
An entrepreneur wants to track the residents of a high-crime American community - pseudolus
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/mass-surveillance-tech/592117/
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olivermarks
Thinking of UK football 'hooligan' violence, after lots of surveillance being
installed within stadiums, violence enthusiasts organized their confrontations
at areas reconnaissance proved to be unmonitored. Nearby industrial parks
etc... If you are involved in a high risk activity you take steps to outwit
any surveillance. A relative was recently mugged by Sheperds Bush
tube/Westfield London UK in a busy area. She was rescued by an Uber driver but
the incident was orchestrated by a hooded individual who knew where the
cameras were so there is no footage.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _Thinking of UK football 'hooligan' violence, after lots of surveillance
> being installed within stadiums, violence enthusiasts organized their
> confrontations at areas reconnaissance proved to be unmonitored_

At the risk of sounding like a heartless libertarian, sounds like in this
case, the outcome was a net positive. People who want to and are willing to
suffer violence are going to a specialized place to do so, rather than
involving a bunch of football fans who just want to see some people play a
sport.

~~~
jrumbut
Except for anyone who needs to make a living at the industrial park.

There is a difference though between surveillance at a massive event known for
both violence and family entertainment and wide area, persistent surveillance.
I'm OK with a lot of cameras at stadiums, when they follow you home that's a
problem.

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agentultra
Here's a fix: Ban guns, end privatized jails, invest in education and social
programs, and redistribute wealth.

Mass surveillance? That will not end well. There is historical precedent and
plenty of speculative fiction to persuade us away from this path.

~~~
docdeek
I know the article is about the US use case, but cities like London (in
Europe) and Beijing (in Asia) fit most of the criteria you mention and are
incredibly closely surveiled. I suspect that if someone wants to deploy mass
survillance they are going to find reasons no matter the on-the-ground
reality.

Too much crime? You need 24/7 surveillance to cut that. No crime to speak of?
Let’s put cameras all over the place to keep it that way.

~~~
komali2
Is mass surveillance working to reduce crime in the UK? I recall anecdotes
about police throwing their hands up over moped muggings.

~~~
threezero
It appears that it isn’t working, since crime has risen quite a bit in London
for the past few years.

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fallingfrog
The flip side to the public being surveilled, is the police and other organs
of the state being hidden.

Can I make a prediction? I predict that within 10 years, all police officers
will carry with them a little transponder that transmits a signal that
disables the camera of any cell phone within a certain radius.

Think of the difference between the Vietnam war and the iraq war; during the
Vietnam war the press was allowed to take full color images of the whole
conflict, from the inside, showing the burning monks and children and so
forth. In the Iraq war, we got a few blurry pictures from Wikileaks and look
what happened to Assange. From the point of view of the state, us seeing what
they are doing is a problem to be corrected, nothing more. And likewise if
they don’t have total surveillance of us, it’s a problem to be solved.

Edit: apple’s already got the patent:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/07/what-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/07/what-
if-cameras-stopped-telling-the-truth/491150/)

~~~
maxxxxx
That's the thing: A few people in government and private companies will have
full information about citizenry whilst at the same fiercely protecting their
own secrets.

~~~
carapace
I believe that it's fundamentally impossible to "roll back" the degree of
surveillance in our global society in an effective way. Our technology is
already converging to a near-total degree of surveillance. And it's going to
accelerate, for example, auto-autos (self-driving cars) and the road
infrastructure to support them will be able to develop a near-real-time
history of everyone walking down the street.

We can't (I believe) prevent total surveillance but we can certainly control
how the data are used, and we can set up systems that allow the data to be
used without being abused. The system must be recursive. Whatever form the
system takes, it shall necessarily have to be able to detect and correct its
own self-abuses.

~~~
maxxxxx
Agreed. How we can create laws. Weh also can't roll back the capability of
people to steal things or kill each other so we have laws. For example I
strongly believe that face recognition in public spaces should be outlawed
with maybe a few (!) exceptions for law enforcement.

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DeonPenny
Could of just help by giving kids in that community loans to start businesses,
jobs, and opportunity. But no let's not do that cause that seems like welfare.

~~~
bitlax
I assume you mean grants. It's generally bad policy to load money to people
who are unlikely to pay it back. Unless you mean the government should
suppress the interest rate. And those would sort of be a form of welfare. It's
ok to just admit that you like welfare.

~~~
DeonPenny
I mean the same type of investment that an engineer in SV would get or a Kiva
gives out. It bad policy only if theirs no turnkey solution, but if you look
at immigrants have created hair stores, convenience stores, and such it would
be easy to train and capitalize those Americans to do the same in their very
own neighborhoods.

~~~
bitlax
So private individuals lending money to each other on a case by case basis?
Nobody views that as welfare.

~~~
DeonPenny
I assure you that people would and there Americans fully against doing that
because it makes you lazy.

~~~
bitlax
Well then I wouldn't go to those people for a loan.

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solotronics
Just theoretically if surveillance was good enough to catch every single crime
in public, would this be "worth it"? I think maybe some cities/countries would
opt for this such as Singapore and China. I can even imagine cities in the US
would trade privacy for safety.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _Just theoretically if surveillance was good enough to catch every single
> crime in public, would this be "worth it"?_

No.

Problem #1 is unfair and biased prosecution. If every time someone smokes a
blunt, the police get alerted, but only minorities are actually arrested and
prosecuted, that's bullshit.

Problem #2 is that not every crime _should_ be punished, period. Nobody is
harmed if I walk across a street without waiting for a green light.

Problem #3 is that every crime being captured means that literally every
citizen has a backlog of blackmail material waiting for them that the
government could use to pressure them for one reason or another. Commit a more
serious crime, and you could be pressured into a plea bargain in exchange for
not bringing the others to bear. Speak up against an unpopular policy the
government is trying to push, and suddenly you're being arrested for something
that happened three years ago.

No thanks. This would be a nightmare world.

~~~
mhuffman
I agree with arguments #2 and #3

However, just as a thought experiment, wouldn't total surveillance actually
help stop #1?

If there existed video proof of illegal bias, it could be targeted and
stopped, vs now, where you just have to imagine that all groups are committing
crimes at the same rate and police are only focusing on minorities.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> However, just as a thought experiment, wouldn't total surveillance actually
> help stop #1?

How would it? Prosecutors decide who to prosecute based on available evidence.
It's systematic societal bias (and obviously, personal bias, too.)

But it's not like video surveillance would show anything new - we already have
statistics on which groups get sent to jail over minor crimes, and which ones
get slaps on wrists.

~~~
mhuffman
> How would it? Prosecutors decide who to prosecute based on available
> evidence.

You answered your own question!

> we already have statistics on which groups get sent to jail over minor
> crimes, and which ones get slaps on wrists

I think you will find those statistics correlate almost exactly to income and
only overlap race because there is also a correlation between income and race
in the US.

So without video that is hard evidence of actual racism (eg. arresting blacks
and ignoring whites committing the same crime) we have to do a two-step mental
trick to get to the racism. Poor people that are arrested can't afford lawyers
(or good lawyers) and have worse outcomes. Black people tend to be poorer than
Whites, so the courts are racist!

I believe it would be a different case altogether if you had "actual" direct
proof (ie. video that could be counted and compared to outcomes), not just
correlational proof that involves a lot of other noise that may or may not be
racism or that is a couple of steps removed.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> > How would it? Prosecutors decide who to prosecute based on available
> evidence.

> _You answered your own question!_

The point is that they don't have to prosecute everyone. It's hard to not see
this as a willful misunderstanding of my point.

> _a two-step mental trick_

Just what I'm thinking, but mirrored, actually.

> _I believe it would be a different case altogether if you had "actual"
> direct proof_

I think some people will never be convinced. Also, I'm going to stop
responding to this thread. Without direct video proof, there's no way to prove
the two are related.

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OrangeMango
I wonder about the actual workability of this scheme. The cities mentioned
cover a large area and have things like buildings and airports.

Due to the airports, you can't fly too high without air traffic clearance. You
can't fly too low or the buildings are going to block large portions of your
view. From a practical point of view, you are going to be limited to flying
over specific segments of the city, which leaves your and the city that
authorized your flights open to lawsuits claiming that you are profiling
residents of that specific neighborhood.

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sapilla
Hm. So stalking is legal, if you stalk a lot of different people and take
notes. Hm. Hm. Doesn't seem ideal.

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jbattle
There must be some wrinkle of copyright law that offers a (legal) defense
against this sort of unrestrained mass surveillance. It's my cynical take that
courts will be far more respectful of property rights than privacy
rights/civil liberties.

Something akin to the laws that (on paper at least) forbids people from taking
photos of the eiffel tower at night or commercial photos of mount rushmore.

~~~
module0000
The article _barely_ hints at blackmail as a method of getting around those
laws. Near the end, it says:

>Did his company retain video of the Baltimore officials who could approve or
thwart its return?

To me, I read that and think they probably began surveillance much earlier
than they let on. After collecting dirt on people who could stop it, then they
approached them and got their cooperation. I could be wrong of course, but
that's my 2 cents.

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growlist
I have friends and relatives in London but seriously wonder how long it will
be before they are forced to leave - things just seem to go from bad to worse
on all sorts of indicators of quality of life, and the authorities appear
acquiescent in the decline. Whilst in the UK one admittedly can never get very
far away from built up areas, my plan is to get as far away as possible.

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rmason
Here's an idea that I wanted to get a grant to try in Detroit. Take a high
crime neighborhood where the majority of its residents were working class
poor. Give every house a ring doorbell and then sprinkle cameras where lots of
assaults or drug transactions take place. Then have license plate readers on
major streets but don't store the locals license plates in the database.

Would it allow the police to zero in on the criminals causing most of the
pain? Would it make a meaningful difference in these peoples lives?

Bet it would be cheaper than flying over the neighborhood with a drone 24 by
7.

~~~
TACIXAT
That would get wrecked right quick. First is the assumption that every house
had internet for the doorbell. Next is that they wouldn't be broken or spray
painted over. Third, how easy are they to steal? That is a high ticket item.
Lastly, would the residents fear retaliation if they cooperated with police?

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blueyes
One aspect that's not emphasized here is that _the drones are also tracking
the police_. It's a redundant system for body cams.

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Simulacra
This is a bit of an opinion piece, but that said I disagree. We are already
being surveilled by private companies, whether we like it or not, I don’t
think it’s possible to really prevent the government from using that. I don’t
think we’re there yet. I don’t want the government to get that data to watch
us all the time, but I don’t see any way to really stop at anytime soon. It
will take major events and major public exposure before that, but it will only
take one terrorist attack to take us all the way back to the beginning

~~~
dsfyu404ed
> I don’t think it’s possible to really prevent the government from using that

Yes it is.

Private entities do stuff all the time that the government is expressly not
allowed to get away with and we generally hold them to it. Free speech is the
classic example that comes to mind.

~~~
mixmastamyk
As the grandparent alluded, one 9/11 and privacy rules go in the garbage. The
PBS special, "The United States of Secrets" documented this period well.

~~~
jrumbut
And then some major activism and those laws go away. We can't afford a
fatalist attitude to this. It very much is not inevitable that airplanes with
cameras with monitor everything we do. And even if the data is gathered there
may be some ways to control or delay its use for nefarious activities.

It's a choice, and we have a voice in that choice. There is a broad range of
possible outcomes here some much worse than others.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Preaching to the choir here.

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maxxxxx
A lot of people are uncomfortable with mass surveillance but there seems to be
an unstoppable wave to implement it. Same with climate change. A lot of people
want to do “something” but there s no will to really change things so we will
just deal with the consequences in the future.

Get ready for a mix between 1984 and Brave New World.

~~~
vincvinc
Not to be glib, but... that uncomfortable feeling you get when reading about
this kind of stuff?

This is exactly why the GDPR was written into law in the EU.

~~~
maxxxxx
I am all for GDPR. I am not sure if GDPR will stop the trend towards
surveillance though.

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mindslight
Why do they never target the areas teeming with highly organized crime, like
Washington DC, Silver Spring, or Northern Virginia?

