A partner at Silicon Valley's top VC firms, in a post about the future of cars, has a prediction about the impact on video surveillance:
By implication, in 2030 or so, police investigating a crime won't just get copies of the CCTV from surrounding properties, but get copies of the sensor data from every car that happened to be passing, and then run facial recognition scans against known offenders. Or, perhaps, just ask if any car in the area thought it saw something suspicious.
The partner acknowledges that exact dates are, of course, hard to predict. However, the underlying presumption is that these self driving cars will be packed cameras looking in every direction and that a combination of these cameras from various vehicles would effectively provide mass video surveillance.
There are questions / issues:
- Will the mounting heights of these cameras obscure / hinder identification?
- Will it be legal for the policy to tap into these cameras? Privacy objections?
- Will the video be recorded and if so for how long?
What do you think? Sounds like the future? Or not?