Yet another Hacker News

How we learned to stop worrying and love campus surveillance

37 points cdrnsf 3 hours ago 23 comments

conartist6 3 hours ago | parent

https://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/

Grombobulous 41 minutes ago | parent

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.

kelnos 31 minutes ago | parent

> 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.)

yosamino 30 minutes ago | parent

> 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 ?

Grombobulous 29 minutes ago | parent

Is MIT a state?

malicka 26 minutes ago | parent

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.

kelnos 26 minutes ago | parent

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.)

ajkjk 22 minutes ago | parent

Man I wish HN commenters could be bothered to even attempt to read each other charitably instead of this crap

kelnos 14 minutes ago | parent

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]".

elliotec 11 minutes ago | parent

whoosh

ajkjk 7 minutes ago | parent

Yes there is. That's the point of the comment. They made their points seriously and you should engage with them seriously.

elliotec 12 minutes ago | parent

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.

elliotec 12 minutes ago | parent

They don't, did you read it? It's clearly a satirical art project exposing the bullshit.

malicka 28 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

collyw 21 minutes ago | parent

Is there any equivalent to spraying a camera with paint for audio?

q3k 22 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

jolmg 17 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

0conclusive-dem 17 minutes ago | parent

I mean the correlation is money. Rich people outraged

turtletontine 11 minutes ago | parent

did an AI surveillance startup write this? You gotta be kidding me

fouc 23 minutes ago | parent

If you fail to read the article you might not realize it's being sarcastic.

collyw 19 minutes ago | parent

Has any of this surveillance bullshit reduced the number of incidents that occurred where they have been installed? I find it terrifying.

augment_me 4 minutes ago | parent

No because its not the purpose. The purpose is to reduce risk by having accountability assignment to things like demonstrations that hurts the funding of the institution.

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.

xp84 4 minutes ago | parent

> have set into motion a plan to cancel our subscriptions to 700+ academic journals integral to our research and teaching.

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.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3 minutes ago | parent

Ironic considering who is designing this surveillance panopticon.