Smart Cameras Blog

[From Is Public CCTV Effective? : IP Video Market Info]

John has synthesized a number of the papers on CCTV’s effectiveness on crime. His work is careful and measured on a topic that is highly polarizing. Its a must read and I share many of John’s views. He has also been very helpful in providing links to the papers he reviewed. At some point, I would like to do a detailed post on his review (as well as see if I can add more papers). But for now, here are some of the key findings.

The expectation that CCTV systems should be deployed to reduce crime rather than solve crime has created huge problems. –

While the studies show serious doubt on CCTV’s ability to reduce crime generally, a strong consensus exists in CCTV’s ability to reduce premeditative/property crime

CCTV is consistently treated as a singular, stable technology, obscuring radical technological changes that have occurred in the last 10 years

Routine comparison of police vs cameras is counterproductive

This leads him to conclude:

Stop claiming that CCTV can generally reduce crime

Optimize future public CCTV projects around crime solving rather than crime reduction

Optimize future public CCTV projects around material and premeditative crimes

rshah Policy

[From Views From Both Sides On The Use Of Red Light Cameras] via the Beat The Traffic Blog

Supporters of red light cameras say…

• According to the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS), drivers who run red lights account for 22% of all traffic accidents in the United States.
• An IIHS study in Oxnard, California showed that red light running violations dropped 42% after red light cameras was introduced. A similar study in Fairfax, Virginia showed violations declined 40% after one year after.
• Publicity of red light cameras deters violations.
• Red light cameras don’t have biases and therefore drivers cannot be unfairly profiled.
• Privacy issues are null because of the public setting. Also, only people violating the law are photographed.
• They make lots of money for cities in need of the revenue.

Those who oppose the use of red light cameras say . . .

• The owner might not have been driving the car, yet they are mailed owner the ticket.
• Cameras increase other types of accidents, such as rear ending collisions, when people notice the camera and make hasty decisions to avoid ticketing. A Virginia Transportation Research Council study shows an increase of accidents with the installment of red light cameras.
• Longer yellow lights can make intersections much safer, in an easy and inexpensive way (check out the findings of the Texas Transportation Institute)
• There is no standardization of yellow light duration and several cities have been caught shortening them around a red light camera to increase revenue.
• Insurance companies (including IIHS) support red light cameras because more tickets mean they can raise insurance rates
• The accused receive notification weeks after the violation and there are no human witnesses to analyze the whole situation.
• They are expensive to operate and service the tickets in our court system.
• There are not stands to the fines through the U.S. which range from $50-$400.

Update, Chad Dornsife of Best Highway Safety Practices Institute offers his own analysis that red light cameras are not needed, see the top story at Highway Safety Group.

rshah Policy, Red Light Cameras

[From theNewspaper.com New York: Lobbyist Sparks U-Turns on Cameras] [Buffalo News]

An article on red light cameras gave me some pause on the role of government in using camera systems. Apparently in New York, legislation was introduced favors certain technologies (i.e. vendors) for red light cameras. The article notes the following about the bill:

AB 10948 states red light cameras must use “radar-based down-the-road speed measurement methods in which a photograph is taken coincident to, or as near as possible to, the location of, recorded speed measurements.” This is the description of the technology by Sensys Traffic.

The bill further states “Such demonstration program shall not utilize vehicle sensors of the following types: video, virtual loops, laser-based, across-the-road radar, in-the-road embedded or surface mount or additional road markings . . .” This eliminates laser sensors used by Lasercraft, video technology used by Nestor, and in road sensors used by Affiliated Computer Services (ACS). The leading vendors of red light cameras, American Traffic Systems and Australia’s Redflex, also rely on some of the banned technologies.

While this bill has been pulled at this point, the article points out that “2005, the Pennsylvania legislature likewise adopted legislation mandating “wet film” be used for ticketing so that ACS would be favored over rivals like Redflex that use digital cameras”.

I didn’t realize this type of behavior was happening for surveillance cameras. I am not naive, I understand that lobbyists push for this type of language in bills and its not too difficult to get someone to introduce these bills. I think this type of favoritism is wrong and something all vendors should despise. If anyone knows of other examples, please pass them on. (You can read a defense of the bill in the Buffalo News article, the defense is flimsy).

rshah Policy, Red Light Cameras

[From In Hard Focus: More Cool Privacy Tech]

Stephen Russel of 3VR Security has a very nice blog on issues around smart cameras. In a recent article shows off some technology 3VR is working on. Its a way to provide some privacy. Here is part of post:

The image on the left is from the original video feed. The second image is from a scrambled and encrypted version of that same feed.

Though with the encrypted feed it’s possible to detect loitering, fighting, and many other behaviors of concern, identity information is totally protected…that is, until an authorized user chooses to decrypt the feed. BUT then that action is controlled and logged, and an alert can even be generated, to ensure that the surveillance system is not being abused or misused.

(See the link for a larger picture)

rshah Policy

[From CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police | UK news | The Guardian], See also, this story from the Independent and comments on Schneier’s blog.

The article discusses a why the cameras haven’t worked to reduce crime and what the UK is doing to fix the problem. Here are some snippets:

Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe. The warning comes from the head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) at New Scotland Yard as the force launches a series of initiatives to try to boost conviction rates using CCTV evidence. They include:

· A new database of images which is expected to use technology developed by the sports advertising industry to track and identify offenders.

· Putting images of suspects in muggings, rape and robbery cases out on the internet from next month.

· Building a national CCTV database, incorporating pictures of convicted offenders as well as unidentified suspects. The plans for this have been drawn up, but are on hold while the technology required to carry out automated searches is refined.

rshah Policy

[From Crime cameras not capturing many crimes - Chronicle]

Preliminary results are being released on a study of the effectiveness of cameras in San Francisco. The cameras have slightly reduced nonviolent threats, otherwise they have had no effect on crime.

The city contracted with the UC Berkeley’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society to evaluate the cameras. The final report won’t be available for a few months. I am glad San Francisco is doing this and I wish other cities (ahem . . Chicago) would allow researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of cameras. An important factor to consider is that the cameras in San Francisco are not monitored in real-time (lowering costs, but also lowering effectiveness).

Researchers examined data from the San Francisco Police Department detailing the 59,706 crimes committed within 1,000 feet of the camera locations between Jan. 1, 2005, and Jan. 28, 2008. . . . The only positive deterrent effect was the reduction of larcenies within 100 feet of the cameras. No other crimes were affected – except for homicides, which had an interesting pattern. Murders went down within 250 feet of the cameras, but the reduction was completely offset by an increase 250 to 500 feet away, suggesting people moved down the block before killing each other.

rshah Other Cities, Policy

I found two recent columns on surveillance and government interesting. The first is by Lorne Gunter and offers a fresh perspective on the role of surveillance cameras. I really like this quote:

I enjoy as much as the next person television shows such as 24 and the BBC’s excellent equivalent MI-5, but I am under no illusion that super agents using super computers are able to monitor terrorists in real time as they make their way through city streets and malls so they can be interdicted before they carry out their plots. The best that can be hoped for from cameras is that they deter would-be terrorists. But cameras cannot actually prevent terrorism, unless a perpetrator is very dumb and slow and authorities are extraordinarily lucky.

Another useful observation:

In the 1990s, New York City made great strides in cleaning up its subway system and streets. But it did so by putting more officers on platforms and trains. Police can see what cameras cannot, and they can respond immediately, rather than waiting to be summoned by those monitoring cameras. Cameras are a sop, a symbolic reaction that merely enables timid politicians to say, “Look. See? We’re doing something.”

A second column I found interest is by Julian Sanchez on wiretapping. This is an issue of great contemporary political import. The core of this debate has implications for the use of surveillance cameras by government. Read the column, but here are some key insights:

Without meaningful oversight, presidents and intelligence agencies can — and repeatedly have — abused their surveillance authority to spy on political enemies and dissenters. The original FISA law was passed in 1978 after a thorough congressional investigation headed by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) revealed that for decades, intelligence analysts — and the presidents they served — had spied on the letters and phone conversations of union chiefs, civil rights leaders, journalists, antiwar activists, lobbyists, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices — even Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The Church Committee reports painstakingly documented how the information obtained was often “collected and disseminated in order to serve the purely political interests of an intelligence agency or the administration, and to influence social policy and political action.”

. . .

In that light, the security-versus-privacy framing of the contemporary FISA debate seems oddly incomplete. Your personal phone calls and e-mails may be of limited interest to the spymasters of Langley and Ft. Meade. But if you think an executive branch unchecked by courts won’t turn its “national security” surveillance powers to political ends — well, it would be a first.

rshah Policy

[From Rethinking Surveillance - washingtonpost.com]

A thoughtful opinion by Frank Baitman on whether it is time to regulate surveillance. Frank Baitman is president of Petards, the Baltimore-based subsidiary of Britain-based Petards Group. He has been obviously influenced by the laws in Britain and believes they can serve as a model of us. He points to three specifics areas:

Specifically, Congress should consider establishing laws to:

Ensure that surveillance technologies satisfy their mission for crime and terror control without the potential for misuse.

Reassure the public that their images are being collected for bona fide objectives, and that there are penalties for those who misuse surveillance recordings.

Promote the adoption of open standards to ensure interoperability, which in turn would promote the introduction of emerging technologies.

rshah Policy

[From Keeping an Eye on China’s Security - New York Times]

The article notes the Commerce Department is drafting new rules on what security equipment companies can sell to China. They could restrict the export of facial recognition software:

The move comes in response to rapid advances in surveillance technology and the increasing involvement of American companies in the Chinese market as the Olympics approach. People involved with the process said the Commerce Department was singling out biometric technology — face-recognition software, in particular — which Chinese security agencies could use to identify political and religious dissidents.

Chinese security agencies are rapidly increasing their spending on video systems with powerful computer analysis tools. American companies, with heavy financial backing from American hedge funds, have played a central role in helping Chinese cities install thousands of street surveillance cameras and use computers to process the video.

Congress has become concerned about the export controls on such activity. “It remains extremely important to have such controls in place so that our country’s exports do not enable governments abroad to repress the fundamental freedoms that we cherish here at home,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who presides over the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. “I will be watching closely as this process develops to ensure that current U.S. export controls are not weakened.”

rshah Facial Recognition, Policy

[From City Limits: News for NYC's Nonprofit, Policy and Activist World]

A very good investigative article on the camera systems in schools. The article is noteworthy for several reasons, but I like the fact that it carefully details the problems in the camera installation. As yesterday’s post also noted regarding the NYC subway camera system, installation is never a slam dunk. While I am sure those inside the industry hear these stories all the time, they are rarely brought to the attention of the public (or me), especially for camera systems designed for security. However, its an important point that getting these systems up and running outside of the lab can be difficult in real world environments with budgets.

Another good point in Winston’s story is the use of the cameras and access to the footage. She details the rules regarding archived footage and the difficulty for parents and students in gaining access to the footage. I am sure the issues here occur for lots of cities and schools using cameras. Putting into places rules and procedures for camera footage is not accomplished overnight. Its a mixture of bureaucratic, legal, and technical issues.

rshah Other Cities, Policy