You Got Surveilled

proliferation of cameras all around us these days. There seems to always be a camera somewhere, whether it's in the hands of a person, or on on a street corner, or in a corner store, or on someone's face. There there seem to be just about everywhere, now right, Yeah, this has gone from science fiction to reality in our lifetimes. Yeah, yeah, right right, yeah. When when Well, i mean not that any of us were around in uh came out, but

you just blew my mind. Yeah when Orwell published nineteen eighty four, which came out in nineteen forty nine, and that really did presage this era of surveillance where in that case, a very uh totalitarian and oppressive government was

using surveillance to keep the population cowed and under control. Right, There was a sense that you never knew when someone was watching you, so you so there had to be on good behavior continually because yeah, you had to operate under the assumption that you were being watched and that someone was going to punish you if you didn't anything wrong.

That's kind of interesting considering that when when that book came out in nineteen forty nine, that actually predates the uh the deployment of a lot of CCTV technology, which followed a few years later. But the earliest I could find of any sort of use of closed circuit television cameras dates back to nineteen forty two, and that was in World War Two Germany. They were using that not to keep an eye on citizens or try and report

people or anything along those lines. They were using it because they needed a way to observe V two rocket launches without getting fried when something would go wrong. So losing a camera is better than losing a scientist with a clipboard who was standing there a second ago. And now there's just a pair of smoking shoes for MythBusters. Yeah right, Well, um, it looks like CCTV cameras first

became popular or widespread in the seventies and eighties. Yeah, there was some there's some precedent for cameras in the UK before that, but it was all it wasn't necessarily close circuit television cameras. But back in nineteen sixty there were a couple of times when police in the UK installed cameras in Trafalgar Square. Once but when the tai royal family was visiting and they just wanted to make sure that they were able to keep an eye on

crowd control. Uh. And then the other time was during well the fifth of November, which of course is Guy Fox Day. Remember remember I remember, do you the Gunpowder treason and plot? Wait, you're not saying they had sec TV camera when he tried to blow up Parliament. No, this was nineteen sixty on the anniversary of that. Actually

was on the anniversary of him being captured. To be fair, Guy Fox Day is to celebrate the fact that the government captured Guy Fox, not the fact that a man tried to blow up Parliament, right, never know that from that movie and all the people who wear the masks. Yeah, no, that's true. I did a full podcast about Guy Fox Day on a on a completely separate channel where I talked about what Guy fox Day is all about and how the the modern misconception and particularly in America, casts

it as sort of an anti hero. But really Guy fox Day was all about hey we stopped Yeah anyway, but that that was Those were two incidents where the London police installed some cameras. In both of those cases, those cameras were meant to just be temporary. They set him up in order to kind of give themselves a little extra manpower. Well, they thought it was such a great idea that they would just go ahead and deploy those suckers all over the place, although it did take

them a few decades. Yeah, I saw something about I think the so there were some cameras like up in Times Square in the nineteen seventies and stuff like that, but um, this really got big in the eighties. I think between A figure I saw was that between nineteen eighty and two thousand, CCTV sales jumped seven Yeah, that's when the explosion. The early days were in the sixties and seventies where they were usually being laid out along roadways things like that in order to just keep an

eye on how things were flowing through London. Mainly London was the big city where this was happening. You did have it in some other cities. New York had some in Times Square like you mentioned, but uh, and then you had some private companies or retail organizations that were installing them as a mean to try and counteract any sort of shoplifting activity. So but those were really the the main uses until the nineteen eighties. That's when it

really started to quote unquote exclude well. Actually, uh, one thing that we one misconception we might want to clear up is this idea that most of these uh CCTV cameras are public. The majority, the vast majority, are still private. Um. So when when you've heard about how many times you might be photographed or video recorded going about your business throughout the day, most of those images are going to happen at you know, the shop, you go into, the

place where you work, the public exactly. Yeah, um yeah, there, I mean, there there are plenty of official public cameras, public meaning that they're owned by the government as opposed to private companies. But they do have that. I mean, it's just a fraction of all the cameras that are out there, right, although it should be noted that according to the Electronic Can Occasions Privacy Act of nine, police can legally use footage from private cameras pursue any kind

of Yeah. Yeah, and they do all the time, of course. Yeah. Um. Well, so one interesting question that people started worrying about, especially in the in the post nine eleven era, when they're started to be increasing awareness that maybe we should really worry about privacy and recording. Um, people started to say, how many cameras are there and how much of our lives are being recorded? Yeah, because there was no way of really knowing this. Uh, I would argue, there's still

no way. Well, yeah, just essentially, if you have if you have a cell phone that was manufactured in the last you know, five years, you probably have you have at least a still camera, if not a full digital video camera that can upload uh footage directly to the internet or at least save it on the phone and then transferred. I'm just talking about cct not even when we we'll get to personal devices, and so even even answering the question about CCTV is deaf, That's all I'm

talking about. Yeah, people who have cameras and and they're they're rolling. Yeah, you can count on it. UM. So there are a few different numbers. One number that you might have seen bouncing around a lot um is an estimate that comes from the UK, and the UK is famous for this because it's often said that it's the most surveiled place in the world. Right, they've got cameras everywhere, by the way, set in London in oceanny all right, yeah, yeah, airstrip one okay, UM, So the figure is four point

two million. Now I'll revise this in a second, but this has been for years. People have bandied this about four point two million cameras in the UK and that works out to one camera for every fourteen people that takes I mean, and so you see this sited a lot of times by privacy advocates in the UK and stuff. Um. But it turns out that this is probably not the most accurate estimate UM. In fact, it's probably very high.

Because the way they got this estimate um is that there was a paper that basically they looked at a couple of streets, um, and they were like, well, how many cameras are are on these streets, combining public cameras and cameras and you know, privately owned businesses and and all that, um. And then they extrapolated that out um and and got this really high number. UM. So in

the county Cheshire in England. UM, they had police community support officers go through and physically count all of the cameras to see, well, exactly how many are there really? Um And then they use some statistical models to um say, well, you know, compared to the urban density and and stuff and other areas, UM, what we can say that the UK more likely has one point eight five million cameras, about significantly fewer than four points less than half of

the original estimate. It's still a bunch. Yeah, well there are a few the funny things here. Either way, that's a huge amount of cameras. Number two, it's just kind of creepy that people have no idea their their estimates are differing by the millions. Well yeah, yeah, well when you get to when you get to big numbers, people are really bad about estimating that anyway. Right, This this goes beyond just cameras. This goes to just how how

humans work in general. Like, once we get beyond a certain point, estimations no longer really work out in our favor. We're really bad with big numbers. It's also why you get things like, hey, let's play the lottery. Look how much money it is. What are the odds of winning? And you just you know, the odds are so astronomical that you would, uh, your eyes glaze over. You're just like, well that's big. You're like someone has to win, right

and so. But if you really think about the odds, you just think, well, really buying a lottery ticket and throwing a dollar away, there's not a whole lot of difference there. Yeah, you have a chance of winning, but it's so tiny, and you're probably supporting your local schools, but well, supporting some school. Yeah, the the if my money goes to Georgia Tech, you're gonna know, you know,

I'm gonna be upset. Um. But at any rate, the point is that we're really bad at that sort of thing, So it doesn't really surprise me, you know, to go one point eight million versus four point two million, because once you get over a certain number that you might as well just say lots there are. The point is either way, it's it's one of the most surveilled places in the world, if not the most, and it's it's

incredibly dense surveillance. Oh yeah, and and this plays a role in in television and movies and absolutely like you know, like Torchwood. And there's the moment where Watson is uh

is called. He's answering the phone in a a phone booth, which apparently they still exist, I guess, but he's answering a phone and then the voice on the other line tells him to look up at the various corners, and you can see that there are the cameras that are mounted on the outside of buildings, and the cameras very specifically look away from his um phone booth for showing that the conversation is going to be private and not displayed on any kind of uh uh closed circuit television technology.

So it's it's a part of life over there in the United States. It's still something that we would consider

very unusual, right. I would actually argue, though, going back to a slightly earlier point, that it doesn't matter technically how many there are there due to principles that were talked about by A. Jeremy Bentham in the in the seventeen eighties about the pinopticon, which which which was the concept of this prison that had this a circular tower in the kind of a ring of a prison with a circular tower, whereas the cells are on the outside, the cells are on the outside, and the guards are

on the inside, and the prisoners don't know when they're being watched, that they have to operate under the assumption that they're always being watched. Like we were talking about earlier, and this this concept got a big reprise for pries in the seventies when for co Is starting to talk about it as as a metaphor for the way that all of these cameras around us and and the watchfulness

of society was operating. Yeah. Well, um, part of that comes into Uh, we'll come in when we want to say what is the effect these cameras have and we can get to that in a minute. One another thing I wanted to bring up though about this, uh more recent account of the cameras in the UK is earlier when we were saying that most of the cameras are private. This was definitely the case here. You know, they counted in County Cheshire more than twelve thousand cameras and only

about five hundreds of them were public. Wow. Okay, so most of these like we were saying, they're in parking lots, you know, shops, the places that are privately and people trying to protect their stuff. Right, Well, they're recording you either way, so that that's still something that again is is fairly alien to two people. In the United States,

we don't have as many camera the now. The retails shops definitely do, but not as many cameras that are just mounted on the side of buildings as you would see in London. Right, we don't have as many, but some places in the United States are getting there. Um well, a lot of big cities in the United States now have pretty serious CCTV infrastructure. Um. For example, they think that probably Chicago is the most surveilled city in America. And uh, an often cited figure is that there are

ten thousand CCTV cameras in Chicago. I don't know if that is confirmed. That just that number shows up a lot. I'm sure most of them are pointed at cemeteries to make sure the dead stopped rising from the grave to vote in every election. Well, that's possible. Um, No, I was being too generous. I don't think that's what they're doing. Um, that's a that's a corruption in Chicago joke. Yeah, it

is here in Atlanta. Supposedly, the city, over the course of a year grew from seventeen police cameras to more than that's a pretty explosive growth. Yeah, And one of the big questions is are we getting our money's worth? Are these cameras here in Atlanta? Are these cameras actually uh correlated with preventing crime? Yeah? And uh turns out the answer is by no means unanimous. And it's really

hard to get the statistics to agree on this. From Some studies seem to show that it does help a lot, Some studies show very little help, Some show almost no help at all. Well, it's definitely a very complicated thing.

I mean, I guess the only thing, the only way you could say it's it wouldn't be complicated is if you were to look at crime rates in a neighborhood before there were ever any cameras there versus crime rates there once the cameras are put in there, and ignoring the fact of things like population changes, nothing else has changed.

Of course, life is complex. You can do that, I mean, you can compare neighborhoods statistics, but a lot of times Um, what it seems like often happens is that when you implement these cameras, they seem to coincide with other new policies, like we also added more patrol cars, um so so so can you can't be absolutely certain that it was the cameras that had any sort of measurable impact. It may be one of these other other UH initiatives that

are enacted around the same time. Yeah, Like, for example, one thing I saw is that when they added a whole bunch of CCTV cameras to the to the trains in Chicago, they said crime jumped. Um. Now that doesn't mean there were more murders. They actually saw a decrease in violent crime, but there was an increase in recorded fair skipping or fair evasion and other stuff like that. So really it just meant that the police were able to observe. Well, I don't know if that was the reason,

but that that could be it. I'm not saying it's the reason. I'm saying that they were able to observe a lot more like it may not have been that there was a rise in incidents. It was just there was a rise and awareness. I don't say, yeah, I see what you're saying. I don't know that that's the case, but that that could be. Um. But yeah, I mean one often cited again statistic by privacy advocates in the UK is that there's really only been about one UK

crime solved for every thousand cameras. I mean, whether whether we give that credence or not, um, but there's clearly a discrepancy about the value these things have. The people who seem most in favor of them are law enforcement like officers themselves, and some of the discrepancy comes in the question of whether these actually prevent crime or whether they just make it easier to prosecute crime once it's

been committed. Got So it may be that it's not so much a deterrent as it is just an effective means of if you need evidence for prosecution. One thing I saw is that in one environment they seem to suggest that putting cameras out along with signs that say you know, there's a camera recording what you're doing right now, actually was more preventative than just having the cameras. You might guess that makes sense, yeah, which which is why

the usually when they put these cameras out there. Um, you know, in in this whole kitten comboot of a giant box with these you know, very big, very obvious sorts of things, because yeah, yeah, they do more good by telling you that it's there that hypothetically you could you could even have a camera, like an inactive camera saying on the side of a building and if you have a sign there, then it may have it may

be a deterrent. But even if it's not active, well, uh, that actually may be the case in a lot like that. There is clearly a lot of public skepticism about whether anybody's actually watching these cameras. And it's not entirely unfounded. Um, because as much as it costs to install a camera, it costs that much more to pay somebody to pay

attention to it in real time. Yeah that makes sense. Yeah, this is I was looking at um cameras used in in traffic situations, traffic monitoring, red light camera stuff like that, and um uh and and yeah. There were similar discrepancies in the statistics that people found about whether they were

useful or not. And one said he found that there was a significant increase in crashes and especially crashes with injuries in Florida with red light cameras, possibly because people were slamming on their brakes in order to avoid getting a ticket at a red light rather than just going through it when perhaps it would have been more safe at right when when the light is amber and uh, and it is no longer safe for you to actually stop, rather it's safer for you to go through. Then that's

what you're supposed to do. The problem is that a lot of people don't really seem to, at least in Atlanta. From my own this is anecdotal, obviously, but for my own experience of riding around in cars in Atlanta, it seems that no one's really concerned about hitting on the brakes until the light is red. And even then you probably got about two or three cars that go through first. Oh yeah, as my wife wants said, in Atlanta, red

light means okay, only five more cars, right. But that we do have some some intersections here in Atlanta that do have these these cameras that are located on them that that are supposed to take picture ars of cars after they pass through a red light. Right, And these are these cameras are usually still cameras. They're usually tripped by sensors um they might be video or radar, um or electromagnetic sensors that are that are done through wires

that are placed in the asphalt. And these cameras are in addition to other kinds of traffic cameras, speed cameras, UM, cameras that are involved in police cars themselves that scan license plates, cameras that are starting to be installed on on officers themselves. UM, there's there's some of that gonna gonna happen in Seattle, UM. Five and eighty two American communities alone have some kind of traffic cameras in place. Uh.

Several states prohibit the use of them. Several states have legislature going in right now in and and and and it's it's it's a really contentious subject because yeah, because because again you have a lot of people saying like, well, what how much good do they do? How much privacy do we need? And and you know, municipalities have some of these trait cameras up online, the video ones you can go check. There's entire databases of these things that

you can access. And there are very real reasons why that's very helpful. Um, you know, they could help first responders arrive on scene. With an idea of what the situation is, and in case of a terrible accident or or in case of a national emergency, you're not even national emergency, in case of some kind of weather emergency or or something like happened in Boston, you can you can let people know what's going on on the ground.

It also means that someone who would normally be taking that route might be able to see that there's something serious going on and they know too reroute, which ultimately helps those first responders who are trying to get at the scene and take care of anyone who might be injured or whatever the situation is. So, you know, to to an individual, it may seem like, oh, well, this way, my commute is not going to be three hours long.

But if you step out of that and you look at the big scheme of things, it also means that that the people who are there to help in an emergency can actually do their job. Yeah. Of course this would tie into, as we've talked about before, the idea

of a smart traffic grid. I mean, if you're going to have such a thing in the future, like autonomous cars responding and and doing traffic the smart way, you'd essentially have to have traffic cameras right right, Yeah, and computers could be watching them and help you reroute to make sure that you get there as fast as possible. Exactly. So well, here's a question, though, I wonder that maybe one difference between the idea of say, cameras in a shop or on a street corner looking at the sidewalk

or a park versus traffic cameras at red lights. When do you have the expectation of privacy and when should you be able to feel like I shouldn't have to expect somebody's watching me. Well, according to Cats Versus the United States, as of nineteen sixty seven, people in public areas cannot expect privacy since they are knowingly exposing themselves.

The same thing is true in the United Kingdom, where if you are in any sort of public area, then you by law have no expectation of privacy as far as being caught on camera or anything along those lines. As Second U s Circuit Court of Appeals said that just recording people in a public place is totally fine. Um, it's it's recording with an intent to commit some further crime.

That is a criminal behavior. So I see, so if you're if you're just you know, out and about and you've got a camera going in a public place and it's just because you think it's a nice day and you want to record that. There's that's perfectly fine. Uh, that there may be people who take issue with that,

and they may make that known to you. Yeah, the specific case was was in in a private residences as well um private spaces that the case surrounded this um woman who's I think a woman had passed away and without a will, and her son recorded a family conversation unbeknownst to the rest of the members of the family, and the court said that was totally fine and that

that he could in fact submit that video is evidence. Interesting. Yeah, that's something one of those things where you never know if if it were to go further, if that would hold up or not. It's I mean, that's of course the way law works in the United States, right You you challenge the law, or someone someone can challenge a law, and then it goes up the court system until ultimately the Supreme Court could make a decision. Sometimes they decide not to decide, uh, and then that sort of answers

the question, at least in that particular case. But yeah, I mean there there are other, uh incidents of cameras that I wanted to talk about. Joe what Well, I thought there was one funny thing I read when looking at CCTV cameras in the UK, in conjunction with the traffic cameras, they've actually even got mobile CCTV cameras, mean that they've got surveillance cars. These are like mobile units that drive around and record what's going on in traffic.

That's well, that kind of ties into what I was going to talk about, which are the ashcams that you find in uh in Russia? You did? You did? You know? The more we talk about, the less subtle it is. But that that smooth segue allows me to talk about Russian dash cams. Uh. And of course a lot of people who are on the internet, I mean they're familiar with this because the videos from these have popped up

all over the place. I mean, YouTube's got entire channels devoted to Russian dash camp village tell us all about it for those of us who lag behind. So uh, it's what it sounds like. It's a camera that a driver would mount to their car in such a way as to record what's going on, like the forward view of what that they would see when they're behind the wheel.

Often it's not mounted directly on the dashboard. It's actually the ones I saw were more frequently mounted on the mirror, the rear view mirror, and would would hang either next to it or underneath that and and be up against the windshield. But the idea is that in Russia there's a deep distrust in government and in the police, and and there's a a very deep belief that corruption uh completely permeates those institutions, and so there are a lot

of Russian drivers. In fact, Al Jazeera in November two thousand and twelve said that it estimated there were about one million people in Russia have installed these dashboard camps. And the whole point is so that they can have a record of anything that happens while they are operating their vehicle, so that they can use that in any case that would go to court that they would be

involved in. For example, if you're driving down highway in Russia and an official government car cuts you off or bumps into you, you would want to have footage of that so that if you were brought to court by this official. You could say I'm not guilty of this, this car ran into me, and in fact i've seen footage of that, of that kind of instance. But they've also used it for other reasons too, because it's not just the government that tends to get up to a

little shady stuff in Russia. There are people who will attempt to fake getting hit by a car so that they can uh then sue someone and try and essentially they're trying to extort you for money. It's not even to get to the point where they're trying to get insurance. They're just trying to extort money from you. There's a video that I plan on on linking to on the forward thinking Facebook and Twitter feeds, so be on the lookout for it. There's a video of this car where

there's a man standing in the road. The guy driving the car comes to a complete stop and he's stopped in front of the guy who's just standing there. The guy who is staying there looks at the car, then slowly leans over and essentially lays on the hood of the car for a second, then slowly lowers himself to the ground and then limps off, claiming that he was hit by the car it was. I mean, it's so obviously not a guy getting by a car. It is. It is. I mean, it's comical. It's so badly done.

And the fact that the guy caught the whole thing on camera shows that he could, you know, dispute this entirely saying I didn't if anything, I can sue this guy for running into my car because my car was at a complete stop when he laid on my my car. Yeah. Well, I mean this is clearly a good idea, even in a place where if you totally trust the government and don't fear corruption at all, it would just help settle

private traffic disputes. You know, you get into a wreck with somebody else and it's you're both saying I wasn't at fault. Well, if you have it on tape, and it's easier to say, well, you know, then according to this footage, you know this car or this party was at fault. Uh Yeah, And and that is used quite

a bit in Russia. They also use it because, uh, they're often very treacherous driving conditions in Russia in parts where uh you know, in the winter, where the roads get really icy, they need to be able to if there's an accident, show what exactly happened, so that way, you know, when it comes to insurance, you can claim the right thing. Also, they use it because insurance companies can sometimes withhold payments uh and say that, oh no,

that that didn't happen the way you said it. And when you have a record of it, then you can say no, you owe me money because based upon my policy, this is all covered. Uh. That's also to capture events on like road rage things like that, um, all drunk driving accidents. I mean, it's it's pretty dark stuff. Now that there are some great dash cam videos that are

out there that capture really wonderful, little sweet moments. I'm not you know, so it's nice that we can see some stuff outher that's not just the nastiest part of

humanity right there. There are a lot of videos. I saw one that was just a montage of them, and I'd say about half of all the videos where cars that would stop in the middle of the road turn on the emergency blinkers so the driver could get out and help an elderly person cross the street because they were they couldn't move they because the traffic was so strong, and they would get out and put themselves at risk to help someone get across the street, and then they

get back in their car and drive off. So they're about half the videos were of that. So and then there's some once in a lifetime events that we would not have seen if it weren't for the fact that there were Russian dash camps capturing it. Are you talking about something falling out of the sky, I'm talking about the chelia Bensk media. Is that what you're talking about. Yeah, so this was a meteor that was it was spectacular. You know the videos of this meteor that that the

videos were fake? Yeah, sure, yeah, well it looked like a science fiction film. So yeah, yeah, this fireball flying over Russia. Uh. And there were videos taken not just from dash camps but also from mobile devices as well. But the meteor flew over Russia and exploded over the Cheliabinsk Oblast, which caused a massive shock wave that spread out so far that building in six different surrounding cities suffered damage. Seven thousand two buildings in total were damaged

by that shock wave. Mostly it was stuff like windows shattering because the shock wave was so so powerful, But we would not have seen nearly as much footage of that if it weren't for the fact that these dash cams exist in that people upload the video footage to YouTube. I foresee that things like this will become popular in places other than Russia. I mean, it's such a good idea. I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to do that.

In the United States, you occasionally encounter some law enforcement officials who are not so keen on the idea of video cameras being turned on them. That's a very that's a very general way of saying that there are there's a a great deal of resistance in some communities among some law enforcement officials from the thought of citizens being

able to shoot video of anything that's going on. The eVols police that that Seattle project that I had mentioned a minute ago, this is going to equip at least a dozen officers with a wearable camera for a year long trial and uh. And the reason is that the Seattle Police Department has gotten complaints of brutality recently and of other wrongdoings and um, and they decided as as a protective measure, to put these cameras on their officers and send them out into the world so that they

could say, no, really, I was doing my job. This is the job that I was doing. And hopefully, if you know, should anything terrible happen, it will work the other way as well. But right, right, so, I agree. I think that the dash cam is a good idea in the sense that it will cut down on a lot of the shenanigans that happen, or at least will allow a wronged party the chance to prove that they

in fact were the wronged party. Uh. It may not prevent those incidents, but if it helps a person get insurance or prove that they were not at fault in a particular situation, I think that's a great thing. Um. I think that it's going to you know, in America, I think it's tricky. We've got this this sense that

uh we have. It's this this individuality, independence, privacy thing that's all wrapped up together in a sense of what it is to be American, and the idea of having cameras all around tends to make at least a certain segment of the population uneasy. Yeah. Well, they may have a point, um, because we're I can only imagine that this is going to increase I mean, I I don't see anything that's telling me, well, but within five years

we'll have fewer cameras were a back off. I mean, this is going to increase in every direction from everything I can tell. Both more people are going to be having, you know, recording ready personal devices, but we're all these cities are adding more CCTV cameras. I was reading about, Um, the CCTV industry is preparing for a big boom in the wake of the Boston bombings because they were so instrumental in helping catch the right well both were in

in the Boston Marathon bombings. Both public CCTV cameras and private recording devices were huge in catching the guys who did it, Like you saw, within just a few days those images came out, and I remember thinking at the time, like, wow, I mean there's just so much being recorded that, like

we randomly got images of these guys. Nobody was trying to record them, right, these huge sweeping crowd shots and just and we were like, oh no, that dude, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, And uh, I mean, not only are we going to see a lot more cameras deployed. And I agree with you, Joe, that that trend is not going to slow down. It's, if anything, it's going to increase quite a bit. But we also have the technology now, the facial recognition technology.

These are algorithms, software algorithms that are built sometimes firmware algorithms that are built directly into cameras. More frequently it's built into the back end. But it can be in either case. It can be in the device itself, or it can be in whatever is processing the video feed that can go in and start to identify individuals. Now

you have to create a database for that to work. Obviously, you can't just point a camera that's you know, at someone's face and then they automatically the camera somehow knows

who that person is. But you could develop a database of people and uh and the way the camera does this essentially divides your face into quadrants and it starts to look for points of similarity between your face and whatever faces are in the database, and if it matches a certain percentage of a certainty, it will go ahead and at least suggest an identity. If not, just go

ahead and a sign and identity of that face. So, like like a visual fingerprint, you know something that you don't have to you don't have to have touched anything. You could have been wearing your fancy fancy robber gloves and still get caught, right, because it's it's mostly looking at things like the distance of your you know, your eyes from other parts of your face, or how your chin is shaped, that kind of stuff, and it's designed to be able to extrapolate that information based upon whichever

direction your face is facing. So even if you're not looking head on into the camera, a good facial recognition algorithm can at least come up with suggestions of who that person might be, assuming that again, that the person is in the database. We see this all the time

on social media sites like Facebook and Google Plus. They have that that face tagging technology in there, to the point where it'll start suggesting people like you you want to tag a picture, and often the very first name that pops up is the person that you wanted to tag, because it's comparing that face against all the other tags that you have made that appear in your friends list, and then starts to extrapolate from that, and you know, if it's not that person, you just type in whoever

it is, and then that gets added to the database. Sure, well, you can you can. You can opt out of this on Facebook and Google Plus for now anyway and tell it not to create that that algorithm, that specific number for you that says, you know, this is this is how my face looks? Is your face? Man? Yeah? Yeah. When I see these technologies, I wonder exactly how good are they? I mean, can they tell the difference between

Mick Jagger and Don k Nots. Have you ever noticed how similar they look whenever they when prancing on stage? They were almost identical? Or or or can they tell the difference between Natalie Portman and Kira Knightley. Uh yeah, I can't. I don't which which one, Which one was in which one was in parts of the Caribbean. I don't know. Okay, but those are the two that look really similar, right, I didn't make that up? Maybe maybe to you they're they're they're both a little bit elfin.

It's like sure, but there Don Knots and Mick Jagger definitely you know, separated birth. But you know, you don't believe me, Go look this up after the podcast. There there are there are a lot of instances of people

who look similar. But the thing about the computer algorithm is it can get really really specific, like looking at the position of your ears on your head, and you you know, things that are going to remain the same unless you had some sort of you know, you could have plastic surgery that alters the way you look and that would mess up the algorithm. Ort least algorithm possibly

wouldn't recognize you based upon whatever you had done. And when it comes down to things like you know, identical twins, can it can it tell one twin apart from the other? Probably not, I mean unless there are enough subtle differences for the computer to be able to pick up on it. Keeping in mind, the resolution on these cameras isn't always that incredibly sharp. You know, facial recognition software is getting better and better, but you still need a high resolution

camera to really take advantage of it. Well, the resolution on the cameras plays a role even if you're not using facial recation, if you're just looking at it. Lots of the cameras that are deployed right now are not HD cameras, and they, uh, they might play some sort

of deterrent role. But the problem is once you get your hands on the footage, a lot of times it's like, well it's a guy with a hat on, which again is one of those things like if you've got someone who's watching the footage live, then they can respond to it in real time, which you know, that's one deterrent. But if you're talking about using it as a means to pursue someone legally, then obviously the resolution it plays

a huge role. And and not only that, but the camera angle and the duration and all that kind of because we can't we can't zoom in and turn it around the way that they can on police procedurals, right right, No, yeah, zoom and enhanced. Zoom and enhanced does not work. Yeah,

well the old every procedural ever since. Um. But anyway, the the big fear I think that that folks who are really concerned with this trend, the big fear they have is that we're going to have this huge amount of this huge number of cameras out there, even more than we already do, and it's going to be a combination of the ones that are mounted on the side of buildings, the ones that are inside businesses, the ones that are on dashboards, the ones that cops are wearing,

and all the ones that we have at our disposal. The phones and the Google Glass and all the other kind of stuff, and and in traffic, and all of these cameras could be streaming or uploading video to some sort of Internet server. We're looking ahead in the future here. This is the dark version, right. So you've got all this video going into a server. It's more video than any person could ever watch because you're you're getting so many different streams, all in real time. Obviously, no one

could keep an eye on all of this. But if you designed really really powerful algorithms that could identify people and only that, but also get triggered for certain instances, things that when this sort of situation happens, log it, or when this person shows up, log it right then now if if they're a registered sex offender for example, Yeah, so then you've got this global always on I that's watching everything and logging anything of note. Uh And and

who decides what is of note versus what isn't. That's a big question. That's the big fear. And the thing is is that the technology that we've got is heading in such a direction that that sort of future is possible. Not necessarily that it's going to happen, but that assuming that we are able to keep up with the trends that we have now, assuming we're able to continue improving the algorithms and the equipment and deployment and somehow have the capacity to handle that's this much data. That's a

big question. Well, I mean it seems to me, and you feel free to disagree. The question is not whether we can do it, it's just whether we're going to exactly That's that's where the real question comes in. The technology is going to can be done right, It's happening

right now. The nice thing is that being aware of that means that you can be part of the conversation and talk about what are the benefits, what are the the things that are are detrimental to society in general and your peace of mind in particular, That those are important conversations. Yeah, it's interesting because when the idea of surveillance comes up, I feel this tug from both sides. I don't want to be paranoid, but I don't want to be naive, and I don't know how to feel

about things like this. On one hand, I'm like, I mean, come on, I mean, the government is not actually like trying to track me and stuff like that. They they're they're bigger fish. Yeah, like why are there trying to see me undressed or something like who cares? Why would they? I just don't see that happening. But on the other hand, and again, you know, I don't want to be a sucker,

like you should be cautious. And there are there are probably some people who might have really legitimate fears like um, well, like like activists if you're if you're protesting something and your government doesn't really appreciate you doing that, and and you might think that the protest is important. Well, a lot of it. It depends on the orientation of the government, right, Like I mean, are you scared of this government now? Well, I mean the same infrastructure will be there with whatever

government exists in forty years. Just that is that government something we shouldn't worry about. And there there there are, um there are suits in progress that are discussing this

kind of data and and this kind of information. The a C. L u As of Maden got involved in a lawsuit in California about those automatic license plate recognition scanners that are are in some some police cruisers that can scan you know, hundreds of license plates per minute going at pretty high speeds through a parking lot um and there was concerned that some of the data was being kept for too long or um or that it could it could hypothetically be used to create these records

of what normal citizens with no records of wrong wrongdoing or doing and where they're going well, And you know, I think it's important for us just to remember that that while we're painting this sort of Orwellian future that's very frightening, obviously, that's not it's not a foregone conclusion that that's going to be what the future is, and that if we do pay very close attention and we're careful, we can have all the benefits of this technology without

the you know, the the scary, dark science fiction dystopia version as well. Lots of people don't like to mention the benefits because I don't know, I mean, there's a cynical tendency we have to to play up, you know. But I mean they do actually solve crimes. It's debatable to what extent, but I mean they helped surveillance help to catch the Boston bombers. So I mean, clearly there

are a lot of sides to this issue. It's very complex and We don't mean to suggest that it's it's at all something you can boil down and solve in a in a simple podcast, but these are are good questions to ask. It's good to think about as we move towards the future and make sure that we have the best possible positioning for everything from our rights of privacy UH to our our personal safety, and to make sure that we have those checks and balances in place.

These are all things that we need to think about. So it's good to have this discussion. And guys, if you have any suggestions for future episodes of forward Thinking, please right in let us know. You can send us an email. Our address is fub thinking at discovery dot com or go to fw thinking dot com. That's our website where we have all the videos, the blogs, the podcasts. We've got links to our social media stuff there. So

come visit us, be part of the conversation. Tell us what you're excited about, tell us what you want to know more about. We definitely want to hear from you, and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com. Brought to you by Toyota let's go places,