Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
failedarchitecture.com
Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
1–10 of 36 posts
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#2Look. I'm the target audience- a bleeding heart liberal with a long history of wokeness to the point of annoying others on this site, and a deep mistrust of surveilance. Even _I_ an exhausted with arguments like
"Citizens of Ancient Rome started to install an oil lamp in front of every villa to prevent tripping or thefts, and an enslaved person would be designated to watch the lamp—lighting was already paired with the notion of control through slavery. "Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#3Look. I'm the target audience- a bleeding heart liberal with a long history of wokeness to the point of annoying others on this site, and a deep mistrust of surveilance. Even _I_ an exhausted with arguments like "Citizens of Ancient Rome started to install an oil lamp in front of every villa to prevent tripping or thefts, and an enslaved person would be designated to watch the lamp—lighting was already paired with th…
No kidding. I got to the same paragraph and closed the tab. The author seriously buried the lede. What exactly is a “smart streetlight” and why is it of concern? I have no idea.
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#4Look. I'm the target audience- a bleeding heart liberal with a long history of wokeness to the point of annoying others on this site, and a deep mistrust of surveilance. Even _I_ an exhausted with arguments like "Citizens of Ancient Rome started to install an oil lamp in front of every villa to prevent tripping or thefts, and an enslaved person would be designated to watch the lamp—lighting was already paired with th…
The wikipedia article has no references for that Greek/Roman thing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_light#History
OTOH 'Link boys' make sense; article explains "In thieves' cant, a linkboy was known as a "Glym Jack" ("glym" meant "light")"
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#5the tldr seems to be that these streetlights are being presented as automated maintenance systems, but are being used by the police for surveillance. This is worrying, I would definitely support a law that said all government owned audio/video/3d/biometric/etc recording devices must be clearly marked as such. I might also be in favor of the same law for privately owned devices that are recording public areas.
I didn't really read the whole thing though, it was painful, I wouldn't have made it past the first line but I saw that this thread seemed to be bumped by mods. so I assumed it must be for a reason.
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#6Is here interesting after the first 4 paragraphs. Written by an architect not a tech so that maybe the bias of giving history first.
The conclusion is the ability for passive surveillance using multiple vectors and ability of public sector to combine with other data is open to abuse.
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#7Definitely feels like Toronto made the right choice by not making themselves into a Google-ified IOT city.
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#8the tldr seems to be that these streetlights are being presented as automated maintenance systems, but are being used by the police for surveillance. This is worrying, I would definitely support a law that said all government owned audio/video/3d/biometric/etc recording devices must be clearly marked as such. I might also be in favor of the same law for privately owned devices that are recording public areas. I didn'…
What was your signal that it was bumped by mods?
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#9the tldr seems to be that these streetlights are being presented as automated maintenance systems, but are being used by the police for surveillance. This is worrying, I would definitely support a law that said all government owned audio/video/3d/biometric/etc recording devices must be clearly marked as such. I might also be in favor of the same law for privately owned devices that are recording public areas. I didn'…
Geez, streetlights ARE surveillance technologies. They get put in so people can see each other and surveille them.
And what do they suggest police are going to do? Track the movement of political dissidents? Ain't no one got time for that kind of spy shit. People need to stop imagining they live in a dystopian movie.
The one realistic use/abuse I can see now is tracking homeless people and keeping them from stopping anywhere overnight. Still way too much effort for most police, but maybe in some gated-community-wannabe location.
Re: Smart streetlights are casting a long shadow
#10"The streetlight was originally designed as a surveillance device and has been refined to that end ever since then."
I'm sorry, but I don't think any normal definition of "surveillance" would include a lamp that simply allows those in the area to see their surroundings better.
Distributed observation by unconnected individuals without record keeping just doesn't seem to come close to a normal idea of "surveillance". And usually there's an element of surreptitiousness to the activity that's implied.