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Six U.S. Cities Make the List of Most Surveilled Places in the World

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Re: Six U.S. Cities Make the List of Most Surveilled Places in the World

#91

Post by homonculus1 »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #67
Bostonian wrote: post #12

If the surveillance leads to the prompt arrest of violent criminals, it may be a good thing. I expect privacy in my home, not while on the sidewalk.

Nobody does have an expectation of basic privacy on the sidewalk and they never have, from mutually disconnected agents like watching neighbors, random photographers, the occasional store camera etc.... The argument isn't even about these things. It's being watched by a vast interconnected network of AI-monitored facial recognition cameras that all feed into a centrally readable series of government databases which a…

Exactly, with the progress of technology we need to codify more nuanced concepts of degrees of privacy to protect the individual from powerful institutions. The standard of "no expectation of privacy in public" was developed at a time when universal surveillance was unthinkable, there is no reason that it should permanently remain the limit for putting constraints on surveillance.

Re: Six U.S. Cities Make the List of Most Surveilled Places in the World

#92

Post by hammock »

omarhaneef wrote: post #5

My first thought was: how is NYC not on this list since it has cameras on every block, and has for decades. And then I saw this: "Atlanta was the only place in the U.S. to crack the top ten, with 15.56 cameras per thousand residents." So they are looking at cameras per 1000 residents. This seems like the wrong way to count. If you point a camera at a block, you see everyone on that block whether there is one person o…

NYC is still not on the list by # of cameras. If you read the rest of the article you see Chicago is #1 in that category, with 35,000 total cameras.

Re: Six U.S. Cities Make the List of Most Surveilled Places in the World

#93

Post by ska »

cameronbrown wrote: post #60
testplzignore wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original article - https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv... - explains the source of the data. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bKBFiVXNzrgtW95j66Tp... shows the source of the camera counts. The population counts came from http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/ . Just the fact that the counts came from two different places make this data pretty dubious. A better methodology w…

> Have some people in each city manually count the number of cameras over some area, then extrapolate from there. This assumes a uniform distribution where one isn't obvious. Some places are bound to have more security than others.

It doesn't really make that assumption unless you assume simple linear extrapolation. It wouldn't be easy but I expect a decent modeling and extrapolation scheme could be devised.

I don't think it matters much though, as a simple count of cameras isn't so useful (especially with them being so cheap now). How many cameras is less important than what they cover and what they are connected to.

Re: Six U.S. Cities Make the List of Most Surveilled Places in the World

#94

Post by cowpig »

cameronbrown wrote: post #60
testplzignore wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original article - https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv... - explains the source of the data. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bKBFiVXNzrgtW95j66Tp... shows the source of the camera counts. The population counts came from http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/ . Just the fact that the counts came from two different places make this data pretty dubious. A better methodology w…

> Have some people in each city manually count the number of cameras over some area, then extrapolate from there. This assumes a uniform distribution where one isn't obvious. Some places are bound to have more security than others.

If you cut up the municipality into uniform sizes, and then randomly sample from that to do your counts it should account for that problem I think.

Re: Six U.S. Cities Make the List of Most Surveilled Places in the World

#95

Post by Tomte »

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #19
omarhaneef wrote: post #5

My first thought was: how is NYC not on this list since it has cameras on every block, and has for decades. And then I saw this: "Atlanta was the only place in the U.S. to crack the top ten, with 15.56 cameras per thousand residents." So they are looking at cameras per 1000 residents. This seems like the wrong way to count. If you point a camera at a block, you see everyone on that block whether there is one person o…

Yeah, it also conflates private/publicly owned cameras. As someone who lives in London, I think we get unfairly portrayed as a surveillance state, because really the vast majority of cameras are inside shops and businesses, not on the street, and not connected to any central databank. I personally don't find cameras like these troubling. Once you get out of central London, most streets don't have cameras on them.

The one time I was in London fifteen years ago, it felt like 1984. I was sitting in a bus and there were at least five or six TVs showing several camera perspectives.

Including one directly at the back of my head, which showed some early signs of balding.

It was the most unpleasant bus ride I have ever had. London is nuts.

Re: Six U.S. Cities Make the List of Most Surveilled Places in the World

#96

Post by olivermarks »

anigbrowl wrote: post #80
mytailorisrich wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are vey few surveillance videos of that incident publicly available. Indeed. That's what I wrote. I think it's a good thing.

Why would you want to be less informed? Such information shouldn't be sensationalized or exploited for profit, but nor should it be suppressed. If you choose to kept in the dark - which is not the same thing as choosing not to look - then you are inviting deception and exploitation.

The lack of presented evidence feeds theories and ideas about what actually happened, strengthens local anecdotal witness word of mouth stories. Epstein is a good example of this, more questions than answers and a sudden silence from the corporate media

Re: Six U.S. Cities Make the List of Most Surveilled Places in the World

#97

Post by bpchaps »

jbattle wrote: post #48
mcbits wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear why the number of cameras in a city would fit a power law, which usually arises from some kind of feedback effect. More cameras -> something -> more cameras. Any ideas for what "something" is? (Also... holy shit, that's a spammy site. Blocked.)

An idea: Cameras are deployed for a few different purposes. The more discrete functions you are trying to accomplish, the more cameras you need. Example 1: Red light cameras. Only needed at specific intersections that have particular characteristics (high speed? high volume? not sure). The distribution of these probably maps more to physical space than population itself as the spacing of red lights is relatively inde…

A few years back I was mugged in Chicago at a busy intersection very close to a train station. Being the FOIA nerd I am, I submitted a FOIA request for the footage of the spot I was mugged at. It came back saying that no footage exists. Probing the investigator, I was told that the camera rotates randomly, and wasn't pointed in my direction. It's very difficult for me to think of Chicago's surveillance with any sort of charity, when they can't even do a single major intersection.

Fun fact: Chicago's city hall has a retention period of zero days on its cameras. Go figure.

Re: Six U.S. Cities Make the List of Most Surveilled Places in the World

#98

Post by marcosdumay »

bpchaps wrote: post #97
jbattle wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An idea: Cameras are deployed for a few different purposes. The more discrete functions you are trying to accomplish, the more cameras you need. Example 1: Red light cameras. Only needed at specific intersections that have particular characteristics (high speed? high volume? not sure). The distribution of these probably maps more to physical space than population itself as the spacing of red lights is relatively inde…

A few years back I was mugged in Chicago at a busy intersection very close to a train station. Being the FOIA nerd I am, I submitted a FOIA request for the footage of the spot I was mugged at. It came back saying that no footage exists. Probing the investigator, I was told that the camera rotates randomly, and wasn't pointed in my direction. It's very difficult for me to think of Chicago's surveillance with any sort…

> Chicago's city hall has a retention period of zero days on its cameras.

Does it mean that they have people watching the camera, warning the street police if they find anything, but do no recording?

Re: Six U.S. Cities Make the List of Most Surveilled Places in the World

#99

Post by swiley »

mindcrime wrote: post #72

Here's what I find interesting, and maybe slightly disturbing: there was a time when if you took a highly techie focused site like this, and posted an article on this topic, a significant portion of the responses would include variations of: "how do we hack these things to disable them?" or "How can we avoid being spotted on camera", or "How about we get together and start physically destroying these things" or "Let'…

There's no place in the world for that kind of person. Most of them have probably given up in some way and new ones are rare.

Re: Six U.S. Cities Make the List of Most Surveilled Places in the World

#100

Post by cameronh90 »

Tomte wrote: post #95
sweezyjeezy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it also conflates private/publicly owned cameras. As someone who lives in London, I think we get unfairly portrayed as a surveillance state, because really the vast majority of cameras are inside shops and businesses, not on the street, and not connected to any central databank. I personally don't find cameras like these troubling. Once you get out of central London, most streets don't have cameras on them.

The one time I was in London fifteen years ago, it felt like 1984. I was sitting in a bus and there were at least five or six TVs showing several camera perspectives. Including one directly at the back of my head, which showed some early signs of balding. It was the most unpleasant bus ride I have ever had. London is nuts.

Five or six TVs on a bus? I live here and I've never seen that. What some busses do have is a single TV screen that shows multiple feeds - either at once or flipping between them. I've never been particularly sure of the purpose or the screen (dissuading violence?), but it is useful for seeing if there are any seats upstairs.
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