Smart Cameras Blog

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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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County Councilman Kevin Kamenetz introduced a bill that would require operators of shopping centers with five or more stores to use video cameras to monitor the perimeters of parking lots, garages and other areas used by the public.

Shopping center owners covered by the bill would be required to maintain the video recordings for 72 hours and turn them over to police upon request. Signs making shoppers aware that they are being monitored would be required.

Cameras alone are not the most effective deterrent to crime, according to Bill Toohey, a county police spokesman. There were 96 bank robberies in Baltimore County last year, Toohey said, and all of those banks had video surveillance cameras. However, county police made arrests in 70 percent of those robberies – higher than the national average , according to Toohey. “The cameras helped us catch those criminals, but they didn’t stop them from walking in the doors,” Toohey said.

Link to paper in Baltimore

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In a recent case a school is being sued, because it had cameras in a girls locker room that were accessible via the Internet with their default password. According to the story:

Fredrik Nilsson, Axis’s general manager for the United States, points out that Axis cameras are installed with a default password, and it is up to the owners to make the cameras more or less secure.

“Just to give some perspective, we have delivered close to half a million cameras, and a Google search produces only a few hundred of them,” Mr. Nilsson said. He acknowledges that default passwords to many camera systems, including those of Axis, are frequently traded over the Internet. Nevertheless, he maintains, Axis cameras are secure against accidental intrusion.

A lawyer for the school acknowledged in court papers that school officials never changed the video server’s password from its default setting.

“The real scandal is why these Webcams are insecure,” Ms. Newitz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said. “This is just really, really sloppy. It is one thing for an employer to place employees under surveillance, but to take no effort to keep the Webcam access limited just to the workplace is really reprehensible.”

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From Spyblog:

Public CCTV surveillance schemes do not cut crime, or the fear of crime:

BBC and other media reports about a Home Office study into the effectiveness of CCTV surveillance spy cameras, chaired by Professor Martin Gill of the the University of Leicester, seem to bear out previous studies,which show that public CCTV camera surveillance schemes do not actually cut crime or the fear of crime.

We will link to the actual study if and when we can find it on the labyrinthine Home office website.

Thursday, 24 February, 2005, 14:03 GMT

CCTV systems ‘fail to cut crime’

Most CCTV fails to cut crime or make people feel safer, according to a research study.

Experts at the University of Leicester studied 14 systems across the country on behalf of the Home Office. They found only one area saw a drop in the number of incidents which could be attributed to CCTV. Professor Martin Gill, from the university, said: “Overall, areas have encountered real difficulties in using CCTV to good effect.”

The study showed the only crime decrease attributable to CCTV focussed on reducing vehicle crime in car parks. Systems covered by the research included those in town centres, city centres, hospitals and residential areas. Professor Gill, from the university’s criminology department, said: “For supporters of CCTV these findings are disappointing. “For the most part CCTV did not produce reductions in crime and it did not make people feel safer.”

Staffing levels

Researchers said control room operation was an important factor in a CCTV system’s ability to detect crime. About half of the control rooms involved were staffed for less than 24 hours a day

Professor Gill said: “The truth is that CCTV is a powerful tool that society is only just beginning to understand. “It looks simple to use, but it is not. It has many components, and they can impact in different ways. “It is more than just a technical solution; it requires human intervention to work to maximum efficiency and the problems it helps deal with are complex.”

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A survey of security managers, systems integrators and service providers at the TechSec Solutions conference found that 92% of respondents say they’re already — or soon will be — acquiring Internet Protocol (IP)-ready devices, appliances and system components. But, 74% of respondents say information safety on the Web, coupled with a lack of expertise in integrating physical security systems with the enterprise network, are the two highest barriers to putting critical physical security functions onto the Internet.

So while video surveillance cameras, are now Internet-ready, it may be the case that information and network security aren’t adequate to protect sensitive security-related information on the corporate IP network. Link

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Public eye / Hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras across America track our behavior every day

A nice overview article on some of the issues with surveillance cameras

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