Secret IDs can't be secret anymore?

[zornwil]

Originally posted by austenandrews

I agree that these technologies aren't nearly as intrusive and sophisticated as the hype makes them out to be. In general a large city is such a mass of humanity that no surveillance system is going to be able to track a single guy, unless he's somehow electronically marked. The volume of raw data is more than any real-world analysis operation can handle.

 

I somewhat addressed this in a Champs game I ran in the mid-90's, in which the government-affiliated PC team actually had a cutting-edge spy satellite at their disposal, in geosynchronous orbit over the city. They had centimeter-scale optical resolution, surface-penetrating multispectrum cameras; the works. It was great for tracking bad guys trying to escape through back alleys in the dark, and for marking the layout and inhabitants of a criminal's hideout (scenarios featured nicely in last season's 24); but it never helped much when they tried to find a random bad-guy-at-large. There's just too much raw data to make it very useful.

 

What's fun, though, is to put such technology in the hands of a villain who actually can operate it with super-efficiency. That'd make the PCs work for their 15pts.

 

-AA

 

The real world reality check here is that in England this is a big issue and there have been invasions of privacy. Some guy tried to kill himself, was shot on camera, prevented, but the media is showing the tape.

 

Now, comic-book-wise, I have no issue with using the law of averages is that a hero won't be seen unmasking and he generally knows where the cameras are.

[austenandrews]

Originally posted by zornwil

The real world reality check here is that in England this is a big issue and there have been invasions of privacy. Some guy tried to kill himself, was shot on camera, prevented, but the media is showing the tape.

 

Now, comic-book-wise, I have no issue with using the law of averages is that a hero won't be seen unmasking and he generally knows where the cameras are.

 

Of course there are useful applications of the technology, or no one would spend money on them. They're good for evidence after-the-fact, for instance. But you're generally talking about instances of clearly-identifable behavior. If Captain Mystery takes rudimentary precautions while changing into his costume, and doesn't act strangely except in costume, then his secret identity should be perfectly safe.

 

-AA

[ZootSoot]

I just don't see any technology penetrating the secret ID of hero/villain of the Captain Marvel style. No one will guess he is really Billy Batson, it won't even be a possibility (and, yes, I know that in the original comic Billy Batson/Capatin Marvel did not have a secret identity and everyone did know, but if he wanted one it wouldn't be hard . . .).

[gewing]

I think D-man was referring to the iirc ZERO correct automatic identification of terrorist suspects by the computer surveillance systems.

 

Originally posted by zornwil

In real life, in London, they do much of their crime dispatch now based on monitoring cameras. This started prior to the whole traffic thing. People are watching those cameras constantly - instead of patrolling. That's in real life, mind you.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by gewing

I think D-man was referring to the iirc ZERO correct automatic identification of terrorist suspects by the computer surveillance systems.

 

But that is not true. Years ago they used the process to track terrorists and make captures, at least according to their reports. Obviously, they didn't release specifics so as not to tip off too much. But it has been used allegedly successfully for such purposes. That is one of the major reasons they went forward with the license plate tracking.

[Marcus Impudite]

One should not forget the human element in all this. Until they develope an AI smart enough to handle the task 24/7, you still have to pay someone to sit infront of monitors watching video feed from the cameras. Human nature being what it is, somethings will get overlooked. Hell, unless the area under surveillance sees alot of action, the sheer monotony of the job could cure insomnia.