Smart Cameras Blog

Spyblog has a article concerning Automatic Number Plate Recognition:

The technology is rapidly expanding technology amongst the 43 or so UK Police Forces.

John Lettice has a good article in The Register which cites a Police Information technology Organisation web page which lists the history of ANPR schemes.

Given the 25 to 30 million vehicles on the roads, it makes sense to use this sort of technology to try to clamp down on stolen or untaxed vehicles.

The use of mobile or fixed CCTV camera systems combined with a roadside police intercept team to conduct legal “stops and searches” of vehicles, where the grounds of “reasonable suspicion” have been provided by the ANPR lookup on the Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency and Police Intelligence databases, should be a proportionate use of the technology and is to be welcomed.

However, we really do have serious concerns about using ANPR for “intelligence” rather than for “reasonable suspicion” stops and searches.

rshah ALPR

Story on masslive.com about guidelines for camera usage. The rules were modeled on rules adopted in Chicago.

I couldn’t find the Chicago rules online, but I found two others. Middletown, NY and State College, PA

Update:

John Hopkins policy statement

rshah General

A follow up to the original post.

The Baltimore Sun is reporting the bill went through:

The bill also calls for a task force to study security issues at malls and make recommendations to the council — a provision added Monday to address concerns of business leaders and county officials, including County Executive James T. Smith Jr.

As amended, the law requires owners of about 100 shopping centers — about half of those in the county — to install video surveillance cameras that cover 75 percent of their parking areas during business hours.

Mall operators will have 18 months to complete the installations, and may apply for county assistance with the camera costs, expected to range from $10,000 to $50,000, depending on the size of the property.

rshah General

From Local Tech Wire: (Later story by Wired)

The 188-year-old firearms and ammunition manufacturer is rolling out a Technologies Division as part of its effort to help the company stay on the leading edge of development for law enforcement and homeland security toys and weapons.

The “Eye Ball R1” is a tossable, wireless enabled device about the size of a baseball. It is designed to be thrown, dropped or rolled into a building or location. The Eye Ball provides real-time audio and video to a personal display unit acting as a wireless receiver and control mechanism. The control panel includes a 6.4-inch color screen and can control up to two of the surveillance devices. After being thrown or tossed, the ball orients itself to provide controllers with a clear view, the company said.

The device is also equipped with what Remington calls “near-infrared” capability for use at night or in dark areas. It has a range of up to 200 yards.

Remington plans to sell kits containing two Eye Ball units, a training ball, a control panel and accessories for $4,800. The packages are expected to be made available in the second quarter.

rshah Vendors

From the Vancouver Sun:

A camera operator at the Royal City Star casino in New Westminster used the facility’s extensive system of surveillance cameras to scan female customers and staff, according to a government audit obtained by The Vancouver Sun.

The report notes that during a review of the casino’s surveillance tapes, auditors found “instances where [the] surveillance operator scanned female patrons and employees and tracked unknown female patrons through the casino for no apparent operational purpose.”

The audit, conducted by the province’s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, was obtained by The Sun through the Freedom of Information Act.

rshah General

The Sun-Time has an article with lots of information about Chicago’s plans for addressing traffic problems.

Here are some specific strategies the article mentions:

Smart traffic lights at 2,800 intersections that use computerized cameras and sensors to ‘’self-adjust” with traffic conditions and turn green for approaching CTA buses. Cost: $75,000 to $250,000 per intersection.

Downtown streets leading to and from expressways with dedicated lanes for high-occupancy vehicles.

Cameras that photograph vehicles using bus lanes for ticketing.

Tow trucks dispatched with police and fire vehicles to arrive within 10 minutes to move disabled vehicles and delivery trucks blocking lanes.

50 permanent message boards to detour motorists around accidents and bottlenecks.

Traffic control aides pedaling to the scene on bicycles.

Construction permits electronically mapped to deny applications when projects conflict with special events.

rshah Chicago, Traffic Congestion

A nice intro article from the Detroit Free Press:

Today, a typical Meijer store has more than 100 cameras watching customers and staff. If you shop at Marshall Field’s, at least 400 cameras are keeping an eye on you. Some experts estimate that the typical American has his or her photo taken up to 200 times a day. While there is no comprehensive count of surveillance cameras in metro Detroit, they clearly number in the thousands — concealed in public and private buildings, at intersections and gas stations, and in restaurants, stores, gyms, libraries and schools.

Sometimes, the cameras’ tapes are stored for 30 to 90 days and looked at again only if there is suspicion a crime was recorded. In other cases, security personnel watch monitors live. In the case of 2,500 cameras the Road Commission for Oakland County installed at key intersections, the data help coordinate traffic flow.

Keeping homes and businesses safe was a $24.8-billion business in 2004 and is expected to grow by almost $1 billion this year. There are about 14,000 security companies nationwide, and about 16 percent of their sales are surveillance camera systems.

Surveillance at Marshall Field’s is so sophisticated that a guard sitting at a wall of monitors in a back room or even off site can watch cashiers as they handle purchases and spot thievery. It also allows fraud investigators to backtrack and identify someone using a stolen or manufactured credit card.

Americans, it seems, are just beginning to realize how often they are caught on camera. A 2004 national survey of 20,000 households conducted by the Security Distributing and Marketing magazine showed that about 37 percent believed they were being watched by video surveillance at work.

rshah General

From the Sun-Times:

With an eye toward “moving Chicago faster,” Mayor Daley today will take the wraps off his “Star Wars” plan to use a computerized network of cameras and sensors to reduce traffic congestion. Although the high-tech overhaul will take years to implement, Daley plans to use a $13 million federal air-quality grant to get the ball rolling. The goal is to get the first “pilot intersection” fully equipped within six months.

Ultimately, 2,818 of the 2,900 Chicago intersections with traffic signals will be linked to the new system, automatically adjusting traffic signal times when congestion demands it.

“What we’re looking at is a cutting-edge solution that will result in a significant decrease in congestion time. We’ll be the first city to have this kind of intelligent traffic system in place,” said Ron Huberman, executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, which includes the Traffic Management Authority.

“A lot of the technology today is focused on using cameras and sensors to identify a backlog at one intersection and turning the light green when there’s heavy traffic. Our solution is much more holistic. It’ll simultaneously feed data back from all of the intersections to a sophisticated computer system and make corrections on a global scale. Rather than turning one light and moving a driver a few blocks up, we’re looking to install a system that’s self-adjusting throughout the whole city.”

Last fall, a study by the Texas Transportation Institute concluded the average Chicago area driver frittered away 56 hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic in 2002 at a cost of $520 each in time and fuel for all motorists and a whopping $985 for those who travel during rush hour. That’s the longest per-drive delay Chicago and northwest Indiana commuters have ever faced and the sixth-worst average delay in the country, the study stated.

rshah Chicago, Traffic Congestion

A nice overview article on the role of digital video over at Federal Computer Week, a few good nuggets:

Market research firm Datamonitor sees digital video surveillance as a worldwide market worth $7.4 billion by 2007, a 55 percent yearly growth from $1.3 billion in 2003. The firm’s analysts expect the public sector to account for as much as 22 percent of that future market.

Leading the charge are companies like iMove, which manufactures what it calls wide-area surveillance solutions. Typical surveillance cameras can only pan, tilt and zoom over a relatively narrow field, and many such cameras are needed to cover a broad area. By comparison, far fewer of iMove’s FlexG spherical sensors, each of which uses an array of imaging systems, are needed to continuously cover the same area. For example, to keep an eye on an area three-quarters of a mile long by half a mile wide, company officials say an iMove solution using just nine of the company’s FlexG sensors will do the job. It would take 242 closed-circuit TV cameras to do the same.

Video surveillance cameras produced by IPIX, which similarly provide complete, continuous coverage of an area, were used at President Bush’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., in January. They were also used to guard the G8 Summit held last June in Sea Island, Ga.

A test of a digital video system at the Jacksonville, Fla., International Airport — funded as part of a $28 million Transportation Security Administration program to develop airport security systems —uses this kind of an analog/ digital mix. The system takes the video feeds from some 100 analog cameras positioned at security checkpoints and all along the length of the airport concourse, digitizes the video and then “stitches” the resulting digital images together to essentially provide a single, real-time view of the area. “It essentially produces a movie on the fly,” said Gianni Arcaini, chief executive officer of Duos Technologies, the project’s prime contractor and integrator. “The idea is that, if a security breach is committed, we can wind back to when the breach happened and security agents can then follow the person who committed the breach everywhere they went.”

rshah General

A nice overview article in the Chicago Tribune on using technology to improve traffic flow.

Besides covering the smart traffic lights in LA, the article talks about the six minute rule in Houston.

The idea behind Houston’s six-minute response rule for tow-truck drivers. Since Jan. 1 motorists are no longer allowed to change flat tires or let overheated engines cool off on highway shoulders. Workers monitoring traffic via closed-circuit cameras dispatch tow trucks to clear the accidents or disabled vehicles within minutes. The trucks, assigned to roam specific areas, often arrive before police.

Each minute a disabled vehicle is on the highway results in four minutes of worsening traffic backups, White said. Despite a booming automobile-centered population, commuting times have been reduced as much as 20 percent in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, officials said.

More than 360 traffic-surveillance cameras, panning more than 90 percent of the lanes on area highways, send continuous images to Houston TranStar, a high-tech operations center filled with rows of computer consoles and plasma TV screens that display accidents and traffic knots.

The 9-year-old TranStar facility and traffic equipment deployed on the roads, including about 150 electronic changeable-message signs to alert motorists about problems ahead, cost $24 million annually to operate, said TranStar spokesman Artee Jones. But he said the benefits delivered to motorists total $168 million a year in quicker commutes, less fuel consumed and cleaner air.

“In the past, 10 or 15 tow trucks would rush along the shoulder to be first to an accident scene, creating an even more dangerous situation,” she said. “And there was terrible price-gouging. Today, each tow-truck company is assigned to patrol a segment of the freeway, and the pricing is regulated.”

The tow and the service to replace the flat with a spare tire from Farrington’s trunk were paid for by the City of Houston under a new program called Safe Clear. It costs the city $50 per tow to the nearest highway exit or within 1 mile. Beyond that, motorists are on the hook for towing fees of $75 and up.

Besides Houston, the article also covers possible solutions for addressing Chicago’s traffic issues:

THE PROBLEM

Extra hours spent per traveler in traffic annually, during peak times, 2002: 56 hours

Note: Peak travel times are 6-9 a.m. and 4-7 p.m.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Examples of traffic-management innovations used in Los Angeles and Houston

- Roadside cameras

Generally placed at intervals along a freeway to identify incidents.

- Bus dispatch

An onboard computer communicates with a traffic-monitoring system and sends data such as the bus’ location, number of passengers and fare collection.

- Flow signals

Located on entrance ramps of freeways to provide a consistent flow of entering vehicles.

- Traffic sensors

Collect traffic information such as traffic times and speeds.

- High occupancy vehicle lanes

Designated lanes for vehicles traveling during peak periods with multiple passengers.

- Smart stoplights

Computer-based traffic signals that monitor conditions

- Motorist assistance/vehicle removal

Provide assistance such as changing a flat tire, jump-starting a vehicle, providing fuel to disabled motorists and moving stalled or disabled vehicles that disrupt traffic flow.

rshah Chicago, General, Traffic Congestion