Hidden "anti-crime" mics are proliferating on US public transit, recording riders' conversations -- Tom
The problem here is that it perpetuates the bias in arrest rates on low socio economic groups. If you have two populations, car driving and bus riding, and you focus all your attention on the bus riding it will be far more likely to result in arrests on bus riding. This will further perpetuate the use of the surveillance as police will likely misinterpret the results to mean bus riders are more criminal. I read a paper that talks about increasing police presence in low socio economic areas perpetuates perception that the majority of the crime occurs there. For the life of me I cant find it though.
Eventually there will be microphones in cars But actually, there are microphones and accelerometers everywhere That's one reason why I don't have audio on this box.
I have a Vonage voicemail, and that does email notifications with ASR. Whereas it started out rubbish, the results it now produces are vaguely intelligible and useful. Which, I guess, indicates that mass audio harvesting could become "worthwhile" in the sense that it would be searchable (albeit with a huge false-positive component). That it's outrageous etc. doesn't appear to matter.
