Fact is, stuff happens. For example: we once had a crazed person run inside and start yelling profanities at people for no reason. Then, he denied it and reported us to the police for assaulting him. He got his girlfriend to act as a fake witness.
Having the cameras was a no brainer for legally protecting my staff, we could just pull the footage and show that no one touched him.
Similar protections for when male and female staff are working together alone. They are both protected from false accusations, one from harming the other, and the other from potentially false reports/blackmail that they attempted to do something.
We’ve caught interns stealing petty cash from people’s wallets.
Is it sad? Yes. But it’s the world we live in and cameras are cheap.
Just a reminder: Carmen Ortiz judicially murdered Aaron Schwartz in order to unsuccessfully launch a political career.
There was a bunch of anti-Israel stuff for example, which goes against the alignment of the university donors. In order to be able to assign accountability and prevent reoccurrence of such events, its useful to know who did these things so you can take necessary measures.
A bunch of cameras cost much much less than what stopped funding would cost the university, so it's the rational choice.
ehh, this part is a weak take. All universities should cancel their journal subscriptions because journal publishers are parasites. Lots of other things are done by universities in collaboration with each other, without allowing some random for-profit company to collect rents. Publications should be one of them.
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...
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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."
... but why do you then go on making all pro-surveillance state arguments ?
What? Absolutely not! At least not in the countries in which I went to school.
Now, surveillance can be automated and centralized. Who knows where that footage is being taken. It's not 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. 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.
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 ?
As a general rule: to engage charitably with someone you believe the things they say they believe, at face value and attempt to understand how they could come to believe those things.
Quite literally this:
> attempt to understand how they could come to believe those things.
Is it possible that you are not reading my comment charitably ?
However, I did follow up with a direct reply before making the comment you're replying to, so... I literally did "engage with their questions".
That’s not the surveillance state. That’s just me as a private entity snitching.
MIT is not a public university. It’s private property not much different than my house. You’re generally not supposed to be in most of their buildings unless you’re a student, faculty, or staff, just like you’re not supposed to be at my house unless I invite you over.
I will concede, though, that some lines are blurred. E.g., MIT has a police force.
The other point of my original comment is really just that it seems like the most prestigious colleges have faculty and students that complain about stuff that’s really typical at less prestigious universities.
Why not?
> That’s just me as a private entity snitching.
... to the state. You are surveilling for the state.
Domestic surveillance took off with McCarthyism.
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.)
I do concede what you’re saying about its police force, and that’s a fair angle.
The obvious answer is to leave the organization, but ultimately one shouldn't have to end their employment in order to be free of undue/unjust AI surveillance.
How is that supposed to be a serious question? They brought up real concerns. The "why" is obviously that they had real questions--that's the purpose of all questions. So they asked them,and then you implied that, if a person was truly not pro-surveillance, they would not ask such questions. Yet they had those questions. So you think they should have pretended to not be confused? Not asked those questions? Pretended like everything made sense? What was the goal here?
You didn't engage with the content of their questions at all. You just called out the act of questioning. You implied that by asking at all they were on the wrong 'side'.
> You implied
I think you are implying that I implied.
Best to end this here, probably.