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Security United States

Internet + Wireless Cameras = Homeland Security 404

Posted by michael from the million-monkeys dept.
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..."
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Internet + Wireless Cameras = Homeland Security More

Internet + Wireless Cameras = Homeland Security

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  • Sign me up (Score:3, Funny)

    by ArmenTanzarian ( 210418 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:18AM (#5900283) Homepage Journal
    I'm graduating and I don't have a job yet. Define unsophisticated... Sounds like a great job, all the fun of being a rent-a-cop without the worry of ever having to stop anyone or get beaten up!

  • Super! (Score:5, Funny)

    by CommieBozo ( 617132 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:18AM (#5900285) Journal
    "Unsophisticated" people being paid twice their wages at Burger King will protect me by spotting terrorists from the privacy of their own homes!
    • Yeah.. great.. Its hard diverting their attention from picking their nose while at Burger King, you think they are going to have the attention span to actually sit and watch something like this, and if they do, will they actually be able to spot anything? Arg.. I can see it already.. I'll be itching my ass in public and some Burger King flunky will report me as having an Anthrax spreading device up my arse. :-9
    • I honestly and completely believe that Charlize Theron is a threat to my homeland. I will watch her home day and night if I have to! That is my dedication to this country!

      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)

    by bedurndurn ( 255521 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:19AM (#5900290)
    Sweet, now I can bid $5 dollars / hour to watch hot co-eds in the shower instead of paying conventional webcam fees. Thank you PriceLine!
    • All we have to do is get some sororities classified as top-secret government installations, and you've got a plan there, bub.

      • Re:PriceLine + Cameras = ?? (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        All we have to do is get some sororities classified as top-secret government installations, and you've got a plan there, bub.


        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)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:19AM (#5900293)
    how about the testing and short training of the TSA screeners at airports?

    You think that these people are any better at looking at Xray machines?

  • look (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Bombah ( 572185 )
    Looks lika a good way to see what is available for theft on those locations.

  • Wow and now we have a nation of lurkers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jj_johny ( 626460 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:20AM (#5900297)
    So instead of asking people to go back to simple things like know how your neighbors are, sit outside on the stoop and other local things, they are going to ask some Barney Fife wannabe to look at random cameras. Thanks and count me out.

    sig globally, act locally

    • RTFA, people. The proposal is to install these cameras along the perimiter of sensitive facilities like power plants, etc. If the camera sees a change from one snapshot to the next, the images get checked by Barney Fife wannabes.

      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
      • > RTFA, people. [...] perimiter of sensitive facilities like power plants,

        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)

        by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:04AM (#5900640) Homepage Journal
        RSFH (Read Some Fucking History). Only in sensitive areas, yes. First that's the perimeter of the power plant. Then the road leading to the power plant is declared sensitive. Then the roads leading to the road to the power plant ... etc. And pretty soon everything within a 100-mile radius of any government or major industrial facility -- which means just about everywhere -- is being watched 24/7, and "suspicious" activity becomes a matter of "j'accuse." The only reason the Committee for Public Safety or the Okhrana or the Cheka/NKVD/KGB or the SS never did something like this was because they didn't have the technology.
        • Yeah the idea of slippery slopes is neat. First it gets used in appropriate discussions. Then it gets used when it might somewhat be related. Then it starts getting used when it only seems a little out of place. And pretty soon everyone and their mother is making up rediculous slippy slopes to use in every discussion, rendering impossible sane discussions on the pros and cons of anything.

      • Two words (Score:2, Insightful)

        by NoData ( 9132 )
        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.

        Slippery slope.

  • Sounds great (Score:5, Funny)

    by pubjames ( 468013 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:22AM (#5900311)
    Although many security details need to be handled carefully, it's a weird enough idea that it might actually work...

    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!

  • reality TV (Score:2, Funny)

    by oooooops ( 32349 )
    so basically he's going to have the Reatlity TV channel online and you can win fun prizes at home by spotting suspicious activity ...
    • If they paid bounties for spotting suspicious activities, people would try to create such activity themselves in order to report it. Like how offering bounties for killing pest creatures can encourage people to farm them.

  • Moderation system (Score:5, Funny)

    by maharg ( 182366 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:23AM (#5900323) Homepage Journal
    I can see it now

    +5: Suspicious

  • So we're counting on 'unsophisticated users'? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pop n' Fresh ( 411094 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:24AM (#5900327)
    Forgive my ambivalence about having 'unsophisticated users' watching a webcam, trying to outsmart and detect people who have been training in the desert for the past 5 years on how to AVOID being detected.

  • Homeland security already fading (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KD7JZ ( 161218 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:26AM (#5900348)
    I just heard that they are laying off a bunch of TSA screeners in our state. Americans are very reactionary. My father talks about how "9/11 changed everything". Time rolls on, eventually we will get complacent/get back to normal (depending on your point of view).

    • At least it should be. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by danro ( 544913 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:20AM (#5900787) Homepage
      Besides, why should the average american be concerned for homeland security?
      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)

    by Niles_Stonne ( 105949 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:27AM (#5900351) Homepage
    I nominate this for the:

    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)

    by Richardsonke1 ( 612224 ) * on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:27AM (#5900352)
    I don't know where everyone is getting these crazy fears that it's 1984 playing out in real life. These cameras are protecting the private or secure public areas. We're talking about power plants and dams here. No one that wants their privacy needs to be in these places. I mean, its not like they're going to put one up in the middle of town square. That would defeat the purpose entirely. The picture would change every five seconds, so someone would have to LOOK at it every five seconds, much less find someone on there who might be a terroist.

    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)

      by Beautyon ( 214567 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:54AM (#5900559) Homepage
      These cameras are protecting the private or secure public areas.

      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)

        by Stephenmg ( 265369 )
        I agree, the camaras in stores dont seem to stop the shop lifters, they could care less. Do they actually think a terroist is going to care about a camara that someone "might" be paying attention at any given time.
    • Its all about slow encroachment, and acceptance training, of the public.

      Once this is accepted as normal, its a smaller step to accepting mass monitoring private citizens as the norm.

    • State College, PA had a tiny riot a few years ago in a section of the town that features a dense cluster of apartment buildings catering to students, referred to by some as "Beaver Canyon."

      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)

      by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:54AM (#5901045) Homepage
      The PROPOSED use of the system seems reasonable enough.

      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.

  • Helpdesk Warriors! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sirch ( 82595 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:29AM (#5900364) Homepage
    I can see all the arguments for and against this system, and while it is obviously well-intentioned, I find it a bit disturbing. It's all well and good sticking security cameras around the place and putting trained security individuals in charge of watching them, but this sounds like a helpdesk thing - they get a small amount of "training" and then they're released out into the real world, with a wizard to help them.

    "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)

    by kipsate ( 314423 )
    And exactly how could a million camera's have prevented the september 11 terrorist attacks?
    • It's not about preventing the last terrorist attack, obviously. 9/11 happened because no one was watching for it. Why would any terrorist worry about getting boxcutters past airport security now when they could dump an assload of ricin into a big city's reservoir and watch hundreds of thousands of people croak?
      • Why would any terrorist worry about getting boxcutters past airport security now when they could dump an assload of ricin into a big city's reservoir and watch hundreds of thousands of people croak?

        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)

          by TGK ( 262438 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:58AM (#5901071) Homepage Journal
          Damnit, where the hell are my mod points?

          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)

        by danro ( 544913 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:51AM (#5901021) Homepage
        Why would any terrorist worry about getting boxcutters past airport security now when they could dump an assload of ricin into a big city's reservoir and watch hundreds of thousands of people croak?

        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.

  • Old idea (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MrFredBloggs ( 529276 )
    This was mooted at least 6 years ago. In the incarnation I heard, people swapped details with people in another time zone, so that while one person was asleep/at work, someone else in another country could occasionally check a webcam image in the corner of their screen. The two people need not know each others name or exact location, if they were worried that the person watching would take advantage of knowing when the watched person was home.

  • Sounds dangerous (Score:2, Interesting)

    by JorenDahn ( 670270 )
    Seems quite worrisome to me... There's a great potential for abuse when dealing with this many people on this scale. And it also could provide easier access to sensitive information for terrorists. The problem with terrorists is that they can pass as normal citizens. So who's to say that they won't sneak themselves in to these programs to give themselves access to these areas?

  • The obvious. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:30AM (#5900375)
    This will work for about five minutes, after which lists of every camera location will have been posted online.
  • $8-$10 per hour to sit at home and wait for a web-cam shot to analyse? How do they know whether the watchers are watching the web-cams or just reading slashdot? Could you really sell something like this to an insurance company as a security measure, when there's no real way of ensuring that the system is working reliably?

    • Re:Stupid idea (Score:2, Funny)

      by British ( 51765 )
      $8-$10 per hour to sit at home and wait for a web-cam shot to analyse?

      Ha in S0viet Jennicam, you pay 8-10$ to watch webcam!

  • Everything old is new again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by watchful.babbler ( 621535 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:32AM (#5900389) Homepage Journal
    I'm unaccountably reminded of the "red scare" of the 1950s, when ordinary people had the power (and often the incentive) to turn in their neighbors and co-workers for the smallest of reasons: the recently-released transcripts of the McCarthy hearings include one factory worker who was monitored by the FBI because his shop foreman noticed him reading a library book on Siberia.

    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?

  • Previous work by George Orwell supercedes the patent on this process, right? Thank god, we don't have to worry about seeing this topic as a privacy AND copyright issue.

  • Suspicious? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Stiletto ( 12066 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:33AM (#5900402)

    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?

  • Big-freaking-deal (Score:3, Interesting)

    by foo fighter ( 151863 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:35AM (#5900416) Homepage
    it's a weird enough idea that it might actually work...


    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.
  • Become a government informer
    Betray your family and friends!
    Fantastic prizes to be won!
  • Then there's the Big Brother issue. When Walker unveiled his plan earlier this year in an off-the-record talk at the fabled TED tech conference, the idea of people-scanning cameras on the Net "creeped everybody out," says one attendee. Walker thinks this is a bogus issue, since cameras will be pointed only to areas where people aren't supposed to be. "I don't see a problem with that," says Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. But Rotenberg worries about whether a future iterati
  • What the govt (priceline?) should do is provide a way for user-written image recognition programs to compete with the humans for accuracy.

    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)

    by WegianWarrior ( 649800 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @08:49AM (#5900529) Journal

    ..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.

  • This concept has already been described (after a fashion) in this on-line comic strip The Spiders [e-sheep.com]. In this SF tale, America invades a fundamentalist state with the aid of "spiders" which are web-based mobile cameras with VOIP.
  • Try this new system out for yourself here [blackmire.com].
  • Aren't we already doing this? Monitoring, closeley, those suspicious blonde twins with the double headed "bludgeoning device"... Right-o. Someone in the US once said (to paraphrase) "we don't need the government to curtail our rights, the citizens are doing a fine job of that already".

  • Short-term good, long-term evil (RANT) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Crash Culligan ( 227354 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:03AM (#5900634) Journal
    Yes, it's another casting of that "slippery slope" problem. Whoop-de-frigging-doo.

    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)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 )
    Workers at these facilities will now ALWAYS be on camera. They were on camera before, but it was just internal security cams. Now, your ugly mug is online, all the time. Yuck.

    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)

    by Forkenhoppen ( 16574 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:07AM (#5900661)
    It's already been done in Britain, iirc. I remember seeing a short piece on a news program a while back about some poor couple who were living on a city block with a camera mounted on the pole outside. Because of where it was mounted, it had the freedom to turn to look through their windows. The piece was about how they were trying to get whomever had installed the camera to put limiters on it so the people operating the cam would stop peeping on them all the time.

  • I've got a better idea (Score:5, Funny)

    by kipple ( 244681 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:13AM (#5900726) Journal
    let's put a webcam at every corner in public places, then put a sign under the webcam stating its ip address (maybe ipv6 would help).
    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)

      by anthony_dipierro ( 543308 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:57AM (#5901062) Journal

      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

  • The point is putting cameras at places where normal people aren't supposed to be (nuclear power plants, chemical plants). In that context it makes more sense. Yes it is a little 1984 and could be misused.

    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)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:19AM (#5900780) Homepage
    There are a few things wrong with the system as he describes it.

    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.
  • How long until the X10 PATRIOT Act?

  • Not limited to terrorists (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gone.fishing ( 213219 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:25AM (#5900818) Journal
    This morning I heard a local shock-jock lament that we should treat gang-members as terrorists after all, they hurt far more people than terrorists do... I understand and to some degree agree with this logic.

    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.

  • This doesn't sound as bad as I first thought, but it also doesn't sound very effective.

    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)

    by wardk ( 3037 )
    this is a great idea. put one in every room in Washington DC and State Gov't building that lobbyists exist in. if the lobbyist is making policy (like energy, etc) then we'd have a record without having to sue the VP's office.

    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

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