So I guess, the moral is, make sure you take off all your wearables during sex. Or, just try to keep your heart-rate down . . . unless, I guess, you like having cops show up in the midst of sexy time. Some people probably do. I ainât judging.
This is similar to one of my older ideas, but that was intended for security guards. So they can be aware of one or more of them being subjected to high stress, or loss of life functions, and share the video from their wearable cameras.
Iâm a bit amazed that these guys were dumb enough to say so out loud; but it isnâtâŠexactlyâŠnews that the unifying background premise of âinternet of thingsâ and âbig dataâ and the âsmart dustâ-inspired distributed sensor nodes (along with the âsmart cityâ stuff that IBM ads are always going on about) is pretty much this.
The promise is that technological advances are making it increasingly possible(and cheap) to Gather All The Data and that if we do so, and then crunch it on a bunch of expensive hardware, we will achieve all sorts of neat and actionable insights and ROI and blah, blah, blah.
Some of this might even be true. Its proponents, though, usually prefer to de-emphasize the âso your proposal is basically to build a surveillance state on a hitherto unimaginable scale in order to realize a variety of modest and unproven benefits?â side of the problemâŠ
There is an autocrat lurking in every EU bureaucrat.
Not only the EU ones. This is a feature inherent to bureaucrats regardless of the colors of their flag.
Forget sex - take off all your wearables any time your heart rate might conceivably change for any reason whatsoever.
A waitress drops a tray of dishes in a busy diner.
A car honks / swerves / does something unexpected.
Literally anything at all startles you for any reason at all.
You suddenly realize you completely forgot something terribly important and have to rush to fix things.
Your bus starts to leave without you, so you run after it and wave and hollar to get the driverâs attention.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And you know what the absolute worst part of it all is? The âprevent muggingsâ angle is complete bullshit.
Muggings are over and done with, and the muggers long gone, well before the police could ever possibly respond. Unless an officer is already literally walking their beat down the street within earshot, any data sent to the police is essentially useless.
So being afraid of people walking down the street would be enough to get the cops to harass your fellow citizens. This conveniently ignores the fact that the news media the world over loves to publish scare stories about minorities, immigrants, and other marginalised people, and that peopleâs fear of crime and the actual probability that someone intends them harm is hardly 1:1. The cops neednât worry about accusations of racial profiling. They could simply argue that they were responding to a citizenâs distress. It would essentially codify the crime of being a young black man in the US.
But they have an image of his face and facial recognition software. And I assume everyoneâs face will be on file in this system.
âŠnot meant to be interpreted by lay peopleâŠ
Oh I like that argument! That oneâs new! Imagine all the uses it could be put to!
That might work⊠unless they wear a mask, or otherwise obscure their face.
Hi-tech âsolutionsâ to crime are routinely foiled by low-tech countermeasures. For example. so long as you donât care about making a mess, one of the best tools for getting through a household door lock is a hammer. The fanciest, most unpickable lock in the world is still vulnerable to brute force, making it completely useless in the face of anyone who is willing to make a couple loud bangs and/or get in and out quickly.
Sure, thereâs always a slight deterant effect - make illegality trickier, and it makes it less attractive. But if the point is to dissuade people from crime, why not work the other way? Why spend resources trying to find and capture criminals after the fact of a crime, when you could instead just work to reduce the reasons for people to commit crimes in the first place?
The best way to stop muggings? Eliminate the poverty and desperation that drives people to resort to armed robbery in the first place. If no one has a reason to mug people, no one will ever get mugged.
If our goal is to combat crime, I say make the world a nicer place with less invasion of privacy and more individual freedom, rather than the opposite. I donât sleep well at night because I live in a reinforced bunker - I sleep well at night because the overwhelming majority of people have absolutely zero reason to harm me.
So, basically (as the clichĂ© goes), doesnât this simply mean the system will be so flooded with data that any real âcrimeâ will be near impossible to pick out from the noise?
Status quo preserved, technology achieves precisely nothing?
These guys just sound like naive techno-enthusiasts.
Thatâs some seriously turbocharged Just World Fallacy right there, Pinkroccade. Itâs nuts, but as an ideological construct, itâs, well, impressive, I guessâŠ
Of course, if you take off your wearables all your vital signs go to zero, which could also be (mis-) interpreted as a problem.
Careful. This is Boing Boing youâre addressing.
Already exists from the theologians, and PZ Myers already has a response in the form of the Courtierâs Reply.
So, thanks to these wearables and the authorities watching over my back, I will feel safe and my heart rate wonât increase anymore, when Iâm in a âbad neighborhoodâ⊠Owait.
âChief!?, Chief! Joe #67âs heart rate just sky-rocketed, his breathing seems erratic & he wonât answer repeated advisories! Should I send in back-up, An armed response? Special Weapons and Tactics security guards are ready to deploy!â
âJesus H Christ Gilbert, itâs 6:15pm, you goddam well know that every day Joe goes to the can and pushes out a fat loaf, could you get a fukkin clue & not bother me with this shit!?â
âSorry Chief!â
âŠ
âCHIEF! CHIEF!, Hank #52, Hank #52, his heart rate is through the roof, his breathing is erratic and he also wonât answer his radio! I think he is under fire! Small arms fire, from terrorists, his iPad is detecting high particulate matter in the air, could be gunsmoke!â
âOh for fucks sake I will kick your ass Gilbert! I told you, Hank is a stoner & after dinner he goes & burns a big blunt on the balcony over the Best Buy mezzanine, and what the actual fuck, is it musket fire, cause it would have to be to have that much smoke, you never heard of smokeless gunpowder? Fuck you Gilbert, youâre on bathroom patrol from now on!â
âReally Chief! Thatâs⊠thatâs great, Iâm okay with thatâŠâ
âShit, I forgot thatâs why youâre the dispatcher⊠it was to keep you out of the bathrooms⊠goddamit Gilbert, what will we do with you?â
There is tons of shit worth monitoring in a dense urban environment that could benefit municipalities.
Itâs just that bio-signs, tracking the movements of individuals and such are not among them.
This company is stick-stone stupid. But the real danger here is that they primarily work with governments, which are just dumb enough to listen to them.
1984 anyone?
