Eyes Over Compton: How Police Spied On a Whole City 190
Advocatus Diaboli (1627651) writes with some concerning news from the Atlantic. From the article: "In a secret test of mass surveillance technology, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department sent a civilian aircraft over Compton, California, capturing high-resolution video of everything that happened inside that 10-square-mile municipality. Compton residents weren't told about the spying, which happened in 2012. 'We literally watched all of Compton during the times that we were flying, so we could zoom in anywhere within the city of Compton and follow cars and see people,' Ross McNutt of Persistence Surveillance Systems told the Center for Investigative Reporting, which unearthed and did the first reporting on this important story. The technology he's trying to sell to police departments all over America can stay aloft for up to six hours. Like Google Earth, it enables police to zoom in on certain areas. And like TiVo, it permits them to rewind, so that they can look back and see what happened anywhere they weren't watching in real time."
Re:No privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Apropos of "ethical dilemmas programmers face"... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that the insufferable 'if, hypothetically speaking, this level of surveillance would be legal if carried out by a magical force of zero-cost police officers with perfect memories and no need for sleep, it must be legal if carried out by any means whatsoever!' brigade will be by shortly; but their argument is ahistorical nonsense that ignores the real issue: most of your protection has always been logistical rather than legal. Now we are substantially reducing the logistical barriers and can reasonably expect to further reduce them in the near future. Any protections that you think would be a good idea will soon need to be explicitly legal; because the logistics will be increasingly trivial(possibly even self-financing, if you can sell ads somehow...)
Re:No privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
You shouldn't be mailed a ticket for sunbathing nude regardless. Legislating against the human body is wrong on many levels.
Re:No privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
So if you are sunbathing in your back yard, with 12 ft fences and no buildings visible, would you still presume privacy? Should you be mailed a ticket for sunbathing nude?
A ticket? Not at all.
Rather, you should expect a SWAT team to haul you off to prison to await trial, where you will be found guilty of indecent exposure and forced to register as a Sex Offender for the rest of your life.
Re:Apropos of "ethical dilemmas programmers face". (Score:3, Insightful)
You cannot seriously have an issue with the collection of such freely available imagery.
I do. Especially when it's the government doing it. We The People can easily restrict their activities if we choose to do so. The fact that "anybody" can do it doesn't mean we should let the government, with its virtually limitless resources and authority, do so.
What can the police do these days? Automatic license plate scanning? Red Light cameras? Automated Speed cameras? How about a FLIR camera on a helicopter?
I think that's all morally wrong. The fact that we allow it means we're not living up to the whole "land of the free and the home of the brave" thing.
What do you think the limit should be?
On the government's use of surveillance technology in public places.
Re:On the plus side (Score:2, Insightful)
It doen't *prevent* those crimes at all, merely makes them easier to solve. I for one am not motivated to make the investigators job easier because of the obvious end game for that line of reasoning.