Smart Cameras Blog

The Star-Ledger ran a story on a new policy limiting the number of employees allowed to make copies of videos captured by highway surveillance cameras. A video of a fatal car crash was posted on youtube.com last week. As the article notes:

“These kinds of tapes are for operational and law enforcement purposes, not for entertainment purposes,” said state Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri, who also heads the Turnpike Authority board. “I’m not happy with the fact that these were released. We’re going to take every action we can to figure out who is responsible and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

. . .

Between 12 and 15 employees had access to the video, he said. Officials from the Turnpike Authority have been trying to determine which one of them copied the footage and shared it with someone outside. The New Jersey State Police is helping with the investigation, Orlando said.

There is a long history of government surveillance being leaked. Hopefully, this will be a wake-up call to governments for all surveillance whether its for crime or traffic. There needs to be a system in place that employs both technology and procedural safeguards to prevent abuse.

New Jersey also filed a lawsuit preventing the airing of the video, the IP issues are discussed over at madisonian.net.

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