In NJ, Higher Tech Lowers Crime 219
crimeandpunishment sends along this snip from an AP story carried on Skunkpost.com: "High tech means low crime in a New Jersey city that has used an arsenal of advanced technology to sharply lower one of the highest crime rates in the nation. And now East Orange is poised to become the first city in the country to take high tech crime fighting to a whole new level ... surveillance cameras with sensors that can be programmed to identify crimes as they unfold."
Done! (Score:2)
This is clearly a well thought-out plan. Why, what could possibly go wrong?
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This is clearly a well thought-out plan. Why, what could possibly go wrong?
In this day and age, it doesnt really matter how well thought out such a plan is when it involves information or people. There are always those who have the ability to and will abuse any system. Does that mean we should stop all innovation because of those who will abuse them? Or that instead we should weigh the potential for abuse against the potential for good in determining what to do with such ideas? Or plan in as many safety measures and punishments as possible to prevent abuse?
I know your (possibly
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Now... if the system sent automated drones out to deal with everything it thought was a crime... that would be a different story.
Yes it would, and it's called RoboCop [imdb.com] ;-)
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Robocop is still partly human. Particularly, most of the brain.
The problems always started when they tried making something that was just a machine.
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We don't need to look for ways on how this could go wrong - the constant surveillance is wrong by itself.
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What people feel is wrong about the surveillance system is the potential for abuse - and their is tons of it, but we don't live in a world where people go down the street holding hands while skipping and singing songs. The very reason people fea
Re:Done! (Score:4, Informative)
Surveillance is not the only way to fight crime. In fact, London has shown that it even isn't especially effective.
And while the whole NJ murder rate have dropped nearly 25% [newjerseynewsroom.com], that wasn't due to CCTVs, but by "conducting intelligence-led, high-impact investigations targeting the command structures".
Yes, not only I can be spied by the cops, but by everyone else!
By the way, maybe having "about 15.9% of families and 19.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 24.7% of those under age 18" is a good reason for the high crime rates. It's better to attack the causes instead of the consequences.
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WEll, that was my point. You can be spied on by everyone else - it takes out part of the corruption issue. If the camera's are open, it reduces peoples ability to hide the truth - which may not be such a bad thing.
Sure, criminals can use it to know when you are out of the house, but you will be able to catch them when they break in!... wait... ok fine, you win.
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It's not a justification. There's an observed correlation in multiple studies between both absolute and relative lower income and crime rates, especially theft and burglary.
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-harvardberkeley.htm [huppi.com]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9683374 [nih.gov]
Pretending there's "good" and "bad" people is incredibly naïf, and it's not validated by real data. By the way, there's also no real evidence of capital punishment being an effective deterrence to crime, no matter what petty revengers claim.
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Your first link isn't a study, it's an idiot opinion piece ("Harvard and Berkeley studies have shown..." is a pretty good clue to stupidity, since the studies weren't commissioned by the universities themselves.) Your second one talks about homicide and violent crime involving firearms - not shoplifting to eat. You might also consider the possibility that predisposition to criminality l
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How about the high violent crime rate? The fact that people don't stop at lights out of fear? Those are most definitely not wrong. Its better to let robbers have their victims kneel at the corner of the street and be executed than to have a surveillance system.
Would you think the same if you lived in NAZI Germany, the Soviet Union, or Iran today?
Did it ever occur that if surveillance was open and all video was available to all people that it may actually prove beneficial?
And stalkers would love it too. Ins
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"if the system sent automated drones out to deal with everything it thought was a crime..."
Talking to the "human" cops around here is very much like that.
If a 911 call got you a "competent professional", OTOH...
Re:Done! (Score:5, Informative)
As this system leaves in the human factor for actually deciding if an action is necessary (ie: sending cops), and then leaves the cops deciding what actions to take, it doesnt seem any more open for abuse than the current surveillance system in place.
Except that you left something out, the system is partially paid for with forfeitures. The more forfeiture the bigger the system can be made. We've already been having problems with law enforcement forfeitures. "For example, between 1989 and 1992 [jrank.org], the Sheriff's Office in Volusia County, Florida, seized $8 million in cash in roadside stops of motorists. Although the office returned about half of the money in settlements, it still retained $4 million over the three-year period." Today Texas police seize black motorists' cash, cars [chicagotribune.com]. Or Asset Forfeiture: Austin Police Use of Seized Funds Probed [stopthedrugwar.org]. Law enforcement makes a lot of money from forfeitures [cato.org].
Falcon
Turn the cameras on the politicians who passed it. (Score:2)
And on the voters who voted for this crud. Surveillance will be abused for political gain and really thats the only reason any of these politicians care to lower the crime rate. You don't see any of these politicians trying to create jobs as a way to lower the crime rate bu they don't mind building prisons and putting cameras everywhere?
This is clearly a well thought-out plan. (Score:2)
Yea, I bet the Gestapo and MVD or Ministry of Internal Affairs [wikipedia.org] would have loved it.
Why, what could possibly go wrong?
Loss of freedom.
Falcon
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The irony is that Christians, which Miriam represented in the game, have inflicted a terrible, awful false god upon the West for the last two millennia.
All gods are false, and the sooner we do away with them as anything other than myths the better.
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As if all the wrongs of mankind can be layed at the feet of religion.
As if, if there were godless people, they wouldn't just find another belief system or philosophy to justify doing the same things.
Owning faults (Score:2)
As if all the wrongs of mankind can be layed at the feet of religion.
All? Certainly not. A great multitude of wrongs certainly can be traced to religion without any question on the matter. Numerous past and ongoing examples of wars, torture, terrorism, bigotry, genocide, and more are so frequent as to cause despair.
As if, if there were godless people, they wouldn't just find another belief system or philosophy to justify doing the same things.
Perhaps but at least it wouldn't be because of mythology.
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anytime religion comes up, a majority of people around here love to spout off how much they hate religious people because they are religious.
I have yet to see any slashdotter post that say they hate religious people, well except Muslims who are all terrorists (NOT!!!). Can you provide one example or did you make that up? On the other hand as an Agnostic, "a" without and "gnosis" knowledge, I've heard from a few Atheists that I'm just too scared to admit I believe there isn't a "God" and by Christians tha
What religion does. (Score:2)
Religion effectively turns otherwise sane people into what I like to call supermaterialists. Suddenly, a rock or a cave or other geographic location becomes worth more than the resources it can provide. Suddenly a drawing of a religious figure is enough to kill over. Suddenly you think there's an invisible person who will "sort things out" if you decide to kill a bunch of women and children.
Religion introduces nothing but tools to conquer reason in order to get ignorant followers to go along with whatever p
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The most atheistic nations today have the highest suicide rates (these are those enlightened nations always mentioned here as being so wonderful..we all know which ones those are). They may have a lot of material wealth, but have little regard for anything else, mass alcoholism and drug addiction is the norm in those nations, and has been steadily rising year after year over the last several decades now.
Citation needed -- if you're not even going to name the countries, you don't have much credibility. Also, have you estimated the size of the systematic error due to reporting differences? If you're going to wave your hands and invoke statistics you'd better have some numbers to back them up.
The largest mass murders in the 20th century were done by the officially atheistic and socialist/communist/collectivist nations (USSR, China, Nazi era Germany, and today North Korea, by far the most oppressive regime on the planet).
Did I say that atheists were always perfect? Besides, Hitler's regime wasn't adverse to religion; he alternatively used Christianity and Germanic neopaganism for his own ends.
Your examples would be more meaningful if thr
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The religious impulse in humans is answered less and less these days in many parts of the world. It's mostly answered because of tradition and upbringing, not anything innate.
Christianity bumped off a huge number of people too, indirectly -- how many people died of plague in the Dark Ages because the Church's response was "Pray harder!"
How many Muslim girls have had their clitorises chopped off and then forced to live lives as servants?
How many Aztecs and Incas died because of the Spaniards' holy drive to c
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how many people died of plague in the Dark Ages because the Church's response was "Pray harder!"
In the absence of antibiotics - i.e., until 1940 or so - this was about as good as the advice could get.
How many Muslim girls have had their clitorises chopped off and then forced to live lives as servants?
Ragging on Muslims specifically is a separate post. How many Jewish and Christian boys have had their foreskins sliced off? Why does it matter? As I said, Christianity is not without its problems, but it's a long way from the worst ideology that has ever plagued the earth.
How many Aztecs and Incas died because of the Spaniards' holy drive to conquer and Christianize the heathens?
Not nearly as many as died of the diseases said Spaniards brought over. The Spaniards wanted them as slaves, not corpses.
How many Africans have died of AIDS that would have lived if the Pope hadn't stood in the way of sex education and barrier contraception?
How many have
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This is the same God in whose name we slaughtered Muslims and burned witches in the Middle Ages, in whose name we persecute gays today, and in whose name we restrict the teaching of biology and human sexuality?
Some Christians may well live the life of altruism and kindness attributed to Jesus. (In my experience in the USA, the ones that do are precisely those denominations that are least obsessed with the mythology: the Episcopalians, for instance.) But you can forgive your neighbor and feed the poor based
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Mankind made religion; differentiating between what we made and what we made of what we made isn't terribly relevant.
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and circular ones.
Only fools confuse the two.
I responded to a quick swipe at religion with a quick swipe at dismissal of religion.
I did not believe in God as a child. However, now I have reasons sufficient to convince myself, but they are contingent on things I've learned over the course of my life. I do not believe I could deliver a convincing explanation of my beliefs to someone who has had different experiences from me.
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Unfortunately the evidence doesn't support your hypothesis: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece [timesonline.co.uk]
How about we try teaching people to be rational whilst supplying them with good reasons to behave - that seems logical to me.
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The christian religion has served a vital role in the development of the advanced civilization that has given you the philosophical tools and freedom to criticize it as 'terrible, awful.'
Really? The Christian church didn't persecute scientists and others striven by progress? Quite the contrary, the advancement of western civilization owes more to the Ages of Enlightenment [wikipedia.org] and Reason [wikipedia.org], which both fought against religion. Hell Jews and Muslims gathered and retained more knowledge than Christians. When Queen [wikipedia.org]
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And in the void left by the eradication of religion, what do you think would fill in? Utopian enlightenment and a dreamy new world of scientific achievement and the finest arts?
Not immediately, no. Opiate withdrawal, to borrow Marx's metaphor, is painful. And it's not as though getting a druggie off of his dope immediately makes him a paragon of virtue and achievement... but it's a step in the right direction, and that's all that counts.
Christianity, to be sure, has been behind a lot of achievements: the music of Bach and Palestrina, for an example. But that's only because the church was the great *temporal* power of the time -- giving Christianity credit for things done with the
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In short:
Religion's response to the plagues was the flagellants.
Reason's response to the plague was "Hey, this moldy bread kills bacteria..."
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Tautologies are not welcome on /.
What We Really Need In NJ Are ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Testing such systems is the only way to improve... (Score:2)
While there are proponents and doubters for such systems, real world application and testing of these technologies are probably the only way to improve them. Is it a waste of money, as some detractors claim? I wish I knew. Perhaps analyzing the crime statistics and costs related to them in contrast to the monies spent would give a clearer picture. Then there's the factor of "a life saved... is priceless" - in which such systems (the existing one, and the "smart" one) may be crucial in saving someone's life;
Spinning in their graves.. (Score:2)
You know how many people gave their lives to create that freedom? Now we should throw all that away to save *one*....?
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Privacy and freedom are more important than a few lives. After all, what is the point of living if you have to do it under constant control and observation? I'd rather be dead.
What part of the fact that cameras are already in place did you miss? And what privacy is being invaded on a public street where there is no expectation of privacy (except by idiots hiding under AC status here instead of posting under their account). And what freedom is being infringed by this system? The "freedom" of criminals to commit crimes? Remember, the system does not act on the event in person. It points it out to a human being who then decides what to do... just like as if the human being (cop) saw
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There are levels of the assumption of privacy. On a public street I expect that anything I do might be photographed, but I don't expect that any party is keeping an extensive enough set of recordings of me to plot all my movements and my daily activities.
Even though photography in public in general is legal and violates no rights, it's unclear whether a systematic campaign to photograph such a huge swath of someone's activities that you can extract overall patterns of behavior does. If a private person did
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There are levels of the assumption of privacy. On a public street I expect that anything I do might be photographed, but I don't expect that any party is keeping an extensive enough set of recordings of me to plot all my movements and my daily activities.
So, what you are saying is you dont own a cell phone?
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So you wouldn't see anything with effectively having a cop in each street corner? The words "police state" come to mind... how long 'till facecrime?
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Who watches the watchers?
Any system that can be abused will be.
Falcom
As in the UK (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong reason? (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
The results have been startling: Violent crime in East Orange has fallen by more than two-thirds since 2003, according to state police statistics.
...
Jose Cordero was hired as East Orange's police director in 2004 after overseeing the New York Police Department's anti-gang efforts. Crime in East Orange had dropped off after the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 90s but then rose dramatically in the early 2000s as gangs began to put down roots.
It seems more likely to me that Cordero himself is the reason for falling crime rate rather than any high tech stuff (which just tends to move crime to other locations). I'm suspicious because, for example, in the UK where there is massive investment in surveillance cameras, my understanding is that they have found that they are mainly useful for providing evidence for prosecuting the criminals after the fact, and even that is only in something less than 25% of the cases.
Lowering the "crime rate" does not make us safer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lowering the violence rate, lowering specific types of crime which have victims may make us safer. Lowering the "crime rate." usually raises the incarceration rate which often lowers the income of families making them even more desperate and likely to commit crimes in the future.
Lowering the crime rate is a way to increase the incarceration rate and win political points. It's not going to make anyone safer to for example make massive arrests of drug possession, or to arrest thousands of prostitutes, but thats usually the kind of crime they go after because it's easier. They'll probably go arrest a bunch of small time pot dealers, and crackheads, maybe some prostitutes, and say they lowered the crime rate in the city.
Re:Lowering the "crime rate" does not make us safe (Score:4, Interesting)
As a criminologist I have to say this interpretation of the relationship between crime and incarceration is... well... not supported by the evidence. The relationship between incarceration rates and crime rates is loose at best and this has been demonstrated both in cross national studies and in longitudinal studies of the United States and other western nations. For example, in the United States incarceration rates have risen dramatically and consistently in the last 40 years while crime rates have fluctuated considerably. The factor that has the biggest impact on the incarceration rate is actually changes in sentencing strategies. Changes in sentencing strategies are often only loosely related to crime rates, if at all, however.
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Whether a lowering of the crime rate corresponds to an increase in safety depends on which crimes are being reduced, of course, but typically a reduction in crime rate corresponds to a reduction in violent and property crimes.
Now, padding arrest rates with drug possession/prostitution arrests may be political posturing, but arrest rate is not the same as crime rate.
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Whether a lowering of the crime rate corresponds to an increase in safety depends on which crimes are being reduced, of course, but typically a reduction in crime rate corresponds to a reduction in violent and property crimes.
Now, padding arrest rates with drug possession/prostitution arrests may be political posturing, but arrest rate is not the same as crime rate.
So tell me what exactly is the "crime rate"?
If it's not measured or correlated with the arrest rate, is it the conviction rate? How do we measure the crime rate?
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So if we detect more crimes wouldnt it raise the crime rate?
Re:Wrong reason? (Score:5, Interesting)
At the very least, a plot of the data as a curve over all the years that are available _should_ be expected.
This is dangerous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides the oft-quoted Ben Franklin line, I do believe giving a government too much power in watching the populace is dangerous for liberty. Should the legitimate need arise to break a law or subvert the government, corrupt individuals will have power to stop people even more easily.
On the fliip side, the ubiquity of increased surveillance available to the PUBLIC as well as to the government (they are two different things) might prevent the government from getting away with the shit it does now.
I have to throw in a quote: "With great power comes great responsibillity." I don't think the government has enough of the latter to justify the amount of the former it possesses.
Re:This is dangerous. (Score:4, Insightful)
Should the legitimate need arise to break a law or subvert the government, corrupt individuals will have power to stop people even more easily.
Indeed... I think there is an opportunity here to design systems that are resistant to government misuse.
For example, imagine a system where the standard "camera on every street corner" has limited or no networking capability, and only records an encrypted record of what it sees/hears to local storage in a 48-hour loop. Such a camera wouldn't help police catch criminals in the act, of course, but after a crime had been committed, the police could go and physically retrieve the storage unit from the camera(s) at the scene of the crime as evidence. The police would need to get a search warrant that included the decryption key for the storage units, otherwise the data would do them no good even if they surreptitiously gathered the physical drives.
Something like that might make improper use of the surveillance footage more difficult, and therefore less likely.
Drug dealers and prostitutes of course. (Score:2, Insightful)
This type of surveillance technology wont catch a sophisticated white collar criminal. This technology wont catch organized criminal mafias. It wont catch anyone but the dumbest criminals. This is designed to win political points by making the neighborhood look like it's safe when it really is more dangerous than ever. The police get to look like they are doing their job when they arrest hundreds of prostitutes and thousands of drug dealers. This technology is not going to stop any of the gangs, mafias, or
elitism, racism, and sexism (Score:2)
Why don't we focus on the incarceration rate and seek to lower it to as low as possible? Why don't we seek to decrease the arrest rate for victimless crimes? Anybody have an answer that isn't racist, sexist, or elitist?
Ah but those are the reasons we have victimless crimes, because of elitism, racism, and sexism. Oh, and religion.
Falcon
It does work - first hand account (Score:5, Interesting)
So I lived in the mission area of SF for a while earlier this year. This place was bad - post the 21st street or so. A friend of mine was mugged & beaten badly at 24th and Mission (where Bart is) at 9 in the evening.
Last year they started installing cameras all around (very visible effort - you could see cameras all around you) - and the crime rate (atleast the mugging rate) went down immediately. Everyone here agrees that the drop in crime can be attributed to the street cameras. This opinion is also shared by business & hotel owners whom I know and meet.
I do think nothing can improve Tenderloin though.
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Surveillance tech will eventually improve and become useful. Because it is primitive now is no reason to give up on it. The goal of total battlefield awareness is valid for any battlefield.
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The fact that law enforcement treats the arena in which they work as a battlefield means that they have already failed.
Law enforcement should not be a war.
Re:It does work - first hand account (Score:5, Interesting)
Last year they started installing cameras all around (very visible effort - you could see cameras all around you) - and the crime rate (atleast the mugging rate) went down immediately.
As I recall from the reports in England and other places that have done the same thing an initial drop in crime is common. But unless there are other efforts made to keep crime low, the effect wears off and crime rates return to nearly the same levels. My impression from what I read is that it's due to the novelty wearing off and to the criminals realizing a camera can't arrest them or stop them or really do anything until long after they've left the scene. Especially if the camera feeds aren't even monitored in real time - which is apparently where the interest in having the cameras recognize when a crime being committed comes from, so they can alert a human in real-time. I say good luck with that.
Compounded Charges... (Score:5, Interesting)
They are actually charging users with much higher crimes by adding up all of their purchases. I've had friends that have been charged with their entire years worth of purchases in a single case.
Rather than charging on a single offense for purchasing a small quantity of heroin in Jersey City. They are waiting until the charge can be trumped up to 6 months of their use. So instead of being charged with purchasing a single gram (bundle)... they are being charged with purchasing 400grams over the course of 6 months to a year, bringing long prison sentences to habitual users.
The high charges are definitely a deterrent for users, though I hardly think these charges are justified.
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Solution, don't buy in the first place. No means no.
BTW, I favor handing out free smack and other substances which don't cause behavior problems.
The problem with heroin is that people steal to get money to buy it. They have every right to destroy themselves.
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Then book them for stealing. Anything else is pre-crime.
Also, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization [scientificamerican.com]
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The high charges are definitely a deterrent for users, though I hardly think these charges are justified.
They are definitely not. I would imagine when the law was created it was assumed that someone busted buying a single gram has probably bought several in the past. It sounds like they're now giving small time users the punishments that were originally designed for heavy dealers.
Imagine if they did that with real crimes (Score:3, Insightful)
I am an SVU cop posting to Slashdot from work right now. I am currently recording a man raping a woman in a dark alley. This is his fifth victim that we know of. We're not going to move in until he's gotten to 20, or until he stops.
Whats the incarceration rate? (Score:5, Insightful)
The incarceration rate is more important to me than the "crime rate." Are there more people in prison as a result of the high technology, or are less people in prison? Just because we become more efficient at catching criminals it doesn't mean society is safer, it all depends on what we consider to be a crime at the time and how we sentence it. The technology doesn't really help one way or the other unless we have sane laws.
Meh... (Score:2)
Real high tech would be identifying crimes before they unfold. :P
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
The term "gunshot detection" (Score:5, Interesting)
Could it be via a cheap device called a microphone? Strange how its now "gunshot detection" like its some optical device.
If they can listen for gun shots, they can listen for voices and create a nice 'part time' state voice print database.
Welcome back to COINTELPRO version 2.0 down every large street.
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Paranoia is fine when its a prototype or something used only in Iraq or Afghanistan.
This is in the USA, down real streets.
No problem (Score:5, Funny)
No problem. If it violates our rights, it'll recognize that as a crime in progress, and turn itself off.
I didn't know it was illegal (Score:2)
High fives and stopping to talk to a friend on the roadside are now potential crimes?
Very interesting (Score:2)
Footage analysis software seems to be getting very well tuned. There was some footage of the riots after the Lakers game that was released to the press not long after it was shot (about 30-60 minutes after the recorded incident). The released still retained the "trouble spots" that were much lighter than the surrounding areas. The footage was urban night footage of a LARGE crowd. Dispite all of the "noise" in the crowd, the highlighted area instantly drew focus to exactly what needed to be paid attentio
I hope you guys DO see... (Score:3, Interesting)
...that 25years ago, we all saw that the surveillance states of the Eastern block were an abomination not worthy of a free society...
Now, we create surveillance society V2.0 here in the west...
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CCTV cameras fail to prevent crime in the UK (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1 [guardian.co.uk]
Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.
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There's still not enough of them, obviously...
It did very little good in London. (Score:5, Informative)
MAYBE this system is different. But if it's like many of the other "high-tech" systems that have been tried in recent years, if I were them I would be awfully cautious. As the guy in TFA said, it is very likely that if the system is sensitive enough to actually detect crimes, there will also be so many false positives as to render it useless.
Re:CCTV cameras fail to prevent crime in the UK (Score:4, Informative)
Re:CCTV cameras fail to prevent crime in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I read about the UK failure in the New Scientist and elsewhere.
One thing missing in TFA: Data.
How many people were actually arrested in East Orange, NJ as a result of those cameras? If the cops had a good example, they would give it to the writer.
Another thing missing: Any meaningful scientific evaluation.
After $1.4 million, they should have some kind of evaluation to see whether they're improving the crime rate or wasting the money.
Re:Crime rate is lower in facilities... (Score:4, Insightful)
detection != prevention
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I totally agree, but if the detection rate is high enough, then people start to behave differently and you do not need prevention programs because most people are just too afraid to do anything that goes against what the governing people define as the law.
That was the point I was trying to make. You may call that irony if you wish. I am not saying surveillance, police state and totalitarian regimes are the way to go.
Go talk to some people who have lived under a totalitarian regime. I was just trying to draw
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There was no content, only a callerid shown on the dispatcher console.
The defect on the line was causing it to go on-hook/off-hook randomly. The way rotary dials work is just the same.
1) Go off hook for 1 sec.
2) Quickly go on-hook for 1/10 to 3/4 of a second nine times.
3) Stay off-hook for 1 sec.
4) Quickly go on-hook for 1/10 to 3/4 of a second one time.
5) Stay off-hook for 1 sec.
6) Quickly go on-hook for 1/10 to 3/4 of a second one time.
7) Stay off-hook
There you go, you have just called 911. Of course ther
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That's the problem, because in a city with gun shot detectors, crime in progress detectors and what not, you will end up with more and more false alarms justifying the police to act without a warrant.
At the limit, in an a city under hyper-surveillance, you may as well forget about the police needing a warrant in any case.
Also, I never said the police didn't do job and I remained polite with them because I was understanding what was happening. Funnily enough, if I had told them to go to hell, they probably w
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They finally left without even excusing themselves for disturbing me.
This is the problem.
I've had the cops called on me once. I had a man show up at the gate of my patio wearing a ski mask in 50-degree weather. I greeted him with a handgun. Turns out it was my elderly and somewhat demented neighbor, and when the police officer arrived, he asked what happened. I told him. He wished me a good night and left. That's both good police work and good public relations.
If you're going to toss someone's house, a simple "We're sorry to have bothered you, but we do have to check t
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Once I was sharing the rent of a house with someone else. Occasionally, she would get so drunk she was completely out of her head. (Believe me, when I learned that I did not stay there voluntarily, but for a while I did not have the money to move out.)
One night she was arguing with her boyfriend (no physical fight involved), and threatened to call 911 (nobody know
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And this one (two parts, also about 45 minutes: Don't Talk to Cops [youtube.com]
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You were lied to, and you believed them, and so you g
Incarceration rate is more important. (Score:2)
What is more important is how many of your friends and family will be locked up because of all the increased surveillance?
Crime rate is a very vague standard of measurement. They didn't say violent crime. They didn't say which crimes. They just said the crime rate is lower which could mean anything or nothing at all. It doesn't mean murder is lower, or rape is lower, it's no different than saying the economy is growing even if its a jobless recovery.
The incarceration rate is too high, and unless this techno
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That's exactly what I am thinking too. My GP post should have had a "irony" tag.
In fact, I just said basically the same as you say here, with a personal experience to back it up :
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1692390&cid=32635822 [slashdot.org]
Hate crimes. (Score:2)
Bigots have to worry about becoming criminals twice.
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This is nothing. My startup technology detects crimes BEFORE they unfold.
In Soviet Russia, crime detects YOU!
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The real problem is the anti-precog startup next doors [wikipedia.org].
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The real win is on the install, maintenance, networking, training, upgrades and federal linking of the units.
Would a camera make you safer from a well trained team or a one way project?