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Page 20 of 21

Now Everyone Gets to Watch the Cameras

Residents of a trendy London neighbourhood are to become the first in Britain to receive “Asbo TV”—television beamed live to their homes from CCTV cameras on the surrounding streets.

As part of the £12m scheme funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, residents of Shoreditch in the East End will also be able to compare characters they see behaving suspiciously with an on-screen “rogues’ gallery” of local recipients of anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos).

Viewers will then be able to use an anonymous e-mail tip-off system to report to the police anyone they see breaching an Asbo or committing a crime.

Someone knows what the deal is here:

“The CCTV element is part curiosity, like a 21st-century version of Big Brother, and partly about security,” said Atul Hatwell, of the Shoreditch Digital Bridge project.

Certainly this kind of system can be abused, but my guess is that worrying about this is kind of silly:

Andrew Duff, a Conservative councillor, raised concerns about the system being adopted by burglars to check unoccupied properties. “It could be used by dishonest people as well,” he said.

My guess is that this sort of system will reduce the crime rate, as criminals move to neighborhoods without these sorts of systems. But once everyone has this sort of system, criminals will adapt and the crime rate will return to its original rate.

Meanwhile, everybody loses more privacy.

Posted on January 11, 2006 at 7:55 AM • View Comments

Taser Cam

Here’s an excellent use for cameras:

Now, to help better examine how Tasers are used, manufacturer Taser International Inc. has developed a Taser Cam, which company executives hope will illuminate why Tasers are needed—and add another layer of accountability for any officer who would abuse the weapon.

The Taser Cam is an audio and video recorder that attaches to the butt of the gun and starts taping when the weapon is turned on. It continues recording until the weapon is turned off. The Taser doesn’t have to be fired to use the camera.

It’s the same idea as having cameras record all police interrogations, or record all police-car stops. It helps protect the populace against police abuse, and helps protect the police of accusations of abuse.

This is where cameras do good: when they lessen a power imbalance. Imagine if they were continuously recording the actions of elected officials—when they were acting in their official capacity, that is.

Of course, cameras are only as useful as their data. If critical recordings are “lost,” then there’s no accountability. The system is pretty kludgy:

The Taser Cam records in black and white but is equipped with infrared technology to record images in very low light. The camera will have at least one hour of recording time, the company said, and the video can be downloaded to a computer over a USB cable.

How soon before the cameras simply upload their recordings, in real time, to some trusted vault somewhere?

EDITED TO ADD: CNN has a story.

Posted on November 9, 2005 at 8:46 AM • View Comments

Instantaneous Data Grabbing

I think this is a harbinger of the future:

A high roller walks into the casino, ever so mindful of the constant surveillance cameras. Wanting to avoid sales pitches and other unwanted attention, he pays cash at each table and anonymously moves around frequently to discourage people who are trying to track his movements.

After a few hours of losses, he goes to the cashier and asks for a cash advance off of his credit card. The card tells the casino his name, but not much else. As is required by card issuers, the cashier asks for some other identification, such as a driver’s license. That license offers the casino a ton of CRM identification goodies, but the cashier is only supposed to glance at the picture and the name to verify identity and hand the license—and its info treasure trove—back to the gambler.

Not any more, at least if a Minneapolis company called Cash Systems Inc. has anything to say about it. The firm was recently awarded a U.S. patent for a device that can grab all of the data of almost any U.S. driver’s license in seconds and instantly dump it into a casino’s CRM system.

On the one hand, the technology isn’t very interesting; it’s probably just a camera and some OCR software optimized for driver’s licenses. But what is interesting is that the technology is available as a mass-market product.

Where else do you routinely show your ID? Who else might want all that information for marketing purposes?

Posted on November 7, 2005 at 7:45 AM • View Comments

Private Webcams and the Police

Our surveillance society marches on:

Commercial burglaries have risen in Corona in the past few years. At the same time, security-camera technology has improved, allowing business owners to use Web sites to view their shops or offices from home or while on a trip.

Now the Corona Chamber of Commerce and the Police Department are encouraging businesses with such systems to provide police dispatchers a password so they can see what’s going on during an emergency.

How soon before there’s a law requiring these webcams to be built with a police backdoor?

Posted on October 20, 2005 at 3:25 PM • View Comments

Automatic License Plate Scanners

The Boston Transportation Department, among other duties, hands out parking tickets. If a car has too many unpaid parking tickets, the BTD will lock a Denver Boot to one of the wheels, making the car unmovable. Once the tickets are paid up, the BTD removes th boot.

The white SUV in this photo is owned by the Boston Transportation Department. Its job is to locate cars that need to be booted. The two video cameras on top of the vehicle are hooked up to a laptop computer running license plate scanning software. The vehicle drives around the city scanning plates and comparing them with the database of unpaid parking tickets. When a match is found, the BTD officers jump out and boot the offending car. You can sort of see the boot on the front right wheel of the car behind the SUV in the photo.

This is the kind of thing I call “wholesale surveillance,” and I’ve written about license plate scanners in that regard last year.

Technology is fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance. Years ago, surveillance meant trench-coated detectives following people down streets. It was laborious and expensive, and was only used when there was reasonable suspicion of a crime. Modern surveillance is the policeman with a license-plate scanner, or even a remote license-plate scanner mounted on a traffic light and a policeman sitting at a computer in the station. It’s the same, but it’s completely different. It’s wholesale surveillance.

And it disrupts the balance between the powers of the police and the rights of the people.

[…]

Like the license-plate scanners, the electronic footprints we leave everywhere can be automatically correlated with databases. The data can be stored forever, allowing police to conduct surveillance backwards in time.

The effects of wholesale surveillance on privacy and civil liberties is profound; but unfortunately, the debate often gets mischaracterized as a question about how much privacy we need to give up in order to be secure. This is wrong. It’s obvious that we are all safer when the police can use all techniques at their disposal. What we need are corresponding mechanisms to prevent abuse, and that don’t place an unreasonable burden on the innocent.

Throughout our nation’s history, we have maintained a balance between the necessary interests of police and the civil rights of the people. The license plate itself is such a balance. Imagine the debate from the early 1900s: The police proposed affixing a plaque to every car with the car owner’s name, so they could better track cars used in crimes. Civil libertarians objected because that would reduce the privacy of every car owner. So a compromise was reached: a random string of letter and numbers that the police could use to determine the car owner. By deliberately designing a more cumbersome system, the needs of law enforcement and the public’s right to privacy were balanced.

The search warrant process, as prescribed in the Fourth Amendment, is another balancing method. So is the minimization requirement for telephone eavesdropping: the police must stop listening to a phone line if the suspect under investigation is not talking.

For license-plate scanners, one obvious protection is to require the police to erase data collected on innocent car owners immediately, and not save it. The police have no legitimate need to collect data on everyone’s driving habits. Another is to allow car owners access to the information about them used in these automated searches, and to allow them to challenge inaccuracies.

The Boston Globe has written about this program.

Richard M. Smith, who took this photo, made a public request to the BTD last summer for the database of scanned license plate numbers that is being collected by this vehicle. The BTD told him at the time that the database is not a public record, because the database is owned by AutoVu, the Canadian company that makes the license plate scanner software used in the vehicle. This software is being “loaned” to the City of Boston as part of a “beta” test program.

Anyone doubt that AutoVu is going to sell this data to a company like ChoicePoint?

Posted on October 7, 2005 at 1:49 PM • View Comments

Cameras Catch Dry Run of 7/7 London Terrorists

Score one for security cameras:

Newly released CCTV footage shows the 7 July London bombers staged a practice run nine days before the attack.

Detectives reconstructed the bombers’ movements after studying thousands of hours of film as part of the probe into the blasts which killed 52 people.

CCTV images show three of the bombers entering Luton station, before travelling to King’s Cross station where they are also pictured.

Officers are keen to find out if the men met anyone else on the day.

Shoulder Surfing Keys

Here’s a criminal who “stole” keys, the physical metal ones, by examining images of them being used:

He surreptitiously videotaped letter carriers as they opened the boxes, zooming in on their keys. Lau used those images to calculate measurements for the grooves in the keys and created brass duplicates.

[…]

“The FBI is not aware of anything else like this,” bureau spokeswoman Jerri Williams said.

Technology causes security imbalances. Sometimes those imbalances favor the defender, and sometimes they favor the attacker. What we have here is a new application of a technology by an attacker.

Very clever.

Posted on September 7, 2005 at 11:35 AM • View Comments

Cameras in the New York City Subways

New York City is spending $212 million on surveillance technology: 1,000 video cameras and 3,000 motion sensors for the city’s subways, bridges, and tunnels.

Why? Why, given that cameras didn’t stop the London train bombings? Why, when there is no evidence that cameras are effectice at reducing either terrorism and crime, and every reason to believe that they are ineffective?

One reason is that it’s the “movie plot threat” of the moment. (You can hear the echos of the movie plots when you read the various quotes in the news stories.) The terrorists bombed a subway in London, so we need to defend our subways. The other reason is that New York City officials are erring on the side of caution. If nothing happens, then it was only money. But if something does happen, they won’t keep their jobs unless they can show they did everything possible. And technological solutions just make everyone feel better.

If I had $212 million to spend to defend against terrorism in the U.S., I would not spend it on cameras in the New York City subways. If I had $212 million to defend New York City against terrorism, I would not spend it on cameras in the subways. This is nothing more than security theater against a movie plot threat.

On the plus side, the money will also go for a new radio communications system for subway police, and will enable cell phone service in underground stations, but not tunnels.

Posted on August 24, 2005 at 1:10 PM • View Comments

The MD5 Defense

This is interesting:

A team of Chinese maths enthusiasts have thrown NSW’s speed cameras system into disarray by cracking the technology used to store data about errant motorists.

The NRMA has called for a full audit of the way the state’s 110 enforcement cameras are used after a motorist escaped a conviction by claiming that data was vulnerable to hackers.

A Sydney magistrate, Laurence Lawson, threw out the case because the Roads and Traffic Authority failed to find an expert to testify that its speed camera images were secure.

The motorist’s defence lawyer, Denis Mirabilis, argued successfully that an algorithm known as MD5, which is used to store the time, date, place, numberplate and speed of cars caught on camera, was a discredited piece of technology.

It’s true that MD5 is broken. On the other hand, it’s almost certainly true that the speed cameras were correct. If there’s any lesson here, it’s that theoretical security is important in legal proceedings.

I think that’s a good thing.

Posted on August 11, 2005 at 7:52 AM • View Comments

Technological Parenting

Salon has an interesting article about parents turning to technology to monitor their children, instead of to other people in their community.

“What is happening is that parents now assume the worst possible outcome, rather than seeing other adults as their allies,” says Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology at England’s University of Kent and the author of “Paranoid Parenting.” “You never hear stories about asking neighbors to care for kids or coming together as community. Instead we become insular, privatized communities, and look for
technological solutions to what are really social problems.” Indeed, while our parents’ generation was taught to “honor thy neighbor,” the mantra for today’s kids is “stranger danger,” and the message is clear—expect the worst of anyone unfamiliar—anywhere, and at any time.

This is security based on fear, not reason. And I think people who act this way make their families less safe.

EDITED TO ADD: Here’s a link to the book Paranoid Parenting.

Posted on August 3, 2005 at 8:38 AM • View Comments

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