About
Fifty notes on computer vision monitoring, written from the operator's side.
Who this is for
Whoever has been asked to deploy something and needs to know what the technology actually does. Whoever has to assess it — risk, legal, safety — and needs the technical picture in terms that connect to the obligations. And, indirectly, whoever is subject to it, whose interests are treated here as a design input rather than an obstacle.
How the notes are written
The mechanism before the product. What detection, counting and identification actually do, and where each fails, before any question of which vendor.
Methods you can run. Where a note says something is measurable, it says how, usually on your own site with a stopwatch and a spreadsheet.
Limits stated plainly. One note is entirely about questions a camera cannot answer, and another is a list of requests to refuse.
The uncomfortable findings included. Demonstrations run on footage the system was tuned for. Existing camera estates are usually unsuitable. Error rates fall unevenly across groups of people. Detection is routinely substituted for the physical control that should have been installed.
The boundary
This subject requires a boundary stated in advance rather than as a caveat at the end.
These notes do not describe how to deploy covertly, how to infer emotion, engagement or intent from video, or how to categorise people by sensitive characteristics. The boundary section explains why for each: the science is contested where there is science at all, the errors fall on the same people repeatedly, and several of these are prohibited outright in the EU.
A distinction worth stating: making a covert deployment less noticeable, or emotion inference more accurate, is not a partial improvement. A better version of the thing is still the thing, and assistance makes it more likely to exist.
No benchmarks
No accuracy figures from other deployments are quoted, deliberately. Performance depends on cameras, lighting, scene, population and threshold, and a number from elsewhere predicts nothing about your site.
Every number worth having is your own, measured twice.
About this domain
This address previously belonged to a sightseeing tour operator, with current contact details, prices, schedules and pickup points.
None of that material is here and none of it should be. Beyond the rights questions, restoring tour times and meeting points on a domain no longer connected to the operator would send people to an address where nobody is waiting.
Every previous address returns a clear "gone" response rather than redirecting to unrelated material.