San Francisco cops want real-time access to private security cameras for surveillance San Francisco lawmakers are mulling a proposed law that would allow police to use private security cameras – think: those in residential doorbells, medical clinics, and retail shops – in real time for surveillance purposes. The US city's Rules Committee was due to vote on the draft ordinance on Monday, and this was pushed out …
Not all units are connected to the Internet and if you're like us who had ours cameras put in fucking years ago, then good job looking at some of our sites.
"There's the person we're looking for for"
Really? Are you sure? We're looking at the same camera and all I can see is a pixelated blob as our cameras are so piss poor. Good luck with making that ID stick in court.
That's what comes from being an early adopter, one that built a system and never upgraded it. Early CCTV that uses real (analog) TV cameras will give quite poor pictures. Modern CCTV has more in common with phone cameras -- digital, high resolution and probably capable of enhancing images.
Once that comes true we really are in a different world
Already exists. Ish..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femto-photography
Furthermore, the team was able to demonstrate the reconstruction of unknown objects "around corners", i.e., outside the line of sight of light source and camera, from femto-photographs.
which is pretty awesome as it can video light travelling in slow motion. But 10^13 frames per second would mean any detective rocking up with a USB stick & wanting the last 48hrs recordings will need to come back with a LOT more storage.
CSI - best hacking scene on telly ever, all done in less than 1min, two people on the same keyboard typing independently at the same time - but only on their side of the keyboard, loads of jibberish, screens with pop ups appearing and disappearing,
hack is thwarted by unplugging the monitor… Basically a documentary.
https://youtu.be/u8qgehH3kEQ
The majority of digital CCTV cameras used by consumers and small businesses are wide angle affairs, which are great for taking in everything going on in their FoV but pretty rubbish at resolving a face past a few metres. You can be cunning and add in a telephoto camera pointing at a chokepoint but this generally requires supplemental illumination because the sensors are so tiny that anything outside of full daylight ends up blurred to the point of uselessness (made worse by a given movement speed traversing more of the FoV per second).
With no bounds on most provisions, misleading and toothless protections on others, no data retention policy, no tranfer of information policy, no access policy to say who can look at what cameras/footage, and no transparency as to who looked at what, why, and how often. Of course there are also no penalties for misuse, so if the SFPD starts live streaming all the data they collect to the highest bidder and every single three letter agency the world over, well shucks, they THOUGHT it was ok at the time.
This is a farce, the people involved are are in no way competent to vote on this policy, let alone write it.
San Francisco in particular has been suffering greatly from a particular sort of crime which could be called "We don't give a ***". This has resulted in excessive low level petty crime which is difficult to prosecute because of a lack of evidence. Surveillance (CCTV) cameras are a useful tool to deter criminals; they're obviously not the only tool (we don't want to end up like the UK where if the crime isn't on high definition video then as far as the police are concerned it just didn't happen) but it will help a bit.
@martinusher “his has resulted in excessive low level petty crime which is difficult to prosecute because of a lack of evidence.”
That lack of evidence being in part down to the low definition of the cameras which live streaming will not change. But of course, if the police are monitoring a live stream and see a crime in progress, they can pop down to the crime in progress toot-sweet and catch them in the act.
But to do that the surveillance can’t be temporary, access obtained when an event is happening. That would require the police knowing the crime was happening and if that was the case surely, they would be responding to the crime not asking for a live feed.
So, what the police are asking for is a long term or permanent live feed just in case a crime happens so they can react to it.
"But of course, if the police are monitoring a live stream and see a crime in progress, they can pop down to the crime in progress toot-sweet and catch them in the act."
If they can get there before the crime finishes, which for many types of crimes is no. But this also relies on someone sitting there watching video for crimes, and they don't do that with their own cameras. You can't watch thousands of video feeds at once. This means that it will either do absolutely nothing for crime reduction or they'll realize this and start advocating for automatic software which makes things even worse. Even if they chose the no benefit option, the room for abuse is still very large.
Maybe it's an excuse to hire 100s or more officers to "watch" the feeds 24/7, who can be redeployed to active policing in an emergency or for whatever other excuses.
Not to mention TBs of data captured and stored per day, since there don't seem to be anything stopping them from storing all the data. New DC needed or a fat cloud storage contract to store everything.
I imagine they will need a "command center" with lots of screens and good internet connection to stream and watch everything. That will be extra money for some contractors.
"Maybe it's an excuse to hire 100s or more officers to "watch" the feeds 24/7"
Or, more likely, minimum wage civilian employees, with minimal vetting.
It also crossed my mind that any private individual agreeing to live stream their doorbell or other security cameras might be doing that 24/7. That could come as a shock for anyone on a capped or otherwise limited BB package. Especially it it's a package that lets you keep going past the cap and then bills by the MB.
The DA was recently recalled in SF over the petty crime problem. The thing is, the answer is very simple: you arrest and incarcerate pepetrators of things like vandalism, trespassing, public defecation, petty theft, and aggressive panhandling. you incarcerate and/or force them into programs (such as one designed to get vagrants off of addictive substances and into self-sufficiency) and those who fail these programs and/or go back to their lives of crime get REALLY incarcerated... for YEARS... keeping them out of THE REST OF OUR FACES and in JAIL where they belong.
If you excuse crime, if you overlook crime, if you simply DO NOT PUNISH CRIME the opportunists come of out the woodwork and do smash+grab robberies until all of the neighborhood stores cannot stay open, and they go elsewhere, leaving people out of work and customers having to go to a department store or megastore instead.
It is this policy and attitude of WOKE DAs (often sponsored by Mr. Soros for their elections), some of whom have been recalled (S.F.) or are in the process of being recalled (LA, others) that is at the CENTER of the crime problem.
Surveilance is not needed. ACTUAL POLICE WORK and DA PROSECUTION of even the PETTY crimes, is.
Recently a store employee in NYC was ARRESTED FOR 2nd DEGREE MURDER when he had been backed into a corner by a thug significantly younger and bigger than him, and the store employee stabbed him in self defense, causing the perpetrator's death. The angry girlfriend also had stabbed the store employee's arm. The store employee was IMMEDIATELY arrested, sent to Riker's Island (the WORST of prisons), with his stabbed arm NOT treated (it got infected), and given $250,000 bail, because HE DEFENDED HIMSELF successfully, with a knife. But the WOKE MANHATTAN DA did not even go after the girlfriend who had INSTIGATED the problem by going back to get her thug ex-con boyfriend because her "food card" (aka welfare) did not have enough money on it to buy a bag of potato chips and the store employee had her put the bag back. So the store employee, OBVIOUSLY in the right, 62 years old, gets a "visit" from the thug boyfriend (in his 30's) who then goes behind the counter and backs him into a corner, will not let him escape, and keeps hitting the guy, and would PROBABLY have KILLED him. It is all on video for those who have not yet seen it, and it has been aired in the USA on Fox News and all over social media. THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF *THE* BIGGEST PROBLEM - PUNISHING THE VICTIMS and NOT THE CROOKS by WOKE DAs with a PRO CRIMINAL AGENDA.
And these "wokesters" want "more surveillance". yeah, right. I agree with the ACLU on THIS SPECIFIC point, for sure. NO MORE SURVEILLANCE, especially not with (potentially coerced) live-stream private cameras, NOT without a warrant and all of the restrictions that come with GETTING one.
"The thing is, the answer is very simple: you arrest and incarcerate pepetrators of things like vandalism, trespassing, public defecation, petty theft, and aggressive panhandling. you incarcerate..."
Whoa, Bob, hold yer horses. Ot's called petty crime for a reason. Fines or whatever, not jail time. Unless it's a persistent/repeat offender. Or do you want to go to jail when you get caught picking your nose while driving?
in my opinion, "petty crimes" would include shoplifting, camping on public sidewalks, vandalism, battery, misdemeanor robbery, and things of that nature. jaywalking and nose picking (if that is even a thing) are infractions (like a traffic ticket).
But you are right. Being cited for playing music too loud is not the same as shoplifting less than a felony amount of goods, but in S.F. and L.A. they are NOT prosecuting those things and that was my point.
Amazingly, the small crimes are often also committed by those who commit the bigger crimes, and getting someone fingerprinted for a small crime might help to solve the bigger one while ALSO sending a message to "the outlaws" (a small number of people) that plague law abiding citizens (the vast majority) that the cops are arresting so they better watch their asses...
'a particular sort of crime which could be called "We don't give a ***"'
'Surveillance (CCTV) cameras are a useful tool to deter criminals'
Not if they don't give a ****. And since the courts are hesitant to require cash bond from destitute people or detain these people pending trial for property crimes (because that would discriminate against the poor). They are released. Free to not give a **** all over again.
Because none of the comments seem to have any real clue about the what and the why.
First the what. SF was a very high crime city from the 1960's to the mid 1990's. As were most CA big cities. Then Three Strikes passed in the mid 1990s' and locking up habitual petty criminals quickly collapsed the crime rate. The streets were now safe and a whole bunch of middle class kids from the suburbs move to SF. Population went from just over 700K to over 850K.
The new people from the suburbs dont remember the bad old days and thought it was nt fair that petty criminals were locked up for long periods of time. So they and their ilk voted for Props 47 and 57 which dismantled Three Strikes and released lots of criminals, decriminalized almost all petty crime, and filled the streets with junkies who no longer had to do rehab as a condition of probation.
In SF's case some "civil rights" lawyer from Chicago with zero experience and parents who murdered working class people just doing their job got elected as City DA on the slimmest margin with a campaign financed overwhelming by out of state money. Who then proceeded to prosecute all crime based purely by his politics. Ignoring lots of state law in the process. A lot of people died because of his politics. At least 30. Include a 8 month old baby beaten to death by a repeat violent felon who the DA refused to lock up on several occasions.
And once SF turned into MadMax City again who are the first to bugger off. The same people who voted overwhelmingly for the DA and the politicians just like him.
Until Props 47 and 57 are overturned this crime wave will continue. Another of Jerry Browns clusterf*cks. So many since the 1970's. But in the meantime those newcomers in SF who dont have street smarts acquired back before Three Strikes, boy are they in for a shock. The first time they are mugged or robbed. Which they inevitably will be. Virtual signally politics will make you a crime victim in SF. One day.
Because us old timers do exactly what the ordinary folk who live in places like Hunters Point, south Potrero Hill or the Western Addition do. We profile like crazy. We know who the victims are. And who the victimizers are. And if that does not fit in some outsiders virtue signalling politics then tough sh*t. I have no plans to become a crime victim. I got though the last time unscathed. Unlike almost everyone I knew at the time. So its back to the basics, watch everyone on the street at all time. No distractions. Rolling stops, locked doors for car jacking. etc etc.
So how many of those who might disagree with the above actually live in that kind of high crime city. If not you should try it for a few years. It will be very educational. And not in a nice way.
If I lived across the street from you and deployed a camera that, because it was watching the front of my house, also showed a live feed of your house, how would you feel? Now imagine that, instead of having that there just in case, I'm allowing people to tune in whenever they want. And I do mean anyone, because most methods that would give police access would be prone to security problems allowing others to have access if, for instance, they were interested in breaking into your house.
I admit there's not a clear way to legislate when putting cameras on your property is acceptable or not, but there is a difference between it being there but unused and it being published and recorded by numerous parties.
Nothing stops you from doing that now, and leaving it open to the internet for anyone to see (whether deliberately or not) You could link to it from your Twitter account and say "watch DS999's house 24x7" and there's nothing I could do about it.
The fact that would be legal is a separate issue to whether you give the police access to it.
You missed the point. He's not saying he's giving the access to everyone, he saying the sloppy security methods used by the police will lead to EVERYONE being able to watch EVERYONE.
Stalkers, burglers, abusive exes will all be able to tune in without their victims being aware their movements are being tracked, and recorded.
Nothing stops me, although if I did it there are ways you could have it taken down. The distinction is that basically nobody does it. People don't make their cameras public out of choice, but a policy such as this would end up doing it. If everyone chose to put up cameras with public access, I'd have problems and I'd want to do something about it though my choices are few. This policy would be much closer to that possibility.
Speaking as one who physically blocks cameras when they're not in active use, I'm unlikely ever to stick a camera on the outside of my house. Permission will not be an issue.
There is already far too much of this crap going on. It assumes everyone is at least a scofflaw and at best a criminal... and yet for some reason, we never see real-time video of the watchers.
It doesn't say that permission is required, true. It does not seem to imply that permission is required, either.
The proposed law does not place penalties for refusing access, but neither does it preclude methods of "encouraging" co-operation.
However, the whole point is moot, as this entire endeavour runs afoul of the 4th Amendment, and if SCOTUS is populated by justices that actually care about the Constitution, this would be shut down faster than cops can fail to respond to a crime-in-progress.
It doesn't do either of those things yet, but not only can they use various methods to encourage compliance, but if they don't get what they're looking for, they can add that. Even if they never request forced access to cameras, they can do a number of things to get more access, such as paying users of cameras for access. I would object to that for two reasons: it leads to more surveillance that I've already described as useless and harmful, and it wastes police budgets that the citizens pay for and could be used for things of use to them.
they make a mess of purposes and apply different criteria to "live" vs "historical" video footage, without defining these terms.
what exactly is considered "historical video footage" under the new law?
are video images from one millisecond ago considered "historical" since they are already from the past?
How about from 1 second ago? 5 seconds ago? 1 minute ago? 5 minutes ago?
where is the cut-off mark? since they decided to apply different purposes/justifications for different categories of footage they should also define this threshold point.
Isaac Asimov published in 1956 a short story called "The Dead Past" about chronoscopy and it applies quite well to the live vs historical video footage issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Past
"Happy goldfish bowl to you, to me, to everyone [...]"
By my understanding, a better terminology would be "Warranted" vs "On-going"; so, "Historical" footage would be a recording that is requested after-the-fact, the minimum delay being the time it takes to file a warrant.
And have an up-vote for "The Dead Past" that is an excellent Short, and changed the way I thought about the past.
Those familiar with the contemptible track record of the ACLU in California first helping put larger numbers of seriously mentally ill on the streets in 1987 (Riese v St Marys) and keeping them on the streets since (too many lawsuits over the decades - "patient rights", dont you know) will automatically discount every single thing these kiddie lawyers say and claim. I see in this case its some guy from Arizona who waltzed into the City a few years ago after Stanford and will no doubt be a typical Ten Year Tourist. Bet you he lives in one of the safest low crime rate parts of the City. Just like Boudin does.
These people have not seen a criminal they haven't liked. The only people they seem to care about. So as usual its the - Everything is Racist - argument from them. Lets see. The surveillance video will not show the largest "minority" group in the City committing crime. Because they have the lowest crime rate. Thats 35% of the population. The next largest "minority", 15%, has an above average crime rate but since the gangs were busted about 20 years ago not so much of a problem. Very different story 30 years ago. Now then we get to the real problem. The minority who are are 5% of the City population but account for the majority of street crimes. Which has become a real problem since Props 47 / 57 put most of the habitual criminals back on the streets. To prey on their own as well as everyone else. Who murders who in the City and why, tells the whole story.
The "Los Migres" argument is so funny as to be just plain stupid. All the INS agents ever had to do in the last few decades was sit in a car on a corner of Army St and a few other intersections in the neighborhood and they could easily observer the daily causal labor cattle call. But of course the ACLU kiddie lawyers would not know about that. As none of them seem to actually live in SF very long. Except for the Trust Fund Babies who can afford to buy a place.
The City cannot get rid of the Props that have caused most of the crime problems. That will take time. Based on many years experience I will always give the SFPD the benefit of the doubt but these "activists", usually irresponsible rich kids from the suburbs, the damaged, or just simple nut cases, they have a long history of making stuff up or outright lying. So by default assume they are just making stuff up unless it can be proved otherwise. Because they usually are.
Here in the UK, we are amongst the most heavily surveiled countries on Earth. But the roz do not have access to private cameras without a warrant or by voluntary submission.
As our busies couldn’t be bothered to investigate anything unless there is a public outcry and lots of press, it doesn’t seem to matter.
When they do, finally, get off their fat arse and investigate, they go around to the victims family and insult them a bit before before deciding that there isn’t enough evidence.
Sigh.
So the city wants the public to pay for the cameras AND pay for the bandwidth to share live video with law enforcement. Watch for this to get implemented on an opt-in basis..
Next will be the insurance companies. "You are in a high-crime city. If you want property insurance for vandalism, you need to install cameras and share live feeds with law enforcement."
Crack the door an inch, and it will be forced fully open.
I believe the original idea stems from a 2019 law that requires the cops to seek approval before deploying cameras, and coincidentally resulted in them not being able to use private video systems without having first asked the city government. Which is a reasonable baseline ("No, you can't stick cameras everywhere, and no you can't ask someone else to do it and then siphon off the feed").
So now you have the situation where the cops are not allowed (by policy) to use private cameras, even if the owners are totally cool with providing historical footage or would quite like to have a cop watching their street live. So if someone gets murdered in glorious Technicolor on the set of a movie, the cops are not able to look at the rushes (as it were). This is obviously A Bit Daft.
And now along comes this proposal, and as usual it takes a genuine problem and tries to get way more out of the solution than is actually justified.
I suspect there's good grounds for a policy that (a) defines "temporary" to a period measured in hours (b) defines data retention policies, (c) prohibits disclosure to third parties, and (d) provides teeth if data access/retention policies are violated.
This does not appear to be that policy...
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