UK Police Learn That More Surveillance Data Doesn't Mean Better Surveillance Data
from the swamped-by-data dept
Way back in 2002, we wrote that with all the efforts (mostly in the UK) to try to allow law enforcement officials to collect more and more surveillance data that more data doesn't mean better data, and in fact, all that data often makes it harder to find the right or necessary data. The trick is to be smarter about surveillance, not just focus on getting more. It appears that police in the UK are finally learning this lesson. Last month, we saw how all that data was leading to mistakes as patterns were being spotted that weren't there. And, now, UK police are discovering that they're missing important information and clues because they're just overwhelmed by garbage data. Of course, this won't stop the increasing collection of data, because no one seems to want to admit that too much data helps bury the needles deeper in the haystack.
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Filed Under: police, surveillance, uk
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You really have to think of it in terms of information systems because that's what it is. Data needs to be collected and properly processed (ie: interpreted) but you only have so much bandwidth (in this case, human bandwidth) so you have to be careful about how you select and filter your data.
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Re: At least they have something to study
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Mo' data, pleeze...
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Re: Re: At least they have something to study
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Disagree With Surveillance Analysis
I disagree with this ongoing meme in Techdirt of arguing that collecting data is foolish because it is overwhelming. It's true that many agencies collect more data than they can competently handle, it is wrong to suggest that it is impossible to use the data effectively.
The important reason for this is the undeniable advance of technology. For now, machines do a pretty poor job of mining the mass of surveillance data. Most video data feeds need a real human to interpret them, look for suspects, or see interesting patterns that indicate crimes. For now, then, the data far outstrips our ability to use it economically. However, as machines get more capable to do that job, the costs of sifting through the haystack for the needle will drop dramatically.
While facial recognition software is still unreliable, it will get better. Machines will eventually become capable of detecting suspicious behavior and patterns. This is inevitable. They may never be as quick as the right brain of a human at understanding a complex scene, but they will steadily improve. At that point, your argument of "just too much data" becomes moot. So maybe we should collect the data now, and eventually machines will be able to use it effectively?
This, BTW, is by no means an avocation of a surveillance society. I detest the notion of cameras on every corner, as it is in the UK. But I would make a privacy argument against cameras. Your argument of the "mountain of data too big to ever manage" argument doesn't stand up to Moore's law very well.
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Re: Disagree With Surveillance Analysis
Google's Street View project, which seeks to drive many of the roads of the world with cars equipped like this one:
http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/13/google-street-view-car-pose-or-hide/
As most of us here know, the cars gather images from multiple cameras, data from high-precision GPS units, and other road characteristics and data. This is a mountain of data.
In fact, this mountain of data, just 10 years ago, would have been thought of as just too much data to be useful. Who could afford just the storage for all those TB? What computer systems could handle and manage that data in a way to do anything useful with it?
Clearly, though, Moore's law marches on, prices come down and capacities go up for storage, processing, bandwidth, display technology. Rendering solutions like AJAX are invented, and good ideas for how to use the information are created. What was formerly a mountain of useless data is now a practical service.
So surveillance video data is much the same. Storage is available and cheap today, but the technology to have computers "watch" the video isn't ready yet. How long will it be?
Second example would be Navteq or TeleAtlas, which gather similar data using cars for their mapping solutions sold to Garmin, Magellan, Mapquest, Google, etc. What these companies do is take the video with the cars, then pump it all to India overnight, where cheaper HR pore over the video transcribing road signs an other road characteristics into the map GIS database. Using cheaper labor to pore over video files makes a mountain of useless data VERY useful.
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