Gauteng roads department installing AI-powered CCTV to protect traffic lights at busy intersections

mylesillidge

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Smart cameras to guard South Africa's busiest traffic lights

The Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport has announced plans to intensify its efforts to restore traffic lights at critical intersections across the province.

Many key intersections' traffic lights have been vandalised, and the department's efforts will include leveraging AI-powered CCTV cameras to prevent further vandalism and arrest perpetrators.
 
Greenstone has been on again / off again for more than 5 years.

They couldn't keep these lights up for more than 2 weeks.

Sure. The problem is "We don't have enough LLM! "

Clowns
 
Greenstone has been on again / off again for more than 5 years.

They couldn't keep these lights up for more than 2 weeks.

Sure. The problem is "We don't have enough LLM! "

Clowns
Throwing the current buzzword "AI" into their utterance to sound clever. That's all this is
 
Cameras dont help when, because they contain copper wire and batteries, they are more likely to be stolen first, then the lights vandalised. I am sure I have seen the informal settlements along the N2 with some houses with red, green and yellow exterior lights, and a few with blue lights as well.
 
worst are the clueless people who stop BEFORE the robot loop in the tar so it doesnt trigger a countdown

I think those times after the countdown only one car gets through because its blocked by the flow crossing over blocking the way outweighs the times that granny doesn't trigger the sensor.
 
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Cameras dont help when, because they contain copper wire and batteries, they are more likely to be stolen first, then the lights vandalised. I am sure I have seen the informal settlements along the N2 with some houses with red, green and yellow exterior lights, and a few with blue lights as well.
Just have a camera watching the camera.
 
worst are the clueless people who stop BEFORE the robot loop in the tar so it doesnt trigger a countdown

It's a simple system, but in this day and age, we really should be using cameras to detect vehicles, and not loops that are susceptible to breakage and clearly "user error"
 
I must symphasize with the city to a certain point. When they just manage to repair/replace and entire traffic light stack, the next evening a drunkard mows them down :(
 
worst are the clueless people who stop BEFORE the robot loop in the tar so it doesnt trigger a countdown

Or those who stop over the pedestrian crossing, half way into the intersection, and you have to walk around them. Or the Uber and taxis who just drive through, irrespective of the light being red, green or working.
 
cameras wont help unless they can auto trigger some type of security responders team . or maybe the cameras are monitored 24/7

once thieves know theres cameras they will wear masks
 
They should be converting as many intersections as possible to round-about's imo
 
Big Brother is ALREADY watching you (if you live & drive in the USA)...

Inside the growing police use and misuse of Flock’s license-plate reader cameras - CNN​

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Last December, Milwaukee Police Department internal affairs detectives began investigating an officer accused of misusing Flock, the department’s automated license-plate reader system.

The detectives investigating officer Josue Ayala found he secretly used Flock to learn the location of his romantic partner 124 times and that partner’s ex 55 times, according to a February criminal complaint.

Ayala agreed to resign from the department and plead guilty to attempted misconduct in public office as part of a deal, according to court records.

Then earlier this month, one of the detectives who had investigated Ayala was himself arrested for misusing the Flock system. The detective, Tehrangi Chapman, admitted to using Flock to track two people and to secretly installing a GPS device on one person’s vehicle, according to a criminal complaint.

The incidents are among at least two dozen cases in which officers resigned or were arrested for allegedly abusing Flock’s automated license-plate reader system to stalk romantic interests, according to a tally from the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm.

Just in the past month, five Albany police officers in Georgia were arrested and fired for allegedly misusing Flock, and police in Greer, South Carolina, fired two officers for misusing the product.

The cases underscore the growing use – and misuse – of automated license-plate reader systems, known as ALPRs, that police departments across the country have adopted in recent years.

The technology has its proponents who laud its investigative power, while opponents call it a mass surveillance system that violates privacy and civil liberties.

All agree that police abuse of the ALPR system, such as in Milwaukee, rattles the public’s trust.

Read the full article at the link below:


Inside the growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras - The Guardian​

An underground network of privacy activists is disabling or destroying the ubiquitous surveillance devices sprouting up across the US

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The first time that “NoMark” tried to knock out a Flock camera feed, he waited an hour for the perfect moment – pacing in and out of bushes that towered over him, a few feet behind a pole holding up the device.

“I was just so nervous,” he said.

NoMark, as he’s known on Instagram, had already gained an online following of hundreds of thousands for posting videos of himself wearing a black mask and taking on small-time vigilante missions: breaking up fights outside a bar and breaking into a refinery he believed was “polluting the city real bad”. The Minnesota Star Tribune dubbed him “Minneapolis’ Batman”. He spoke to the Guardian under condition of anonymity to discuss potentially illegal acts.

On this June night, he set his sights on a new target: automated license plate readers (ALPRs) made by the US company Flock Safety.

These black cameras, which are hooked up to a rectangular solar panel and typically mounted on a pole, snap photos of passing vehicles and run the pictures against large databases. They have sparked nationwide backlash from pro-privacy critics, who point to public records suggesting that these devices can help law enforcement keep tabs on specific license plates and the people driving these cars. That they can sweep in so many people’s location from an innocent act in a public space – regardless of whether the target is a suspect in a crime, and without a warrant – has led to fears of mass surveillance.

Flock, based in Georgia and valued at $8.4bn, says its cameras scan license plates billions of times each month in about 6,000 communities in nearly every state in the US.

The company said in a February blogpost that its ALPRs are “not mass surveillance tools” and that it “cannot track vehicles, much less individual people”.

Read the full article at the link below:


‘Creepy surveillance’: why some cities are shutting down Flock cameras amid privacy concerns - The Guardian​

Some cities are cutting ties with firm that provides license plate reader cameras, others are signing new contracts and many are still looking for their footing

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In recent city council meetings in Dunwoody, Georgia, a spokesman for Flock Safety, a Georgia-based firm that provides automated license plate readers, has found himself in the hot seat again.

For two months running, some residents of the affluent north Atlanta suburb in the region’s tech corridor have been demanding an end to the city’s contract with the security firm, which has drawn similar protest from California to New York.

Between a recent change in terms of service that removed a line assuring customers that the company does not own and will not sell customer data – done to eliminate redundancy, Flock says – and videos circulating of hackers showing how they had obtained access to live video feeds from Flock cameras, Dunwoody residents and some members of the city council have been in in revolt.

“When you hear from our police department saying they trust Flock, it’s clear that our police are too lazy to verify what a vendor such as Flock says,” said Joe Hirsh, a Dunwoody resident, haranguing the council over privacy breaches last week. “You and I both know the next time Flock is misused in our city, you will turn a blind eye because none of you are trustworthy with our records.”

Kerry McCormack, Flock Group Inc’s public relations manager for the east coast, spent about half an hour explaining that the company doesn’t own the images its increasingly ubiquitous license plate reader cameras take, and that it doesn’t sell the data.

“One hundred per cent of data, which is the photo of the public license plate, is owned by our customers,” McCormack said. “So, you own that data. It is never sold. We don’t have that in our model. It is written into your contract. We do not sell data.”

Skepticism of these statements abounds among Flock’s critics, who have made surveillance a political issue for municipalities. And within the bounds of the law, Flock’s clients can share or sell their data as they see fit.

Read the full article at the link below:

 
Until the cameras themselves are stolen.
GENIUS IDEA........ NOT

Like happened at R512 (Malibongwe) and R114 intersection. They put up cameras with a solar panel high on one of those H shape concrete poles. The criminals broke that pole down and stole that stuff and then the robots too, now it has stop signs.
 
Smart cameras to guard South Africa's busiest traffic lights

The Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport has announced plans to intensify its efforts to restore traffic lights at critical intersections across the province.

Many key intersections' traffic lights have been vandalised, and the department's efforts will include leveraging AI-powered CCTV cameras to prevent further vandalism and arrest perpetrators.
will it bark at black or white people?
 
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