Comment by Grombobulous
1 day ago
I keep wondering if there’s some kind of positive correlation between prestige of an institution and level of immaturity and fragility of their employees.
Look, I’m not trying to be pro-surveillance state or whatever, but in what universe is a handful of cameras (less than 10 per building) in a publicly accessible space on a private university unusual or alarming?
I thought every university had this, but I guess I’m now learning that my university wasn’t prestigious enough to be exempted from reality.
My high school also had cameras. Isn’t that rather typical?
Keep in mind that pretty much 100% of schools this size have assaults take place every single year on school grounds, in a country where school shootings happen on a literal weekly basis.
Speaking of the supposed cost waste of these cameras: I would be surprised the university can get reasonably priced insurance without them.
Edit: this comment has picked up a lot of attention. I encourage those who are disagreeing with me to go directly to the university’s FAQ on the subject that is linked in the article. They directly state that this surveillance system isn’t new, it merely has some new cameras added to the existing system, audio isn’t recorded, facial recognition isn’t used, AI isn’t used, budget from other programs wasn’t sacrificed to add cameras, and data is stored inside an MIT data center. That’s one reason why I hold skepticism about the objectivity of the authors. I thought the authors were not very generous to the school’s willingness to clarify, and based on that FAQ a lot of accusations/assumptions in the article and discussion seem to be false.
https://evpt.mit.edu/campus-security-cameras-frequently-aske...
> Look, I’m not trying to be pro-surveillance state or whatever
Kinda sounds like you are, though.
> but in what universe is a handful of cameras (less than 10 per building)
The article notes 6-7 cameras per floor of one particular building. I'm not sure of the size of each floor of that particular building, so 6-7 cameras per floor may cover very little space, or it may cover a lot. That also says nothing about the coverage in other buildings. Larger buildings probably got more cameras.
Either way, often these sorts of things are set up in phases, with higher concentrations of cameras added later, after the system proves itself as useful.
> My high school also had cameras. Isn’t that rather typical?
There's a big difference between your bog-standard security camera that just records footage to a hard drive somewhere, and these cameras, that send live feeds to an AI company, where the video is presumably automatically analyzed and indexed to allow administrators to effortlessly track people's movements. The AI company may (now or in the future) offer real-time alerts of "suspicious activity", which as we all should know by now probably will have a significant false-positive rate. (But cops will treat alerts as gospel without doing any critical thinking.)
There were a lot of things in the article I didn’t take at face value due to the obviously non-neutral point of view of the faculty.
For example, why would I assume that MIT is going to violate Massachusetts law and record audio? The cameras possessing microphone hardware is irrelevant if the software doesn’t turn on audio recording.
MIT clearly states in the FAQ linked in the article that audio isn’t recorded:
> No. The security cameras do not record audio. Massachusetts law prohibits recording audio without the knowledge of those being recorded. Additionally, we do not use facial recognition technology with our security cameras.
As you alluded to, 6-7 cameras per floor might be a lot or might not be. I would think it’s not that many: you’re probably getting two to cover stairwells, one for the elevator, one or two to cover a corridor. As soon as a corridor has a bend or runs a certain distance you’re getting another camera. We’re basically at 4 cameras per floor minimum for the smallest multi-story building possible.
> No. The security cameras do not record audio. Massachusetts law prohibits recording audio without the knowledge of those being recorded. Additionally, we do not use facial recognition technology with our security cameras.
could you read lips with AI?
Nowadays since corps lie frequently I treat FAQs as another lie.
If the capability is there, it will be used, specially since the whole decision process appears to have been rather opaque.
How do you know that "we" in "we do not use facial recognition technology" covers ambient.ai, who presumably gets the feeds directly?
> My high school also had cameras. Isn’t that rather typical?
Security cameras are incredibly typical. Having cameras that record _audio_ are not, and having cameras whose audio and video recordings are handed over to an AI company is _absolutely_ not typical.
Security cameras on the outside of a building to deter after hours crime is fairly normal.
Security cameras on the inside of a high school strikes me as deeply NOT NORMAL
Admittedly it's been many decades since I was at high school. I think some of your metaphorical frogs might be getting boiled here.
> Security cameras on the inside of a high school strikes me as deeply NOT NORMAL
1999 - https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Columbine_Shooting_Secur...
2022 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvalde_school_shooting 2023 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting
I could go on ... but most of the school shootings in the us seem pretty well documented on cctv
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Based on the article I really didn’t feel like I could assume that they were really recording audio. I had a hard time believing that MIT was violating state law.
MIT very clearly states that audio isn’t being recorded:
> No. The security cameras do not record audio. Massachusetts law prohibits recording audio without the knowledge of those being recorded. Additionally, we do not use facial recognition technology with our security cameras.
Whether or not the cameras possess microphones is irrelevant.
Many cameras include microphones that the user has no intention of enabling. These are like that, since they're in a state where no-consent audio recording is illegal.
No audio recordings are made or handed over to anyone. Handing video over to a service provider to do things like weapons detection is not uncommon and not inherently a privacy problem. It's done in hospitals today.
how accurately can a model do lip reading these days?
Is there any equivalent to spraying a camera with paint for audio?
Might as well just smash them if you're already vandalizing. Spray painting is not a lesser offense here.
> in what universe is a handful of cameras (less than 10 per building) in a publicly accessible space on a private university unusual or alarming?
> My high school also had cameras. Isn’t that rather typical?
I don't think such a handful of cameras means the same thing today as it meant in e.g. the 00s. Lots of things have changed, the government, the politics, the culture, the technical possibilities.
> Lots of things have changed, the government, the politics
This reads like you're saying "When [Good Party] were in charge, they would have always done the right thing, but now [Bad Party] is in charge so we need to handicap the government (perhaps only temporarily, until we get in charge again).
More compelling would be "Doesn't matter if it's a Bernie Sanders Socialists supermajority or a Trump MAGA government, the government shouldn't be allowed to have such-and-such power."
No, I mean that before, the video would've led to a closet where maybe someone was occasionally paying attention, the footage just recorded in a loop, new overwriting old, and it would only be accessed upon request when an incident happened. The matter would be handled internally; people would use their heads.
Now, surveillance can be automated and centralized. Who knows where that footage is being taken. It's no longer necessarily the school handling its matters internally. They can just offload that and accept the judgment of an algorithm. Maybe you're holding a Doritos bag and that results in police swarming you and almost killing you for fear that it was a gun.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684934
> Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon
Re: government and politics, maybe you fear your government is heading towards authoritarianism, something that would've never crossed your mind in the 00s, and that makes more conscious of surveillance. You've also become more conscious about Facebook and Palantir, etc, and how mass surveillance is a thing that's quite different from regular surveillance (handful of buildings, handled manually and autonomously).
It's not about what party. I don't think another Republican candidate would've had the same effect. Also W. Bush was on for most of the 00s; he was Republican, so what are you even talking about with parties? And though politics is a factor, I wouldn't say "When [Good Party] were in charge, they would have always done the right thing". Both ends of the spectrum can suck, and the polarity itself that's been growing in politics can be part of the problem.
Your high school has responcibilities over minors and the video never gets seen except when an incident is reported. Do you think office spaces or libraries need face tracking and ai cataloging surveillance too?
To me that is no different than having someone follow me and everyone else around and writing a report on all my daily activities and submitting it to arbitrary self-appointed authority.
Private office spaces can and do exactly that as long as it complies with the various privacy and biometrics laws out there. MIT is a private university.
I don’t say this as someone who is in favor of that sort of thing beyond a certain point.
Technically the university could literally send a real human to follow you around while you’re inside their buildings. Your professor actually kind of sort of does that while you’re in class and even bases your grades on your behavior, and can report code of conduct violations.
> Look, I’m not trying to be pro-surveillance state or whatever, but
... but why do you then go on making all pro-surveillance state arguments ?
Is MIT a state?
When the data ends up inevitably in the state’s hands (almost certainly thanks to the AI company they’re contracting), it is 100% part of the surveillance state. Same reason telecom providers and Big Tech generally is part of the surveillance state; they’ll just hand over data, no questions asked, no warrants provided.
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MIT has a police force, so in the way that matters for this particular topic, yes, they are a state.
Aside from that, the lines are very blurred these days, as the state often ends up gaining regular, easy access to systems such as this.
(Regardless, it's a bit in bad faith to bring up surveillance-state scenarios, and then, when called on it, claim that it doesn't matter because it technically doesn't apply to the organization at hand. Even though it does in the ways that matter.)
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Yes. They have borders, government, and a police force.
Man I wish HN commenters could be bothered to even attempt to read each other charitably instead of this crap
I did and then I asked a serious question.
These are arguments that are put forward in favor of mass-surveillance.
That is in direct contradiction to the claim "I’m not trying to be pro-surveillance state or whatever".
So I was wondering how that contradiction comes about and asked about it.
What would you suggest the charitable reading should be ?
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A charitable read of this article isn't even necessary to understand the point of this is the opposite of the poster you replied to. Basic discernment at most.
Not sure there's a more charitable read on "I don't want to be pro-surveillance, but [bunch of reasons why I think this is fine and that surveillance should be and has been normalized]".
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They don't, did you read it? It's clearly a satirical art project exposing the bullshit.
> My high school also had cameras. Isn’t that rather typical?
What? Absolutely not! At least not in the countries in which I went to school.
According to a quick kagi, over 90% of US high schools have security cameras.
I mean the correlation is money. Rich people being outraged
did an AI surveillance startup write this? You gotta be kidding me