Eye in the sky: Did Baltimore’s aerial surveillance program go too far? So this technology was developed for Iraq fallujuh during Iraq war to help track IED bombers. Basically a plane or drone flies 15000 feet in the air and takes a picture every second. With that, once an event happens you can track backwards to see where the instigators originated. It was tried in Jaurez Mexico and during a demo helped identify and land an entire cartel based upon one cop murder. Was tried in a couple of US cities and they were able to solve crimes. In spite of that they didn’t move forward due to privacy concerns. This is frustrating in that you could literally save thousands of lives and millions of dollars due to crime, but people don’t like it because it seems icky. I heard about this on a radiolab podcast episode.
Everything is subject to abuse, and there's always a weighing of interests. Whenever I'm in London, I'm struck by the proliferation of CCTV cameras. They are crucial to solving crime there, and my English friends are not in the least bothered by them.
Do you like the idea of a surveillance society? I don't necessarily want to live in the panopticon, even if we are theoretically 'safer.'
I just don’t get hung up in most of these so called privacy issues. You can literally allow people to not have family members murdered, but people are scared their privacy will be violated. What privacy? There are lots of cameras, your phone and gps tracks everywhere you go, you have financial transactions everywhere, extensive web history. Listening to the podcast one young female talked about after 9/11 hearing fighter jets over NY made her sick to the stomach. To me it would have the exact opposite effect. I love seeing those things.
I’d rather be surveilled than live in fear (in some places). Seems to me being willing to sacrifice thousands of lives so that you can feel “free” (when you are really already being survellied in other ways) is akin to saying getting vaxxed is a violation of your privacy even when it may save others. Strikes me as really selfish.
Privacy? Im thinkn freedom. Id rather swim the seas and take my chances with sharks, than live safely in a flippn fish bowl. Or aquarium if you prefer.
I doubt you believe vaccination should be forced on anyone though, so to me it would seem the same as surveillance, which I have much less power to refuse as an individual.
Yeah, and they arent even doing that out of some abstract fear of crime, but I suppose the instincts are the same, a drive toward maintaining order.
More grist for my theory that some people would rather create a massive police state than address the economic issues which create crime, all to just not pay slightly higher taxes
All the while people walk around all day long with their phone gps on. It would be pretty easy to come up with pretty much everywhere you went in the last year.
It’s a slippery slope. There isn’t much crime in N Korea, maybe some petty but not much violent crime. There are certainly less intrusive methods to combat crime than literally filming every second of every day and hitting rewind
yes that is the choice of the person holding the smart phone not a dictate from an overlord. It’s not new concept. There is no shortage of people throughout history willing to trade their liberty for security, real or perceived
Ok, I think the main problem besides all the surveillance issues is that this technology doesnt prevent crime, it just makes some crimes easier to solve (and once people understand how it works it probably becomes less effective or spawns innovation among criminals). The things that actually prevent crime are going to be proactive, not reactive (the legal system is necessarily reactive). I suppose you can be 'proactive' by treating people like criminals before they commit crimes, but the best way to be proactive is to address things like poverty and inequality which create the incentives for crime in the first place. Unfortunately I think there are quite a few people who dont want to be proactive in that fashion, because the first way inconveniences them less.
All the more reason we don't need an 'eye in the sky' watching us. We already have security cameras everywhere and cellphones and other devices that track us. It's harder to get away with crime than ever. You should be happy.
If s always a sliding scale. If you live in a big city you are being watched. Security cameras, atms, traffic light cameras, etc…. Bell even in most neighborhoods you have ring doorbells every couple of doors/driveways. I question how much crime it prevents vs how much it helps in solving a crime. Does the eye in the sky’s top home invasions? Premeditated murder? Random mugging? Or just make it easier to close the case? I live off grid about half the year. I like being away from people. There is a danger in it… yes. We have had run ins with meth heads twice and a wayward hippie druggist looking to steal things once. But we don’t rely on the government to protect us out there so we don’t need any surveillance from the government.
