I live in Amsterdam and can confirm this is a real problem. Lots of assholes with small dicks who pimp their cars or motorcycles to be loud as fuck. I applaud this measure
Yeah I wished they would do this in my city. Everyone complaining about privacy has clearly never had to put up with these assholes.
Otherwise known as microphones?
Cameras with microphones. Once a loud vehicle is detected the license plate has to be photographed.
It reminds me of the case in NY where they charged someone for murder because they caught his license plate while he was driving near a shooting with no evidence whatsoever other than being near the shooting.
Great, for added big brother points, the government could literally listen to every conversation on every street corner…
Edit. Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to why the police having live recording microphones everywhere is a good idea, generally you’d need a warrant to record citizens.
But sure, this is just for loud exhausts and has no other possible uses. Lol!
I always ask myself with these sorts of things, what would the CCP do?
China’s ambition to collect a staggering amount of personal data from everyday citizens is more expansive than previously known, a Times investigation has found. Phone-tracking devices are now everywhere. The police are creating some of the largest DNA databases in the world. And the authorities are building upon facial recognition technology to collect voice prints from the general public.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/21/world/asia/china-surveillance-investigation.html
I don’t think it’s wise to install potential dual use surveillance tech that a future government/leader could use
- Sent from my phone
Hate to admit even the least paranoid among us to take this with caution.
I can turn my phone off or leave it at home…
But do you do that?
That’s not the point. The point is we shouldn’t have to.
Mics can collect voiceprints. It’s like the police dusting for your fungerprints wherever you go. Which, if they had a warrant and cause, fair enough, but everyone 24/7? Seems like a privacy invasion to me.
Yeah and where are you more likely to talk about sensitive information, at home or outside next to a busy street?
Er, outside in a busy street. Isn’t that tradecraft 101?
But, the police have other ways these days
https://www.policeprofessional.com/news/lip-reading-technology-to-combat-crime/
Have you been sleeping under a rock for the last 15 years? If the government wants to listen to you, they’ll just use the microphone in your pocket. Or better: they don’t listen to your incoherent ramblings and go straight for your search history, which is much more interesting than what you are generally talking about.
I don’t know if you know this, but it’s pretty easy for someone to make private their phone, search history, etc. You just need to be a little dedicated and sacrifice some usability.
You cannot do the same with microphones listening everywhere that you do not own.
Have some sense.
That’s what you think if you haven’t worked in the Telecom sector before.
Unless there’s something beyond switching DNS, using a VPN and your own router/modem. It’s maybe 100$ up front and ~3-5 per month to be able to circumvent any telecom.
You mean the VPN advertising everywhere, who gives out the user data whenever a goverment agency knocks on the door? Or the other big name VPN, where the company owner has another business that makes money by selling users internet data?
Yeah, i’m sure they will bend over backwards and file lawsuits to “protect your privacy” for $5/month…
Switching DNS does jack squat for your privacy. Any telecom worth their salt can read all DNS requests no matter which DNS you talk to. They only don’t filter content on alternative DNSes because they don’t care about filtering/blocking in general unless forced to by law.
Using a VPN doesn’t add privacy, it just swapps out who is monitoring your traffic. Many VPN services are actually owned/run by secret services or cooperate with them (like NordVPN). Others are directly run by criminals who use them to steal data or inject malware. Also, VPN providers also have ISPs that reside in countries. In the very best case it’s not your ISP spying on you, but the VPN’s ISP. In the worst case, you now have an ISP and a VPN provider spying on you.
Your own router/modem again does nothing at all for your privacy.
That’s what I mean: people think they are doing privacy enhancing things, but actually what they are doing isn’t helping at all.
Your ISP knows all the websites you go to. They might not know the contents due to encryption, but they do know websites.
And for search, well, google knows everything. Unless you use something else than google. But few people do, and bing isn’t much better.
That’s even assuming the phones themselves don’t have backdoors. Unless you run a custom android OS… which definitively almost nobody does.
All of those things are within the dedication to privacy. A lot of upfront time commitment but near effortless after the fact. On desktop it’s even easier.
The fact that we have a technology such that do not justify his use nor an expansion of the surveillance. Au contraire it is the time to fight back.
Well then fight back. Relinquish your phone first, as it’s the easiest thing to.
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I live in the UK. We stopped people having guns after a mass shooting.
This can be done without constantly recording or transmitting what the microphone perceives. It can simply start recording sound and picture when a noise is detected that is loud enough / matches the pattern we’re looking for. This can be done just on the device. No big brother tech needed.
None needed, but that doesn’t stop autocratic regimes from doing mass surveillance.
China’s ambition to collect a staggering amount of personal data from everyday citizens is more expansive than previously known, a Times investigation has found. Phone-tracking devices are now everywhere. The police are creating some of the largest DNA databases in the world. And the authorities are building upon facial recognition technology to collect voice prints from the general public.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/21/world/asia/china-surveillance-investigation.html
I don’t think it’s wise to install potential dual use surveillance tech that a future government/leader could use
A system like this isn’t any less harmful to privacy than speed cameras, is it?assuming it’s not implemented with a bunch of other non privacy friendly features (which I’d argue isn’t an issue with the microphone)
They know where you’ve been…which is fine until the govt doesn’t like you
A record for all vehicles passing by a camera is stored, including those for vehicles that are not known to be of interest at the time of the read.
At present ANPR cameras nationally, submit on average around 60 million ANPR ‘read’ records to national ANPR systems daily
Why isn’t a microphone an issue? It could easily record everything and upload it
This is like claiming speed cameras are filming all the time.
Many of them in a grid.
One microphone would be like having 1 ear. If you’ve ever known someone who is deaf in 1 ear, they have trouble locating the direction sounds come from. IIRC, the implementation involves something like ~50—100 or so microphones. If you have a lot of noise entering your house you can point the thing towards a window and it will generate a heat map image showing red color where the noise is the highest.
Good. Sick of the noise. Now figure out how to deal with the illegal ebikes and scooters riding like dickheads using bike paths at well above 25kmph.
A couple hundred meters away from me, there’s a piece of a two-lane two-lane road that has no traffic lights for a little over 1 km and has the priority of way, too - meaning that at night, you can get a somewhat high speed over there for a little while without leaving the city limits.
There’s only a few bikers in my city, but holy shit do they make “good” use of the opportunity in summer. I really wish we also had this kind of cameras out there, because the noise from just one is insane, especially at dead of night, and sometimes they do this in packs.
The best part is that it never lasts once - they just speed between the two traffic lights for a while, making a shit ton of that noise.
There are also buildings with windows overlooking that same road from a much closer distance than mine. Can’t really imagine what it’s like for people living there, even though we’re basically meters away from each other.
Great to see! I really hope more cities will follow suit to deal with this problem as well.
Wish we had that here. I could only afford a home on a busy street and the pollution is bad enough we it is without the modded trucks, muscle cars and motorcycle racing by at 1am. It’s illegal, but uninforced.
And that crying about being spied on… we already have cameras everywhere, actually having them used for something we want would be lovely. This and carpool lane enforcement, regulated in a way that can’t be abused (unlike red light and stop sign cameras, which local governments really abuse given lack of top down regulation).
I hear that the UK is trialling them in England an Wales, and London also had a trial run in 2021/22. Not sure what came of it, though.
Trouble is, the UK has no law limiting the noise a car can make. Only if there is e.g. a modified exhaust can the police even do something.This is not true. See rule 123 of the Highway Code which says it is illegal to modify your vehicle to make more noise and that the noise of a vehicle should be below 86 db.
The current issue is that enforcement is not proactive and the fines are very low. Most police departments only issue a warning for first time offenders.
For an extensive review.
It is unfortunate that some countries are using cameras, microphones and others to control the behaviour of people. I agree that it is a required measure - as some people do not change their behaviours out of good will - but it is definitely not ideal.
Hopefully, in some years it will no longer be necessary, as people will have those good behaviours deeply rooted.
You forgot that there will always be young men succumbing to testosterone.
Maybe next they can introduce these in Sweden, to deal with the eurodanceraggare and loud-tailpipe dickheads that plague the roads.
This seems to be a problem everywhere in the world where young drivers can afford shitty cars.
Great news!
I’d like one of those for the park across the street where alcoholics congregate each night and yell at each other until 3AM.
Based. Your turn, US.
I agree that it is sad that we have to come to that, but if good procedures are in place to make sure that the cameras and microphones are used for only this purpose, this can really help to have a better living environment.
I wish my city was implementing just half of the measures Amsterdam is doing
Ngl would community self-reporting be better? I don’t even know how to report traffic violations etc. in the US. Do they also need proof in order to do something about it? I wonder if being able to record and send video to the police of loud vehicles would be better. Or perhaps that could turn out worse?
If a motorcycle is zooming at Mach 3 in a general vicinity of your house it’s pretty hard to report due to practical issues like getting shoes on, getting to your Mach 4 capable vehicle, locating the offender and catching up with him to get his plates.
I don’t think you want to outsource these kinds of things to the general population. If I have problems with noisy drivers in front of my house, I’d have to stand outside all day waiting for them to take a picture, or I’d have to install a camera. Both aren’t things a private person should have to do.
Your solution has the major drawback of not enabling further surveillance of the population under the guise of public safety.
Please sell these cheaply to consumers. I would really love to have one that photographs the plates extremely high pitch 50cc scooters on my street. I would pay $€£ 1000 for the ability to launch rotten eggs when someone uses the horn at 2am.