
San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance - User23
https://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2019/03/san-diego-has-been-turned-into-massive.html
======
zzzcpan
This is what so sad about tech, it gives those in power unprecedented
abilities to control the population. Essentially heading back to slavery
through technology with no way out for the slaves anymore.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It also gives tech workers unprecedented abilities to fight it. Software
engineers need to take social responsibility for what they create.

~~~
Benjammer
I don't think new feats in society are accomplished by holding groups of
individuals to task and making each one play by the rules. We need new ideas
and new government structures to fight the tide or get ahead of it and inspire
people with smart and informed leadership. Shaming ambiguous highly paid
developers doesn't do anything, because you are criticizing a _job role_ , a
"slot" in society, when you think you are criticizing a person. If you get one
software engineer to "take responsibility," another will simply step into
place and gladly accept the high paying salary to code without ethics.

We need government regulation.

~~~
bitL
The whole point of importing H1Bs from areas with questionable past ethical
standards in economical distress (India, China, ex-Soviet union, EEU etc.) was
for some managers to have a workforce that could do dirty jobs a regular
US/WEU citizen would refuse to do (and do it cheaply ofc). You can still
observe it even in FANG that is specifically poaching people from EEU for
dirty work (e.g. building internal censorship tools led by
Ukrainian/Romanian/non-US devs).

~~~
cbnotfromthere
_" You can still observe it even in FANG that is specifically poaching people
from EEU for dirty work (e.g. building internal censorship tools led by
Ukrainian/Romanian/non-US devs)."_

Romania is not and never was part of the EEU aka Eurasian Economic Union
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Union)

~~~
bitL
Alright, I meant Eastern (members of) European Union (EEU) vs Western (members
of) European Union (WEU). You could see it sometimes abbreviated that way.
Didn't occur to me it denotes Eurasian union (I thought that one was largely
defunct anyway?).

~~~
cbnotfromthere
_" I meant Eastern (members of) European Union (EEU) vs Western (members of)
European Union (WEU)"_

If so then you made another mistake :-) as Ukraine is not a member state of
the European Union.

 _[EEU vs WEU] You could see it sometimes abbreviated that way. "_

Please don't read my comment as aggressive but I have NEVER seen such
abbreviated form.

 _" Eurasian union (I thought that one was largely defunct anyway?)"_

This entity is very much alive and kicking (usually as much as Vladimir Putin
wants it to be). The EEU presidency is held throughout 2019 by Armenia.

~~~
bitL
The "Ukrainian" portion was related to "ex-Soviet Union" I mentioned there
(cough) ;-) No need to be so academic here lol

With Eurasian union I thought that Ukraine basically killed it and since then
Kazakhstan is trying to get rid of cyrilic and Lukashenko is all in to be
either the Russian boss and Putin successor or moving Belarus towards EU, so
the original Eurasian union idea is toast. At least from my outsider
perspective (never visited any ex-Soviet Union countries, just knew some
people from there, both pro and anti-western ones).

------
mark212
This blog post is highly misleading and inaccurate. Access to the video is
very limited and subject to strict protocols for use in investigations. And
the audio recording capacity isn’t live because the City has no use for it.

The SD Reader isn’t a very trustworthy source. Here’s the U-T’s extensive
piece on the topic:

[https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-
conversatio...](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-
conversation/sd-san-diego-street-light-sensors-camera-for-law-enforcement-
use-20190319-htmlstory.html)

~~~
kelnos
I frankly do not care how limited access is, or if parts of the hardware are
disabled. I do not trust governments to act transparently.

There are a few telling things in the article you link to that make it clear
that the government values expediency over protecting citizens' rights.

The first notable one is the process: a police officer has to submit a request
to view video records... but to whom? It looks like just to their superiors?
If they _actually_ cared about protecting people's rights, the request should
have to be made to a court, in the same way a warrant needs to be requested.

The city points out that the audio recorders aren't active because they don't
have a use case for the audio. They claim that they would engage the public
before activating them, but... is that really true? And regardless, I would
not want that activated, ever. Any use case audio recordings of public spaces
could possibly have... I do not want that. Having the hardware there and ready
is just too tantalizing to public officials.

I've been thinking about moving to SD at some point, but this kind of thing
really gives me pause.

~~~
mark212
“Too tantalizing to public officials”? Please explain. The city is run by nine
elected members of the council. For what possible purpose would they wish to
have audio recordings of street traffic?

~~~
orhmeh09
When they have purchased machinery with microphones and set out policy and
procedure like the following: ‘The policy adds that "audio from the City's
intelligent streetlight sensors may be accessed exclusively for law
enforcement purposes with the Police Department as the custodian and
departmental owner of these records."’

That means they are planning to use audio recordings.

------
username223
Wow, GE doesn't even bother with euphemism:

> In short, CityIQ transforms a city's lighting infrastructure into an all-
> knowing, data intelligence network. --
> [https://www.currentbyge.com/cities](https://www.currentbyge.com/cities)

"Hey, cities, want to install our Panopticon?"

At least BriefCam took the time to encode their site in PR-speak:

> BriefCam is the industry’s leading provider of Video Synopsis® solutions for
> rapid video review and search, real-time alerting and quantitative video
> insights. --
> [https://www.briefcam.com/company/about/](https://www.briefcam.com/company/about/)

------
rhokstar
Since the introduction of cameras used at intersections to penalize stop light
violators (made famous by a former mayor who ran a red light while getting a
blow job from his mistress), San Diego has always been experimenting with
surveillance technology especially thereafter. Those intersection cameras have
been minimized from county wide implementation at its height.

Being a border city and a major military hub for the Navy and Marines,
surveillance technology being developed by businesses here have been a
response to these types of organizations' needs and challenges.

I could see backlash as this surveillance tech permeates the county and
extreme edge cases are brought to the surface to be used as weapons for
curbing implementation.

~~~
chiefalchemist
> "Those intersection cameras..."

Fun fact: Intersection cameras have been proven to cause more accidents, as
more people slam on their brakes to avoid a ticket then coast through the
light.

~~~
jnty
That sounds exactly like an urban myth along the same lines as 'seatbelts kill
more people than they save'. Has it ever been proved?

Worth also noting that rear-end crashes are generally less dangerous than
t-bones. For similar reasons, roundabouts can be preferable to standard
crossroads even if they result in a higher number of collisions.

~~~
rsync
"That sounds exactly like an urban myth along the same lines as 'seatbelts
kill more people than they save'. Has it ever been proved?"

I hope you will look further into this - you may be interested to learn (I
was) that a nearly perfect intervention for red lights being "run" is to
lengthen the yellow signal.

It costs nothing and works as well, or better, than red light cameras - and
with none of the artificial, unexpected driving behaviors that can cause rear-
end accidents.

[http://saferstreetsla.org/679/case-studies-longer-yellow-
lig...](http://saferstreetsla.org/679/case-studies-longer-yellow-light-times-
improve-safety/)

[https://www.motorists.org/issues/red-light-cameras/yellow-
li...](https://www.motorists.org/issues/red-light-cameras/yellow-lights/)

~~~
asdff
Yellows have been shortened on purpose to raise revenues from tickets. If
cities cared about accidents and congestion, we'd have less lights and more
traffic circles, but that means less tickets and more thought and effort than
lowering the yellow light time.

------
sroussey
5G and it’s need to remake all the light and utility poles in the city will
bring the cameras and microphones. It’s a compelling use case to a government,
regardless of privacy implications.

Microphones are used in a lot of places to figure out and triangulate the
location of a gunshot. Cameras can track cars and people automatically.

Not sure what to do about it though. Maybe multisig with community leaders and
police with a court available as an override? Just spitballing. Everything has
a negative unintended consequence.

~~~
komali2
>Microphones are used in a lot of places to figure out and triangulate the
location of a gunshot.

Apparently, those don't work too well.

Spotshotter works in principle, but police departments are getting as low as
50% false positive rates, and can't really do anything if they do get reports
of gunshots anyway - they turn up and the shooter is gone.

[https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/After-Too-Many-
Shots-M...](https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/After-Too-Many-Shots-Missed-
Fall-River-Mass-Ends-Deal-with-ShotSpotter.html)

~~~
village-idiot
Former Chicago resident here. The spotshotters were a very effective way to
determine what neighborhoods you didn’t want to walk through at night.

~~~
onion2k
You'd hope that would lead to more public investment in education and services
in those areas to alliviate crime and make them safer, but somehow I doubt
that's what happened...

~~~
shard972
More? At what point will they look at all the money being spent and the blood
being spilled and maybe consider investing in public schools doesn't magically
get rid of an infestation of gang violence.

~~~
onion2k
_At what point will they look at all the money being spent and the blood being
spilled and maybe consider investing in public schools doesn 't magically get
rid of an infestation of gang violence._

If your question is "When do you decide to stop spending and give up on
people?", then I think the only civilised answer is "Never".

~~~
dredmorbius
Excellent response.

------
maxaf
Has anyone else read the novel Golden State by Ben H. Winters?
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39599913-golden-
state](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39599913-golden-state)

He describes an extrapolation of our world's recent history, one in which
"reality" is captured for posterity by omnipresent cameras. Citizens record
the details of each day by taking written notes of encounters, in addition to
stamping pages of their day book with "conversation stamps". These stamps
establish the presence of a person in the company of another, thus allowing
"reality" to be pieced together later on. In short, citizens of the Golden
State consider reality precious, and go to great lengths in order to record &
preserve the events of each day, however minute they may seem.

Ben Winters is a great author, one of my favorite sci-fi craftsmen. He had me
hooked throughout the novel, in no small part because I kept alternating
between two emotional extremes. On one hand, I was abhorred by such systemic
invasion of privacy. At the same time I saw obvious benefits that stemmed from
systemic, society-fracturing lies having been banished from the Golden State
universe.

~~~
stordoff
As someone who has OCD related to this ("Citizens record the details of each
day by taking written notes of encounters" could almost describe me), I'd be
interested to know if he addresses the downsides that could result from this.
You become more worried about capturing the moment, so you can't live _in_ the
moment. It's almost self-defeating -- because you are worried that if you have
this interaction, you will forget to make a record of it, you end up not
having the interaction at all (you limit interactions to things that will fit
in short term memory). Regardless of how highly you value reality, you end up
missing out on it, losing the very thing you valued in the first place.

~~~
maxaf
I'm familiar with the feelings you describe, but the Golden State's citizens
appear to be unconcerned with this. The book's timeline is preceded by
unspecified terrible events which have destroyed the old world. These events
are said to have been triggered by lies, and it's this terror of repeating
past mistakes that keeps citizens in line.

------
sonnyblarney
The most shocking thing is that this could happen apparently without any
public discussion or awareness.

There is simply not enough crime in most US areas to justify this.

This should only be allowed in hyper-specific scenarios wherein there is an
evident need: airports, borders, very high crime areas, international
conferences, maybe around Capitol Hill and White House etc..

And it should be marked / publicized.

------
maxxxxx
It's just a matter of time until we have country-wide full surveillance. It
will be the perfect tool for anyone who wants to create a dictatorship. The
thought police and the telescreens in 1984 will look primitive and weak in
comparison. I think there is no way around it.

Add to that drones to keep the population under control and there is huge
danger we'll have a pretty bleak future.

~~~
panic
This sort of defeatism isn't helpful. Surveillance technology doesn't sprout
up from nothingness; it's built on a culture and a political/economic
environment which can be changed.

~~~
HashThis
US Congress doesn't represent US citizens. 84% of the time, the congress
person that wins in that district raised the most money. Corporations and the
wealthy provide that money to get congress people who represent THEM, not US
citizens.

US Congress doesn't represent US citizens. So nothing changes if moneyed
interests want US citizens to live under surveillance.

~~~
starik36
Except when this correlation is wrong. Such as when Trump won with less than
60% of the money spent by Hillary Clinton.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...](https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-
campaign-fundraising/)

~~~
f-securus
Targeted ads/disinformation campaigns are very effective

------
shittyadmin
Maybe this will be viewed as too anti-social, but has anyone considered doing
laser based attacks on these? Lasers seem to be able to damage camera sensors
fairly easily and permanently and as they operate in the visible light range
should be hard to block. Could make a system like this prohibitively expensive
to operate.

~~~
unstatusthequo
Until they arrest and fine you for damaging government property...

The way to fight this is with votes or in courts, which may not be effective
in short term but doesn’t land you in jail.

~~~
pugworthy
Neither votes nor courts enabled this - governments just did it, and will just
do things like this without asking (nor sometimes checking).

The challenge in a way is how can we ever vote for or fight against (in court)
things we don't even know exist sometimes?

~~~
bilbo0s
To be fair, the people of San Diego _voted_ their government in. So in my
view, they got what they deserved.

I'm not sitting on a high horse or anything. I mean hey, I'm from Wisconsin.
We're literally the nation's corruption _measuring stick_. But _we_ voted our
politicians in, so we deserve what's happening to us.

I'm just holding San Diego to the same standard. If you hadn't voted them in,
this wouldn't be happening to you. Best advice I can give you? Vote in some
new guys who will pass new measures to get rid of the cameras.

~~~
djeikyb
1\. the folks who did this weren’t unanimously voted in by san diego residents

2\. the folks who did this did it secretly, without consent

deserves? i’d rather push for what ought to be than justify the current mess.

~~~
another_comment
>> the folks who did this did it secretly, without consent

This. I've lived in San Diego for 50 years and this was done in secret.

I'm contacting the ACLU to try and get a lawsuit going. This is appalling.

------
blackflame7000
I live in San Diego and frankly, I hate the new lights because they simply
aren't as bright and there are fewer of them. I can't run outside after work
during the winter because the streets are dark now.

~~~
trhway
With modern LED the small battery powered headlamp I have on a headband is
like a headlight of the cars of the past :)

~~~
01100011
Headlamps can be dangerous because the shadows are in the same plane as your
vision. I gave up using them for hiking because they didn't help me see drop-
offs. You're better off with a light in your hand or on your waist.

~~~
fbonetti
Just get a headlamp that can be angled down.

~~~
usrusr
Does not change the fact that the light source is very close to the observer,
and to make it worse higher than the observer. Both are quite bad for
detecting the structure of the ground.

~~~
zaroth
Where would you want the light to fix this? Somewhere else you could wear it
on your body? Torso, thigh, ankle?

~~~
usrusr
Torso would probably be good, any deeper and you get too much shadow in
depressions or behind bumps, dosage matters.

But you lose head aiming into curves, so maybe somewhere in the jaw region
might be interesting. You'd need an entirely new approach to fixing for sports
that don't already have full face headgear, but the usual forehead position
isn't exactly fashionable either (historically this position comes from mining
I think, where the shadow/structure effect isn't wasted when it works on the
ceiling instead of on the floor).

------
crazynick4
> "..disparately impact communities of color."

Just want to note, to be fair here, the "communities of color" have next to or
no active cameras installed (according to the map in the article).

That said, this is sad but not surprising.

------
SEJeff
If you're into citywide streetlight sensor networks, Chicago undertook a huge
initiative dubbed the "Array Of Things":

[https://arrayofthings.github.io/](https://arrayofthings.github.io/)

It was specifically designed to not have cameras however, to assuage privacy
advocates.

~~~
lexicality
That very clearly has both cameras and microphones.

It claims the data is local to each node, but you've only got their word about
what firmware is running on each node.

~~~
SEJeff
Sorry, they claim it can't be scraped by the city. I guess we'll see :/

------
mullen
Life long resident and native born San Diegan here. This is not meant to be
sarcastic or dismissive but this is the City of San Diego we're talking about.
City of San Diego has a pretty good history of being completely incompetent.
No matter what nefarious intent that you might think the City has, they are
way to incompetent to do any of it. This type of system is only useful to non-
idiots.

~~~
dsl
> No matter what nefarious intent that you might think the City has, they are
> way to incompetent to do any of it

They already (incompetently) shared access to real time licence plate scanning
with federal agencies.

------
BubRoss
How does anyone who lives in San Diego get to see the live camera and data
feeds? Surely a city in the US didn't create a public surveillance network
that takes the information and makes it private.

~~~
themark
It sure seems like it.

[https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2019/feb/20/san-
diegos-s...](https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2019/feb/20/san-diegos-
street-lights-spy/)

"...when a request under provisions of state public records law was sent to
the city on January 3 to obtain data generated by a single so-called smart
streetlight installed on a Market Street light pole, the response was
repeatedly delayed.

“The City has to conduct a search for records, examine records, consult with
another agency, or compile data in order to determine whether it has
disclosable records,” said a January 11 message.

“Pursuant to Cal. Government Code section 6253(c), the City needs to consult
with multiple departments having substantial interest in the determination of
the request or among two or more components of the department having
substantial subject matter interest; such consultation shall be conducted with
all practical speed. Therefore, the City is taking a 14-day extension in which
to conduct this consultation. We will notify you on or before January 25
whether the City has disclosable records."

Come January 25, the city said it still wasn’t prepared to turn over the
records.”

------
pie_hacker
I find it frightening that local governments in the U.S. are installing
microphones to spy on their citizens in public.

~~~
Shivetya
it is more frightening how quickly citizens of most countries willingly give
up their privacy and freedoms to their government over the promise of a cookie
or promise of keeping other people away from the same cookies.

politicians in the West excel at exploiting fear and jealously to obtain more
authority, divide and conquer.

The US would only end up in dictatorship through court packing or a moral
authority faction taking over; by moral I do not mean religious. pretty much
look at countries where politicians declare a group of haves to be illegal or
unjust and you get the idea.

~~~
toomanybeersies
> politicians in the West excel at exploiting fear and jealously to obtain
> more authority, divide and conquer.

I don't think that's a trait unique to politicians in the West, and in fact
I'd say that Western politicians tend to exploit fear and jealousy less than
those in the developing world. You've got ethnic cleansing going on in
Myanmar, ethnic and religious conflict in Kashmir, and the extrajudicial
killings of drug dealers and users in the Phillipines, to name a few
instances.

------
lstroud
If this has been created by government agencies, then the data should also be
public. Once the data about what politicians are doing and saying becomes
public, the program will end. :)

~~~
mfoy_
That's not how it works, as history has shown us.

------
ralusek
Did the citizens request it?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Request what? The surveillance system? No. That said many on HN where strong
proponents of it when it was announced because it was marketed as providing
data the city government could use to make improvements.

~~~
bilbo0s
Improvements to what?

Serious question.

~~~
blackflame7000
Traffic congestion by studying the build-up of traffic at certain lights

~~~
decebalus1
I call bullshit. Pneumatic road tubes have been around for a while to gather
data about traffic flows.

~~~
blackflame7000
Cameras can be at every intersection all the time and can adapt in real-time
to emerging traffic patterns (ie a ballgame ending and a stadium of people
hitting the road at once) as well as traffic changes over time from
environmental changes

~~~
_underfl0w_
...which would required correlating what they're seeing with outside data.
That's not something /inherent/ to the device.

If you're going to correlate datasets, you could just as easily do it with
your sports/weather data and pneumatic tube data.

~~~
blackflame7000
A camera is cheaper and a camera can measure speed as well as slowdowns and
stoppages that a tube simply can't do. A tube was the old way but if you're
going to make a new device a camera makes more sense.

------
cronix
Here's a few more:

[https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/05/22/amazon-sold-
pow...](https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/05/22/amazon-sold-powerful-
facial-recognition-software-to-the-washington-county-sheriff-and-gresham-
police/)

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-
predict...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predictive-
policing-tool-new-orleans-nopd)

------
exabrial
One of the rare times I would condone the destruction of property and make it
expensive for the city to operate these things. The US government has 0
authority to monitor its citizens without a warrant.

------
bitL
ctOS from Watch_DOGS at its infancy... Should be fun soon!

I liked one scenario they had for self-driving car crashes and the dilemma who
should be killed in the event of an unavoidable accident. Car quickly
retrieved the social score of each probable victim from a ctOS database and
optimized crash setup to do the lowest harm to subjects with highest social
score. No more car occupant vs external person nor owner vs manufacturer legal
responsibility dilemma. Sounds really prophetic. Can't wait to see it in
action! /s

------
macawfish
How long is it gonna be before somebody majorly abuses this system? And how
would anyone be able to tell?

~~~
Not_a_pizza
Which are you honestly more worried about? Someone abusing the system to know
where you are when, or not having a system in place when some lawless asshole
decides to start doing very nasty things to people and/or property?

Repeat after me: Ever single hierarchy has abuses.

Build a society that has more than one person, and I'll show you a society
where someone takes advantage of something more than they probably should,
either legally or ethically.

------
JohnFen
Note to self -- don't go to San Diego.

------
mnw21cam
Empty page over here. What's the story?

------
segfaultbuserr
Big Light is watching you!

------
DigiMortal
New Zealand arrests individuals that violate their censor laws. And NZ is
considered western and advanced.

------
scarejunba
Excellent stuff. This is the future: universal surveillance with auto-
detection of crime. It's going to be very nice. We can't fight dictatorships
by disallowing this tech. We have to fight it elsewhere. This is a good thing.

