Live data from Hacker News

San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

massprivatei.blogspot.com

41–50 of 292 posts

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#41
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.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#42
post #21

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...

> strict protocols

Much like discussions about corporate policies, I find it helps to ask what happens when the handbook isn't followed...

How many years in prison does someone get for unauthorized access or (if an authorized user) abusing their access for improper use?

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#44
post #2

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.

When cities/states rolled out wide license plate reader networks, wasn't the resulting data also shared with many government agencies, but not accessible by the public? I'm sure the justification for not allowing that data to be public is "well, if we let people access this data, surely it would be immediately abused." And I'm sure that's true. And it's also true that the data is immediately abused when shared only with government agencies.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#45

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.

This could work great mounted to a drone, to operate without being tracked by the remaining surveillance cameras.

The problem is that the stakes are quite high, and a gradually creeping occupation doesn't lend itself to a flashpoint of popular opinion saying enough is enough.

This might be a great nonmurder application for an assassination-market style thing though.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#46
Has anyone else read the novel Golden State by Ben H. Winters? 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.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#47

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…

>"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."

The border already has border security and military bases already have existing security. What specific "needs" and "challenges" does San Diego currently have that are not fulfilled by those existing systems and requires the deployment of all pervasive surveillance throughout the entire city?

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Why can't pneumatic tubes do this?

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#49

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

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.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#50
post #21

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...

SD Reader was, in my opinion, more honest and willing to do municipal reporting requiring attention to detail than the Scripps/Tronc-owned UT, which was often a vehicle for whatever local real-estate magnates wanted to be in print.
Post reply on HN