Is the entire city of Boston under complete police video surveillance?

 That is the question I have after reading this story. When I first saw the headline I assumed that the entire city of Boston was temporarily under police surveillance for the upcoming marathon, and while that would be troubling enough, this article makes it sound as if Boston is under a permanent, complete, and constant police surveillance.

Following the Boston Marathon bombings almost one year ago, the Boston Police Department started looking toward more high-tech means of securing the city against future attacks. They found the solution in the form of an artificially intelligent, self-learning surveillance network that now watches the entire city, and all of its inhabitants.

The Texas-based Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. (BRS Labs) headed by former Secret Service special agent John Frazzini has a reputation for developing advanced, AI-based surveillance platforms. The system the company built for Boston after the bombings is on the bleeding edge of such technology, and not only watches and analyzes human behavior, but learns from it to identify suspicious or abnormal activity.

It actually predict threats by itself, completely free of additional human programming, guidance or monitoring.

  Here is more:

“Our system will figure out things you never thought of looking for,” BRS Labs chief science officer Wesley Cobb said in an IT ProPortal report. “You never thought to look for a car driving backwards up the entrance of a parking garage, for example. Our system will find that and alert on it, because it’s different from what it usually sees. It’s taught itself what to look for.”

AISight’s analysis of human behavior based on surveillance footage “promises to change the way humans conduct their surveillance of other humans,”

  In order for this system to “learn” behaviors and determine when something out of the ordinary is happening it would seem to me that having the system in place for a day or two surrounding a high profile event would not be enough time to accurately determine a change in a particular behavior. But then again, I might just be paranoid.

  And according to the article linked to above this is fairly easy to set up using the cameras which are already installed all around the city. This will be coming soon to a city near you…..in fact Chicago and Washington are already looking at implementing this system as well.

  Those who would give up essential liberty for a little perceived security…..the police state cometh.