There’s a curious article on the BBC’s news website today about CCTV in Glasgow, Scotland that has the ability to listen;
Security cameras have long been a fact of Scottish life, viewed with relief by many communities and with suspicion by civil libertarians. But what if they were listening to you as well?
Scary. However, the article goes on to say;
A Dutch company called Sound Intelligence carried out a two week long trial in a busy city centre street. They stress that their system, called Sigard, does not record conversations. It listens not to what is being said but how it is being said.
Ok, so that’s slightly less scary, if you believe it, but where this entire idea really (and thankfully) falls apart is here;
[A spokesman for the company...] Bram Kuipers demonstrated this by clapping his hands. A display screen noted the sounds but took no action. Then he shouted aggressively. This time an alarm sounded and a CCTV camera spun round to look directly at the source of the shouting.
It will not work in reducing serious street violence, and here is why. I was born and spent the first thirty years of my life in London, ergo, I can speak with far more authority on the subject of street violence than anyone making lamposts with ears in a Dutch field full of tulips, and here are a couple of things that we learn really young in London;
- People who shout a lot in the street are almost always of little real threat. They are using up their aggressive energy in the act of making an unholy noise, and therefore are likely to be easy to deal with if they get out of hand physically. Usually they are either very young, or very drunk, or both.
- The most effective, and by far the most dangerous, violence on the streets comes from people who have thought quietly about what they are intending to do before they suddenly, and usually almost silently, do it.
So you see, the probably extremely expensive camera with ears will have a look at a shouty-but-harmless sixteen year old who has drunk way too many pints, and probably catch the last few seconds of him falling over, all by himself, dead drunk onto the ground. It will not look, though, as a truly dodgy geezer quietly walks up to his target and knifes him.
Pretty pointless then, no?
Then of course we have the real life situations;
Lets suppose this tech spreads out all over the UK. Then one day Jock comes down to London for the weekend. Goes out on the booze and ends up at a bus stop next to a bunch of drunken teenagers who hear his accent and decide to take the mickey (it’s always a bad plan, by the way, to take the mickey out of drunken Scots, it does terrible things to your life-expectancy). So Jock, used to the mean streets of Glasgow says; “Ah, will ya be quiet ya wee kiddies”, and looks innocent until the camera turns away.
Ok, so remember this bit?
Then he shouted aggressively. This time an alarm sounded and a CCTV camera spun round to look directly at the source of the shouting.
So the camera will see the mouthy kids giving Jock some verbal grief. All well and good. But then comes this;
Bram Kuipers demonstrated this by clapping his hands. A display screen noted the sounds but took no action.
You see Jock is not stupid and he like any Londoner will know CCTV well, and as we can see above the camera, once it has looked away, will not look around again as Jock decides to exact his revenge on the mouthy kids by quietly slapping them around a bit.
And Jock will know this.
I rest my case. This tech will not work.
