Skip to content or view screen version

Citizen journalists and video activists beware

Undercurrents | 31.01.2014 20:26 | Bio-technology | Indymedia | Policing | London | World

Citizen journalists and video activists beware of google.
Google patent could have nightmare implications for privacy, freedom of assembly


Paul Joseph Watson from Infowars.com has exposed that Google has filed a patent for identifying when a “mob” event takes place by detecting when a number of cellphone videos or photos are taken at one particular location with the intention of forwarding such information to' law enforcement authorities.' So imagine being on demonstration and a small group of people break away to do some direct action such as put super-glue the locks of an arms factory. It is easy to imagine 15 people will get excited and start recording the action via their smartphones. It shows up as a spike which Police can monitor takes to Google. They inform the most local cops and bang - the activists are pounced upon. So an effective non-violent protest gets people locked up thanks to Google.

“When there are at least a given number of video clips with similar time stamps and geolocation stamps uploaded to a repository, it is inferred that an event of interest has likely occurred, and a notification signal is transmitted (e.g., to a law enforcement agency, to a news organization, to a publisher of a periodical, to a public blog, etc.),” states US Patent #20140025755

The full patent reads as
 http://www.google.com/patents/US20140025755

Inferring events based on mob source video

US 20140025755 A1

Undercurrents
- Homepage: www.undercurrents.org

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

element of surprise? don't stream live

01.02.2014 00:07

From the sound of it that system might be triggered even if you avoid corporate platforms and upload/stream the video elsewhere... because google's system will presumably be monitoring all public content. So it sounds like the answer is not to stream live anything which you wouldn't want to notify the police is happening.

anonymous

bad example

02.02.2014 20:49

bit of a stupid example, seeing as if you're gluing locks you wouldn't want anyone filming regardless. plus you wouldn't do that kind of action as a breakoff from a demo anyway, unless you're stupid. that's dead of night pixie territory.

yeah i get that this is concerning in an Orwellian kind of way but for your average activist pro-active law enforcement are more of a threat than this specific software. at this point in time anyway. of more concern would if google were looking to get prior knowledge of an event, rather than this reactive algorithm. maybe they are doing that also.

cluz