Video Surveillance

10/10/2012

Newest Video Analytics Technique “Product Recognition” Aims to Judge You By What You Wear

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 4:56pm

I blogged recently about video analytics, the attempt to build intelligence into video surveillance so that cameras can not only record our every move in public, but also in some respects understand what they are seeing. Now comes word of the latest twist in this effort: “product recognition.” As Technology Review reports, a startup called Graymatics

08/20/2012

Artificial Intelligence

Video Analytics: A Brain Behind the Eye?

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:14am

One of the central elements in last week's Trapwire story involves the application of “behavioral recognition,” also known as “video analytics,” to camera feeds. What are we to make of this technology?

In essence, video analytics is a form of artificial intelligence that tries to automatically derive meaning from a video feed. Face recognition, license plate recognition, and red light cameras are each examples of the automated extraction of meaning from a video feed, but what I’m focused on here are technologies that aim to offer more general analysis of behaviors that are taking place in a camera’s field of view. Examples include the tracking of people throughout an area, zone or perimeter protection, determination of (and detection of deviations from) “normal” patterns of movement in an area, and the detection of abandoned objects. (This article at EE Times offers an extensive introduction to the technology.)

07/13/2012

Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

Friday Links Roundup

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 3:26pm

Here are some links that have caught our eye recently:

The FBI’s “Next Generation Identification” biometrics database is starting to plan for the inclusion of iris scans. Iris scans raise more issues than some other biometrics (such as fingerprints) because they can be used at a distance without a subject’s participation, permission, or even knowledge. Hand-held iris scanners are being sold to police around the country for identification uses. We were assured in a meeting with the FBI last year that biometric scans in situations such as traffic stops would not be used to enroll individuals into the database, just to check their identity.

07/27/2012

Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

Friday Links Roundup

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:52pm

A few links that have caught our eye this past week:

Earlier this month in response to the Pauls’ Internet Manifesto I pointed out that the internet “was created by the government.” Monday Gordon Crovitz wrote a column arguing that this was an “urban legend,” and that the internet “reaffirms the basic free market critique of large government.” Since his column went to print, it has been thoroughly debunked by many experts, including Vint Cerf, Robert Metcalfe, Tim Berners-Lee, and even internet history expert Michael Hilzik, whom Crovitz quotes in his column. Media Matters, summing it up, asks whether the WSJ will issue a correction lest a nation full of Journal readers be left with a falsehood.

06/15/2012

Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

Friday links roundup

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 5:47pm

A roundup of some items that caught our eye recently, but we haven’t had a chance to write about.

San Francisco’s MUNI train system is installing new “intelligent” cameras that will track and monitor commuters, raising an alarm when it spots “anomalous activities,” which it will identify by learning over time what is “normal.” It always surprises me when cutting-edge surveillance technologies are introduced in the Bay Area (see BART, phone cutoffs in, and bar cameras). Don’t people know that Northern California is home to perhaps the most tech-savvy and privacy-aware population in the country?

05/25/2012

This Week in Civil Liberties

Free Future Friday links roundup

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:20am

A few links that have caught our eye this past week:

The Citynewswatch blog in Charlotte, NC has a nice post on that city’s new license plate reader program, among other surveillance systems (pity any city that hosts a major national or international event these days). Among many other good points, Citynewswatch highlights the fact that they are being funded via our deeply troubling civil asset forfeiture laws. I didn’t mention it in my blog the other day but the ALPR program being pushed in Utah by the DEA is being similarly funded.

09/17/2012

Police Surveillance

New Public Safety Broadband Network: Tool For A Domestic Secret Police?

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 6:19pm

Police in Tampa used smartphones and tablets to spy on protesters at the Republican National Convention, according to a report today from the National Journal.

Smartphones have proven to be an excellent tool for empowering individuals faced with sometimes unprofessional or abusive law enforcement officers, thanks to their built-in cameras and the constitutional right to record the police. But they also allow the police, according to the article, to blend in and transmit live video of protesters:

07/26/2012

Photographers' Rights

Sympathizing With The Police (Up to a Point) On Photography

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:00pm

This past week we saw a strong step forward on photographers’ rights in Washington DC: a groundbreaking General Order issued by the DC police chief as part of the settlement of an ACLU lawsuit. This is the latest in the ACLU’s ongoing effort to fight for the rights of photographers—especially the right to record police—in courts (and courts of public opinion) around the country.

American Civil Liberties Union