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San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

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Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#191

Post by orhmeh09 »

mark212 wrote: post #86
kelnos wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“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?

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.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#192

Post by godelski »

shittyadmin wrote: post #33

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.

Wouldn't spray paint be a lot easier?

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#193

Post by jdavis703 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #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.

It’s up to us to stop this. Me and many others took time off work to tell our transit agency, BART, not to implement a draconian police state, including facial recognition cameras. BART wound up becoming one of the first (if not first) transit agencies in the US to implement a privacy policy instead [0].

Work still remains though, one BART employee told the press they were considering fake gun turrets that would drop down from the ceiling on suspected criminals. Work still remains to make American culture see the dangers of a police state as more than a punch line [1]

0: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/09/bart-delays-action-on...

1: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/amp...

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#194

Post by olefoo »

maxxxxx wrote: post #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.

Do you have a smart phone?

A telescreen by any other name...

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#195

Post by floatingatoll »

kelnos wrote: post #62
mark212 wrote: 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...

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…

I do care about nuanced use cases, so I’m grateful to upthread posting a source that’s reporting in a tone that contrasts with the pitchfork-waving of the original post. I wouldn’t move back to SD regardless, but that’s not due to the smart lights!

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#196

Post by closeparen »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #109
rhokstar wrote: post #10

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…

> "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.

In California it is legal to be in an intersection on red as long as you entered it on green or yellow. The slam-on-the-brakes effect should at least be smaller than in states where being in the intersection on red for any reason is an offense.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#197

Post by convivialdingo »

zzzcpan wrote: post #138
_bxg1 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The narrative is frequently, "Tech company X's CEO was running secret, morally-questionable project. Rest of the company's engineers upset to find out about it." So far that dissatisfaction has been mostly inert, unfortunately. But I like to think that the typical engineer's morals haven't been as corroded by money as the typical CEO, and that we'll eventually reach a breaking point where things will get so b…

Engineers, like almost all employees, have to work for a living and will build whatever they have to build. Jobs are not easily replaceable for them to be able to take a stand. This means that even highly skilled and highly specialized engineers can't afford to have a problem working on censorship and surveillance tech, they probably find it exciting given all that cutting edge high performance packet processing or m…

>> work for a living and will build whatever we have to build.

No, not all of us do this.

I’ve quite jobs over questionable morals/ethics a couple of times. It wasn’t a hard choice - I applied for a new job and was gone in two weeks.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#198

Post by bitL »

Benjammer wrote: post #64
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 c…

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).

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#199

Post by ocdtrekkie »

dontbenebby wrote: post #188
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Googlers have already left Google on ethical grounds, and many more likely will in the near future. There are multiple organized groups of employees trying to enact change internally, but some who previously did that have already recognized that as futile and left, so presumably more will eventually. Google is already an extremely large company, and I think that many are only just now realizing the problems that…

>I think that Google's available talent pool is shrinking. Many very talented engineers have left, and many new potential engineers would not want to work there. Sure, there are still plenty who do, but I would say their options are narrowing over time. I think you overestimate how skilled you need to be to work at Google. Google has famously put people through enormous hoops to work there, regardless of the complexi…

Sure, any employer can always choose to lower their standards, but wouldn't you argue then, that the quality of their output is also likely to suffer?

The goal here is to ensure their ethical competitors have access to resources they don't.

Re: San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance

#200

Post by Terr_ »

mark212 wrote: post #91
Terr_ wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It’s classified the same as other confidential information. There was a senior detective fired because she mishandled the same class of info on a case, so yeah there are serious consequences for breaking these rules. It’s not at all like corporate policies.

So... No criminal charges, just fired? How is that markedly different?

The subtext of my post was that virtuously rigorous guidelines with no enforcement mechanism are a paper tiger.

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