Chicago sleepwalks into the surveillance society with "intelligent" networked cameras

Ryan sez, "Chicago is touting their new 'intelligent' 700+ camera network as being able to flag suspicious activity without human intervention, based on operator-defined criteria within the video frame. Video is archived for 30 days in a 60 terabyte storage vault. Great."

They're everywhere. They're multiplying. Several thousand cameras are now capable of sending live pictures into a room - the operations center at the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communication.
There's no way that human beings can effectively watch all those feeds, so enter video analytics. By programming algorithms, you give the camera intelligence.
"We actually can tell the camera, 'This is precisely what we're looking for.' The camera will watch for that circumstance, and when that circumstance occurs, comes back to the human being whether they're watching that camera or not - with an alert," said OEMC director Jim Argiropolous.

Someone needs to come up with a name for this fallacy, the "untouched by human hands" fallacy: "the computers are impartially finding the bad behavior -- there's no human bias or prejudice at work -- we just program it and then it proceeds with perfect platonic precision to catch all the bad guys." Link (Thanks, Ryan!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Tenn

What grade?
anthony

Inner city style high school.
Tenn

A good place to make changes. I’m a junior, and if I had the fortitude and didn’t already hate my peers enough, I’d consider teaching solely because my greatest role model remains in our lame little school to teach Chemistry and life lessons. What subject or are you an administrator? You sound like the sort of person that there need to be more of in schools- openminded and committed to true freedom.

Then again, I’m a red-stater, so most of the school staff in our area is very “monitoring makes the world safe!” and “Praise God!” My perspective may be skewed.
Antinous

My perspective may be skewed.

Like you actually ever show up for class.
anthony

I teach visual art. It’s going to be awkward if you turn out to be a student of mine. I salute you either way!
Stefan Jones

Can they be programmed to ignore acts of violence by authorized personnel?
Jeff

I for one Hail our new monitoring AI overlords! (Remember that please when you take over the world. I’m sucking up to, my new Silcon Gods.)

Seriously, if it’s good enough for London, it’s good enough for a great midwestern city like Chicago. A watched population is a polite population. Don’t worry kids, identity camouflage is right around the corner. Everyone will be recording everything around themselves all the time. We will do so because it will be easy. In a world where everyone wants to be a star, everyone will be, at least in their own reality web drama. What better way to keep your kids safe than with a ‘watcher’ that you implant in their arm?
Tenn

I’m not that inner city of a school. Suburb, really, and our visual arts teachers are female and buoyant and while I respect them, I doubt their presence on bOING.

Antinous, I do too show up for class. Or did so enough in the past to have gained a perspective!
anthony

Well, I live in a pretty small town now, but “inner city style” is codified language for high poverty rate and over 70 percent African American. I started teaching in Chi-town, though.
WeightedCompanionCube

It’s like a kind of automatic alarm, isn’t it? If you rely on something like this to guide the human operators, two things will happen:

Bad: Stuff will be missed. Signatures and heuristics aren’t perfect. I don’t expect great results.

Good: Direct abuse of the system by the operators may actually decrease. If the operators don’t directly control the cameras, they can’t aim them into bedroom windows or follow someone just because they don’t like the way they look. And I seriously doubt anyone would program a system to find something like “woman in shower” or “dark skin in white neighborhood” because if it’s actually programmed into the system, it can be reviewed and there’s accountability.
cherry shiva

“Someone needs to come up with a name for this fallacy”

how about ASS: artificial sentient stupidity
Antinous

I do too show up for class.

After I graduated from High School, I added up all my sick days and I was absent more than three years out of twelve.
Tenn

I figured it was high poverty and +70% minority of some sort. Our school district is just 50% minority (majority of the minority being hispanic). We are well funded. I am lucky.

I have watched various shows lauding arts teachers in inner city schools. I will now think of you as the hot teacher chick from one of them (can’t recall the movie name.) Miss Anthony. :)
Tenn

After I graduated from High School, I added up all my sick days and I was absent more than three years out of twelve.

And how did you graduate?
t3knomanser

Well, once someone finds out what the “triggers” are for suspicion, it’s an easy system to DDoS. I imagine when the city council gets the bill from the police department, things will change.
Nelson.C

As usual, America far outpaces Britain. In London, you have a bored bloke watching twenty or thirty monitors, so you have a one-in-twenty chance of getting away with it, whatever it is. In Chicago, you have a dumb, badly programmed machine watching you, guaranteed to set off the alarms as soon as you do something unexpected. Ah, progress.
mybaboonheart

Accountability in Chicago? Ha! Also this report fails to mention that the police cameras, in a addition to being bulletproof also have gunshot detectors. shits crazy
WeightedCompanionCube

Nelson.c – in the US, a bored bloke who has to handle 20 or 30 alarms at once. You’re one of them. Think you’ll get caught?

Outpaces in futility, perhaps.
sluggo

I foresee choreographed ‘fights’, ‘muggings’, and ‘carjackings’ becoming a fun new sport.

Then in true flashmob style, walk away like nothing happened.
ill lich

A computer program to flag suspicious activity?

I’m sure there are a myriad of ways for pranksters to screw with that.
baskoner

I guess you’d have to live in Chicago to realize how good this is for its residents (such as myself). You might be surprised to know this, but it’s amazing how many rapscallions in this city need a constant eye on them.

I’ll start worrying when people start getting arrested because the camera thinks they did something they didn’t. In the meantime, bring on the surveillance and down with Chicago’s omnipresent aggressive panhandlers, reckless jaywalking crackheads, and stinking drunks.

And if you still think the cameras are wrong, tell that to my friend who spent two months near death in a coma because some bum decided that the best way to cover his tracks after stealing his cash was to bludgeon him and leave him for dead.
rageahol

baskoner:

welcome to city life, whiner.
proto

Perfidy by peeping
aileinduinn

Surprised? Chicago is probably one of the most corrupt places in the country.

I hate Chicago with a passion. I don’t go visit friends who live there anymore, I won’t fly out of there anymore, I simply won’t go there.

I would literally have to be paid to live there.

The best 16 dollars I ever spent was on tolls from Chicago to move back to Wisconsin.

The solution to failed public policy is not more guaranteed-to-fail policy. Yet you are willing to trade away your rights for the illusion of safety. You deserve the coming storm that will destroy everything you ever valued.
THIS
BarkingSpider

@#10- baskoner

Jaywalking? Really? Even reckless jaywalking seems not reason enough to “bring on” a surveillance system.

My point here (one that I wish was so common sense that it was hackneyed) is that when we turn over our security to this sort of surveillance we often do so with the argument that “if you’re doing nothing wrong, you should be worried.” What we fail to grasp is the likely shift of what is considered “right” by the powers that be.

I don’t live in Chicago, so beyond poking fun at your comment on reckless jaywalking, I can’t really speak to how bad things are there. But I have to believe that there are other more effective solutions that do not set our society up for a huge fall: Neighborhood watches? Neighborhood patrols with Police? Building a greater sense of community?

On a tangential note, is 1984 still taught in school?
BarkingSpider

“if you’re doing nothing wrong, you should be worried.”

Freudian slip FTW. That should read “shoudn’t
Tenn

On a tangential note, is 1984 still taught in school?

No.
Antinous

And how did you graduate?

Back in my day, before there was air or gravity, you got credit for intellectual and scholastic merit. There weren’t a whole lot of rules about how you achieved it. If you got a 100 on everything, nobody complained about attendance.
Nelson.C

Weighted @8: I think we’re on the same page on this one.
noen

In the meantime, bring on the surveillance and down with Chicago’s omnipresent aggressive panhandlers, reckless jaywalking crackheads, and stinking drunks.

The solution to failed public policy is not more guaranteed-to-fail policy. Yet you are willing to trade away your rights for the illusion of safety. You deserve the coming storm that will destroy everything you ever valued.
Tenn

I wonder if I coerce the student body into wearing onions on their belt, if perhaps we can propel the school administration into the belief that they are in ancient history?

Then, maybe, I won’t be so fearful for my school year. I’m ‘making up hours’ by spending two hours daily in Detention. Which is retarded because I would be much better served by going to Physics tutorials, but you can’t make up hours with a teacher.

I hate bureaucracy with a deep passion born from the center of a nebula.
wynneth

@5 & @9 – exactly.
Takuan

can you sue these imbeciles?
namewithoutwords

I’d like to suggest “Sussman’s Fallacy” as the term being sought.

via the (famous) AI Koan:

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
What are you doing?”, asked Minsky.
“I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe.”, Sussman replied.
“Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky.
“I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky shut his eyes.
“Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
Antinous

You can probably sue under ADA. You have a clinical health condition that keeps you out a lot. If you make adequate grades, detention is harassment. A lawyer letter would likely be sufficient to get them to stand down.
Tenn

I haven’t got the time to sue. My grades are not adequate at the moment because I am trying to complete the assignments I missed, many of which I forewent simply so that I could STUDY for the AP exams, as the other classes were a nuisance, and some of the assignments I was given did not, in my opinion, further my ability to perform well on the tests I just took. I know my own study habits and I made a priority call that does not gel with the school’s.

I think it will be alright in the end. My doctor never gave me proper notation, but I’m taking the diagnosis slip up to the Principal who I am on good terms with, and negotiating at the earliest opportunity.
anthony

Ragehol, that’s a heartless comment. Some of your own medicine.

This is a sticky issue. I lived in Chicago for about ten years and in some bad neighborhoods, too. My brother lives in Englewood. When I go back to visit, I do notice the strobe-light monitors in the intersections….I have to say not in a bad way.
My current town also has a surveillance system up and running to catch drunk frat boy shenanigans. I am not a fan of the police state and I sure do love Orwell, but I have noticed lots of Americans unable or willing to behave in a civil manner. Some of this makes sense.
Takuan

Tenn-kun, other countries exist.
Tenn

So they do. I have tentative plans to go to Germany after college.
Sutra

Ugh, Chicago, my home, what are you up to??? I was reading/watching this and this guy over my shoulder was like, “What’s the problem?” I dropped my jaw and would’ve smacked him but I didn’t considering I just met him this morning.

What’s the problem? Are you kidding me, guy?

I can see how CCTV can help Chicago but not in any substantial manner. I imagine that people will be accused of crimes they didn’t commit because someone who shares their likeness robbed a bank.

“Don’t tell us you didn’t do it, we’ve got video proof!”

What do you say to that? Video confirmation is probably held at the same level as DNA evidence and probably even a plea of guilt.
Antinous

I haven’t got the time to sue.

What kind of American are you?
Tenn

What kind of American are you?

Native.
Tenn

Anyway, off to bed so I may stand a chance of attendance tomorrow. Best of dreams to you all!
Takuan

Good night child, I send my aspect to guard thee.
Digital Artz

I imagine this is all getting us used to having
an identifying micro chip put into our brains
time future.
Many decades ago we could see this starting during
arguments about the power of “Sesame Street” in
getting kids to think and be part of the TV.
Older friends then said this would make us accept
Big Brother CCTV as a friend not an intrusion and
here we are.
davotoula

“And I seriously doubt anyone would program a system to find something like “woman in shower” or “dark skin in white neighborhood” because if it’s actually programmed into the system, it can be reviewed and there’s accountability.”

I on the other hand suspect this is EXACTLY what would happen.

When was the last time you were given a chance to audit any “security procedures”?
Tenn

I am not a fan of the police state and I sure do love Orwell, but I have noticed lots of Americans unable or willing to behave in a civil manner. Some of this makes sense.

The thing is, that’s where they get ya. It makes sense. Of course it does. Wouldn’t we all like a bit of peace? I sure would…

But- people are always going to be uncivil. The only way to prevent that is to instill so much fear in them that they trundle along like automatons. By monitoring the world, we’ll be breaking a lot of eggs for the world omelet. Everyone is going to be watched, not just the bad folk.
anthony

I know, I know….
anthony

You are correct, Tenn. Sometimes the quick fix is more tempting than sticking it out for the long haul, especially when one is concerned for friends and family.
We need some kind of deep cultural examination and subsequent effective action to change this crap. By crap I mean the old man’s inhumanity to man.
Tenn

We need so many things. One day, I hope they happen. A quote from something I wrote which I think applies;

A governing body is trustworthy only when it is infallible. As no such body exists, none is trustworthy.

You and me, man. Social overhaul. Let’s get out the big (figurative) guns.
anthony

…Yes…Trying my hand in the public school system.