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.”