Monday, May 22, 2017



Spy city

Wellington's latest plan to stamp out beggars: spy on everyone:

A 'big brother' camera and sensor network, used to tackle begging on Wellington's Cuba St, is set to be rolled out across the city.

[...]

The project focused on begging, rough sleeping, alcohol and psychoactive substance abuse.

An analytics platform collected data from new sensor technology and combined it with data held by agencies such as police, fire, emergency departments, ACC and the council.

This was then fed into a computer system that created a map with insights into day-to-day street level trends and patterns.

It also highlighted hotspots and provided real-time information to alert agencies to respond.

Video and acoustic sensors were used to count instances of begging, particularity at ATMs on Cuba St.

The information was fed to agencies that sent someone to remove and help beggars with social issues they may also have.


"Acoustic sensors" are what real people call "microphones". So what they're proposing is eavesdropping on street conversation, then having a computer pick out the conversations of interest. It's ECHELON for facespace! And while in this case the target conversations happen to be people asking for or giving money, it could equally be people complaining about politicians, or talking about their private lives, or discussing financial information - the platform allows all of that. And of course, because the system exists, then its accessible to the police in case they want to use it for investigative purposes as well (next step: using it to find drug users maybe?)

The idea that whereever you go in Wellington the council will be listening is simply creepy. And setting up their own total surveillance network (and providing guinea-pigs for foreign companies who probably want to onsell this tech to oppressive regimes) is well outside what most kiwis think local government is for.

Meanwhile, there are a limited number of homeless people and beggars in Wellington. The $125,000 they spent on the trial system would have made a huge difference to their lives. The fully operational system would make an even bigger one. But instead of actually helping these people, the council would waste money on spying on them (and on everyone else). Typical.