Monitoring on request: good or bad?

It's in Dutch, but has subtitles. You'll get the drift. In short, this promo advises municipalities to start using a system that can monitor civilians, use their e-goggles to inspect the neighbourhood, watch and inspect data on smartphones, correlate various databases etc. Big Brother, for real. It is presented as a benevolent system to aide citizens when they might find themselves in disstress.

What, dear ATS community, is your opinion on this?

a reply to: ForteanOrg

I have read reports that non-Dutch populations in some cities in the Netherlands has reached numbers that threaten the historical nature of those cities, in some places, to the extreme. I view this "infomercial" as an effort to set citizen's minds at ease as they bicycle into areas where--for some (good?) reason they suspect they may encounter foul play.

Welcome to the New World Order where Google Glass and your cell phone will protect with an all-encompassing web of info and data. Oh, don't forget to wear your Apple watch! They can never collect too much data on you. After all, it is your own safety they are concerned about not your data.

a reply to: ForteanOrg

Creepy totalitarian crap !

They are already experimenting with this :

Police experimenting with watching people with I-watch

Dutch

It allows the police to watch with smartphones and tablets observation cameras in real time at train-stations, the inner-city cameras and on music festivals.

Why in the world would anyone want his whole life being monitored ?

It is a weird video watching it outside of its original context. Where or what site did the video originate.

From what I can see and make assumptions on... by just watching the video this program looks like it was planned with good intentions on making "un-safe" areas safe, there will always be a bad side to all good intentions. Its just the way it always is.

It sounds to me like they already know of problem areas so I think they need to get in and revitalize the areas in question now. Simply watching and having more police activity in the areas isn't enough. If they want it to improve they have to be willing to make real improvements to areas. Simply having a heaver police presence isn't enough.

leolady

a reply to: leolady

It`s from a presentation from a well known (in The Netherlands) private tech company.

Problem areas have always been around being such a heavy populated country it`s no wonder.

This is not the only thing they are rapidly deploying over here to get an Orwellian system. You can only travel now with a special card in public transportation and only park your car with license plate (both used in criminal cases). Cameras on highways at lots of places to scan lice plates, You can only get ID with giving of a finger scan. Almost all cities have cameras in the inner-cities and they are also now on certain places in the outer-cities. Public transportation has cameras everywhere in trains, buses, etc. They are pushing it further and further step by step.

a reply to: BornAgainAlien

Like with almost anything, electronic surveillance has its pros and cons.

I see two problems here: the system has to be on at all times and it assumes a benevolent group that is keen on helping you (the government).

The first problem: the system assumes permanent monitoring is needed. That makes sense, because if you already know you are in danger you just as well might dial 911 or activate your "red button app". So, the system only makes sense if it is on at all times. Do you want to be monitored at all times? What about privacy then? Sure, we all tend to say "yean, well, we live in a democracy, so there will be rules and regulations and bans on mis-use" - but really? Ever since we have "terrorists" we "the people" don't have that much control anymore. Systems to snoop on our data have been installed without our consent and laws have been adjusted to allow it - after the event took place. Nobody asked me. It just happened.

The second problem is that you can not be sure the group that is monitoring you really wants to help you. Assuming the Government runs this service and given their general track record I'd rather be without such a system to begin with. But say we trust our Government. Alas, the same tech may be mis-used by criminals. They might use it to find out that I was actually wondering through the streets of a neighbourhood unknown to me (with a flat tire). They might even offer me "help" and the "help" would rob me ..

So, I'm really not in favour of this.

a reply to: BornAgainAlien

So far the only place locally that I have encountered doing finger scans in my area here is our local amusement park. That one made me think about why on earth would they do it at an amusement park. When I thought about it... a-lot of people go there, it is a good way to get a finger print on record matching all the identities in the locality all in one massive database that could then be off loaded for use by some other entity. It could be nothing... but I did wonder about it.

Our public areas have cameras too. For example, stoplights have cameras attached to them but this is more for local police to spit out tickets for cars running lights...so on so forth. I think.

I can't remember a time when cars could be parked without license plates in my area.

I have not ridden the bus or trains so I don't know if we have cameras set up on those public transportation systems. I don't think passengers have to give a finger scan in order to get a pass to ride them though.

I agree with what ForteanOrg said "The second problem is that you can not be sure the group that is monitoring you really wants to help you." " the same tech may be mis-used by criminals."

It is scary to think about the cons.

You might be interested in reading up on the facial recognition programs that exist, places like airports and malls use it (FaceIt) and your handy dandy cell phone aps have the capability now too (Recognizr). Also don't forget about the internet, there are software programs which can do facial recognition by searching for a targeted individual. Enter said persons photo and walla, the program goes searching all the social media sites and photo buckets that exists out there.

Basically if you can think about it... they already have the technology built and have been using it already. You just don't openly know about all of it is all.

leolady