Vigilant Space
@
Edinburgh University School of Architecture
30 . 01 . 09
alex haw : atmos
Home Office website
Q: “Is surveillance effective?
A: In 1996 and 1997, lawful interception of communications played a
crucial part in police operations leading to:
-1200 arrests
-seizure of nearly three tonnes of class A drugs, and 112 tonnes of
other drugs, with a combined street value of over £600 million
-seizure of over 450 firearms
In June America’s Departments of Justice and Homeland Security
and a grouping of American police chiefs released the “Suspicious
Activity Report—Support and Implementation Project”.
Inspired in part by the approach of the Los Angeles Police
Department, it urges police to question people who, among other
things, use binoculars, count footsteps, take notes, draw diagrams,
change appearance, speak with security staff, and photograph
objects “with no apparent aesthetic value.”
INSTITUTIONS GOVERNING REG. OF CCTV & SURVEILLANCE:
1a Home Office &
1b Information Commissioner
-produce the overarching guidelines and codes
2a Councils
-operate with above guidelines
2b Constabularies
-control e.g. licensing agreements
-each police force at liberty to set its own requirements;
some simply refer people to ICO
3 Other institutions
-CamerWatch
-CCTV User Group
-Many cities, shopping centres and even car parks
have their own Codes of Practice
Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) CCTV Code of Practice
-Signs should be placed warning the public that they are entering an
area surveyed by CCTV
BUT:
(1c) an exemption may be found... for any of the following purposes:
a) prevention or detection of crime
b) apprehension or prosecution of offenders”
...
NB
These are the very first principles justifying the use of surveillance in
the 1st Data Principle of the DPA98;
the majority of actions covered are exempt from the laws that are
supposed to govern them.
The Data Protection Act 1998 protects individuals’ information held in
organisational data systems.
Domestic properties are exempt.
You have rights when being spied on by organisations but not
by homeowners; the privacy of voyeurism is sacrosanct.
P300 "Brain Fingerprinting": A Very Freaky Future Indeed http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/01/p300_brain_fing.html
We may not be far away from the thoughtcrime described in 1984.
“Apparently, your brain creates a very specific electrical brain
response, known as P300, when one is presented with information
that is already contained in one’s mind.
If you recognize the information (i.e., it is familiar to you), you will
have a P300 response. There is no way to avoid this; it is a
biological/electrical stimulus response event. Sort of like a lie
detector, only (reportedly) always accurate.
P300 is already being used in court as admissible evidence by both
defense and prosecuting attorneys.” On March 5, 2001
Pottawattamie County, Iowa District Court Judge Tim O'Grady ruled
that Brain Fingerprinting® testing is admissible in court.
Hsinchun Chen, head of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the
University of Arizona says “sentiment analysis”, which he performs
for American and international intelligence agencies, is an emerging
and booming field.
The goal is to identify changes in the behaviour and language of
internet users that could indicate that angry young men are becoming
potential suicide-bombers.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a lobby, says the list
maintained by the Terrorist Screening Centre at the FBI now has
more than 900,000 names, with 20,000 more every month.
Abdul Bakier, a former official in Jordan’s General Intelligence
Department, says that tips to foil data-mining systems are discussed
at length on some extremist online forums. Tricks such as calling
phone-sex hotlines can help make a profile less suspicious.
“Meat tagged in readiness for crime surge” 20 October 08
Alan Hyder
“Retailers preparing for a rapid rise in crime due to the credit crunch
are placing electronic tags on expensive cuts of meat.”
COTS Dust
GOALS:
• Create a network of sensors
• Explore system design issues
• Provide a platform to test Dust
components
• Use off the shelf components
COTS Dust - RF Motes – Atmel Microprocessor
– RF Monolithics transceiver
• 916MHz, ~20m range, 4800 bps
– 1 week fully active, 2 yr @1%
N
S
E W 2 Axis Magnetic
Sensor
2 Axis Accelerometer
Light Intensity
Sensor
Humidity Sensor
Pressure Sensor
Temperature Sensor
1 Mbps CMOS imaging receiver
10cm
200m
Field of Viewof Single Pixel
5mm
2 km
CollectionLens
OpticalFilter
64x64CMOSImager
10mW, 1mrad
Photosensor
Signal ProcessingA/D Conversion
SIPO ShiftRegister
CRC CheckLocal Bus Driver
Off ChipBus Driver
Pixel Array
2D beam scanning
laser
lens
CMOS ASIC
Steering Mirror
AR coated dome
Dust Delivery
• Floaters
• Autorotators
– solar cells
• Rockets
– thermopiles
• MAVs
LO
AD
MO
TE
Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) http://www.acpo.police.uk/
“There are no definitive performance criteria for video to be
legally admissible. It is for the court to decide whether the pictures
are accepted, and this is done on the grounds of relevance to the
case, reliability of the evidence, etc.
The appropriate resolution, level of compression and number of
pictures per second will be determined by what you wish to see in the
recording.
A good way to ensure that the system is capable of achieving
the requirement: do a subjective test.”