New “Intelligent” CCTV Cameras Can See and Hear
June 25th, 2008One camera for every 14 people in the UK.
Via: Telegraph:
Researchers hope the smart cameras will have a dramatic impact on crime detection and prevention by cutting response times and ensuring that more incidents are caught on tape.
A team at the University of Portsmouth has already developed software which enables cameras to spot visual clues to anything from violent crime to vandalism, by looking for tell-tale signs such as someone raising their arm suddenly or even a snapped car aerial.
Now the artificial intelligence software is being taught to recognise sounds which are associated with crimes, including breaking glass, shouted obscenities and car alarms going off. Cameras which ‘hear’ the sounds will automatically swivel to the direction they have come from, and will alert the person monitoring the system to a possible crime in progress.
Dr David Brown, who is leading the team at the university’s Institute of Industrial Research, said: “We have already developed visual recognition software, but the next stage is to develop audio recognition software to listen for particular sounds.
“We can teach the cameras to listen out for things like a swear word being shouted in an aggressive way, or for other words which might signify a crime taking place. The camera will be able to swivel to the direction of the sound at the same speed someone turns their head when they hear a scream, or about 300 milliseconds.
“People monitoring CCTV images have banks of screens in front of them, and this system helps them by alerting them to something the system has spotted. The person looking at the screen can then quickly identify if it is a crime taking place, or whether the camera has simply picked up on something innocent, like a child screaming, and act on it accordingly.”
Although the new system will inevitably raise concerns about the unstoppable march of the “surveillance state”, with one CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK, Dr Brown said there were no plans for the system to record conversations.
The UK is way beyond remedy now. In a rare break from work, I was having a go on a swing today with my wife (as one is wont to) in a small, deserted park in the leafy village I live in and what did we see but CC bloody TV cameras and the requisite warning notices. Why don’t they just come clean and say “Big Brother Is Watching You”.
(I know you were asking a rhetorical question, but…)
The reason why they’ll never say “Big Brother is Watching You” is because as long as they don’t use known forms, they can “get away with” claiming that what they’re doing is nothing like the oppressions we’re all familiar with (real or fictional). So as long as the leader of the United States doesn’t speak German, wear a military uniform most of the time, and have a little black mustache, well, then, how could this be fascism?!
Assuming humanity survives, it will then look back at our era and say, “Ah, THAT’S what fascism looks like” — and when the next new form comes along, they’ll fail to recognize it again. Because, evidently, it’s too difficult for people to realize it’s the “abstracts” — loss of freedom, loss of rights, war- and fear-mongering, and of course, power and wealth highly concentrated in a few hands — that constitute a fascist society.
But I’m being pessimistic. Maybe we will learn, maybe we will recognize it in time. Despite how unlikely that currently seems.