Cameras who must be obeyed

The UK is awash in surveillance cameras. The city of London has three cameras per person, according to Dr. Alan Lipton, CTO of ObjectVideo, who mentioned that fact at the 2007 Automated Imaging Association Annual Business Conference, as I reported earlier. The problem, he noted, is that no one is interpreting and acting on the data the cameras collect.

Now, however, the cameras seem to be taking action themselves. According to a BBC report, "’Talking’ CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing antisocial behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England.” The linked article includes an image sequence showing a man being admonished to retrieve and discard his empty soda can.

The new talking cameras don’t really solve the problem of the lack of people power necessary to analyze and act on visual data. The scheme relies on human monitors to observe miscreants over a CCTV system and do the scolding. The government does seem to think that the scheme can enlist some free labor, however: Home Secretary John Reid told the BBC that competitions would be held at schools for children to become the voice of the cameras.

Also, it probably won’t be long until someone invents an automated antisocial-behavior-detection algorithm.