“The Subway Bomber’s Journey to 42nd Street, Captured on Camera” (nytimes, November 5, 2018) is a little shocking for showing just how many security cameras are running in our cities these days.
There is a lot of speculation on why crime is less prevalent today compared to 30 or 50 years ago. I wonder how much of the credit for this reduction can be claimed by the developers of the integrated circuit. Now that cameras and memory are almost free, maybe criminals know that it is tough to get away with crime (though plainly Akayed Ullah did not expect to get away with his actions and did not regard what he was doing as a “crime”).
Related:
True. My city has installed license plate readers at intersections all over the town. I think it would be pretty hard to be a successful home thief for very long, these days, with all of the cameras owned by the government, plus the home security cameras.
In addition, during trick-or-treating, we noticed about 1/3 of houses in my neighborhood also have doorbell cameras.
This surveillance is only going to get more pervasive and more powerful (AI, etc).
“Today we are releasing records obtained from 200 agencies, accounting for more than 2.5-billion license plate scans in 2016 and 2017.”
via
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/11/eff-and-muckrock-release-records-and-data-200-law-enforcement-agencies-automated
I’ve also started noticing toll road pass readers mounted on the back side of street signs on non-toll roads.
It’s been like that in the UK for a much longer time.
I’ve long been looking at the UK and thinking how horrible to live under constant surveillance; thank God we’re not like that! Guess I just needed to give us some time to catch up.
It was like that in the Soviet Russia for generations, and with no stinky AI to boot: just grab the guy and beat him up until he recalls everything; and if he does not, gang-rape his daughter and let him watch it. He will confess for sure.