The NYT is all hot'n'bothered by this but somehow I'm a lot less sussed than I could be. Part of it is probably that there are plenty of cameras to watch in Newark. Part of it is probably that the probably-lives-with-opiates neighbor kid decided to (a) come into the house and steal my daughter's boots so he could throw them on the roof (b) climb up on the hood of my Porsche and jump up and down so I'm thinking of going full Sliver on this place to match what I have at the business.
I dunno. I would argue that having big brother watching you is deeply dispiriting... but having big brother hand you the binoculars takes some of the edge off. That's just my opinion, though, and I'm curious as to everyone else's thoughts.
There is an interesting bit of dichotomous thinking going on with security cameras. On one hand, we have known of, and see, security cameras throughout our lives since at least the 1980's. These have gone from bulky things with wires, to little wireless things, but the idea is the same: Security Is Watching. Over the last decade, cameras have become web-enabled and ubiquitous. So now anyone can log in to tens of thousands - possibly millions - of unsecured cameras all over the world. Anybody could be watching. So what is the practical difference between the "acceptable" type of Security Camera, where an overweight, $7/hr high-school dropout watches you on camera, versus, a random high schooler in Moldova seeing you buy a Snickers at a corner bodega in New Jersey? People get all worked up about the second one, but not about the first one. And yet, the second one is idle-scrolling, like flipping through channels on TV. But the first one is someone completely unskilled for the job, being paid to actively monitor and judge you and your actions. This is a weird bit of thinking, to be sure. Humans are fascinating, man...
I'm not sure I agree with you. When webcams first became popular, people would set them up on their computer at work, and point the camera at something interesting outside... the Danube River, a bird nest, a coffee maker, whatever. They pointed at public and private areas, were open and available on the internet to anyone with a web browser, and nobody blinked. There were web sites (and really early sub-Reddits) which were dedicated to gathering the best footage from these public cameras, and sharing the video or stills. There were even ads based off this idea, like the one of the cubicle worker going bonkers: I think the idea that people have a problem with a camera being watched by a "professional" vs "some guy on the internet" is a red herring. I don't think that is the problem here. There is something more deeply at work in the psyche...
I'm of two minds. On the one hand, security through obscurity. Nobody's watching that shit. Nobody can watch that shit. It's like the NSA vacuuming up everything everybody says ever. On the other hand, once you're no longer obscure you're no longer secure. Make a move and they can troll back through every camera they've got. I biked through this charming scene earlier this year; they were able to go back through the cameras to see the mutherfucker dragging a body in a suitcase (with a bicycle!)onto the goddamn metro. On or around Feb. 1 in the early morning hours, Gutierrez boarded a Gold Line Metro train in Pasadena with a bicycle and the suitcase containing Alfred's remains, officials said. Gutierrez then got off the train at the Lincoln/Cypress Station and rode his bike to the Home Depot parking lot on Figueroa Street at Avenue 22. Thinking about it, I wonder if what we're all doing is reconfiguring our danger-meters from "nobody saw us, we're good" to "we didn't commit a crime serious enough for someone to troll back through the footage."According to police, Gutierrez dismembered the body at the restaurant.
Sidebar - A friend of mine is putting together her portfolio, right now, and it includes a lot of video and stop-motion animation. The stuff she did even 5 years ago is entirely unusable, apparently. Audio quality. Video resolution. Graininess. Whatever. The NSA (et al) have been collecting data and storing it in massive troves forever. Traffic cameras have been running with no film or recording devices for decades. We may have already hit your threshold of "...crime serious enough for someone to troll back through the footage...", and that threshold is only going to get shorter and shorter as more and more content is created. And then ... what? When storage/assessment becomes more costly than the crime itself, what's the point in recording at all ...? There is definitely some deep human cognitive science to be done here ...
Naah you pick a record threshold by policy. The streams are so tidy at this point that with motion detection you can pack months on very little space. I've allowed my surveillance station to fill up 1TB, no more, and with nine 720P or better cameras, being constantly triggered by headlights and stuff, I can still go back about eight weeks. Thing you gotta keep in mind is if it was built in the past twenty years, and it was worth surveilling, there were tape decks. Their archives were thin. But when those tape decks went away, the RAID arrays came in and they're phat. If I dedicated my 40TB home NAS to recording the cameras I got I could do 24-7 recording of 9 streams at 18 frames for a month before I recycled anything and a 40TB array is Amazon Prime territory.
I’m not at a computer right now but I encourage everyone to read up on the history and progress of Newark from, say, the 50s onward. This is an important move for the city.
A series of questions I think we should all ask ourselves in regard to this experiment. First and foremost, what is you kneejerk reaction to this concept? Why do you think you have that response? What role does privacy play both in regards to human rights as well as the dignity of individuals? Why is privacy something we desire, expect, and value? The standard argument today is that if we're in public we have given up any expectation of privacy. Even in public, shouldn't we be allowed some degree of privacy in the form of anonymity, concealed movements, etc.? Why or why not? How would you feel if at any time a police officer could stop you, ask who you are, where you are coming from, and where are you going? How would you feel if at any time literally anyone could stop you and ask you those questions? How is passive surveillance similar and how is it different? What effects could this system potentially have on the people being watched? What effects could this system potentially have on the people watching? How could it be open to abuse or scandal? What changes could be made to this system that could increase or decrease chances for abuse and how would the change the effectiveness of the system? For example, what if facial recognition software was implemented and the names and information of citizens were prominently displayed for all to see? If this system was implemented where you lived, would it make you think twice about stepping out in public? Do you think you'd be likely to sit down on your computer and see what's going on in your city? Would you feel more safe or less safe? What changes would make you feel more or less comfortable with this system? Why?
They got 62 cameras. You know they're recording 'em all. They exist entirely so that they can use the footage in court when something happens; they might have a dude or two sitting there watching 'em but the whole reason they're there is so they have footage of something when they need it. What's weird to me is I click around and I see legit weird shit. First time I logged on I saw a guy bombing up the street on a quadrunner. Just now I watched a cop pull out from a line of traffic, lights blazing, and a car stopped in the middle of the road with its turn signal on. A few minutes later, some dude running down the street as if he's trying to get away from something. If nothing else, it's not making me wanna move to Newark...
Hm. So maybe we would grow okay with constant surveillance once we have access to it as well? Dunno. Just exploring.I dunno. I would argue that having big brother watching you is deeply dispiriting... but having big brother hand you the binoculars takes some of the edge off.