Expansions in CCTV
Discussion
'Crowdsourcing' videosurveillance
A British company is setting up closed circuit TVs in stores and inviting people to sign up to watch the cameras in real time (four cameras at a time) over the Internet. If they see something bad (i.e., someone shoplifting), they notify the shopowner via their site.
There's obviously tremendous opportunity for people to cause mischief (e.g., by tagging customers based on appearance), but some consideration seems to have been given to privacy concerns.
There are several interesting things about this:
- there is a rating system for watchers - if you cause too many false alarms, you're kicked out;
- watchers are unpaid, although they can get some rewards. The service provider believes that because people want to reduce crime they'll volunteer their time; [Voyeurism, anyone? - S]
- watchers can't choose what cameras they see, and are assigned stores far from where they live. [Unlike the local community scamera operators - S]
Nonetheless, there are opportunities for mischief here.
I can't imagine that it would be interesting for very long, but perhaps if you're really bored ... after all, this is what minimum wage rent-a-cops do. [Cue the unions protesting about this scheme putting their members out of work - S]
Listening to cries for help
A BBC report of a UK company that has: "Produced software that can analyse the pitch, tone and intonation of noises - captured by public CCTV cameras - and work out if they pose a threat". [A listening CCTV system - 'Sigard' - became operational in Coventry in June 2010. This system automatically directes the focus of associated cameras to specific sounds - e.g., breaking glass, raised voices - S]
A company spokesman commented: "A certain number of false positives are beneficial so long as you have the security bandwidth to cope with them because you'd rather know about things that you think were an incident than just miss things you failed to be alerted to."
It's not made clear in the article whether the firm in question is familiar with Bayes' Theorem [Which shows the relation between two conditional probabilities which are the reverse of each other - S], or has considered the risk of false positives in jurisdictions where an armed response is likely, or false negatives, in cases where people are being assaulted but calling for help in the wrong tone of voice.
Expect more of this sort of technology to be deployed ... the authorities will justify the cost somehow, along the lines of: "Adding listening capability to the existing CCTV network will enable us to catch terrorists and criminals more easily."
Streaky
A British company is setting up closed circuit TVs in stores and inviting people to sign up to watch the cameras in real time (four cameras at a time) over the Internet. If they see something bad (i.e., someone shoplifting), they notify the shopowner via their site.
There's obviously tremendous opportunity for people to cause mischief (e.g., by tagging customers based on appearance), but some consideration seems to have been given to privacy concerns.
There are several interesting things about this:
- there is a rating system for watchers - if you cause too many false alarms, you're kicked out;
- watchers are unpaid, although they can get some rewards. The service provider believes that because people want to reduce crime they'll volunteer their time; [Voyeurism, anyone? - S]
- watchers can't choose what cameras they see, and are assigned stores far from where they live. [Unlike the local community scamera operators - S]
Nonetheless, there are opportunities for mischief here.
I can't imagine that it would be interesting for very long, but perhaps if you're really bored ... after all, this is what minimum wage rent-a-cops do. [Cue the unions protesting about this scheme putting their members out of work - S]
Listening to cries for help
A BBC report of a UK company that has: "Produced software that can analyse the pitch, tone and intonation of noises - captured by public CCTV cameras - and work out if they pose a threat". [A listening CCTV system - 'Sigard' - became operational in Coventry in June 2010. This system automatically directes the focus of associated cameras to specific sounds - e.g., breaking glass, raised voices - S]
A company spokesman commented: "A certain number of false positives are beneficial so long as you have the security bandwidth to cope with them because you'd rather know about things that you think were an incident than just miss things you failed to be alerted to."
It's not made clear in the article whether the firm in question is familiar with Bayes' Theorem [Which shows the relation between two conditional probabilities which are the reverse of each other - S], or has considered the risk of false positives in jurisdictions where an armed response is likely, or false negatives, in cases where people are being assaulted but calling for help in the wrong tone of voice.
Expect more of this sort of technology to be deployed ... the authorities will justify the cost somehow, along the lines of: "Adding listening capability to the existing CCTV network will enable us to catch terrorists and criminals more easily."
Streaky
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