Smart Cameras Blog

[From San Francisco Chronicle: Spy cameras no help in violent crime]

I haven’t had a chance to read the study, which is available from the Samuelson clinic. But here are some tidbits from the Chronicle.

A long-awaited study of San Francisco’s installation of surveillance cameras in high-crime areas shows that the effort fails in its primary goal of reducing homicide and other violent crime, but succeeds in reducing such offenses as burglary, pickpocketing and purse-snatching. The study found that the program, started by Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2005, is hampered by a lack of training and oversight, a failure to integrate footage with other police tactics, inadequate technology, and what may be fundamental weaknesses of cameras as devices to stop violent crime.

The 184-page study, which was called for by the Board of Supervisors in 2006, was conducted by the UC Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society. It represents one of the most thorough reports on public surveillance, a trend that has swept the nation in recent years.

The report was critical of the way a hodgepodge of city agencies combined to administer the program. It said the program had no dedicated manager, and that officers and attorneys got no training on how to view the footage. The clarity of the footage, the study said, could be greatly improved if San Francisco bought more data storage space.

The report raises the idea of using the program more aggressively, perhaps integrating cameras with gunshot detection devices called ShotSpotters or buying so-called smart cameras that are capable of sounding an alarm if a gun is brandished, a fence is jumped, or a person falls down.

rshah Other Cities, Policy

[From CCTV camera pushes crime into blind spot @ SecurityInfoWatch.com]

A story that illustrates the classic displacement effect. This occurred in Flint, MI using a 2 camera system.

To those living in view of the police security camera at Cecil and Jewell drives on the city’s north side, the camera has really cleaned up the neighborhood.

But residents who live just out of the camera’s range tell a completely different story.

“Now what happened is the drug dealers have went on the side streets because the camera just does not get down those side streets,” said Curtis Baker, president of the Northeast Carpenter Road Neighborhood Association. “We have a drug house on just about every street now.”

rshah Other Cities, Policy

[From Crime-fighting cameras a bust | CharlotteObserver.com]

A few months ago, I pointed out the problems in Chicago with Project Shield. A similar occurence has happened in Durham, NC.

DURHAM Police hoped that the cameras lined up along Angier Avenue would be the latest technology to help them fight crime. They had visions of not only capturing criminals in the act on video, but also controlling the cameras remotely from police cars to keep ever-present eyes on the street.

But so far, after months of work, the video surveillance program has not produced one arrest and its future is uncertain.

Documents obtained by The News & Observer – e-mails between city officials and TelePort Systems Inc., the Baltimore based company that installed the system – detail a project filled with missed deadlines, recurring technological problems and complaints from police officers and city officials.

TelePort’s contract ended in October after the city spent over $90,000 on the project. What the city got was a system of 13 cameras where only six are used for their intended purpose.

Camera systems are complex from a technological, economic, and organizational perspective. Cities that don’t remember this will run into problems using cameras.

rshah Other Cities

[From Feds Investigating Cook County's 'Project Shield' | NBC Chicago ]

Project Shield in Cook County consists of 802.11b and 4.9Ghz hotspots, adjustable and fixed cameras, vehicle locator GPS, pole mounted police surveillance cameras, premises digital video recorders, and personal computer-based viewing stations. These devices are wired into the Cook County network. The project was funded by a $41 million grant from Homeland Security.

During Phase I and II of the project, the county installed the system in 35 municipalities. “Hylton said that paid for 35 to 40 suburban police cars to be outfitted with cameras and computers, as well as 37 stationary cameras placed across the county. In some of those police cars, though, the cameras never worked.” The cost was $22 million for Phase I and II.

“We were scheduled to get some installed in 2006,” said Franklin Park Police Chief Tom Wolfe. “There was either a hardware problem or some kind of installation problem that didn’t allow that to occur.” Franklin Park was hardly alone, Marin reported. Suburban police departments across Cook County were contacted, and while there was some praise for Project Shield, there were more often complaints. In departments like the River Forest and Palos Heights police departments, mobile cameras were installed and later removed because they just didn’t work.

Phase III consists of a partial retrofit and an emphasis on standardizing all the system components. As of July, 2007, 130 vehicles, 65 hotspots, 98 surveillance cameras and 55 viewing stations had been installed as part of Project Shield.

The lack of results has pushed governments official to seek greater oversight into how this money was spent. Some are calling it a boondoggle. For more background, see these stories on ABC and Fox.

rshah Chicago, Other Cities

[From Security Camera Blog (CCTV DVR): Cincinnati to receive security cameras]

Cincinnati Ohio will be installing 120 “crime cameras” soon after receiving a two million dollar federal grant. Cincinnati City Council is hoping to see similar results as observed in Chicago where their 600 surveillance cameras have reportedly assisted in 1,400 arrests.

rshah Other Cities

[From San Francisco Chronicle, S.F. board panel imperils crime-watching gear]

A 3-2 vote in San Francisco is cutting $360,000 that Mayor Newsom sought for installations and repairs of the anti-crime devices, i.e., cameras and gunshot sensors. The cut was motivated by the lack of evidence that the cameras and sensors were effective. This decision could still be reversed and it doesn’t affect all the camera/gunshot systems in the city.

The anecdotal evidence seems to show that gunshot systems are useful. Its unfortunate that there isn’t hard data to support the use of gunshot systems. I am afraid that these useful systems will be muddied by the less effective surveillance cameras.

rshah Gunshot Detection, Other Cities

[From For New York City Subways, Another Delay in Surveillance System - NYTimes.com]

This is a followup from a story posted a few months ago.

rshah Other Cities

[From China's All-Seeing Eye : Rolling Stone]

A nice article on surveillance in China, with a bit on the role of smart cameras, facial recognition technology, and the role of US companies.

Now, as China prepares to showcase its economic advances during the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, Shenzhen is once again serving as a laboratory, a testing ground for the next phase of this vast social experiment. Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city. Many are in public spaces, disguised as lampposts. The closed-circuit TV cameras will soon be connected to a single, nationwide network, an all-seeing system that will be capable of tracking and identifying anyone who comes within its range — a project driven in part by U.S. technology and investment. Over the next three years, Chinese security executives predict they will install as many as 2 million CCTVs in Shenzhen, which would make it the most watched city in the world. (Security-crazy London boasts only half a million surveillance cameras.)

The security cameras are just one part of a much broader high-tech surveillance and censorship program known in China as “Golden Shield.” The end goal is to use the latest people-tracking technology — thoughtfully supplied by American giants like IBM, Honeywell and General Electric — to create an airtight consumer cocoon: a place where Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cellphones, McDonald’s Happy Meals, Tsingtao beer and UPS delivery (to name just a few of the official sponsors of the Beijing Olympics) can be enjoyed under the unblinking eye of the state, without the threat of democracy breaking out. With political unrest on the rise across China, the government hopes to use the surveillance shield to identify and counteract dissent before it explodes into a mass movement like the one that grabbed the world’s attention at Tiananmen Square.

Regarding facial recognition:

In Guangzhou, an hour and a half by train from Shenzhen, Yao Ruoguang is preparing for a major test of his own. “It’s called the 10-million-faces test,” he tells me. Yao is managing director of Pixel Solutions, a Chinese company that specializes in producing the new high-tech national ID cards, as well as selling facial-recognition software to businesses and government agencies. The test, the first phase of which is only weeks away, is being staged by the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing. The idea is to measure the effectiveness of face-recognition software in identifying police suspects. Participants will be given a series of photos, taken in a variety of situations. Their task will be to match the images to other photos of the same people in the government’s massive database. Several biometrics companies, including Yao’s, have been invited to compete. “We have to be able to match a face in a 10 million database in one second,” Yao tells me. “We are preparing for that now.”

The companies that score well will be first in line for lucrative government contracts to integrate face-recognition software into Golden Shield, using it to check for ID fraud and to discover the identities of suspects caught on surveillance cameras. Yao says the technology is almost there: “It will happen next year.” . . . Yao denies that a primary use of the technology he is selling is to hunt down political activists. “Ninety-five percent,” he insists, “is just for regular safety.”

Interesting is the lack of recognition from its partner company, based in the US:

L-1′s enthusiasm is hardly surprising: If Yao impresses the Ministry of Public Security with the company’s ability to identify criminals, L-1 will have cracked the largest potential market for biometrics in the world. But here’s the catch: As proud as Yao is to be L-1′s Chinese licensee, L-1 appears to be distinctly less proud of its association with Yao. . . . The company’s reticence to publicize its activities in China could have something to do with the fact that the relationship between Yao and L-1 may well be illegal under U.S. law. After the Chinese government sent tanks into Tiananmen Square in 1989, Congress passed legislation barring U.S. companies from selling any products in China that have to do with “crime control or detection instruments or equipment.”

But they are not the only US companies involved with China:

As The New York Times recently reported, aiding and abetting Beijing has become an investment boom for U.S. companies. Honeywell is working with Chinese police to “set up an elaborate computer monitoring system to analyze feeds from indoor and outdoor cameras in one of Beijing’s most populated districts.” General Electric is providing Beijing police with a security system that controls “thousands of video cameras simultaneously, and automatically alerts them to suspicious or fast-moving objects, like people running.” IBM, meanwhile, is installing its “Smart Surveillance System” in the capital, another system for linking video cameras and scanning for trouble, while United Technologies is in Guangzhou, helping to customize a “2,000-camera network in a single large neighborhood, the first step toward a citywide network of 250,000 cameras to be installed before the Asian Games in 2010.” By next year, the Chinese internal-security market will be worth an estimated $33 billion — around the same amount Congress has allocated for reconstructing Iraq.

rshah Other Cities

[From City picks gunshot detection system - NJ.com]

Newark has chosen Shotspotter for a gunshot detection system over competing systems from Safety Dynamics (SENTRI) and Planning Systems (SECURES).

Gunshot detectors will be mounted on structures over a 7-square-mile area. When triggered, Shotspotter sensors will provide police with the location, number of shooters, and number of shots fired. . . . Shotspotter’s Gunshot Location System has also been installed in 27 cities around the country, including Washington, D.C., and East Orange. Newark’s neighboring municipality first introduced gunshot detectors made by Planning Systems Inc. in 2005, and deployed a Shotspotter system in 2006, according to Detective Andrew DiElmo of the East Orange Police Department. Both systems are in operation in East Orange.

Gunshot detectors are viewed as a “useful tool” for investigative purposes, and the East Orange police also considers it a crime deterrent, DiElmo said. However, there have been issues about gunshots that go undetected by sensors. “Does it work 100 percent of the time? No,” said DiElmo. “We have had incidents where the sensors haven’t alerted us.”

rshah Gunshot Detection, Other Cities

[From D.C. Forging Surveillance Network - washingtonpost.com]

The network is expanding by 5000 cameras. It will include 3 to 5 operators watching images in real time. Analytic software is expected to be added by the end of the year. The cameras come from existing networks:

In its start-up phase, the system will include the public schools, the D.C. Housing Authority, the Office of Property Management and the Transportation Department. By year’s end, it will expand to homeland security and the departments of Parks and Recreation, Corrections, Health and Fire and Emergency Medical Services. The schools have the largest number of cameras, about 3,600.

Right now DC is still looking for funding and privacy advocates are not happy that the department is rushing ahead without applying prior safeguards. Until now, DC had been the model for the best privacy safeguards. See the article for more or read this nice opinion piece by John Podesta and William Sessions.

rshah Other Cities