American Cities Are Installing DHS-Funded Audio Surveillance (csoonline.com) 160
"Audio surveillance is increasingly being used on parts of urban mass transit systems," reports the Christian Science Monitor. Slashdot reader itwbennett writes "It was first reported in April that New Jersey had been using audio surveillance on some of its light rail lines, raising questions of privacy. This week, New Jersey Transit ended the program following revelations that the agency 'didn't have policies governing storage and who had access to data.'" From the article:
New Jersey isn't the only state where you now have even more reason to want to ride in the quiet car. The Baltimore Sun reported in March that the Maryland Transit Administration has used audio recording on some of its mass transit vehicles since 2012. It is now used on 65 percent of buses, and 82 percent of subway trains have audio recording capability, but don't use it yet, according to the Sun. And cities in New Hampshire, Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio, Nevada, Oregon and California have either installed systems or moved to procure them, in many cases with funding from the federal Department of Homeland Security.
be afraid (Score:2, Insightful)
as someone who works in the entertainment industry, i have to say this is more about keeping the populace paranoid than preventing terrorism.
most of the audio they are liable to pick up will be garbage. directional mikes can only pick up so much legible speech before being overrun by ambient noise.
there is a reason we use body mikes: because without them we get nothing but unintelligible noise.
Re:be afraid (Score:5, Insightful)
That assumes only single microphones per car/train/etc.
Placement, and quantity can make up for ambient noise, and also permits big brother to know where exactly on said train you were standing when you discussed your seditious materials.
Small mics places every 3 feet would probably be sufficient to get most conversations.
Re:be afraid (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who also worked in the entertainment industry, I'd say you ought to reconsider what skilled audio engineers can do.
When we had a case of equipment get delayed, I've had to use the wrong mics and set up recording without a soundcheck. The raw recording was noisy and inconsistent, and the actors' speech was practically unintelligible. However, with a few minutes at a workstation, I was able to smooth out most of the inconsistency, and even out the noise floor. It was still unintelligible, but that cleared up after some vary careful noise filters were applied. The end result wasn't stellar, but it was passable.
The goal here isn't to have an entertaining immersive audio experience, though. The goal of audio recording on public transit is to provide evidence in a court case. A precise count of gunshots or a noisy recording of an argument are useful things in a courtroom, even without an engineer cleaning up the clip. If cleaner results are needed, an audio engineer can work his magic, and extract the evidence from the noise.
Unfortunately, that's precisely where the privacy concerns come from, as well. If a skilled editor wants to extract speech from a recording, he can probably do it. If the subject happened to sit near a microphone, it makes the job easier. There must be clear rules in place for who can have access to the recordings and under what authorization, and that hasn't happened in many places that have implemented audio recordings.
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At this point, though, is it actually of any *surveillance* value?
Or is the kind of thing where they only keep a rolling 7 days worth of audio recorded and don't bother with it unless an incident happens and then start seeing if their recording means anything?
Unless they have some pretty magical, automated software that can clean it up and then turn it into keyword searchable text on a regular basis it doesn't sound much like "surveillance" as much as it is just shot-spotter audio.
Re:be afraid (Score:4, Interesting)
This is heading into speculation territory, but I suspect both.
If I were designing such a system, I'd keep a month of raw audio on hand. That fits on a cheap 80GB hard drive. If an event gets reported, a day's recording could be pulled off for professional cleaning and analysis, to make something humans could understand. Keeping a full month provides enough time for the report to cycle through the various authorities and bureaucracies to actually get retrieved before being cycled out.
I'd also expect that the DHS would have some real-time analysis software, but its status as "magical" is certainly debatable. I'd expect it could detect gunshots, explosions, loud arguments, and maybe a few distinctive words, but I doubt it's capable of tracking and understanding multiple conversations in real time in a noisy environment.
In both cases, I think the value would be a modern equivalent to the Zapruder film. There would be many errors in an automatic analysis, but the recording would provide contributing details to reconstruct an event for detailed manual analysis after an event. That in turn can either support or disprove a theory, ultimately revealing a story closer to the truth.
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DHS is just giving cash grants to pay for it, they're not developing anything or pushing locals to use certain software. That's why there are all the idiot problems in NJ; the locals were not competent, and neither were the consultants.
At least slashdot remembered to tell us what Bennett thinks, though! lol No surprise that the blah-blah is uninformed.
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Where I am not only is it a loop that is only reviewed if there is an incident, there isn't even central storage or anything; and they can't view it from the bus without special equipment. The security guy has to use some sort of laptop-based tool to collect the data off the bus if there is an incident. It is like the security cameras in a store, but for buses. Audio really helps on buses, because there is a problem of people being verbally abusive to other riders, but there is also the problem that accusat
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"because there is a problem of people being verbally abusive to other riders,"
Absolutely, and this problem has existed for centuries in all kinds of environments.
Do we really want to sacrifice our privacy, expose ourselves to the possibility that the state could investigate our "thought crime" or reconstruct a record of everything we have said in the past few years?
All for the sake of dealing with loud mouth dickheads on the bus?
Seems really stupid and unbalanced if you ask me.
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The panopticon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], does not require that you watch everyone all of the time, in the war of the rich versus the poor, it just requires that you convince them that they are being watched all of the time. Keep in mind the rich do not walk public streets, they are not in public places, they remain in private places, places they own and control. This is mass surveillance for the masses, the working in poverty, to keep them in their assigned place.
So letting you know they are mon
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"The answer for mass surveillance is mass misinformation, false data to poison their databases and computers can generate false information, at a far greater rate than real information can be created and spread, so as to drown out mass surveillance. If they are going to treat the majority of us like criminal, well, we might as well 'pretend' to be criminals so as to confuse the fuck out of them."
I agree completely, but it does not quite gel with the first part of your post, which I also agree with.
Ideally (
Re:be afraid (Score:4, Insightful)
Not just that — they may be able to parse the words (the way Siri, Alexa, et al do already) looking for certain terms and expressions to alert human operators to the conversation.
Public transit is, by definition, public. If a person next to you can overhear it — and even record it on his smartphone unbeknown to you — then so can police. It just makes their job much easier.
I too am rather uncomfortable with these developments, but there is nothing illegal about them. And, no, we do not need rules, which TSA and others will write and then change to suit themselves. We need laws — set by lawmakers, binding for the police, enforced by the courts...
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File a FOIA-request...
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More often than being used in court it is used to verify behavior in order to ban the correct people from the service. The video, rather than the audio, is the part that is a threat of evidence collection; people are less likely to try to rob you on the bus if they're on video. Flashers are less likely to strike there, too. These are the real problems on buses, not, "zomg a cop looked at me, I'm like, so totally busted, man I hate pigs." LOL I mean, I'm sure that is on the tapes a million times too, but nob
aw, pshaw (Score:2, Informative)
it is commonplace for cities/regions to have audio and video recording on public transit, the Twin Cities has had audio for over a decade on its buses and added video at least as long ago.. it's used in accident and violence investigations. they have never sent goons on the bus to club a slob who drops orange peels and potato chips all over the bus.
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they have never sent goons on the bus to club a slob who drops orange peels and potato chips all over the bus.
But it would probably be a popular action if they did!
What I want is microphones all over the mountains so they can club those jerks who use their cell phone as a boom box while hiking.
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I'm in one of the Oregon communities that has had audio/video recording on buses for a decade. It wasn't "the gubermint" or the police who installed it, it was the local transit district. At first it made people nervous, but then over time they realized that it means that if there is a crime on the bus, it is really easy to solve. Also it helps the transit district to ban people who are causing problems for other riders, because they don't have to wonder what happened they can check. No, you can't hear ever
Re: be afraid (Score:2)
If enough crime happens on your buses to warrant the installation of audio or video surveillance, I think I would find another means of transportation instead.
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uhhh... it solved the problem, so your comment lacks a point.
Fear is the mind-killer. Don't be so afraid! You're willing to give your Freedom away to the criminals, that is pathetic. No, people kept riding the buses but they demanded some basic security steps, and those steps worked.
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as someone who works in the entertainment industry, i have to say this is more about keeping the populace paranoid than preventing terrorism.
most of the audio they are liable to pick up will be garbage. directional mikes can only pick up so much legible speech before being overrun by ambient noise.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/... [schneier.com]
Hello Orwell. (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like it is time for widespread counter-actions, while we are still able to do so.
Microphones need wires leading to them, which means they will absorb/attenuate nearby EM fields. That means you can sweep for them with a fairly low tech detector. If they are not wired, they will actively emit a signal, which likewise can be detected.
Once you find them, pour superglue into them. Document their presence and location on your social media platform of choice, so that others can quickly sabotage similarly placed microphones.
Dutiful denial of service will make this too costly for the orwelian surveillance state to maintain.
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Possibly, but when large numbers of people do it, then the buses will quickly run out of eligible fares.
Also, the sabotage can be done quite innocuously.
Barometric Identification (Score:5, Funny)
After you are barometrically identified by the cameras...
Aaaah, finally an algorithm for uniquely identifying people by the pressure they are under.
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I presumed they were being identified by how much their air they displaced; volume combined with speed and drag effects.
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...because vandalism and destruction of city property is what heroes do [tvtropes.org]!
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Microphones are too easy to hide, behind a panel, whatever. What might work is a personal little white noise generator (the old running faucet in the bathroom trick). Humans can "hear around it", a microphone can't. It will hear static. For a wireless mic, signal jammers. They wouldn't need to transmit beyond 20 yards or so, making them difficult to catch.
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Sounds like a job for a simple sticker.
Round, has little black arrows pointing toward the center, says "Hidden microphone!" on it.
One can probably get these mass printed at cafe-press.
Detect the microphone, and put the sticker down (If you cannot sabotage the mic yourself) to alert others. Then use your white noise generator.
Echelon that bitch (Score:1)
whenever youre on public transportation, dont forget to mention how "this weather is the bomb!" and "ISIS was an Egyptian god before AL QUEDA got hold of it"
Look for ways to insert world-war-terror phrases into every conversation.
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You'll really get paranoid after the person sitting behind you who dislikes your snark decides to report it to the FBI, and they come to interview you, leading you to become totally convinced that there is an evil supercomputer listening on the bus. You could fall down a rabbit hole that impacts the rest of your life! lol
The local anarchist group went through some convulsions of that sort, when they were getting "mysteriously" arrested for crimes they didn't expect to get busted for. They were sure it prove
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Yes because those would be the only wires on the bus. /s
They could put the microphone inside the unit for the speakers (stop announcements, bell, etc), the light that comes on when someone wants a stop, or just the lights. And the wires would be run together with the component it's installed with. There are a lot of wires on a bus.
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You don't need to "sweep" for microphones, just look for the pattern of little holes right below the camera.
Start at the sign warning, "Audio and video recording devices in use." Lift your head up, and to the right. See the camera on the ceiling? The mic is right there too. There is another one in the middle of the aisle by the back door.
Wiretapping laws (Score:5, Interesting)
Why aren't these systems running afoul of both state and federal wiretapping laws?
Re:Wiretapping laws (Score:4, Informative)
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"If the president does it, it's not illegal" - That predates HRC by a long shot.
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your stupidity predates everything you say
This is what I think every time I see an ape talk. Even the smart ones, most of what they say is total crap.
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Hey dude, HRC is running for the presidency, Nixon is dead.
There IS a difference.
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Essentially it is not a wiretap,
and when you are in the public you cannot expect privacy.
(This is the rationale - and yes it sounds very fishy).
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The term "wiretap" doesn't literally mean "tapping an electronic communication". It refers to the general practice of eavesdropping on a conversation and is explicitly covered by New Jersey state statute N.J. Stat. 2A:156A-3, -4 and 18 U.S. Code 2511.
So, yes, this is specifically covered under both state and federal wiretapping laws and neither of those make an exception for public spaces.
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"Wiretapping" is listening to phone calls. Federal law doesn't restrict general recording of information. It is only the local laws that are relevant here.
In my State, the requirement is that they post a sign that says they're recording. And so they post the sign. Done.
A funny story, the local police got a warrant to tap a phone booth, but then after rolling-over the warrant a few times a judge told them that unless they were going to leave it off and only turn it on when a suspect was using the phone, they
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Probably because they're recording sounds where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.
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Both state and federal wiretapping laws make no exceptions for "public" or "private" spaces, nor is "expectation of privacy" a relevant facotr as it is with photography.
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Both state and federal wiretapping laws make no exceptions for "public" or "private" spaces, nor is "expectation of privacy" a relevant facotr as it is with photography.
Yes they do! If the cops want to record what you announce over a PA system, they can do that and it isn't wire-tapping. They may or may not need a warrant, depending on how public it was.
Whereas, if you use a string and a pair of cans, then they have to follow the wiretapping rules because it is a type of low-tech telephone and there is a presumption of privacy. But for example if you use a telephone handset as the mic on your PA, that doesn't make it a telephone or cause wiretapping laws to apply.
Here is t
Re: Wiretapping laws (Score:4, Insightful)
You're wrong, and what's worse you're parroting what the government wants you to believe. It's like the 'driving is a privilege' idiots. The government has no constitutional authority to grant 'privileges' other than letters of marque and reprisal. Period. I have no problem with driving having skills based regulation, but letting them call it a privilege diminishes all of us and empowers bureaucrats.
This is similar. I can't go out in public and not be seen. If someone knows me then they'll recognize me. If someone is looking for me and they happen to be where I am they'll find me. If not, and I do nothing unusual they"ll forget me shortly. I can't speak above a whisper and not be heard by people near me. THAT is the 'no expectation of privacy' I have in public. Using that to justify electronic surveillance and recording is twisted and wrong, and way too many people around here are not doing what needs to be done and challenge the underlying assumption.
This is wrong because it is wrong, not because it is now public knowledge. It needs to end not because some politician gets embarrassed at being found out--it needs to end because some lines should never be crossed and the people who cross them have no place in governing or enforcing our laws. We can do just fine without all of them. Anyone who would justify this needs to be removed from public office, and the private sector people who make the equipment and software for this purpose and profit from the same are scum beyond belief and traitors to their neighbors and should also be exposed for all to see and judge.
Re: Wiretapping laws (Score:5, Insightful)
We really need to stop and question what privacy actually means in the 21st century, with the capabilities of modern technology. We should be asking why what we used to call privacy was important, and what the modern equivalent is, and how and why we might want to protect it for the same reasons.
Otherwise, you get people who can't see a difference between someone just passing someone else anonymously in the street for a few seconds and someone being monitored 24/7 whenever they are on any public street, identified by correlating the video feed with other biometric data sources, recorded in a readily searchable format for further correlation with other data sources, so that the resulting data may be analysed by unknown parties for unknown purposes at any future time, without any meaningful form of accountability or regulation applying to the much larger and more powerful organisation(s) doing the monitoring.
I just got back from visiting Germany, and I promise you there are still plenty of people there and throughout Europe who are acutely aware of the difference between those two scenarios. Unfortunately, the generations with living memory of the potential results are leaving us all too quickly, and the younger generations are in danger of not learning from history and being doomed to repeat it.
Re: Wiretapping laws (Score:3)
The police who lose their shit when they spot you video taping them would violently disagree with you.
Consented? (Score:2)
You consented when you got on the bus.
That argument is right up there with "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."
Freedom of movement is a basic necessity of a civilised society. By attaching riders -- sure, you have freedom of movement, but only if you consent at metaphorical and/or literal gunpoint to some other undesired behaviour -- you are undermining that freedom as surely as if you just locked someone up in the first place.
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And don't forget, if you're observed actively avoiding cameras, microphones, etc., then you're *automatically* suspicious, and our governmental Heroes of the Homeland are obliged to surveil you more aggressively because terrorists-pedos-commies.
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It is public transit. There is no "wire" being tapped and your conversation is not private. If a person next to you can hear/see — and record — audio/video of your conversation, so can the government.
You should review the laws for both your state and the federal government. I think you are going to be shocked at how wrong you are.
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I reviewed it for you since you could only speculate and accuse others of not reading.
You'd be shocked how wrong you are, (there has to be an "intercept" step for it to be wiretapping, and interception doesn't apply to things that are broadcast to the public) but how would you ever know? If you were likely to be willing to actually read it, you'd have read it in the first place instead of just waving your hands and claiming that whatever it says, it must support your claims.
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What if Joe the Revolutionary and Bob the Bomber are the only people in a particular train car. Do they then have a reasonable expectation of privacy?
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It is a good question, and I'm not prepared to answer. The judge will decide, whether this evidence against them will be admissible in trial. But the bombing will have been prevented, one hopes.
Stop wasting tax money (Score:5, Insightful)
This shit isn't necessary, and even the people installing it don't think so as the equipment is sitting there unused. Use the money for better teachers, enabling the poor, etc but not for useless expensive contracts that ultimately don't even have a clear goal or function.
Big Brother is back in town (Score:2)
Nice gadgets they have and little respect for the constitution, too. They have not up to this day demonstrated that these intrusive mass spying mechanisms and continuous and ever more severe invasion of privacy has brought any real results. It's as if they're just gathering information of every individual citizen for possible later use. Be it for prosecution of inconvenient individuals at a later time or for the purpose of creating a paper trail in a totally unrelated case.
Absolutely nothing will change unt
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"They have not up to this day demonstrated that these intrusive mass spying mechanisms and continuous and ever more severe invasion of privacy has brought any real results. It's as if they're just gathering information of every individual citizen for possible later use. "
It's about instant dossiers for people who become "problems" to the establishment. Proles don't have to worry. They're too busy trying to go along to get along. It's the people who shout words like "change" and "peace" and "corruption is
The quiet car? (Score:1)
New Jersey isn't the only state where you now have even more reason to want to ride in the quiet car.
Why would privacy be a reason for riding in the quiet car? You'd be better off in the noisy car if you want your conversation to be lost in the hubbub. And if you're not planning to have an incriminating (or otherwise) conversation, it doesn't matter which car you're in!
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Good lord.
Does this have to be spelled out for you in black and white?
1) the DHS and its cronies want to have massive collection capabilities.
2) They want to deny all FOIA attempts and subpoenas against their archival audio recordings.
3) they behave as an unaccountable agency, that can do no wrong.
Taken together, they can straight up fabricate that you said something, you cannot challenge it in court, and unless you can prove a negative, you will go to jail.
So, yes-- it matters.
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You have no idea how the court system (or government in general) works, do you?
If the prosecutor can't establish where evidence came from, it's not admissible. Yes, it can be challenged by the defense, and those challenges have to be addressed. If the prosecutor can't provide a trail for the evidence from collection to the courtroom, it gets removed from the trial. If that was the prosecution's key evidence against you, you walk free.
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If the prosecutor can't establish where evidence came from, it's not admissible.
That's why prosecutors obfuscate where evidence comes from through the miscarriage of justice that is known as "parallel construction." That way, they can use the evidence without the legal risk of it being excluded.
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That's not how parallel construction works, either.
Parallel construction is where an investigator gets a tip from another agency (like the DEA or NSA) that indicated how to find evidence. Legally, it's no different from an anonymous tip, or a confidential informant. The investigators then get an appropriate warrant to gather that evidence, and that starts the chain of custody. Nothing is ever fabricated or obfuscated, except the source of the original tip.
In preservation of the accused's fourth-amendment ri
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Bullshit. "Fruit of the poisoned tree". It still means something in spite of SCOTUS' recent attempts to eviscerate it.
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"The prosecution are unable to declare how the evidence was gathered due to reasons of national security"
Judge: "oh, that's all right then. Objection denied"
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Did you literally only read the words "it doesn't matter" before embarking on your rant?
I said "it doesn't matter which car you're in," referring only to the somewhat nonsensical quip about the quiet car in the summary.
A great idea (Score:3)
Oblig. Orwell reference (Score:2)
Big Brother hears you. :(
This is why (Score:2)
This is why I avoid using public transport. I started avoiding it when they installed those video surveillance systems. Including audio surveillance just makes using it that much more objectionable.
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Sure, but that doesn't address the issue.
Statists gonna state (Score:2)
"I don't mind paying taxes", claim the Statists. With them, they say, "we are buying civilization". How about it? Civilized yet?
Me? I just try to ensure, my daughters grow up with good enough knowledge of Ukrainian to be able to hold a conversation in a language bound to remain unparsable by such equipment for decades to come... Celebrate diversity.
What's your plan?
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"If I'm paying a lot of taxes, I must be making a lot of money!" -- The Governator
what else are you going to do? (Score:2, Interesting)
How else do you expect to run a public transit system? Run trains completely without any supervision 24/7? Hire more people to patrol the cars constantly? Who is going to pay for that, given that public transit systems already require massive subsidies for their operations?
Come on you folks who advocate public transit: what is your solution?
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You mean with staff and transit police patrolling the trains? Since wages keep rising, that is getting increasingly expensive.
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I'm sorry, but what "problem" have you pointed out? I don't see a problem with audio and video surveillance of public transit systems.
Funny you should say that, because that's my solution too, next time I'm asked to vote for additional funding for public transit.
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Vandalism, pickpocketing, violent crime, hooliganism, and public intoxication, all of which occur commonly in public transit systems.
Pretty soon (Score:2)
Much like the airport, free speech will go right out the window and it will be illegal to say much of anything that might be taken out of context. This isn't about terrorism, it's about control.
Yes, yes, " Fire " in a movie theater and all that. Toss in the " No expectation of privacy in a public place " BS while we're at it. Doesn't mean I want a camera and / or microphone recording every moment of my life for me, looking for any excuse at all to arrest me. Seems to fall under the " We'll just grab eve
Illegal (Score:2)
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Where does "private" end, and "public" begin?
Is it in your home? Maybe not with all those smart TVs and the 3rd party doctrine.
Unless there is outrage, the line will vanish, and there wont be a private.
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Where does "private" end, and "public" begin?
Where the judge rules it begins and ends, and it will weighed on a case-by-case basis. Same as what every other law means.
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Surveillance does not prevent crime or terrorism. It records it. Recording it doesn't prevent it from happening next time either, because it will be a different guy next time with a different set of reasons for the stupid shit he's about to do.
I don't expect privacy in public either, but that doesn't mean I want the eyes of Big Brother to be upon me from the time I leave my house to the time I return.
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Moron.
Recording it provides evidence, which aids in the successful investigation and prosecution of perpetrators. That in turn becomes publicized, serving as a deterrent to the different guy with different reasons.
It is important to note the difference between well-controlled recordings and indiscriminate surveillance. The cameras and microphones are not what actually matters, so much as the objectives of the controlling entity. Big Brother was oppressive. Star Trek's ship computers were not.
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The cameras and microphones are not what actually matters, so much as the objectives of the controlling entity.
The trouble is, it's remarkably difficult to identify all possible future objectives of anyone controlling data, and at the risk of Godwinning the thread albeit on an entirely legitimate basis, we know all too well what can happen when the objectives change over time.
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Most of the evidence shows that arresting and prosecuting people doesn't have a significant deterrent effect. Most of the deterrent only applies to people with a normal sense of risk aversion; just having fingers pointed at them and being accused of Something Bad is enough to deter them from crime. People willing to commit crimes in the first place are not using the sort of long-term thinking implied by the concept of "deterrent." For example, it has been shown that long and short prison sentences have the
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Half-wit.
It's not the threat of punishment that matters, but the higher likelihood of being caught [nij.gov] that has actually been shown to deter crime. Having more and better evidence from recordings improves that chance.
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Can someone explain this one to me?
You might be interested Liberty's video [youtube.com] on communications surveillance. It shows, quite effectively IMHO, that once normal people are actually aware of intrusive surveillance, they really aren't happy about it at all. You could make very similar arguments about AV surveillance and recording in public spaces.
Re:Can't Expect Privacy In Public (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very limited (bi-polar) expectation of privacy. In fact, reasonable expectation of privacy is a continuum. If I am sitting in a little box on the south pole and know there is no human being within a few hundred miles, I have a huge expectation of privacy. If I am on stage in the spotlight surrounded by microphones, I have none.
If I am ion public, I certainly have no absolute expectation of privacy, but I do have the expectation that I am lost in the crowd. The people surrounding me are unlikely to care what I am mumbling about and are likely single chance encounters. Someone following me around in secret aiming a highly directional microphone at me is a violation of my expectation of privacy in a public place.
Likewise, I cannot reasonably expect that I won't end up in some tourist's snapshot, but I do have an expectation that I won't be followed around and star in someone's documentary movie.
Likewise, I have no expectation that I won't be identified by a random acquaintance that I meet by chance, but I do have an expectation that I won';t be videoed and then have my image compared against a multi-terabyte database in a sophisticated system to identify exactly who I am and where I go.
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Re: Can't Expect Privacy In Public (Score:2)
Would you be ok with a mandated video and audio device you must carry with you at all times just to make sure you'll never say anything that is questionable ?
Your cellphone notwithstanding . . .
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However, I can never understand the concern about video/audio surveillance of public places. When you're in a public place you can have no expectations of privacy to begin with because you're generally surrounded by people.
Public and private are mutually exclusive, so you cannot expect privacy in a public place. I therefore don't understand the outrage.
Can someone explain this one to me?
It isn't about one bus or one street as it is about canvassing everything everywhere and employing computer algorithms to automatically stitch and compile government stalking files on everyone.
If someone sat 24x7 parked in front of your home waiting for you to leave, tailed you everywhere you went, followed you to every "public" place and recorded all of your "public" conversations. If when you left they got up and followed you to your car parked just in front of their stalker mobile and followed you to yo
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I would much prefer to live free in a dangerous world than to live safely in an unfree world.
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While I agree with this generally, and I'd rather a terrorist attack now and then to nonsense like the TSA security theatre, or Russian-style surveillance...
In this case I don't really see what "freedom" is lost. I was already in public on the bus. Having a camera on the bus seems a lot more like having a camera in the bank, or at the front counter in a restaurant. I'm clearly getting increased safety in a real way. What freedom does this actually reduce?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm clearly getting increased safety in a real way.
That's not as clear to me as it is to you, but regardless...
What freedom does this actually reduce?
Personally, I think that the freedom to act without being spied on counts as a real freedom.
Re: (Score:2)
I feel like, if somebody proposes a freedom that doesn't exist, then balancing it with other freedoms will reduce the freedoms I'm actually supposed to have.
How would important freedoms like the right to take photographs in public places survive your additional "right?" I don't think it is obvious at all that you would be able to add that right without taking away real rights that already exist.
It certainly isn't a right that comes from the Constitution, though the ones it would have to push aside certainly
Re: (Score:2)
I said nothing that implied removing any rights from anyone. I'm talking about restricting government action.
Re: (Score:2)
You did, you just didn't think it through far enough to see that as a consequence.
I replied 2 days later. You replied to my reply within a minute or two. Maybe you have email notification turned on and were just a bit too quick to give an insta-reply? This isn't twitter, maybe think about it for a few minutes next time, at least long enough to comprehend what was said.
You didn't understand me, as shown by your reply, so how can you disagree? You can't!
Re: (Score:2)
It would be more productive if you actually explained your thought process rather than just imply that I'm an idiot. How can I learn what I have wrong if you're unwilling to teach me?
Re: (Score:2)
I did, above, in the comment you replied to without reading.
You didn't even read my criticism carefully enough to find out that I accused of having not put any effort into understanding what I said, as evidenced by the very, very short time frame between my response, and your counter-response. To put it in perspective, I spent more time composing the comment than you spent with both reading it and replying to it. And so it is no surprise that you didn't understand it. If that makes you an idiot or not is up
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't even read my criticism carefully enough to find out that I accused of having not put any effort into understanding what I said
Of course I did. Stop being silly.
Where does the imagined freedom "not being spied upon" end and "you can record whatever you want in public" begin?
You see, was that so hard? Now I'll provide the response that I already provided: this isn't about balancing the freedoms between citizens. This is about the limits of governmental power.
Re: (Score:2)
That just shows you don't what know what rights are, or where they come from. You just know you dislike the gubermint, whatever that is.
Re:Tweak The Topic (Score:5, Insightful)
The best alternative, IMHO, is a combination of principled leadership and education.
We could start by not doing the bad guys' job for them, for example by using scary words like "terrorist" to describe these people. Just call them what they are: murderers, cowards, bullies who think might means right. Every school child used to know that these things are unacceptable, and that the way to beat cowards and bullies is to stand up to them. When did our political leaders and influential media commentators and, for that matter, teachers forget that?
Likewise, you don't beat someone who wants to change your way of life through force or the threat of force by... changing your way of life. Every time someone gets delayed at airport security or monitored online or stopped and searched by a police officer in the street, every drop of taxpayers' money that funds those activities, every law that enables them, is one more feather in the cap of the people who want to change our way of life for their own purposes. Yes, some pragmatism is needed because we live in the real world, but we should never give up those freedoms lightly and never more than is demonstrably justified.
We could also try putting terrorism in perspective through better public education. As a matter of fact, the worst terrorist incident in recent history was 9/11 in the US, killing nearly 3,000 people and of course injuring many more and causing massive damage to property. That was 15 years ago. All the "terrorist attacks" since then combined still don't reach the same total. Meanwhile, almost as many people die on US roads every month as died due to the 9/11 attacks. There are more than 10,000 homicides using guns alone in the US each year. If you look at a much more damaging cause of death, say cancer, that claims around half a million people too early in the US alone each year, and of course has profound impacts on their lives and those of their friends and families and carers until that point. In the big picture, terrorism simply isn't that big a danger, and there is little indication that it ever was or is likely to become so any time soon.
And yet, we don't see the time and money and political resources diverted to researching improved cancer treatments, or safer road designs, or identifying those who need psychiatric help before they hit breaking point, that we see diverted to the so-called war on terror, despite the dramatically better results we might reasonably expect to achieve in terms of saving lives, improving quality of life, and keeping property safe. IMHO, that is a failure of leadership, pure and simple.
In short, I think the best alternative is very clear: stop the political and media fear-mongering around terrorism and the hypothetical bogeyman, stop all the intrusions and harassment and day-to-day costs of ineffective or excessive security, divert all that attention and all those resources to more constructive purposes like improving education or healthcare or infrastructure instead, and make sure the resulting benefits are visible for all to see.
Re: (Score:3)
I wish that were true, but based on the figures I'm familiar with in the UK, I fear you're being optimistic.
For example, the government health R&D budget here in the UK is around 1.5B pounds per annum. As another relevant figure, Cancer Research UK had an income of just over half a billion pounds last year; CRUK is our main umbrella body for cancer research today, which in turn funds university research projects and so on.
I don't know exactly how much we spend on all the questionable security and "anti-
Re: (Score:2)
It was easier in the past, and there weren't more of them then. Terrorism isn't cosmic inflation; it doesn't just spring magically from the laws of physics.
I could as easily argue that you create more terrorists by alienating people with heavy handed policing (why not?).
What does that have to do with anything? Decent