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Businesses Government Privacy

Cities Worldwide Spent Over $3 Billion Last Year To Peep On You (cnet.com) 98

Posted by msmash from the big-brother-is-watching dept.
The world market for security equipment in city surveillance surged past $3 billion last year and won't be slowing down anytime soon, a research report by IHS Markit said Wednesday. From a report: State capitals and major cities have been spurring rapid development of city surveillance market in recent years, mostly to help police forces maintain public safety and reduce crime, the researcher said. Demand has surged for video content analysis, like facial recognition, as well as for things like body-worn cameras and services for police officers. IHS Markit estimated the city surveillance market will grow at average annual rate of 14.6 percent from 2016 to 2021. China is the biggest market for security equipment in city surveillance, taking up a two-thirds share, and it will also be the first country to widely use facial recognition in city surveillance projects, according to the researcher. More than 10,000 smart cameras are expected to roll out in Shenzhen city this year.
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Cities Worldwide Spent Over $3 Billion Last Year To Peep On You More

Cities Worldwide Spent Over $3 Billion Last Year To Peep On You

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  • Cities paying for it? No. YOU are paying for it. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @11:58AM (#56341771)

    The nature of government is such that you are being forced to pay for your own breach of privacy.

    • Could be worse - I misread the headline; thought we were paying for the privilege of getting peed on.
  • Translation: the world needs a good, hard recession to slow things down, maybe bankrupt a few governments. The only thing that made the US think about reducing prison sentences, drug legalization, etc, is that states could no longer afford it during the Great Recession.

    • I'm going to put an end to recessions in the US forever, along with homelessness and hunger; I'm also absolutely on board with getting rid of FISA 702 and other such things (Elizabeth Warren is your best friend, by the way).

      I need some guidance on where all the messes are. I can solve practically any problem, but I need to be appraised of the problem so I can ferret out the appropriate facts. Criminal justice reform is enormous for me; state surveillance is kind of a quiet topic that the state likes to

  • I'll just close my curtains (Score:3)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @12:08PM (#56341847)

    Peep is probably not the word they intend, they mean monitor/spy/track/control.

    It's even more intrusive when you consider that most people have an always on, personal tracking GPS/locater in their pockets and purses all the time.

    • How about ... "creep?"

      As in a creeping stalker.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

      Peep is probably not the word they intend, they mean monitor/spy/track/control.

      It's not the peeping that I'm worried about. The typical location being watched is a public space and I have no reasonable expectation of privacy for what I do in that space.

      It's the coordination across an entire network of cameras, with "new and improved" facial recognition technologies to boot, in order to surveil individuals in vast numbers across entire geographies, persistently, and with retention of the data even in the ab

      • I have no reasonable expectation of privacy for what I do in that space.

        But you do (or at least did) have the reasonable expectation that your movements, actions, time in/out and all would not be recorded, tracked and analyzed...and stored for a long time to be used against you in a number of different methods and manners and who knows when the date could be?

        It's one thing to be seen by people...its quite another to have it recorded and kept by authorities.

        This is a new thing and time to fight it is NOW!

        • Exactly, those privacy laws and conventions come from a time before automated monitoring could be a 'thing'.

          The ability to have a network of cameras recording all the time; tracking everyone at all times as they move about, might technically be within the letter of the law; but is most certainly very much contrary to the spirit of them.

          And as has been previously mentioned; once the government gets a new tool, which can be sold to the public as a 'safety' measure, it's there, forever.

          The lack of (real) push-

  • Cockroaches (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @12:09PM (#56341857) Journal
    Governments like the communists in China don't seem to understand: The more cameras they install, the more actual criminals will improve at hiding, and the more the average citizen, minding their own business, is made miserable. Even if they implanted GPS, cameras, and microphones on everyone, cradle-to-grave, criminals will find ways to circumvent it all and do what they want to do anyway. Meanwhile, again, the average citizen has more and more of their basic human rights taken away, more and more of their privacy destroyed (until there is none), and the more and more miserable their existence becomes. When will they stop? When people start committing suicide en masse, because the Afterlife has to be better than the Hell they're living in? I feel sorry for the average Chinese citizen. Before too long, farm animals will be treated better than they are.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You don't seem to understand the whole point of this. The point is not to prevent crime. The point is to manage the lives of everyone. Governments understand that very well. They're not stupid.

  • I am ok with video surveillance only with these protections:

    - Non-exclusive access. If the police or any government agency can see the video feed, then the feed must be made public and everyone gets to stream it.
    - Cameras only in public spaces

             

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )

      Terrible idea -- if it's public, anyone can archive it, bypassing data-protection regulations. Also, why should a husband be able to watch the street outside his wife's suspected lover's house 24/7? How about an employer watching the street outside your house to see if you were out partying late last night? People should have a safety valve -- the ability to do certain things and even tell lies without getting caught. We don't need a panopticon where our families, friends, employers, etc can keep us und

      • Re:making that less bad (Score:4, Interesting)

        by BronsCon ( 927697 ) <social@bronstrup.com> on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @12:46PM (#56342221) Journal
        Are there limits on the retention of photos and video I shoot in a public space?

        This is no different.

        You can't tout the argument that one should have no expectation of privacy in a public space (which is the only justification I ever hear for these cameras) while simultaneously shouting "MUH PRIVACIES!" The world doesn't work like that, it's one or the other and you have to choose.
        • Effectively, there are limits to you creating the content in the first place. If you dropped a camera in a public place and left it unattended, it would probably get stolen or confiscated fairly quickly. Whereas, a government, with unlimited ability to record in a public place, should be subject to stricter data protection laws.
          • Funny, the camera I have aimed down my street, which is in a public place, hasn't been stolen yet.
            • You're limited to placing them on your property or property you rent, you can't go around dropping cameras everywhere. A government can.
              • I can also shoot from anywhere I'm allowed to access. It's really no different.
                • Yes, you can film there, but it's unlikely you'd be allowed to put a camera there that records 24/7. Thus your ability to film is limited by your physical presence there.
                • Bullshit. If you're somewhere, your rights to document what you experience outweigh the rights to privacy of those in uour vicinity.

                  If you're not physically present somewhere, you have no right to invade the privacy of those that are.

                  Anyone who says otherwise is a fucking cretin.

                  • Actually, the law says otherwise. Whether or not my camera will still be there when I go back, or whether it's creepy or not, are completely different issues. Plenty of private parties have cameras sitting in locations where they're not physically present; ever seen a news channel traffic cam? That's just one example, there are many more.
                    • You need the property owner's or city's permission (in the case of a public space or road) to set up a traffic cam. You can't just zip-tie a camera to a phone pole and expect it to still be there next week.
                    • I'll ignore the remark about property owner because we're talking about public spaces. From there, that's not as true as you might think.

    • I look forward to Google's and Facebook's shadow profiles getting significantly better.

  • Now I know what I'm worth....

  • I see graffiti on bridges, signs, etc. but has any of this surveillance stuff get any of this as it occurs? Any arrests from video footage? Just wondering.

    • The cameras are mainly pointed at the neighborhoods around gated communities and the property of prominent business owners in the best parts of a commercial district. These cameras are not pointed at industrial areas or poor residential areas where you're likely to find people tagging bridges.

  • Feed, cloth and house a person (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    groceries are as little as $125/month/person (USDA's estimate), but that does not include preparation costs. But let's say that's our lower bound of $1500/year/person.
    Volunteer organizations often claim that it costs less than $2/meal. Assuming a person has 3 meals a day that's $2190/year/person.
    Salvation army estimates it costs them $20-$30 to feed and shelter a person for one night. So up to $11k/year. Homeless shelters that charge in Honolulu are taking $70/month and L.A.'s Skid Row charges $7 a night (e

  • Latest estimate is that 54% of the world's population lives in cities [who.int]. That's over 4 billion people. So $3 billion spent on surveillance works out to less than 75 cents per person.

    Of course most of that spending is skewed towards developed countries. But even there, the OECD accounts for about 18% of the world's population, or 1.37 billion. 68% of them live in cities [oecd-ilibrary.org], or 930 million. So $3 billion represents about $3.20 per OECD citizen, or 0.017% of the average OECD government spending [oecd.org] of $18,496 p

  • I have never heard of any crime stopped, or the perpetrator caught via these.
    Just the old anecdotal, friends with cars broken into under cameras in parking lots or people mugged in areas with cameras in cities.

    The actual effect is never mentioned. Does it reduce crime significantly? Is it all just security theatre?
    $3 billion on 'look how much we spent on making you safe!'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by baboon ( 4086 )

      I just finished watching season 2 of 3 of "Caught on Camera" on Netflix (UK CCTV, mostly police). Prior to that, I would have been as adamantly against such government surveillance like CCTV as anyone else here. But now, I'm not so sure this is entirely a bad thing. I welcome anyone to intelligently dispel my illusion.

      With all the private security cameras and smart phones everywhere, I haven't had much expectation of physical privacy for a long time, except restrooms/etc and inside my own residence (if I

    • I have never heard of any crime stopped, or the perpetrator caught via these.

      The Austin Bomber. It was last week, FFS.

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