
San Diego’s Smart Streetlights Yield a Firehose of Data - teklaperry
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/computing/networks/san-diegos-smart-streetlight-network-yielding-a-firehose-of-data
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srcmap
"The city is also getting ready to use the parking data to help people find a
parking space. "

I can see the "real" conversations between the sales person and city
officials. "We can tell you when and where exactly the parking violations is
happening and guide enforcers directly to that car. This is not an expense, it
is a revenue generating machine."

Every $1000 investment generate $xxxx ARR ticket revenue - easy math.

~~~
mc32
And still they won't be able to help law enforcement track down the delinquent
who broke your car window or worse.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The delinquent who broke your car window has a pretty good chance of not
paying whatever fine he's given (and arresting him when they come across him
after a bench warrant is issued still costs money, even if he does eventually
pay). You will almost certainly pay your parking ticket promptly and without
causing the system to incur additional cost. Going after generally law abiding
normal people has a much better ROI.

~~~
kolbe
I hope government doesn’t turn into that. The legal system is supposed to
maximize justice, not revenue.

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dano
San Diego resident here.

One of the more valuable things I would like to see from this network of
sensors is heat maps of traffic issues.

For example, California rolling stops are the stuff of legend, and yet failure
to stop is a significant cause of accidents and injuries. A heat map of the
day of week, time of day, when these incidents are most likely could provide
for selective and useful enforcement.

Alternatively, that same data could be used to indicate that stop signs should
be replaced with a yield sign in a particular direction or convert the entire
intersection to a roundabout to ease traffic flow.

My hope is that the data streams will be used in aggregate and not for
individual enforcement. Trends are your friend.

~~~
retro64
This reminds me of something that happened to me several years ago.

I was in living in a small town and a new cop moved in. He became very
diligent about enforcing the law, and I was pulled over for a rolling stop
along a lonely country road. He didn’t give me a ticket (I wasn’t even sure
what I had done wrong), but he gave me a stern warning and let me go. I
continued on my way (mildly fuming) and came to the next stop down the same
road. So I “stopped” and began taking a left. I was still thinking about this
when I looked to my left, then right and began to pull out. I realized I just
did another rolling stop, so I hit my brakes and this time I actually stopped.

And to my surprise a fast moving car emerged out of my right side blind spot.
He was right at the crossing, and had I continued he would have smacked into
me.

I was in my pickup truck, and the blind spot was caused by an aftermarket
plastic detail that was attached to both windows, so it made the ‘A’ frame 3
times as wide as it should have been, and the angle of the road and speed of
the vehicle perfectly matched the location of this plastic piece, effectively
hiding the oncoming vehicle so I didn’t catch it when I first looked right.

I met that same cop some weeks later at a social gathering and of course went
out of my way to shake his hand in gratitude.

~~~
wrinklz
I had nearly the same experience. Leaving later than usual from work, I had to
exit through an entrance gate, which left my approach to the road at a
different angle than usual. I looked left and right, then started into the
road (doubt that I stopped completely). A car seemed to appear from nowhere. I
had time to stop, but was embarrassed and agitated. The next day I recreated
the scene and realized that the window frame on the right side had a slope
that matched the slope of a section of the road, blocking my view. The speed
and timing of our approaches and the angles of the road and window frame hid
the approaching car from my sight. A full stop would have allowed for the
approaching car to move through my blind spot.

~~~
robocat
Here is an article about an intersection that is at just the wrong angle, and
causes deaths to cyclists:

[http://singletrackworld.com/2018/01/collision-course-why-
thi...](http://singletrackworld.com/2018/01/collision-course-why-this-type-of-
road-junction-will-keep-killing-cyclists/)

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w-m
The idea of collecting lots of audiovisual data all over a city without a
clear plan of what to do with it seems mad, outright dystopian to me.

The article describe how the city suddenly has much more data than what they
needed or wanted and that they have to start training their people in data
science now. There's no mention of privacy at all. I'd see having too much
data ("But it’s like we asked for a cold drink of water and got shot in the
face with a firehose") more of a liability and danger for the people of the
city than a great opportunity.

Public projects should approach problems from the reverse. Figure out what
problem you need to solve, then define what the minimal amount of data is that
you need to capture. Make a plan how to guarantee privacy and anonymity, and
if you have all that, go and put out some sensors. Not the other way round.

~~~
kolbe
This is going to happen sooner or later. The efficiency gains and extra data
to help the justice system come to accurate judgments is far too large. People
will ultimately want it. Or cities that do it will ultimately become so well
run that they will draw talent and capital from cities that refrain. Cameras
and microphones everywhere will win out.

What we need to to is change the laws that these systems will enforce. Laws
that were once designed to punish people harshly because they’re infrequently
applied (like speeding) cannot exist once the enforcement mechanism catches it
all the time.

~~~
Legical
> The efficiency gains and extra data to help the justice system come to
> accurate judgments is far too large

That's an admirable way of looking at the US justice system, but not quite how
it really works. The system is adversarial, and "the truth" is a narrative
advocated by one of the combatants.

Given enough data, a DA could choose which facts fit their narrative and
present a very convincing "truth" to a jury. Unless defendants have access to
the entire dataset and can select their own datapoints to refute that
narrative, they're fighting at an extreme disadvantage.

Picture a scenario where a person gets murdered, and you're on trial because
the only evidence the police have is a smart streetlight log of your car's
whereabouts that show you parked in front of a mob-owned business and later in
front of the victims house. Your truth is a simple dinner and date with the
victims neighbor. The DA's truth is "backed by data".

Yes, this sounds far-fetched and may be an oversimplification, but it's
important to remember that the justice system isn't programming and access to
more general data doesn't necessarily level the playing field.

~~~
kolbe
That's an edgy way of looking at the justice system, but not quite how it
really works.

Discovery explains away most of your hypothetical.

Why is your account only 30 minutes old? You're clearly an old user. Why the
throwaway account?

~~~
wolfgang42
_> Why is your account only 30 minutes old? You're clearly an old user. Why
the throwaway account?_

Why the combative tone, and how are you so certain that Legical is an 'old
user' with a throwaway?

~~~
kolbe
He understands the forum's quoting conventions. He referenced programming. He
responded quickly, and got several up votes quickly but few afterwards (i.e.
it looks like he extinguished his alt login voting power). Lazy username. He's
writing extremist views with no justification designed to undermine confidence
in the US. It just hits a little close to what I would expect from a non
genuine member.

~~~
wolfgang42
I'm not seeing anything in your explanation that couldn't be explained away as
someone who had been lurking for a while and happened to decide to write a
comment for the first time around the time the post fell off the front page.
Besides, from the guidelines:

 _> Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and
is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at
the data._

On the topic of "extremist views with no justification," there are a great
many people in the US who are concerned about the imbalance of power in the
criminal justice system. Handwaving these concerns away with, "it's not a
problem, just hire a lawyer who can go through the pile of data during
discovery" doesn't strike me as an effective argument.

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deogeo
Secure beneath the watchful eyes... only these record audio as well. Hope you
didn't plan on having a conversation in private.

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mrpippy
I remember when San Diego streetlights had radios strapped to them for the
Ricochet wireless internet service. 56-128 Kbps wireless internet was a damn
cool thing to see back in the late 90s/early 00s.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricochet_(Internet_service)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricochet_\(Internet_service\))

~~~
rconti
Oh man, we had a Ricochet model glued to the screen of our on-call laptop in
Seattle in 99-2000.

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vkuruthers
Did anyone see any mention of the networking tech. their using in each light,
e.g. 4G or something else?

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SubiculumCode
The only mention of privacy on that page was the site's privacy policy--the
issue of privacy is more important than that.

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mistrial9
there is a military-connected startup that is making physical devices that can
be placed on vehicles to track them, in that sensor network

