London traffic lights rigged to win International Olympic Committee's favor

http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/13/3018101/london-traffic-lights-rigged-to-win-international-olympic-committees

by ValentineC • 14 years ago

96 94 14 years ago

rkudeshi2• 14 years ago

Just me or is it a bit creepy that not only do they have a city-wide CCTV system, but they apparently used it to track specific vehicles?

Perhaps it's just the US mentality of tremendous respect for civil liberties[1], but what they did is actually appalling to me.

[1]: Please, let's not make this a discussion of how civil liberties aren't uniformly enforced in the US. I think we can agree that things like the Bill of Rights affirm more individual liberties in the US than many other countries.

rsanchez1• 14 years ago

I also find it creepy, but I wonder if the CCTV and traffic light network can be hacked to help you arrive somewhere on time, or even to have a rival arrive late to make them look bad.

cubicle67• 14 years ago

or aid your getaway?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064505/

arethuza• 14 years ago

Market forces should be applied - each set of traffic lights should take bids from the waiting vehicles. Whoever bids the highest gets to go through.

_delirium• 14 years ago

Vaguely, but it sounds like it was a fairly 'manual' sort of tracking: they attached GPS devices to the vehicles, so watching them on CCTV just meant switching to feeds based on the GPS location, rather than some kind of automated vehicle-following algorithm.

mryan• 14 years ago

The UK has a scarily-advanced automatic number plate recognition system in place throughout many parts of the UK, particularly London and the south east. The police can, and do, track vehicles in real time using this system. This is particularly true in London, where this is used to enforce the congestion charge.

Although the collection of the congestion charge is automated, this system can be used to alert police to the location of a vehicle in real time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police-enforced_ANPR_in_the_UK

nknight• 14 years ago

Of course it's creepy, but it's not new, either. The UK went Big Brother long before even 9/11, their CCTV obsession has been making international news since the 90s.

d503• 14 years ago

At least they don't try to hide it. Remember these lovely posters from 2002?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24992147@N03/2644171457/

Now available in mug and t-shirt form.

http://www.ltmuseumshop.co.uk/search.html?SearchTerm=watchfu...

ticks• 14 years ago

I think what outsiders don't realise (due to this hype) is that most of the CCTV isn't linked together. The majority of it is privately run by local businesses and households - it is used after a crime is committed to provide evidence of said crime.

jefftchan• 14 years ago

I feel that it's mostly the American mentality of civil liberties. CCTV's are ubiquitous not just in UK but also in Japan, China, Taiwan, etc

rkudeshi2• 14 years ago

Really? I did not know that! Are they as ubiquitous as London's system? (ie. literally every street and corner in the city is covered by a camera)

The only use of cameras in the US that I know of is for red-light cameras, and even those are hotly debated.

rangibaby• 14 years ago

I would like a source for this, particularly for Japan.

ktizo2• 14 years ago

Not just specific vehicles, the London camera system is setup to try and automatically track all numberplates of all vehicles moving in the city, which is how the congestion tax is implemented. It is run by IBM and Seimens, so they presumably have gathered a lot of valuable data there between them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge#Operat...

rtkwe• 14 years ago

They had planned the IOC's route through the city and had GPS in the cars with them so I doubt the tracking was automated. And England seems semifamous for it's intense use of CCTV systems, on the traffic side larger US cities with advanced traffic control systems have cameras at most (major) intersections.

sneak4• 14 years ago

The reason I moved out of NYC (and out of the country) was because the NYPD put up cameras on my local (135th Street 1/2/3) subway entrance.

If you think the billions of USD of antiterrorism money is somehow not funding purchase of facial recognition software, you're foolin' yourself.

Collect enough uniquely-identified John Does and you can link them statistically to MetroCard swipes, and then you've got names from the credit cards used to purchase them...

Ride the subway enough times with (a) friend(s), and then they've got part of your social graph, too.

zht• 14 years ago

there are large swaths of the country without such video surveillance.

did you consider staying within the country?

andrewflnr• 14 years ago

Where are you now?

felipemnoa• 14 years ago

Anecdotally speaking, I know people in NYC that live in communities with high crime rates that are happy knowing that their neighborhood is being monitored by the police 24/7. Whether in the long term this is actually a good or a bad thing to have cameras in the streets, I just don't know.

Devil's advocate here, there are countries that have had no such instant surveillance and still managed to oppress their people quite effectively. I don't want to start a flame war so I won't name a country. And many times all it took for you to get arrested was for somebody to accuse you that you were a traitor or that you were badmouthing the government.

eps2• 14 years ago

Where did you move if you don't mind me asking?

aes2563• 14 years ago

> The reason I moved out of NYC (and out of the country) was because the NYPD put up cameras on my local (135th Street 1/2/3) subway entrance.

You moved out of a city because a CCTV camera got put up on a subway entrance? You're kidding, right?

nextparadigms• 14 years ago

Well UK is the country that has just passed a porn ban, and wants to pass a new law to monitor all Internet communications in the country. That puts things into perspective for what we used to think about this "modern western country".

US is actually not that far behind from doing this and more - Constitution or not. They'll just pass the laws and deal with it 10-20 years later. After all US still has the Patriot Act, and that never seemed too constitutional to me.

What's funny is that the Eastern Europe countries are probably the least likely to go this path anytime soon, and that's because it wasn't that long ago when they had revolutions over this kind of thing. But UK and US hasn't really done that in a long time, so neither the Governments nor the people there really get what it means to have mass-surveillance and have the Government know everything you did or want to do, and how bad of a thing that truly is.

ScottMFisher• 14 years ago

>Well UK is the country that has just passed a porn ban

Excuse me?

danssig2• 14 years ago

Don't forget; the UK also put someone in jail for tweeting.

nodata• 14 years ago

> Perhaps it's just the US mentality of tremendous respect for civil liberties .. Please, let's not make this a discussion of how civil liberties aren't uniformly enforced in the US

Then don't write flamebait.

gouranga2• 14 years ago

The number plate recognition is 100% ineffective.

People use fake plates all the time.

aes2563• 14 years ago

Number plate cloning is a problem, but many of the people who do it aren't the sharpest tools in the shed.

You would have to clone a number plate from an almost identical car (same make, model, colour, etc.) in order not to raise any suspicions.

In many areas of the country there are police forces with ANPR on their patrol cars, and you can bet they'll pull over a car over a mismatch. Most probably quite aggressively, on the presumption that other criminality is involved (e.g. the car is stolen, has been used in bilking of petrol, etc.)

alan_cx• 14 years ago

We British are such scum we cant be trusted with freedom. And then we have....... immigrants. OMG, they are taking over, we are over run...

Yeah, I do like to poke at the US, but the UK is equally fecked up. I think the one real thing we in the UK and US have in common is the notion that we the people are now seen as the enemy of the state.

Trouble is, Im yet to find a suitable country, with the same good stuff the UK has, which is not also equally fecked up. I can imagine Americans like me might think the same thing.

Frankly, I do not know of a country where one can live good and not feel like the enemy of that country.

What I want to know is when will the people, yes us privileged westerners, stand up and say we have had enough. Maybe in Greece and France it has already begun.

ljf4• 14 years ago

Not only that, but number plate recognition means that ANYONE is and can be tracked as you drive around the 'city' of the London - once you enter certain zones your plates are checked to see if you have committed and crimes etc. It's done by a system alongside the CCTV, but doesn't need someone to visually track the car, the system does that automatically.

It part of the same system that charges people for entering the congestion charging zone, and those that drive in bus lanes.

http://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/CityPolice/Advice/TrafficT...

aes2563• 14 years ago

> Not only that, but number plate recognition means that ANYONE is and can be tracked as you drive around the 'city' of the London - once you enter certain zones your plates are checked to see if you have committed and crimes etc. It's done by a system alongside the CCTV, but doesn't need someone to visually track the car, the system does that automatically.

It's an impressive system, and despite being an ardent supporter of civil liberties, I don't have any problem with it myself.

Vehicles are only stopped if the police have good reason to do so, i.e. they have reason to believe the driver is committing a categorical offence (e.g. the car has no insurance or tax), or if the vehicle/owner has previously been involved in serious crime (e.g. there is a marker on the vehicle linking it to drugs or firearms)...

willyt• 14 years ago

Civil liberties covers more than just tracking. The UK police are a lot more likely to automatically fine you for speeding or for forgetting to pay you vehicle tax. But on the plus side, they are a lot less likely to shoot you if they come to arrest you for it. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3966187

The focus should be on having a healthy criminal justice system which is completely free of political interference and effective in enforcing sanctions on the police when they behave unjustly and neither Britain or the US can claim that at the moment.

RyanMcGreal• 14 years ago

> I think we can agree that things like the Bill of Rights affirm more individual liberties in the US than many other countries.

The Bill of Rights is so 18th century. I think you'll find that most industrialized liberal democracies have constitutional guarantees of freedom that are more modern and comprehensive than the US version. The UK is something of an anomaly in that it still relies on common law and tradition rather than an explicit bill or charter of rights. The honour system works fine and tends to be self-correcting over the longer term, as long as the government is willing to play along nicely.

shabble• 14 years ago

I think a good chunk of it was probably installed as a consequence of terrorist attacks during The Troubles[1], which led to the "Ring of Steel"[2], a fortified security/surveillance cordon around the financial districts.

If you compare those measures to the US response to Sept 11th and others, I think you'll find a lot in common. I think at the time the measures were widely welcomed by the public too, although I'm not certain.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_steel_%28London%29

nl• 14 years ago

That's news? I know Sydney did the same thing back in the 90's. They didn't have as sophisticated a system - I think it involved people phoning in locations of the delegate's convoy as it drove around.

dmfdmf• 14 years ago

> the event's costs have expanded from an original estimate of $3.9 billion to $18 billion, according to Vanity Fair.

This was the most shocking item in that report. That blows away my usual "double the estimates" rule-of-thumb for govt related bids. Now we even have rule-of-thumb inflation.

46Bit• 14 years ago

The original estimate was a farce anyway. It could never have been delivered for that.

gaius• 14 years ago

I bet it could: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Summer_Olympics

pbhjpbhj2• 14 years ago

Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth games cost a whopping $1.5billion AUD (about £600 million GBP; about 3% of the current estimate for the 2012 Olympics).

Now the Delhi 2010 games did go vastly overbudget, possibly as high as 60,000 crore INR (about £7 billion; less than half the current estimate for the Olympics). But they also built a 4 lane highway, new metro tunnels, and expanded the airport in that price. About one-quarter of that gross estimate was budget spent on the sporting events and directly related infrastructure.

There are 302 events at the 2012 Olympics versus 272 at the 2010 Commonwealth games.

They're not exactly doing it on the cheap.

estel• 14 years ago

Whilst that was an original estimate several years before the bid formally took place, Parliament agreed to a budget of £5.3B for the games, an extra £2.7B contingency, "security and policing costs of £600 million, VAT of £800 million and elite sport and Paralympic funding of nearly £400 million" [0]. £2B for actually staging the games is covered by sponsorship etc.

As the agreed cost before the bid was finalised, this is really rather close to the $18B figure the cited Parliamentary report comes up with.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics#Financing

stordoff• 14 years ago

I revised my rule-of-thumb after seeing the costs for the NHS IT systems [1]. The Olympics going so far over budget really didn't surprise me.

> Originally expected to cost £2.3 billion (bn) over three years, in June 2006 the total cost was estimated by the National Audit Office to be £12.4bn over 10 years ... Officials involved in the programme have been quoted in the media estimating the final cost to be as high as £20bn, indicating a cost overrun of 440% to 770%.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health#Costs

DanI-S• 14 years ago

It's an altogether unpleasant feeling to see my country and its people become a plaything for the rich and powerful.

Too many government decisions are made in order to procure glory and gratification for those at the helm. Britain has a lot to offer the world, and it has been stifled by its vain and inward-looking leadership for far too long.

gouranga2• 14 years ago

Spot on.

To be honest 99% of us ignore it and treat it like a different world. However, if it becomes a problem en masse the shit WILL hit the fan and the accountable will be made examples of.

DarkMeld• 14 years ago

That's totally awesome and completely fine in my book. Props (Cheers!) to whoever thought of the idea.

benologist• 14 years ago

Summary stuffed full of verge links and seo tags just like the site they left to "avoid" the "AOL Way".

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/06/international-olym...

eps2• 14 years ago

Oh, common now. Who is there left believing that an Olympic city selection process is based on city merits (and not on bribes and kickbacks)?

sparknlaunch12• 14 years ago

Missile launchers, dedicated traffic lanes for Olympic delegates, controlled traffic lights... it doesn't sound like a Bourne film... it is a Bourne film! You have to pay £10 to enter the park and £15 to climb the Orbit tower.

The Games will be sadly for corporates and VIPs. Any non athletes or local Londoners will suffer during this Olympic period. Londoners hope the world will enjoy the games.

Produce• 14 years ago

>Londoners hope the world will enjoy the games.

As a Londoner, I hope the games suck and they never come back.

tijs2• 14 years ago

Most, probably all, modern olympic game organizers make sure there are VIP lanes for sponsors and the very (very) rich. Basically, fortune permitting, you have to be able to get off your yacht, stroll into your limo and then be at any olympic venue in about 10 minutes.

So while it could also be done to impress committee members it's more probable that it's done to not piss off the Mittal's and the Saudi's.

SagelyGuru4• 14 years ago

Nah, you fly from your yacht to your Olympic Suite in a helicopter. This was done to favour the next rank down, i.e. government officials who have to be a little circumspect about their priviledges but not circumspect enough to allow their subjects to go about town unhindered.

tijs2• 14 years ago

Isn't the whole idea of having a super yacht to not have to sleep in somebody else's shabby hotel suites?

SagelyGuru4• 14 years ago

They plagiarised the idea from the KGB, whereby in Moscow they had/have middle lanes reserved for the VIPs and the peasants are consigned to where they belong: to crowded muddy ditches.

SagelyGuru4• 14 years ago

I have no idea how one gets to be on the Olympic Committee but intelligence and thoroughness are presumably not required. They could have hired a car and gone on a drive by themselves.

On second thoughts, nowadays they would have been no doubt identified through their payment and the lights surreptitiously switched to green anyway.

Whatever happened to the Olympic spirit of fair competition?

No doubt this exploit had convinced the government more than ever about the value of mandatory online identification, mandatory financial transactions monitoring, car registrations tracking on the streets, and control of traffic on the Queen's highways in favour of the VIPs.

nkoren2• 14 years ago

I'm a transport planner who lives in London. An elder statesman amongst local transport planners once told me the following story.

"Once there was a sheik that was planning to make a £3B investment in a new real estate development in Canary Wharf [located about 5 miles east of the city centre]. Plans had been drawn up, and everything was in place and ready to go -- with one hitch: the sheik wanted to see the site for himself. Wouldn't sign the on the dotted line until he'd walked around and kicked its metaphorical tyres a bit.

"The problem is, if you're a billionaire sheik you you have to stay in a a certain class of hotel, and there just wasn't anything appropriate in Canary Wharf. So he found a nice place in the West End [about 3 miles west of the city centre]. He flew in, spent the night there, and went to see the site first thing in the morning, around rush hour.

"The other problem is, if you're a billionaire sheik, you don't just hop on the tube with everybody else. So, he hired a limousine and said 'take me to Canary Wharf!'.

"Two hours later, the limousine was still crawling past the Tower of London [about 1 mile east of the city centre]. They'd managed an average speed of 2 miles per hour. The sheik was fuming. Any property this hard to access surely had to be worthless. 'Driver!' he said, 'Change of plans. Take me to Heathrow.'

"And that's how 3 billion pounds of investment died in traffic."

You can bet that the London team pitching to the IOC were very well aware of this story.

pbhjpbhj2• 14 years ago

Wouldn't you just helicopter him there?

nkoren2• 14 years ago

Helicopters aren't used for VIPs here, no.

TomGullen• 14 years ago

I spoke in person to someone who operates traffic lights last year at a party, and he told me about this!

alainbryden• 14 years ago

I'm looking forward to these Olympics - I've got lots of money on some high-paying odds. I have it on very good authority that everyone in the stadium will spontaneously vanish during the opening ceremony.

malandrew• 14 years ago

Beijing went as far as to paint the leaves on trees green to win IOC's favor.

For those that haven't been there, it is (or at least was) a dismally grey city with little greenery outside the public parks). I know they've worked to improve this issue, but at the time of the IOC visitations it was quite dreary.

London traffic lights rigged to win International Olympic Committee's favor

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