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RNZ’s Phil Pennington says it’s hard to get a comprehensive picture of the wide range of cameras and technology used to collect information about our daily lives.
photo: Photo courtesy of Dan Bailey
analyze – Artificial intelligence cameras already exist or will soon appear on billboards, on bus windshields, on gas station forecourts, and at supermarket checkout counters.
Surveillance for security purposes has been very successful around the world and in New Zealand.
The process went smoothly and with little drama – despite a legal challenge to the case being heard in the Auckland District Court this week, there was no media coverage.
The hearing is expected to involve at least four separate criminal cases. Challenge the police to use The ruling was reserved in relation to evidence of unauthorised footage collected from retail CCTV cameras linked to automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems.
Another episode appeared After RNZ reported Last year, it emerged that new billboards at Wellington train station were to be fitted with cameras from the same Swedish company that supplies surveillance products to China. The billboard company soon abandoned the cameras.
MetLink began installing large digital billboards at Wellington train stations last year, although they were unaware at the time that cameras were embedded in them.
photo: RNZ/Phil Pennington
Just last week, the third speed bump appeared, and the New Zealand Transport Agency delayed Using license plate recognition cameras On the highway (see below).
The march has been largely one-sided, though, involving money given to technology manufacturers and marketers who are known for protesting media calls their products “surveillance.”
This sensitivity has not put off government spending on a hybrid public-private system.
New Zealand has its own system, used by powerful state agencies, police and immigration.
Many camera systems can run facial recognition (FR). Sometimes you are just asked to trust that FR is not turned on.
Here’s a quick recap of what we know about our surveilled society:
- Bus – This is the latest. San Francisco company Hayden AI puts car recognition cameras on bus windshields. Working with NEC New Zealand, a major public transport contractorThey market their product as a road safety tool to drivers who crowd bus stops, bus lanes or cycle paths.
- Automatic Number Plate Recognition CCTV System – There are at least 5,000, and possibly as many as 10,000 or more, private CCTV cameras across the country connected to two separate private AI systems For license plate recognition. Police use this when investigating retail and other crime. Your local council may well have some of these. Introduced – Since 2015.
- Airport – Customs regularly upgrades the facial recognition technology at its e-gates, which can match your face to your passport in the blink of an eye – although the biometric data is then retained for three months. Just tendered Added biosafety features.
- ANPR on Transmission Gully – The agency wants to install ANPR cameras at both ends of the Transmission Gully Highway near Wellington to record vehicle travel times to see if the road is properly operated by private operators. It is not known whether the license plate images will match the motor vehicle registry, nor whether the NZTA will actually go ahead with this, as Postponed until the end of July. Launch- 2024, but was delayed.
- Billboards – The latest can watch you pass by Customize advertising based on demandLast year, the country had at least 1,400 high-tech billboards, at least 49 of which were equipped with license plate recognition cameras to count cars (although operators insist the billboards cannot identify car owners). Some malls are also equipped with smart screens that can measure your mood.
- Body-worn cameras – Police still don’t have them, but prison officers and cashiers do. Woolworths In April, the promotion was launched in nearly 200 stores.the video was downloaded and stored by Singaporean company CSE. Launch date – 2024.
- Speed Safety Cam – The new speed cameras installed on motorways are so powerful that they can see inside cars. And smart enough to send the desired information back to the artificial intelligence for analysisDriver on phone, ping. Not wearing seatbelt, ping. Waka Kotahi vows to use the feature wisely. Rollout – Testing to begin in mid-2023.
- Congestion charging and tolls – The cameras and new back-end technology will ensure that all the data you generate every day is not lost but stored in anonymised form somewhere, perhaps a cloud computing supercentre in Sydney or Canberra, to help generate the next business case.
The CCTV surveillance room of an Auckland business association in May. (File photo)
photo: RNZ/Finn Blackwell
Cameras are not the least important part of surveillance, but they are only part of it.
Another is the spread of systems that don’t rely on cameras but still surveil, collecting data about where you go and what you do, storing it and sharing it where possible, under agreements and contracts designed to protect your privacy and prevent your profile from becoming a tradable commodity, although this doesn’t work as well elsewhere, such as on social media platforms.
For example:
- Spider Web – The technology, which amounts to surveillance by camera, has been monitoring people’s social media for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. MI Intelligence Departmentto stop boat smugglers. In the market Replace it with similar technology. Launch – 2020.
- National Ticketing Solutions – It can take you anywhere by bus or train By scanning your phoneThe price of any such convenience is always control – you hand over control of your travel data to a national agency, the NZTA, and its contractor, Cubic, which happens to own the defence surveillance and reconnaissance arm.
While it may seem there’s always room for more surveillance, New Zealand doesn’t have eyes everywhere. Other countries are closer to full coverage.
There are over a billion CCTV cameras in the world, with China having the most, the United States also having many, and Africa having few. Although some rough estimates suggest that New Zealand There is one camera for every 12 people, and one for every 2 people in Shanghai.
A key development is that public agencies used to buy hardware and run it, keeping data in-house; now they often buy the complete package in build-and-operate contracts with tech companies, which often collect and store the data.
Just as there has been software as a service (SaaS), there is now monitoring as a service.
Again, it’s convenient, and the popularity of this new type of SaaS has not hindered New Zealand A “Joint Statement on Combating the Proliferation and Abuse of Commercial Spyware” led by the United States was recently signed.
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