch them as they used remote control cars to test their tracking cameras. Their products are really pretty stunning.
The basic idea is that if you have a complex with 100 security cameras, you're going to have half a dozen security guards sitting there looking at a huge bank of video feeds. Studies show that guards tend to just phase out after about twenty minutes anyway. So all those security cameras are really pretty worthless.
Instead, you run all the video feeds through a set of servers, the servers can detect moving objects and track them. It's more sophisticated than basic motion detection. They can differentiate between cars, dogs, trucks, boats, etc. They can even tell if you drop or pick up a bag, or throw something. Some applications of their technology can be used to monitor highways for instance: cars traveling north-to-south produce no alert, while cars traveling south-to-north set off the alarm.
This technology removes the human restriction on scale and overcomes the diminishing returns barrier to deploying huge huge banks of CCTVs all over a chemical plant, or military base, or corporate HQ, or national border.
(And as a side note, their IT guy was a real hard-ass about information security. He gave me a personal, one-on-one, 45 minute lecture about everything I wasn't allowed to do, or even think about doing, when I arrived. Guy had the place locked down tight, and easily out-nerded the dozen or so PhDs who were doing the actual coding and development. Just sat in the server room with the petabyte backup drives and listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. Hilarious.)
PLEASE someone, hook these to a traffic light. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Induction loops and bikers (Score:2)
Induction loops suck. 95% of them aren't tuned to be sensitive enough to detect bikers (either the motorized or the human-powered variety). Bring on the cameras, please!
-b.
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Why a camera ? (Score:2)
They're both less intrusive (only detect whether there's a car or not. Not get your face on a picture), and less vandalisable (they're under the ground, as oposed to a camera mounted on the ground).
We have a few of them around here.
Either on very-low traffic lanes, that normally have permanently red lights and only stop the rest of the traffic and turn green in the few case there's some one on them.
Or on normal traffic street, at night-time when the
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Even *with* a crosswalk button, it would be a PITA for an undetected motorcyclist. Stop engine. Get off bike. Run to light. Press button. Restart. Move off. Hope that some sleep-addled caffeine-deficient cager hasn't come and smashed your bike in the meantime :)
-b.
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And the problem with induction loop sensors is that they are prone to failure and expensive to replace. You don't need to dig up a lane every time a camera needs to be replaced.
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Loop detectors are unreliable when dealing with small vehicles and bicycles, too, especially if not kept in tune. BTW, what about other motion sensing technology combined with visible-range cameras? Maybe ultrasonic or infrared sensors for dark times.
-b.
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That said, in principle there's merit in what you suggest, but all the cameras on all the lights would need to be hooked into a program to manage overall flow dynamicall
"switch view to camera with movement" feature? (Score:4, Informative)
I see a flaw... (Score:1, Redundant)
I wonder if they can distinguish the sound of a gunshot from the sound of a recording of a gunshot...
"Interpret what they see?" Wanna bridge? (Score:3, Interesting)
lat time I checked, AI wasnt up to the task of discerning whether someone was spraying a wall with Lysol, or spray paint. or spraying with the intent to cover grafitti, or to add new grafitti.
Methinks someone is applying a generous dollop of wishful thinking.
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My EE teacher had such problem. One day he laid a bare wire along the wall, and through a current limiting capacitor he fed it with pulsed high voltage. The next day a few drunks from the village walked funny and since then nobody pissed at his house.
Some problems have simple technical solutions.
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Translation (Score:2, Insightful)
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If they can just catch the cheating slot machines (Score:2)
Define cheater? (Score:3, Interesting)
Casinos would have us think that card counting is cheating.
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I wouldn't bet on it ... (Score:3, Insightful)
The tests of facial recognition technology in which the results have been made available (e.g., in airport security trials) have been failures. I'm pretty skeptical that there's anything of substance to this until I see some evidence. The intelligent student will readily observe that the casinos have a strong interest in having people believe that the technology can do this.
oh goodie (Score:3, Funny)
If only.. (Score:4, Funny)
But the joke's partly on them, one of them was waiting to be junked, brakes shot, chain twisted, chainrings bent, tyres bald, bottom bracket does a very loud SKREEEEEEEE sound when you try and pedal and it weighed half a ton. The other was from Halfords.
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Heh. That might be the best security - leave an obvious bike that's somehow dangerous for the yobs to steal and put the GOOD bikes somewhere else. Then just look at hospital records for someone who pranged face first into a lamppost.
-b.
Setting a bad precedent (Score:2, Interesting)
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Well, they'll act as a filter for the security guards, anyway. A filter can be a blinder as well as an aid to the guards and cops, since if the behavior of the cameras becomes known, perps will learn to act in ways that are ignored by the cameras.
-b.
Can't even get stable basic security cam software (Score:2)
Does anyone know where to get *any* decent software for security cams?
Re:Can't even get stable basic security cam softwa (Score:2)
cool video tricks (Score:2)
Problem: Gramma wins big at casino, takes winnings in cash (why not a cheque?? I dunno). Joe Badguy follows her into the parking lot; bops her on the head, takes money, drives away. Not enough security guards to watch 10 acres of parking lot, surveillance cameras inside the casino see Joe Badguy leaving Casino but can't prove he did crime.
Solution: smarter video. Two cameras, one for spotting, one for tracking. First camera is a wide angle view of the parking lot
The Worm... (somewhat OT) (Score:2)
That's is very sad... The misunderstand of song lyrics is the minor part. It's that the lyric in question is an obvious reference to DUNE, and anyone who ever saw the movie should know it.
Re:The Worm... (Score:2)
When I was younger, we had those things, I think they were called books. They actually required some effort to read, though; also, having an imagination of one's own usually enhanced the storytelling instead of colliding with it like in case of moving pictures. Geez, am I *that* old?
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A similar line was in the book as well.
It's fascinating to see xenophobic trolling on
US - police state (Score:2)
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I assume (hope) that you're joking! How are you going to detect sound in the vacuum of space? "In space, no one can hear you scream."
-b.
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That would be assuming that the burn isn't in a covered area, it isn't cloudy, etc. Also, things other than guns use gunpowder. Explosive-powered nail guns for only one possible example.
-b.
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