A paper was published recently that provides a technical assessment
of the effectiveness of surveillance cameras for identifying people.
It concludes that "Surveillance cameras, as they are currently used,
are almost useless for the identification of people. [Indeed],
surveillance cameras ... arguably meet the definition of being
legally blind".
The author is not a privacy advocate, but a computer scientist who
has spent "many frustrating years attempting to assist police with
the enhancement of numerous surveillance video images".
This is highly valuable support for the efforts of people in many
countries throughout the world who are endeavouring to force proper
evaluations of CCTV proposals and installed schemes, and withdrawal
of those that cannot be demonstrated to be justified.
And of course it's also relevant to surveillance researchers.
Kovesi P. (2009) 'Video Surveillance: Legally Blind? ' Proc. Aust.
Pattern Recognition Society conference (DICTA09) pp. 204-211, IEEE
Computer Society, December 2009, at
http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/~pk/Research/pkpapers/legallyblind.pdf
PowerPoint slides at:
http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/~pk/Research/pkpapers/LegallyBlind.ppt
--
Roger Clarke http://www.rogerclarke.com/
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:[log in to unmask] http://www.xamax.com.au/
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science Australian National University
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