Relax, people. This is about how to extract government subsidies. The IT contractor doesn’t care if the idea is remotely feasible (surely it would suffer from a massive false positive rate) - all that matters to them is how they get sponsorship from the Dutch government for feasibility studies whilst they think of a better idea.
Likewise the NSA Warrentless wiretapping programme is a massive subsidy to disk vendors and server farm vendors. It doesn’t matter what the NSA monitors, whether it’s relevant or useful for investigations, whether they’re able to usefully process what they collect. All that matters is that they need to record everything for as long as possible, and thus need to make bulk purchases of tape drives, servers, SSD, etcetera
The actual answer here is to make subsidies for socially useful developments. But that sounds dangerously like socialism, so we have to dress up our socialism as funding a military, and providing high-tech surveillance tools, rather than equally productive ways to spend money in the economy, like education, healthcare, better transport, non-violent energy security policies, etc.
“Chief! Chief! Gilbert#72 biomonitors indicate he’s under intense strain and hydrogen sulfide and nitrogen heterocycles are detected in the air in his vicinity!..”
There may also be an element of selling tech to gullible receptive government officials, after the recent ‘success’ James McCormick had with selling magic golfballs. But that would be mere speculation with no evidential basis.
I think this might be somewhat less awful for those people living in countries where the governments are considered benevolent, and actually function primarily to serve the average citizen. Those of us living in places like the USA are outraged at this, and for good reason. Here, such information would at best, be saved until we become suspected of some crime, then used as evidence against us. In the worst case…heck, I don’t even want to guess what the worst case is. However, I have lived in some places where there is at least a perception that such info would never be released, and only used to help the individuals involved. So I can understand the mindset of this proposal.
You forgot one of the more common reason for your heart rate to change: exercise. Someone may want their wearable while running to monitor their performance to track how well they’re doing. It would cause a lot of false positives if that activity also called the police.
On the other hand …
“slower…slower…now put your right hand as shown on your G-glass overlay, now quickly…again…once more…faster…not that fast…a little more…match the animation on the overlay…a little more…YES!!!”
Just about all of the criticism of surveillance I read treats it as a hierarchic, top-down affair, initiated by some “priviledged parties”. What I am surprised to not encounter much is the idea of democratizing surveillance. In a massively connected world, having and broadcasting information about others might be unavoidable.
As much as people like to argue that the average citizen has a right to avoid being unnecessarily scrutinized, it is hard to apply the same argument to government officials, public servants, etc. Does a policeman on patrol have any realistic expectations of privacy? How about a legislative debate? Why shouldn’t we assume that government doing public work should not always be in public view?
I do not like the average person being held accountable to shadowy forces. But it seems to me that surveillance technology could actually be used to achieve a level of social equality which would be difficult without it. The key is making it so ubiquitous that anybody can use it.
Assuming the mugger isn’t obscuring their face, this whole complex system is better replaced with a panic button on the glasses that then automatically uploads video footage to a remote server for use in future law enforcement efforts. Assuming they aren’t so overwhelmed that they even care that you got mugged, of course.
Then you track the gait. Or assuming the panopticon is pan enough, just track him until he takes his mask off.
Under this total observation system, life would be like it is in a small town. You can’t go mugging people when they know it’s Billy from down the street even when he wears a mask. Certainly immoral activity is possible in a small town, but only certain kinds. The problem is that most people don’t like living like that. Even the people that live there use the term “escape” when they talk about moving away.
That presumes that gait tracking would ever actually work (well enough to get a warrant for someone), which I rather suspect it wouldn’t. Even universal surveillance would have blind spots, and anywhere where someone could get lost, or just take off the obscuring item and blend in with a group would defeat the system. I have family in small towns, and the amount of crime that goes on, especially on Halloween…
A car full of police drove right past mine and stopped to ask me why I was shouting after him. They left for another job after first asking me if I had ‘fought back’ (I was injured).
I think it should be a fairly easy thing to deal with - Dutch voters should just very loudly insist that the officers of the company demonstrate the technology on themselves, acting as their own guinea pigs, 24/7 for a year at minimum. Not volunteer test subjects: the company’s officers themselves, as well as any politicians or bureaucrats seriously considering this.
Don’t I remember reading somewhere that the Police are under no legal obligation to serve or to protect?
ah
but of course, I;m not suggesting there cannot be extenuating circumstances but surely we can obligate them not to be criminally spying on everyone?
Adds a whole other dimension to ‘who watches the watchers’. But perhaps only half an orthogonal twist, we’ve all been so thoroughly primed for the new age of enforcement. The law can be interpreted ‘later’.
"(if your heart-rate rises because you’re about to be mugged, the police could be alerted, "
What if is raised because I am making out with someone? Could the cops show up with some condoms too? Maybe some lube? It would be convenient if they had a selection of sex toys in their trunk for purchase.
If it lowers because I am stoned, can they bring me some Doritos?
If the answer to these questions is “yes” then perhaps we should look into accepting this.
