Auckland Transport Teach Us Comms Failure over New Big Brother Surveillance System

Someone in Auckland Transport will be banging their heads on the desk after this rather large comms failure in regards to the new surveillance system due to be rolled out for an unknown sum of money.

From Stuff:

Sophisticated surveillance coming to Auckland

MICHAEL FIELD Last updated 15:52 01/10/2014

Surveillance technology that uses high definition cameras and software that puts names to faces and owners to cars is coming to Auckland.

Surveillance will also include scanning social media and news websites.

Auckland Transport, the regional transport provider, has yet to announce the multi-million dollar deal, but California’s Hewlett-Packard Development Company said today it has the contract.

No dollar sum is given.

They call it a “visionary Big Data” project and in a statement said Auckland has selected HP “to drive groundbreaking future cities initiative”.

With over 2000 cameras deployed across Auckland, the system will use a “HP Intelligent Scene Analysis System” and licence plate recognition for accurate identification.

They will screen for dangerous activities and analyse safety threats across the city.

All the data gathered by the cameras will be processed by HP cloud servers based in Palo Alto, California.

Auckland Transport’s PR department has not confirmed the announcement, but Auckland Transport’s Chief Information Officer Roger Jones is quoted by HP.

“The safety and well-being of our citizens is always our top priority and the Future Cities initiative is a big step in the right direction,” he is quoted saying.

“Only HP could comprehensively deliver the custom solution, expertise and ecosystem at this scale to transform our vision into reality.”

The vast amount of data including text, images, audio and real-time video will be analysed by HP’s system.

….

Full article, video, and source here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/10567293/Sophisticated-surveillance-coming-to-Auckland

Okay the part in bold either illustrates comms incompetence or someone not telling the full story.

However, check these line of Tweets out over the procurement of the system:

Credits to Transport Blog for pointing this out

I believe an investigation by Council, and the Auditor General might be very well needed into the procurement of this Big Brother system. As for Auckland Transport? Blessed and Special come to mind over this…

[Update] Auckland Transport Replies

Auckland Transport replied on Twitter last night pointing us to the Herald article about scheme that was published in late July.

However, Transport Blog continues on the case this morning with this post: AT’s surveillance system 

The questions are no longer about the scheme itself per-se but the procurement around it….