IBM & the City of Boston used spying software at an outdoor concert
The city of Boston spent $650,000 to test surveillance software during last year’s Boston Calling music festival, using the technology to record the crowds of concertgoers without their knowledge.
No similar surveillance at public events — including this past weekend’s Boston Calling festival — is scheduled, a city spokeswoman said. But she acknowledged that future tests of systems with similar capabilities may also be done without notifying those being recorded.
Systems like the one tested by Boston can be used for many purposes, including everything from alerting police to abandoned bags to sorting people by height or skin color.
The city last month acknowledged that it participated in the pilot project at last year’s festivals in May and September, during which IBM demonstrated what the city calls “situational awareness” software. The city denied using the technology’s ability to track individuals based on race or other characteristics.
The surveillance, which the city said used existing security cameras, was revealed when a journalist found documents and video recordings from the project on the Internet. Reports on the surveillance program appeared in the alternative weekly DigBoston last month.
City spokeswoman Kate Norton said the $650,000 bought temporary or limited licenses for the software as well as IBM setup and support.
The city decided against purchasing the software, saying in a statement that its practical value was unclear. But Boston remains interested in similar software despite criticism from privacy advocates.
The goal of the project, which occurred under the previous city administration, was to see whether the software could help with public safety, management of crowds and traffic, and other concerns during large public events, Norton said.
What a load of B.S., IBM has been profiting for years by selling cities & states surveillance cameras used to identify & track people.
IBM has been working on it's 'Smart Surveillance" program for years and it does use facial recognition & tracks vehicles.
"Smart Surveillance Research includes members of the Exploratory Computer Vision group at IBM Watson Research who are involved in research and development of video analytics for surveillance. This team created the "PeopleVision" prototype which has become a product and solution offering called Smart Vision Suite. This team has worked on moving object detection, tracking, object classificaiton, color classification, and face tracking. More recently, the team has started an effort in large scale learning of vehicles and pedestrians."
Situational awareness software analyzes video and provides alerts when something happens. For example, if someone walks into a secure area in view of one of the system’s cameras, the software would raise a red flag. More sophisticated systems can track people in real time as they move through crowds — such as following an unauthorized person in the area — without requiring dozens or even hundreds of human analysts to watch video feeds.
“Race-based searches were not used by the city at any course during this technology demonstration. In fact, the searches were not focused on any individual characteristics of people at all, but rather situations that were deemed a potential threat to public safety [such as] abandoned bags [or] vehicles illegally parked.”
IBM did not return calls seeking comment about the demonstration, but in an e-mail, company spokeswoman Holli Haswell said neither “face capture . . . nor facial recognition” were used at the event.
Whether facial recognition or other tracking was used in the project is beside the point, said Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Project at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
“What really matters is that a private corporation was brought in to conduct a surveillance experiment on thousands of unwitting partygoers,” Crockford said. “This is the opposite of the way a democratic society should function.”
“The city, like many cities, has a bad habit of implementing costly surveillance programs and not informing the public ever,” Crockford said.
The pictures below are IBM's vision of surveillance state Amerika:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/09/07/boston-watching-city-acknowledges-surveillance-tests-during-festivals/Sz9QVurQ5VnA4a6Btds8xH/story.html
http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_group.php?id=1903