From Sun-Times:
Mayor Daley is replacing his chief of staff with Ron Huberman. The squeaky clean Huberman is coming onboard as investigations proceed into corruption at city hall.
This is a big deal for the Chicago camera project. Huberman is the IT wizard of the OEMC and was just profiled by Wired, see post. As chief of staff, Huberman will not have the time to carefully tend to the camera project. Hopefully, there are others within the OEMC that can ensure this project is as successful as their other projects. The story noted there is no word on Huberman’s replacement.
rshah Chicago
From KHON2:
Chinatown in Honolulu has 26 cameras. The surveillance system is suppose to be run by volunteers. But as the story reveals, manpower is not easily found (they need 10 volunteers):
Uehara says a tough screening process is necessary. He recalls an applicant who was recognized by a fellow officer. “We made a warrant check on him using the computers right there,” Uehara said. “He had a $10,000 warrant, so I had to tell him sorry, you can’t volunteer, but you’re getting arrested for that $10,000 warrant.”
Uehara is aware of the potential for misuse. “They can tell their partner, hey you better watch out and not do something because the camera can pick you up on this street or that street,” he said.
rshah Uncategorized
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
Twenty-four police surveillance cameras will go up at CHA developments under a $1.1 million proposal expected to pass the Chicago Housing Authority board today. There are 39 cameras attached to utility poles around the city now.
he video recorders are housed in bulletproof, rectangular, blue-and-white boxes, with a blue flashing light on top. They’re called Police Operation Disruption devices, or PODs. They were first introduced in 2003. If a shot is fired nearby, the camera immediately turns toward it, follows the shooter and automatically calls 911.
Under the proposed deal, CHA will pay Huberman’s agency up to $1.1 million over five years to install, maintain and monitor the PODs.
Here is a picture of the cameras for the curious:
rshah Chicago, Gunshot Detection
From CoCo: Earcams Listen to the Sound of Violence:
Camera’s are getting ears: in the Dutch city Groningen surveillance camera’s are equipped with sound detection technology to detect sounds of violence. The company behind the technology, Sound Intelligence, says:
Our technology is inspired by the human auditory system and allows the detection and classification of all kinds of sound sources in arbitrary noisy acoustic environments.
A news item on Dutch television reported today that Groningen has been experimenting with the technology in the city’s center without the knowledge of the Dutch privacy watchdog, or the public for that matter.
Groningen’s mayor and those who designed the “earcams” point out that the sound surveillance merely picks up sounds of violence, points the camera towards the source of this sound and does not record anything.
rshah Vendors
From ObjectVideo Press Release
Homeland Security Advanced Research Project Agency (HSARPA) awarded ObjectVideo two contracts of the four available for studying “Automated Scene Understanding“. The grants, according to the press release, seek to move beyond current technology which monitors an “area of interest” to a:
system recognizes specific mobile assets, understands what rules apply to them, and automatically adjusts to protect them, no matter where they appear. It does all of this without a systems operator intervening.
More detail can be found in the HSARPA proposer information
rshah Vendors
The NY Times has a story on the role of sensor networks for environmental studies. The work is largely funded by the National Science Foundation.
U.C.L.A. Center for Embedded Network Sensing on the forest project, which is in its third year. The James Reserve, some 90 miles southeast of Los Angeles on a mountain flank that is home to 1,500 species of plants and animals, including the yellow-legged frog and willow flycatcher, now bristles with enough monitoring gear to make it one of the world’s most advanced tests of ecologic networking. Wireless motes, cameras and other sensors track the nesting habits of birds, the life cycles of moss and the carbon dioxide uptake of various soils. Robots move along wires strung from tree to tree, lowering sensors to take temperature, humidity and light-level readings at different levels.
Thousands of miles away, scientists are starting a similar effort – but wet. They are designing floating robots, wireless sensors and distributed computers in an effort to better understand and improve the water quality of the Hudson River. The project, known as RiverNet, is to use roughly two dozen instruments in all. Financed by the science foundation, it seeks to track fertilizer runoff from farms, heat from power plants, growth of algae and pollutants like polychlorinated biphenyls.
rshah Uncategorized
From The Washington Times:
A short overview of the camera system for Baltimore:
The new cameras, which are monitored at the City Watch Center, cover a 40-square-block area on the city’s West Side, home to light-rail and Amtrak lines, government buildings and cultural attractions, such as the recently refurbished Hippodrome Theater.
Baltimore’s West Side cameras are part of a comprehensive homeland-security plan paid for with $2.75 million of federal urban area security grants. The surveillance network is designed to thwart terrorists and coordinate emergency response to terrorist strikes, but Baltimore officials say the cameras also will deter crime in an often dangerous part of town now on the cusp of a renaissance.
The West Side cameras one day will be linked with ones already keeping an eye on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the University of Maryland campus. Eventually, the cameras will be tied into a regional network also covering Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Harford and Howard counties and will include cameras monitoring highway traffic across the state.
rshah Other Cities
KnoxNews: Traffic:
A story on the traffic monitoring system for Knoxville provides some clear insights into handling law enforcement and privacy issues with traffic cameras.
Despite the plethora of cameras that can be swung around 360 degrees, TDOT officials emphasize they are not spying on motorists and will not use the system for law enforcement. Dahlinger said TDOT doesn’t record the camera images. “We don’t record anything because, if we did, we’d be bombarded with requests from attorneys for videos of crashes,” he said.
Knoxville also has a policy on personal or corporate messages on traffic message boards. “It can’t be bought”
rshah Traffic Congestion
Wired on Chicago’s IT. The story has a few nuggets, but generally provides an entertaining read on the role of IT in Chicago’s police department (with good background on Ron Huberman).
The story mentions that the police will depend upon Verizon’s high-speed cellular network to connect to officers in patrol cars.
How Oracle contributed 20 million in time, software, and hardware to get Clear running. Clear (Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting) is an IT system connecting several databases to make it easy for officers to find relevant information.
It notes the price of the camera project, Chicago is putting up $5 million, Homeland Security $34 million, and $3.5 million from seizures for gunshot cameras.
rshah Chicago
From Globe and Mail:
A story on the role of cameras in passenger cars. For example, how U.S. safety regulations are pushing manufacturers to use cameras to judge whether to deploy an airbag depending on the size of the passenger (e.g., adult or child). The article notes that camera systems will face competition from radar systems. Radar is better at determining distances, while cameras are better at identifying objects.
The article covers how Nissan is adopting smart cameras in its cars:
Nissan’s system — part of options packages that start at about $5,000 — has a tiny camera that watches the road, and an on-board computer that analyzes the car’s position and how quickly it is approaching the dividing line, explains Ian Forsyth, director of marketing at Nissan Canada in Toronto. The warning works at speeds above 70 kilometres an hour, and not if the turn signal is on. It’s meant for highway cruising — the driver can deactivate the camera on a winding road, for example, where tight curves could confuse it. It’s available in the Infiniti FX and M models
Nissan’s latest back-up camera for its Infiniti M uses multiple cameras and projects the path the car will follow. The system uses red, yellow and green to indicate the danger of hitting an obstacle, making manoeuvres such as parallel parking easier. A more elaborate system the company showed off earlier this year, the Around View Monitor, shows what’s surrounding the car. A computer combines images from cameras on all sides of the car to create a bird’s-eye view that shows the vehicle and surrounding objects from above, displaying it on a dashboard screen.
rshah Uncategorized
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