
Cops Tap Smart Streetlights Sparking Controversy and Legislation - sohkamyung
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/sensors/remote-sensing/cops-smart-street-lights
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pluto9
> “There was an expectation when we launched this that it was not a law-
> enforcement system, Says Erik Caldwell, deputy chief operating officer for
> the City of San Diego. “That’s true; that’s not the primary purpose,” he
> adds. “The primary purpose is to gather data to better run the city.”

The doublespeak is comical.

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noodlesUK
It sounds to me like intrinsic concerns aside, the original process for
acquiring footage seemed reasonable. It’s not really any different from if the
police asked for CCTV records from a local business or similar. A huge problem
was the creation of a streamlined request portal where cops could just ask for
whatever they wanted, with little oversight. I’m increasingly curious what a
model for a society where voluntary compliance with production of business
records wasn’t acceptable, and any request for records had to come with a real
warrant, signed by a real judge.

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eie7eu3hrruur
The reasonableness isn't the issue. San Diego has a few groups criticizing
these cameras and if you read between the lines and look at what neighborhoods
and communities they're advocating for it's obvious that the real concern is
that the system will work and catch criminals in high crime neighborhoods.

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wil421
They did something similar with power poles in the city I used to live in. The
power company came up with cameras they would mount to read license plates. If
a car went by with a stolen license plate the cops would get an alert.

In the first month they recovered more stolen cars than the previous year
combined.

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pluto9
While this may be a reasonable use case (though personally I might dispute
that), what's to stop them from using the same system to fine everybody with
expired registration? One crime is obviously more serious than the other, but
how serious must a crime be to warrant the use of mass surveillance as an
enforcement tool? Where does one draw the line?

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DarthGhandi
Isn't that a problem with the law/punishment if enforcement is too effective?

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sharken
It looks like the API is open to the public although it looks like that access
is currently closed, source: [https://www.sandiego.gov/sustainability/energy-
and-water-eff...](https://www.sandiego.gov/sustainability/energy-and-water-
efficiency/programs-projects/smart-city)

Found some perhaps outdated info on setting up Python with the API. I wonder
if camera data is accessible with the public API.

Source: [https://developer.here.com/blog/how-to-render-a-map-of-
san-d...](https://developer.here.com/blog/how-to-render-a-map-of-san-diegos-
smart-city-initiative-with-here-xyz-and-tangram)

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loriverkutya
Just following the general rule, if it can be used for surveillance, it will
be sooner or later, because there is always a crime which justifies the
surveillance.

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huffmsa
> half a terabyte of memory

512gb ssd in each street light?

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arielm
I had the same thought. They say memory, but it’s unlikely they mean RAM here.

512gb of SSD should fit 5 days x 2 HD cameras @ 30fps, so I’m pretty sure
that’s what they mean.

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huffmsa
I thought RAM too, but that'd be overkill even for a workstation I'd try to
slip past the purchasing dept. Though the rest of the article makes it sound
like they're streaming it to a central server, so that's a pretty beefy local
buffer.

I guess it'd be appropriate for a local fallback if the network connection was
dropped. Shouldn't take more than 5 days to get back up.

