Internet + Wireless Cameras = Homeland Security 404
NumberField writes "According to an article by
Steven Levy posted on MSNBC, Jay Walker of PriceLine fame is talking about a
system he calls
US HomeGuard. His plan is to hire large numbers
of unsophisticated users to monitor Internet-connected security cameras looking for
suspicious activity. Although many security details (i.e.,
DOS attacks,
cryptography,
privacy)
need to be handled carefully, it's a weird enough idea that it might actually work..."
Sign me up (Score:3, Funny)
Super! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Super! (Score:2)
I got it all planned now... (Score:3, Funny)
I also believe that most terrorists do their planning in bed and while taking a shower, so rig the cameras accordingly. Also, I'm going to need them to be zoom-capable so that I can intercept messages she may be writing.
Should the time come when I need knock out gas and a full insertion team, I'll contact you.
PriceLine + Cameras = ?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:PriceLine + Cameras = ?? (Score:2)
Re:PriceLine + Cameras = ?? (Score:2, Funny)
Come on now! You didn't really think the U.S. government was paying $1500 USD for toilet seats, did you?
and the short training period of our TSA? (Score:4, Interesting)
You think that these people are any better at looking at Xray machines?
Re:and the short training period of our TSA? (Score:2)
Turn off the television...
look (Score:2, Interesting)
Wow and now we have a nation of lurkers (Score:5, Insightful)
sig globally, act locally
Re:Wow and now we have a nation of lurkers (Score:2, Informative)
It has nothing to do with watching you in your house, or in your neighbourhood. It has nothing to do with people watching random cameras. I agree that it opens the door wider for 1984ish stuff, but it's not going nearly that far. These are hardly even 'public' places, they are plac
Re:Wow and now we have a nation of lurkers (Score:2, Insightful)
Finally, someone who can READ!!! But seriously, it is obvious that you RTFA yourself, but while I was R-ing TFA (hehe) I immediately knew that no one else would and the majority of posts would be "I don't want some schmoe watching me in the bathtub."
Maybe the country's problem isn't terrorism, but ignorance & stupidity. Actually, Brash Ignorance mioght be a better phrase.
Re:Wow and now we have a nation of lurkers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow and now we have a nation of lurkers (Score:3, Funny)
Two words (Score:2, Insightful)
Slippery slope.
Sounds great (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, sounds like a great idea! It could be very useful where I live. We've got new neighbours, and I think they might be muslims. They're definately foreign, anyway. I don't have the time to sit at the window all day looking for suspicious activity, so if we put a web cam up it would make it a lot easier. God Bless America!
Re:Sounds great (Score:2)
Well, it was meant to be. I sometimes write "This is sarcasm" at the end of my posts if I think they will be misinterpreted, but I hoped in this case it was obvious that I was joking.
reality TV (Score:2, Funny)
Re:reality TV (Score:2)
Moderation system (Score:5, Funny)
+5: Suspicious
Re:Moderation system (Score:2)
Re:Moderation system (Score:2)
+10: Boobies
So we're counting on 'unsophisticated users'? (Score:5, Insightful)
.. and unsophisticated people worldwide !! (Score:2)
from http://www.ushomeguard.org/coming-soon.asp [ushomeguard.org]
Re:So we're counting on 'unsophisticated users'? (Score:2)
Oh maybe it's that "sophisticated users" have something better to do with their time?
Homeland security already fading (Score:5, Insightful)
At least it should be. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure domestic any number of different things, cars, tobacco, alcohol, etc. kills more people each year on american soil than terrorism does.
Yet, I see no huge overarching "war on speeding" for example.
I'm not american, but let me tell you. From the outside this fixation on security looks a lot like hysteria.
Furthermore it seems like a lot of people in the position to do so is converting this paranoia into money and power for themselves.
I think the general US population would be much better of without these monsterously huge efforts to "increase security" att all costs.
But what do I know, I'm just a dirty foreigner.
Award! (Score:4, Funny)
Orwellian Award for Excellence
It might be a close race with some of the other things that are happening...
It's not 1984... (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with the poster that it is so crazy that it might work. The only thing that i doubt is that they're going to pay $10/hour for people to watch this. That's a very good salary, and i wouldn't mind doing it for that much.
Re:It's not 1984... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cameras dont protect anything. The collect "evidence". And unless the response time is around 60 seconds, no matter how many people are watching remotely, not a single act of sabotage will be prevented by the presence of a CCTV camera, no matter who is behind it.
The "security" industry in this case is a vile parasite, feeding off of the fear of crime and sabotage. It would be far better to spend time fixing the root causes than putting cameras on everything.
But you know this.
Re:It's not 1984... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not 1984... Yet (Score:2)
Once this is accepted as normal, its a smaller step to accepting mass monitoring private citizens as the norm.
Here in State College, PA its 1984 (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, nearly five years after this event with almost no major incidents, the city council approved sticking cameras all over this area [centredaily.com]. There will be no cameras near residential areas for locals, just cameras for students. The police chief has designated the areas as a problem section and now he will have the legal righ
Re:It's not 1984... (Score:5, Insightful)
But if it works, what do you think the next applications of the technology are likely to be?
And, of course, the implications of the "piecework" model are a little chilling.
The article says that the "pay for this part-time work would be $8 to $10 an hour" but there's no reason why it would have to stay at that level, why it would have to remain part-time, or why the work would necessarily be given to Americans. I can easily see a world in which companies use this kind of technology to perform constant surveillance on their employees--and the surveillance piecework would be done overseas where the labor rates are lowest.
Re:It's not 1984... (Score:2)
Helpdesk Warriors! (Score:5, Funny)
"Is there a person on the camera?" Yes
"Are the person's eyes looking shifty?" Yes
"Is this person wearing all black?" Yes
"Is the person carrying something?" Yes
"Alert the authorities that a Muslim individual is walking around in the local supermarket carrying military-grade C4 explosives! Query the man through the loudspeaker. Don't believe him if he says he's doing his shopping! Don't accept any other explanations he gives! You are ALWAYS right, and even if you aren't, this wizard IS!"
Orwellian nightmare?
how? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:how? (Score:2)
Re:how? (Score:2)
Erm, obviously they decided to do the plane thing, although there were _no_ homeland security stuff and _no_ cameras installed at that time.
People, face it, there are a million things dedicated evil people can do and _nothing_ can really prevent it. America is _not_ at war (at least there's no war at its home
Re:how? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been trying to beet this through people's heads for years now. Terrorists don't have a problem with you specificly. They don't have this burning urge to see every last American dead... they have nothing against the individual American at all.
They have a HUGE (and some would say legitimate) greviance against the American government and the actions of our country.
As a tiny faction of a very poor and politicaly irrelevant society how can they incite change in that which they dislike? Unlike the wealthy westerners we associate with they can't lobby Congress or take our ambasadors out to dinner to talk things over. The money isn't there.
So they turn to the only option open to them, violence.
September 11 was a poorly calculated move. Look at it objectively. The targets were military (pentagon), economic (world trade center), and probably governmental (Congress? Whitehouse?). These people were protesting the actions of the American economic/political/military machine through violence.
Remember, terrorism has an agenda. When a terorrist does something so horrific that others of his ilk around the world stand up and repudiate him (look at Quadafi's actions on Sept 11-12, 2001) he's screwed up. The objective is lost. They are trying to incite change, not wrath and revenge.
Will we see a biological or nuclear act of terrorism in the future? The CIA says yes, and I'm inclined to agree with them. HOWEVER, it will not be from a small group seeking to affect a change in the policies of the American government. It will be an act of State Sponsored terrorism, terrorism as an act of war.
Before you flame me, I'm not appologising for what these people did. It was horrific, terrible, and utterly wrong. Violence is not an acceptable way to make your political opinions known, and reguardless of the significance of the targets, the casualties were civilians. That's low.
What I am saying is that these people had an objective, a goal. They failed in that goal because what they did was such an atrocity. If the US wants to avoid acts of terrorism in the future perhaps the millions we invest in homeland security should go to making life suck a little less in the distant corners of the world.
rant... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why did they bother to do it in the first place?
Maybe because the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon was first and formost an attack on the symbols of the military and financial might of the US and that the civilian victims were just a side effect?
If they only were looking for a huge bodycount they would have choosen another target, or another method.
Contrary to popular opinion, terrorism (per definition) isn't just about killing people, it's about furthering your agenda through intimidation.
This means that they are mostly primarily interested in maximizing the propaganda value of their actions, not the destructions they cause.
Take Usama Bin Laden for example.
As I understand it one of his most important objectives was to get the US military out of Saudi Arabia.
And, guess what, you're pulling out of there right now.
From his point of view: Mission Accomplished.
And all this essentialy because of the fear instilled by one operation.
As an added bonus you crushed a secular regime in the middle east.
Be prepared for Al Quaida operatives (or others) trying to instigate a islamic revolution in Iraq sometime in the next few years...
I think most of the proposed methods for reducing terrorism misses the point.
Almost all methods try to take the terrorists on directly. But terrorism is only the symptom, not the decease.
It's root cause is: A lot of people are so desperate that supporting these guys seems like a good idea.
A terrorist organization can't live without popular support somwhere. Take away this support for their cause and what you have left is a few extremists with a serious funding problem (ok, OBL might be an exception) and nowhere to hide.
In the case of islamic terrorism solving the Palestinian question would probably go a long way towards reducing the threat.
Re:how? (Score:2, Interesting)
You mean like all those hijacked planes recently that landed in cuba?
Re:Not INSIGHTFUL - Wrong! (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times have we seen the videos of Mohommed Atta and his buddy walking through Logan airport and entering the gate on CNN over the last 1.5 years?
Millions.
Most major airports already have plenty of video surviellance to stop baggage theft. That didn't stop the 9/11 guys, nor would it stop anyone bent on a suicide mission.
All that was needed was a good, solid cockpit door and 9/11 would just be another day on the calander. Or maybe an Air Marshall and 1 or 2 Glazer safety slugs. Or better intelligence gathering by the people whose job it is to know about and prevent these things (NSA, CIA, FBI).
Better yet how about stopping the root cause of terrorism in the first place? As other posters have pointed out, terrorists don't usually recruit from populations that are happy and treated fairly . Perhaps US foriegn policy should concentrate less on supporting repressive regimes so they can get cheap oil and more on helping the people live free (without all the bombing
Any and all of the above would help, But not more cameras.
Old idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds dangerous (Score:2, Interesting)
The obvious. (Score:3, Insightful)
Stupid idea (Score:2)
Re:Stupid idea (Score:2, Funny)
Ha in S0viet Jennicam, you pay 8-10$ to watch webcam!
Everything old is new again (Score:5, Insightful)
Naturally, it's not the monitoring of restricted areas that I fear so much as the next step. Government expanding to fill all adjacent spaces, I can't help but believe that the next iteration of that technology would be to begin monitoring public areas for suspicious behavior. Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Not a patentable process, is it? (Score:2, Funny)
Suspicious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I read about "looking for suspicious activity" I cringe at what my neighbors might be suspicious of. We (at least in the USA) are trained from birth to conform and not stand out. We are taught in school to ridicule and/or fear people who are different--people who look different or behave different. Some of the folks I live near are afraid of people who wear black. Others don't like seeing people walking home after midnight. The problem with letting joe sixpack look for "suspicious" people is that anyone who does anything besides sleeping, going to work and shopping, will inevitably be considered suspicious by someone.
The USA has become a nation of freightened sheep, and the general public is happy to lock people away who don't totally conform to the norm (please compare our imprisonment rates for non-violent offenders against the rest of the world).
Would you want your neighbors to watch you and decide whether you're doing something "suspicious"? How about letting your business competitor decide? How about that homeowner's association nazi who thinks your yard gnome is too big?
Re:Suspicious? (Score:2, Funny)
Big-freaking-deal (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait, let me get this straight:
1. Hook up some cameras to a network.
2. Hire people to monitor the output of the cameras. (People who may or may not have an understanding of the technology behind the cameras and the network.)
3. Security!
How is this weird? This is how security camera operations have worked for half a century. The only new things here are the use of an open, instead of closed network, and cheap, instead of expensive, cameras.
Whoopdy-freaking-doo.
Brings to mind a Red Dwarf scene (Score:2)
Betray your family and friends!
Fantastic prizes to be won!
Only spies on trespassers (Score:2)
Re:Only spies on trespassers (Score:2)
why the need for a HUMAN to watch it????
simple motion detector would do very well for that job(cheaper, more effective.. & etc.).
Turn it into a turing test (Score:2, Interesting)
Since they're ranking the spotters anyway, why not just provide an API and let the CS students duke it out?
I foresee a couple of problems... (Score:5, Insightful)
..most of which can be overcome, but still.
Nighttime. Either they'll need to flodlight the area, in effect showing where the target is for those pesky terrorist who - like the IRA - uses homemade mortars or rockets, or they need to have night-vision camear which'll drive the price up. In addition to that, just how many of his 'one million' watchers will be not only up, but fully awake at night?
Latancy. According to the article, they'll first collect the image, send it to three 'watchers' and - given that one thinks it's something funny going on - to ten more for confirmation. If one of the last ten agrees that it is something not right, the Center takes over and, get this, tries to talk to the potential terrorist / intruder. Chances are that by the time the Center gets around to looking at the feed, the interlooper has moved deeper into the facility... and possible done what he came for.
Jamming. This will only be an issue if they do - as the article suggest - use WiFi. In fact, by exploiting this weakness to create false positives (ie; jamming the system at irregular intervals for some time), a potentional intruder might lower the thrust in the system so much it end up beeing dismantled - placing the door as open as it is today.
False positives. I have little or no trust in the ability of 'untrained' personell given a short, online course to decide wether or not someone is in the area on legal business or not.
So, in short, it's a idea with some merit - if you are comfy with the thought of entrusting safety to complete strangers sitting on their collective butt - but the implentation as outlined in the article needs rethinking.
Prior art for this (Score:2)
try it out (Score:2)
Hehe, naked terror (Score:2)
Short-term good, long-term evil (RANT) (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, the article specifically mentioned pointing those cameras at places where nobody is supposed to be.
For now.
For years, the government has gotten around the Constitution by outsourcing its atrocities. They can't really abridge the rights of people by interrogating them here, so they let their allies do it. They're prevented from infringing the privacy of the people (but in many cases still do it), but they're fine with letting companies collect the data and then rifling through their records.
They've made a science of preserving the illusion of freedom while making it scarcer and scarcer in real life. That's because the government's primary goal is to protect itself. The consumers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hitizens come a distant second.
If by some miracle the webcam idea works (and I really don't think it will, except as a psychological deterrent to attacks on soft targets), someone will suggest it gets "spread" to other places. The citizens of the nation will manage to keep themselves under tight scrutiny at the behest of the government. Can you say "worst case scenario," boys and girls?
Other concerns (Score:2, Informative)
Joe Q Public, the 'unsophisticated user', will now have the ability (and they will) to check out what Mr. Dam Inspector is doing at any particular time.
MOVEMENT DETECTED!
- Joe, you must evaluate this picture.
--Damn...lookatthat...he's pickin his nose!
MOVEMENT DETECTED!
- Jane, you must evaluate this picture.
--Does that guy
UK (Score:5, Informative)
I've got a better idea (Score:5, Funny)
Now everybody with an internet connection can watch any webcam at any time.
Since it would be impossible to know who is watching the camera that's above your head, everybody will become a good and productive dron^H^H^H^Hcitizen.
oh, and the paranoia that would arise shortly after will be defined as anti-American: if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have to worry about anything.
say welcome to the new Privacy era!
ps: this is supposed to be a joke. If you don't get it, don't care about it.
Re:I've got a better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds good to me. Then maybe the judge will believe me that I really didn't go through that red light, and that the cop was lying. Then maybe I can charge my state senators with speeding, which we all know they do just as much as I do. I may have something to hide, but I don't have anything more to hide than anyone else.
But no, I'd much rather have racist cops on every corner than cameras. I'd much rather have webcams that only corrupt politicians can view.
"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." - Abraham Lincoln
In all honesty it isn't that bad... (Score:2, Interesting)
My big concern is that it could let potential terrorists know where the cameras are actually placed and give them details about other security measures in place. I guess that's all in how it is used.
Anyway, after seeing the Nova documentary on how vulnerable some targets really are, a little secur
Unmonitered cameras (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, trained or untrained, it would be very easy to "pass" on a security camera as a bunch of curious college kids with backpacks (full of C4). Even a well-made bear costume would be indistinguishable from the real thing on a webcam.
Second, such a system might not have a fast enough response time. A five second window is a long time to run through a security camera. Assuming the first camera captures you, it might take 30 seconds for 3 people on the internet to recieve the image, and another 30 for the next 10 people, and 60 seconds for a person in the emergency responce headquarters to review, find, interrogate, and notify the authorities on campus. Let's assume the security responce people take 2 minutes to find these terrorists... They now have had 4 minutes to poison the water, plant a bomb, or take an opera full of people hostage.
Third, like all motion detectors there must be an amount of accepted variance. If terrorists walked really slowly or very slowly obstructed the camera they could walk right in front of it. Being wireless, the cameras' locations would be easy to detect. If the system compared this 5 second picture to one 10 minutes ago they could detect such changes, but such a system would consume large amounts of resources to store those backphotos. This problem is sticky but not unsolvable.
Overall this is an interesting idea. In essence, it automates most unnecessary parts of security screening (staring at unchanging images) and taps groups of affordable internet personnel to do the easy but non-automatable task of deciding if a moving object is a person or a blowing trash bag. Once those two criteria have been passed, the real security specialists can respond, thus lowering the number of security personnel needed and the overall cost per camera monitered. And reducing cost for the same service is always a good thing.
So... (Score:2)
Not limited to terrorists (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems to me that we could put webcams through-out the city and use untrained people to filter the cams and pass suspicious activity along to the police. Of course every once in a while a pizza delivery dude would be mistaken for a drug dealer and once in a while a lady waiting for a bus would be mistaken for a prostitute.
But what the heck, what are a few civil liberties compared to safety? Everything - ask the few Jews that survived Nazi Germany.
Won't catch terrorists with a routine (Score:2, Interesting)
First of all, a bunch of extra people watching the permiters of soft targets is a good thing. Many people would like to do that to contribute to their national security as long as
a) it didn't infringe constitutional rights and
b) they didn't have to be full-time security guards to do it (that is, they wouldn't have to change they're life substantially to help out)
a) This is satisfied by having the web cams only along sec
Watch elected officials (Score:2, Interesting)
I think that every elected official could have one in their office, this would help ensure that they are on the up and up.
I mean, if they aren't doing anything illegal, immoral or shameful they have nothing to hide, right? and if they are, they don't have a right to keep it under w
Re:oh boy (Score:2, Funny)
unsophisticated users, eh?
little brothers are watching you...
Re:oh boy (Score:5, Interesting)
1984, George Orwell. (on-line version [online-literature.com])
What are the odds on them starting to recruit children from the schools first...?
Re:oh boy (Score:2)
Actually, these cameras come equipped with Infra-red.
Re:oh boy (Score:2)
Actually, these cameras come equipped with Infra-red.
So, you are telling me that George Orwell was to optimistic?
*shudder*
Re:oh boy (Score:2)
Re:Sigh.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sigh.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sigh.. (Score:2)
The homeless person can expect to be watched 24 hours a day - this is an invasion of his/her privacy but they have more fundemental problems than that. They still have the right not to have their privacy invaded further, for example their personal details should remain private.
How about if some of the money planned set aside for this scheme in 1984 were to go to providing shelter for the homeless?
Although in theory you have nothing to fear if you do nothi
Re:Sigh.. (Score:2)
Re:Sigh.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sigh.. (Score:2)
Homeland security is everyone's business, comrade.
And it's all homeland security.
Re:Sigh.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Privacy isn't something limited by your location, it's a universal righ
Re:Sigh.. (Score:3, Informative)
No, a cop shouldn't be able to ask you anything if there is no reason to. I carry a newspaper clipping in my back pocket that proves this point - a man was awarded $6,000.00 (the incident occured the 4th of August, 1997 at 11:30pm) when a cop (Jean-Francois Rivard) stopped the music curator of McGill U (Rejean Mongeau) and asked to see ID, without probable cause,
Re:Sigh.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sigh.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I know this is a touchy subject for some of you out there, but:
The Constitution isn't perfect. Which is why you can make amendments in the first place, and why in most countries, the constitution can even be altered.
I'm not talking about your legal rights here, I'm talking about your moral rights, which are what the law should be modelled after - what is right and what isn't? Just that something is
Re:Sigh.. (Score:2)
Re:Sigh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for securing potential targets but I don't think that letting the average person run the system is a great idea. Think back a few months to an incident in Florida where three medical students on their way to their new residencies were chased down and then detained on the side of the highway for nearly 24 hours. This was all because one ignorant woman saw three Middle Easter-looking men having a private discussion in a restaraunt. I'm afraid that this system of cameras will only increase instances like this.
Re:Sigh.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The new spy-on-your-neighbor line is already up and running (started in January 2002). Read up on TIPS [whitehouse.gov]... I love how it's under the "USA Freedom Corps"... oh, the delicious Orwellian irony.
Speaking of which, browse through this essay on Orwell's 1984 [umanitoba.ca] to spot some familiar themes.
Re:Sigh.. (Score:2, Informative)
This was briefly covered here [slashdot.org] with a link to a more substantial piece here [wired.com]
Thank god for cooler heads.
Re:Sigh.. (Score:5, Informative)
As described, this is only useful for moniitoring places where people rarely venture, and really shoulnd't be anyway, such as power substations and bridges in remote areas, etc.
Looks like a pretty good system to me, at first glance.
not to mention... (Score:2)
BREAKING NEWS: sniper driving a white van! possible terrorist!
Great future we're promised...
Re:Sigh.. (Score:2)
Right to privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
As technology progresses, this expectation is eroded. What does it mean to go to the store and buy a magazine? It used to be, it was public, but unless someone you knew saw you, no-one would now. It is possible now to track what magazines I buy (through credit cards, Bonus cards, etc. and the UPC code on the magazine), and form a database. The test of "expectation of privacy" is the same, but technology has lowered that expectation.
You're right, in that the test of "expectation of privacy" is the current way to determine if you have a right to privacy, and this stuff happens in public view. The question is whether we need to change either the test, or our expectations, or whether we accept an ever-vanishing amount of privacy. If millimeter wave imaging became cheap (which can look through walls), would that mean I wouldn't have the expectation to have sex in my own home without being seen?
Technology has definitely changed the picture. Privacy is no longer an issue of being seen, but also of being tracked. Just because we have lost so much privacy does not mean we can't reclaim it.
Re:Cue large amounts of lawsuits (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually I believe this..
I have the ability and software to hook my police scanner to my computer and do VOX recording (actually nothing tricky, I plugged the scanner headphone jack into the line-in on the computer and found some freeware VOX software that will use any Windows installed codec for compression on the fly). Anyway.. During the sniper scare in DC last year I happened to catch a few of the incedents. I learned a lot about human nature listening to the
Re:Big brother is finally here. (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless you live in a nuclear power plant, or some other place where there are not supposed to be any people walking around... Read the fucking article, the cameras would be in places where there should be no peolpe, not in front of your damned house. Come on, the Gov has more important things to do than watching your every move.
Re:Big brother is finally here. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Propaganda of the powerful will cause rejection (Score:3, Funny)
Well, we obviously need to beef up security, inasmuch as the existing system has clearly failed to keep out the Communists....