Big Brother

According to this article, they’ve invented some intelligent CCTV cameras which can tell when a crime is about to be committed and alert the authoritities:

“People’s movements are then reduced to a series of pixels and compared to a pre–defined set of patterns, or algorithms. As soon as the computer identifies someone’s behaviour as “unusual”, such as wandering aimlessly near a potential target building — perhaps a royal palace — the computer alerts CCTV operators or staff”.

Riiiiiiiight. 1984, Big Brother, intrusive surveillance issues aside, it seems to me that there is an obvious practical difficulty, if a person “wandering aimlessly” is one of the criteria for paging the S.W.A.T team. The guys who came up with this obviously haven’t attempted, say, to jog past the Houses of Parliament recently; an impossible feat due to the flocks of morons “wandering aimlessly”. Maybe someone “walking purposefully” near a public building would be a better trigger for the 999 call? Perhaps we could propose a few more:

1. wearing a mean/determined expression (where public building ≠ City institution)
2. wearing an expression of religious fervour (where public building ≠ church)
3. wearing fancy dress (where time ≥ 21.00)
4. sweating profusely (where suspected perp ≠ jogger)

Any other ideas?