Reading
11/28/2006
Street swearing will help police restore order
Many people who have visited Holland are convinced that it is the most democratic country in all of Europe. And, it must be said, not without reason: a more than tolerant attitude towards representatives of sexual minorities and the legalization of same-sex marriages caused by this attitude, the famous Amsterdam red light districts, which attract foreign tourists no less than museums, as well as all sorts of coffee shops where you can safely indulge in marijuana and other mild narcotics, speak for themselves. However, few people know that in a number of Dutch cities, the police use a network of highly sensitive microphones installed in public places. These devices are connected to CCTV cameras and can record conversations at a distance of more than 90 meters. What kind of democracy is this!
In particular, we are talking about such cities as Groningen, Utrecht and Rotterdam: in these settlements, highly sensitive microphones are installed, for example, in benefit and pension registration offices, in mobile phone stores and even prisons. Their function is to catch aggressive conversations in raised tones and send a corresponding signal to the police before these conversations result in some kind of conflict. "The operation of audio cameras is based on the principle that in a conflict situation the sound is made higher and the speech rate increases," said Derek van der Vorst, director of the Sound Intelligence company that created this technology. "The voice does not have a normal even tone, but, on the contrary, vibrates. It is precisely such subtle changes that our audio cameras can catch."
It is noteworthy that the new system, which successfully passed a six-week trial period, has already received approval from the Dutch Commission for the Protection of Privacy. In addition, the country's prosecutor's office can use data obtained from such audio cameras in court as evidence. It is no wonder that other countries have decided to adopt the Dutch experience - in particular, Great Britain, whose law enforcement agencies are interested in installing the new system in the run-up to the 2012 Summer Olympics, which will be held in London.
"There is a lot of interest in our system, especially because of the importance of security issues at the 2012 Olympics," said Martin Nanninga of the Dutch company VCS Observation, which sells these audio cameras on the market. "We have talked about our 'smart' control centres and our aggression recognition system." The only thing left to do is to put the issue of installing a similar system on the streets of British cities up for public discussion.
“This is a novelty for the UK,” said Graham Gerrard, chairman of the CCTV working group of the Association of Chief Police Officers. “Obviously, this would mean that there is someone or something involved in listening to people’s conversations on the street, and before we take "We will need to have a debate about whether this is a wise use of the technology from a societal perspective."
utro.ru
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