X-From_: info@notbored.org Mon Jan 13 21:17:07 2003 X-Original-To: info@notbored.org X-Sender: notbored@popserver.panix.com (Unverified) Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 21:13:32 -0500 To: me<info@notbored.org>From: SCP-New York<info@notbored.org>Subject: clipping service! Status: RO X-Status: 1. Cameras seem to work in Northants (England) 2. Mobile phones and video (India) 3. Glastonbury Festival (England) 4. Face recognition software (USA) 5. Spy planes (Japan) 6. Cameras don't seem to work (USA) 7. Citizens' Patrol (USA) 1. cameras seem to work in Northants (England) Thursday, January 09, 2003 http://www.northantsnew.co.uk/ref/main_crime_beat.asp?ID=15619 Spy cameras snare more than 3,000 ARRESTS through the use of surveillance cameras in Northampton have soared by more than a quarter in the last 12 months. More than 3,000 people were arrested as a result of closed circuit television footage in the town in the last year, an increase of 28.3 per cent on the previous 12 months. The figures, released by Northampton Borough Council yesterday, have shown a continuing trend in the number of arrests in recent years. Cameras were introduced to try to cut down on crime, and 494 arrests were made in 1997 compared with 3,026 in 2002. A total of 2,358 people were arrested as a result of CCTV footage in 2001. Insp Sam Dobbs, the strategic liaison officer for the Northampton police area, said: From a policing point of view, it's hard to remember what life was like before CCTV. It is a huge tool in the fight against crime and also in making people, including police officers, feel safe. CCTV is no longer regarded as Big Brother watching over you, and there is an insatiable demand for cameras in areas which are not currently covered. Not only does CCTV help prevent crime and anti-social behaviour, it also provides excellent evidence when we need to prove whether or not an offence occurred. The investment by Northampton Borough Council in the CCTV system, and the partnership we enjoy with them, can only serve to create a better life for people who want to enjoy the town, and make life difficult for those who want to disrupt it. A monthly breakdown shows August to have been the quietest month in 2002, with just 179 arrests, compared with a peak of 297 in April. The increase in arrests has been put down to improved technology and a proliferation of cameras around Northampton town centre. The Pubwatch scheme has also had an effect, with hi-tech links from pubs and clubs allowing operators in the CCTV control room to pinpoint troublemakers. A spokeswoman for Northampton Borough Council said: The continued improvements in technology combined with the installation of more cameras in crime hotspots around the town have helped us to make Northampton a safer town. "Last year there were well over 3,000 arrests as a direct result of CCTV footage which is fantastic. We can never obliterate crime completely, but anything that makes people think twice before committing a crime has got to be good." 2. Watch live events with BT's mobile video hosting tech SUDHIR CHOWDHARY TIMES NEWS NETWORK [THURSDAY, JANUARY 09, 2003 03:46:06 PM ] A revolution is underway in the way people use their mobile phones and some analysts say it will be as big as the effect of TV on radio. In the given scenario, video over the internet is a challenge but video over mobile networks is much tougher as no single platform meets every customer's needs. However, scientists at BTexact Technologies, British Telecoms advanced research and technology division, are working towards combining the best offerings on the market today to offer video services on the new generation of mobile phones and PDAs. Vemotion, part of BTexact Technologies' corporate technology incubator Brightstar, is utilising patented technology from BTexact to deliver full-colour video services to the latest mobile phones and PDAs. With GPRS devices, such as Nokia's 7650 and mmO2's XDA, expected to be the 'must have' gadget soon, users are looking for content and applications to make the most of the features available to them. However, with speeds limited to 40kbit/s (that's 25 per cent lower than a standard computer modem), and connection quality varying with signal conditions and the number of users, the specialist services of Vemotion are positioned to help content providers satisfy this demand. The most popular video applications currently are video ring-tones, video greetings, surveillance cameras, music videos, sports clips and news clips. The typical length of the clips is between 20 seconds and 4 minutes, which can cost users as little as 30 pence. Vemotion's solutions allow users to watch live events, access content on demand, or download clips for later viewing. Vemotion's underpinning technology includes the FastStart capability, which halves video start-up times; Layered Download, which improves quality with each viewing of a clip, and Mobile Aware features to enhance user experience in harsh network conditions. The technology is also the first in the world to meet the emerging H.26L international standard, which doubles video quality for the same data rate as MPEG-4. A new generation of mobile phones with colour screens and high-speed connectivity are already appearing from companies such as Nokia, Sendo, SonyEricsson and Motorola. Users have high expectations for these devices and BTexacts new patented technology is set to meet and exceed those expectations--its delivering video services today. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=33867244 3. Glastonbury: ROCK ON ROCK ON THE Glastonbury Festival could be saved - if plans to install CCTV cameras to protect neighbouring homes are accepted. Festival founder Michael Eavis, wants to spend 100,000 on 50 cameras, extra police and security to secure homes in the nearby village of Pilton - and he is optimistic that the proposal means Europe's biggest performing arts festival will be allowed to go ahead. The future of the festival was thrown into doubt last month when Mendip District Council turned down Mr Eavis's application for a public entertainment licence to hold the annual event in June. Councillors rejected the licence after gatecrashers, unable to break in to the festival site last year because of a new 1 million steel fence, wreaked havoc in the village, stealing property, trespassing and shouting abuse. But Mr Eavis now hopes his 100,000 plan to provide a 200-strong security team to patrol the village and 50 CCTV cameras, planted in previous troublespots, will overcome objections. Festival operations director Melvyn Benn appeared before Wells Magistrates Court at a preliminary hearing of the appeal against the council's refusal to grant a licence yesterday. He said that organisers were already making significant moves to address the council's objections. Under the new plans, CCTV cameras will provide 24-hour surveillance of the village and Mr Eavis will pay for an extra dozen police officers to patrol Pilton and arrest any troublemakers. The firm which handles security for Old Trafford is favourite to win the 100,000 contract to run the village security operation. But Mr Eavis admits that the new security measures will come at a cost to the charities who receive a share of the festival profits. The ticket price for the festival will remain the same, at 97 with 3 booking fee, with the cost of the extra security being paid for before the remainder of the profits are handed out to good causes. Mr Eavis said: "I'm quite optimistic that we will get a favourable result from the council. Last year people were told that they could not gatecrash because of the new fence, but about 100 turned up and were a nuisance. There were problems with trespassing and one person broke into two houses and stole some clothing and jewellery. We have now done more work on the village security. We will be using a large number of cameras and we have already got a map of all the places where they will be put up, in previous trouble spots. Last year was the best year that we had ever had because we had reliable security around the fence. Our internal security problems had been resolved but the only thing we didn't sort out were the problems in the village. If we solve this problem than there will be nothing threatening the future of the festival." But Mendip councillor Bill MacKay, of the opposition Tory group, said that the proposed security measures would not be enough. He said: "It does not matter how many police are there - the village of Pilton will still be under siege and the residents resent that. When the festival is on they are literally stuck in their houses." Mendip District Council is set to reconsider the festival's licence application on February 17. http://www.thisisbristol.com/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=86419&command=displayContent&sourceNode=86416&contentPK=3613056 4. Face Recognition Cameras Stir 'Big Brother' Fears Reuters Sunday, January 12, 2003; 9:29 AM By Alan Elsner, National Correspondent VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (Reuters) - Police in this popular resort city recently began operating video surveillance cameras with controversial face recognition technology that critics say brings the United States one step closer to becoming a society where "Big Brother is watching you." Virginia Beach, along with Tampa, Florida, is one of only two cities in the United States to acquire the technology, which cost it $197,000. The system went live last September, at the tail end of the summer vacation period when the city was crowded with visitors. "Before we switched it on, we went through an extensive public education process with hearings and the involvement of citizen groups and minority groups, who helped write the policies we are using," said deputy police chief Greg Mullen. As a result, the cameras may only be used for two narrowly defined purposes: to catch some 1,500 people wanted by the city on outstanding felony warrant, and to find runaway children or missing persons. All the images picked up by the cameras are immediately deleted from the system if there is no match. A citizens' auditing committee has the right to perform unannounced spot checks on police headquarters to make sure the technology is not being misused. Virginia Beach has had video surveillance cameras watching over its beachfront area since 1993. Three of the city's 13 cameras are linked full-time to the face recognition system, though the others can be activated as needed. The database of wanted people is updated every day. So far, the system has failed to produce a single arrest, though it has generated a few false alarms. In September, it was sending some 8,000 images a day to the computer at police headquarters. Each camera has the capacity to generate six pictures a minute. It works by analyzing faces based on a series of measurements, such as the distance from the tip of the nose to the chin or the space between the eyes. Critics say it is highly inaccurate and can be easily fooled. Mullen, who sees the system eventually being linked to the databases of other city, state and federal law enforcement agencies to track criminals and suspected terrorists, said: "The system doesn't look at skin color or your hair or your gender. It takes human prejudices out of the equation." Civil liberties groups are hardly reassured. They fear an erosion of personal privacy and evoke the dark vision of British author George Orwell's novel "1984," in which he imagined a totalitarian society with a "Big Brother" who kept all its citizens under constant surveillance. "This technology has little or no effect on the crime rate but it does have an effect on peoples' behavior. People feel cowed," said Bruce Steinhardt, who directs a technology and liberty program for the American Civil Liberties Union. Video surveillance has mushroomed across industrialized nations in recent years. Britain leads the world: the average Londoner is estimated to have his or her picture recorded more than 300 times a day, but New York is not far behind, although its cameras are not linked to face recognition technology. Studies have found that any reduction in crime after surveillance cameras go in may wear off over time. But Mullen said the cameras in Virginia Beach had provided evidence at trials, allowed police to arrive at crime scenes much more quickly and track criminals as they made their escape. They have also helped police disperse crowds before they became rowdy and freed up officers for other tasks. In the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Americans seem to be more willing to sacrifice some of their personal privacy for the sake of enhancing security. Still, many are alarmed by concepts like the Pentagon's proposed Total Information Awareness system, which would collect individuals' financial, medical, communication and travel records in a massive database in the hope of uncovering patterns of potentially hostile activity. Despite the fact that tests have shown face recognition only works in around 30 percent of cases, the ACLU is alarmed that the technology may soon spread to airports. The organization also fears it could potentially be used to monitor individuals' political activities to harass law-abiding citizens. "This kind of surveillance should be subject to the same procedures as wiretaps. Law enforcement agencies should justify why they need it and it should be tightly limited, otherwise it will soon become a tool of social control," said Mihir Kshirsagar of the Electronic Information Privacy Center. Nor does such criticism come exclusively from the political left. Lawyer John Whitehead, founder of the conservative Rutherford Institute, wrote in an editorial that the technology threatened the right of each U.S. citizen to participate in society without the express or implied threat of coercion. "After all, that is exactly what constant surveillance is -- the ultimate implied threat of coercion," he wrote. Mullen said that was nonsense. To him, the cameras are no different in principle from a police officer standing on a street corner with a wanted poster -- just more efficient. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45784-2003Jan12.html 5. Handycams in Space: With its first spy satellites on the way, Japan is keeping a closer eye on its neighbors BY ILYA GARGER Reported by Hiroko Tashiro/Tokyo January 20, 2003 / Vol. 161 No. 2 http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501030120-407386,00.html When you live in a rough neighborhood, it's natural to want to keep an eye on your neighbors especially when, unlike Totoro, they have nuclear ambitions. That's why the latest Japanese gizmos aren't cute cameras or robo-pets but high-powered military surveillance technology. According to officials in Japan's Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Center, the country will launch its first two spy satellites by the end of March, followed by two more later this year. Between them, these four cosmic eyesdeveloped at a cost of $2 billionwill be able to snap any spot on Earth with 24-hour's notice, come rain or shine. The project was hatched in 1998, after a North Korean ballistic missile flew over Japan and shook the nation's collective faith in the U.S. military umbrella that has shielded it for half a century. U.S. officials initially pressured Japan to buy American satellites, but Tokyo insisted on developing its own technology. Social Democratic Party lawmaker Masami Imagawa warns that government hawks "are quietly expanding military strength without enough public debate." If so, they're on a roll. Next up: an unmanned spy plane that can patrol North Korea from international airspace. Smile, Dear Leader: the camera loves you. 6. Student jumps off MU parking ramp, remains in hospital By Jill Sederstrom Daily Staff Writer January 13, 2003 (The Iowa State Daily does not generally report on suicide attempts. However, due to the nature of this incident and its presence on campus -- as well as a history of similar acts -- the Daily has pursued this coverage. While the name of the student has been released, the Daily has opted to instead protect the privacy of our classmate, particularly while he remains hospitalized. --Cavan Reagan, Editor in Chief) An ISU freshman leapt from the Memorial Union parking ramp shortly after midnight on Jan. 1. Police officials have found evidence to indicate the man jumped from the northeast corner of the fourth floor of the parking ramp, 67 feet above the ground, said ISU Police Capt. Gene Deisinger. He said witnesses at the scene reported they heard the man say he had jumped and that he wanted to hurt himself. Witnesses also heard the man say he had taken hallucinogenic drugs earlier that night, Deisinger said. The man survived the fall and is listed in serious but stable condition at Iowa Methodist Hospital in Des Moines, said hospital officials. "He had suffered numerous and severe injuries to his legs, arms and head," Deisinger said. Deisinger said police received a call after a wedding guest was leaving the Memorial Union and noticed someone lying on the ground near the parking ramp. The Ames Fire Department, Mary Greeley Medical Center paramedics and ISU Police responded immediately to the scene, Deisinger said. Paramedics worked to stabilize the man at the scene. There have been two other cases of individuals jumping off the parking ramp in the past 10 or 12 years, Deisinger said. Both individuals survived. Deisinger said ISU Police regularly patrol the Memorial Union and the parking ramp. There are also video cameras inside the parking garage. These cameras are used for surveillance; however, no one was working at the tollbooth and monitoring the cameras when the attempted suicide occurred [...] http://www.iowastatedaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/01/13/3e224b2fbdc37 7. Citizens on Patrol help keep Blackfoots neighborhoods safe 01/12/03 Blackfoot Citizens on Patrol volunteer John Peck has seen the difference his work has made in his own neighborhood. Peck, a former law enforcement officer, and partner Ferd Jensen patrol nearby Monroe Park in the evenings. The park used to be a haven for rough teens. The two men believed they made a difference simply by being there with a marked police car. They used to go there and smoke and trade dope, Jensen said. Now it doesn't happen. You are seen and it helps. The Blackfoot Citizens on Patrol recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. About 25 volunteers help police officers by checking homes and businesses, assisting with funeral processions and providing traffic control during power outages and crime scenes. In addition to freeing an officer, the citizens also provide a deterrent to crimes, Blackfoot Police Capt. Kurt Asmus said. The volunteers drive marked cars, and are given radios and video cameras. You dont have to make an arrest or get out of your car to stop crime, he said. Visibility is a deterrent. Before patrolling, volunteers take a 14-hour course, and ride with a Citizens on Patrol officer and a police officer. http://newspapers.mywebpal.com/partners/669/public/news417408.html X-From_: info@notbored.org Sun Jan 26 18:15:04 2003 X-Original-To: info@notbored.org X-Sender: notbored@popserver.panix.com Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2003 18:11:19 -0500 To: me<info@notbored.org>From: NOT BORED!<info@notbored.org>Subject: clipping service: surveillance cameras Status: RO X-Status: Assembled by the New York Surveillance Camera Players https://notbored.org/the-scp.html ------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------- 1. The artists saw it coming (USA) 2. Burglar Mugs for Surveillance Camera (USA) 3. Restroom Surveillance Case Appealed (USA) 4. Stopping loose nukes (USA) 5. Wireless surveillance in California (USA) 6. Phone-tap buying spree raises alarm (England) 7. County school bus cameras malfunction (USA) 8. Webcams as surveillance cameras (USA) 9. University sues attorney general to keep surveillance information secret (USA of course) 10. The Finn line that separates crime-busting and privacy (Finland) ------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------- 1. The artists saw it coming Jan. 24, 2003 Artists saw surveillance era coming BY MICHAEL KILIAN Chicago Tribune WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Among their other abilities, artists can see things coming. Reflect upon how much the onset of World War I, its accompanying horrors and the depravity and economic chaos that followed were presaged in the prewar works of the German Expressionists. Now, nearly a century later, our own nation is in the grip of an unsettling enterprise we euphemistically describe as "homeland security." In the name of this elusive but omnipresent "security," in the hope of easing the lingering dread that still haunts us from the terrorist acts of 16 months ago, we are imposing serious constraints upon our daily lives, sacrificing longstanding rights and values and succumbing to a general militancy. And, like it or not, we are placing ourselves under surveillance. Artists saw this coming uncannily, even before Sept. 11. And they saw it in American suburbs. A just-opened exhibition at Washington's Corcoran Gallery - appropriately, across the street from the heavily fortified White House complex - contains ample and disturbing testimony to this phenomenon in the form of a computer-graphics display, a video installation and four photographic series, all by five U.S. artists and another from Norway. The exhibition is called "Homeland," and the works on view provide us with a look at how we have chosen to see ourselves. And watch ourselves. "The `Homeland' artists function as provocateurs," said Corcoran curator Paul Brewer, "making us aware of the delicate balance we maintain between being secure and being surveilled." Norway's Sven Pahlsson has the most telling contribution of the five to this endeavor. His "Sprawlville or Life at the End of the Highway Ramp" is a continuously played video employing digital animation and 3-D modeling software. It begins with what looks like the burning of Troy, a walled city with an orange glow at the center, glimpsed from afar. As the viewpoint moves closer, we see that the fortresslike structure actually is an enclosed shopping mall, surrounded by an empty but brightly lit and vast expanse of parking lot. In the manner of a police helicopter or a constantly revolving surveillance camera, the viewpoint goes `round and `round this cold, forbidding complex as the morning light increases and the orange glow at the center, presumably from a sodium vapor light, recedes. Then the digital video display segues to something as dreary and forbidding: an endless drive down a suburban street. Some of the stark, nearly featureless houses have cars in the driveways, but most do not. Everything and everyone is behind closed doors. A few windows shine with light, indicating a human presence. But no one is seen. This is true of all the works in the exhibition. "Though void of human figures, the images constantly reaffirm their existence," observed Brewer. "When looking at living and social spaces without a physical presence to read in terms of expression, gesture or fashion, viewers are left to populate the images themselves by assigning values, lifestyles or even personalities to absent strangers, using only banal backdrops, props and details. In attempting to construct such vague identities, one is forced to consider the implications of one's own opinions and judgments as an outsider. Within the current social atmosphere of exaggerated paranoia now validated by new mandates associated with security and pre-emptive action, the outsider is an increasingly theatrical suspect." Another artist in the group, Susan Black, returns to her childhood neighborhood with videos taken driving endlessly by its houses. For reasons not satisfactorily explained, these are projected upside down. Todd Hido's still camera prowls a neighborhood of desolate, rundow little fort. With different building materials, it could be 15th Century Scandinavia. Jason Falchook chooses more upscale houses and yards, and stares at them, as if from surveillance cameras set on the grass of lawns or in shrubbery. Michael Fisher and Kate MacDonnell boldly intrude upon their subjects, getting inside the houses and photographing their contents as clues to the identities of the inhabitants and what it is they hold dear_what it is they so desperately want to protect. In his darkly satirical 1997 film "The End of Violence," starring Bill Pullman and Andie MacDowell, German director Wim Wenders pursued a plot line involving a top-secret government scheme to install surveillance cameras throughout a city and so keep watch over all its inhabitants. When a government agent played by Gabriel Byrne threatened to reveal the project, he was killed. With cameras like these now in place in cities throughout America, there's no need for such secrecy now. http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/5022223.htm 2. Burglar Mugs for Surveillance Camera Crime doesn't pay, particularly for a pair of smug burglars in Crosby Township. The suspects broke into Town and Country Ford Parts and calmly walked out with a truckload of cd players, speakers, and tires. Three hours later, the men returned to the scene of the crime. "Whoever had fenced the place figured out there were cameras in it," said owner Richard Elsen. "They sent them back." Surveillance video shows the worried burglars looking up, down, and around for the camera. One finally spots the lens and goes in for a closer inspection, leading to several nice, candid mugs. The criminals destroy the equipment before ripping apart the ceiling and second floor in search of more. "They never did find the rest of it," said Elsen. "That's why we've got such nice pictures." Anyone with information should call CrimeStoppers at 352-3040. http://www.fox19.com/Global/story.asp?S=1091923 3. Restroom Surveillance Case Appealed Wednesday, 22 January 2003 COLUMBUS -- A December ruling by the Seventh Ohio District Court of Appeals in Youngstown that gave police permission to hide video cameras in public toilets, will be appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court, the Gay People's Chronicle reports. The appeals court also upheld a public indecency conviction against one of 13 men arrested in July, 2001 in a highway rest stop sex-cottaging sting operation conducted by local police and prosecutors. Saline Township Police Chief Kenneth Hayes and Jefferson County Prosecutor Bryan Felmet hid video cameras inside the men's toilet light fixtures and conducted video surveillance. One of the accused, James Henry was convicted for standing at a restroom urinal for 47 seconds in May 2001. He is shown leaving the restroom without incident. At his trial, prosecutors convinced the jury that because Henry stepped back from the urinal before fastening his pants, anyone entering the facility "could have" come to the conclusion that Henry was masturbating. He was summarily convicted of public indecency. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that cameras in public restrooms, locker rooms, jail cells and dressing rooms constitute illegal searches and thus violate the Fourth Amendment. But in a unanimous opinion, the three-judge appellate panel ruled Henry had "no reasonable expectation of privacy so long as he remained in the common area" of the restroom. Henry is optimistic about his chances to have the ruling overturned by the high court. "We just have to get this thing away from southeastern Ohio," he said. Henry's lawyer, Sam Pate, is less optimistic and expressed his disappointment that national civil rights groups, like the American Civil Liberties Union, have not yet weighed in on this case. http://www.datalounge.com/datalounge/news/record.html?record=20484 4. Stopping Loose Nukes excerpt: "To track vehicles traveling along a highway, what you'd need is a sensor array, and probably a secondary array - along with some video technology to keep track of who you were scanning," says Jim Winso, vice president of the San Diego-based SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation). The company is developing a radiation detection array - SAIC calls it a nuclear portal - that could cost less than $100,000 when purchased in bulk. The device would scan for suspicious cargo without slowing down traffic; once law enforcement identified an undocumented radiation source, they'd shut off the flow of vehicles at that particular access point, which would require roadblocks that could be set up in a matter of seconds. Once the vehicles in question had been contained, they would be examined with a more elaborate device - something like AS&E's $2 million MobileSearch system, which combines gamma ray detectors with advanced X-ray technologies. So when the terrorist heading toward the center of DC drives up the Beltway entrance ramp, his van would travel under a passive scanning device mounted on an overpass. If you remember high school physics, you know that radioactive materials emit invisible particles, including alpha and beta particles, which can be easily shielded against traditional scanners; most also emit gamma rays, which penetrate most materials and are far more difficult to conceal. In the split second he was under the scanner, 500 gamma rays might collide with it. Someone monitoring incoming data would notice the spike in radiation, and a video camera - the kind already used to catch traffic violators - would record his vehicle and license plate." Full article: http://wired.com/wired/archive/10.11/nukes.html 5. California installs wireless surveillance BY Dibya Sarkar Jan. 21, 2003 Federal Computer Week http://www.fcw.com/print.asp The announcement last month that the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is putting wireless technology on several San Francisco bridges and tunnels for video surveillance may be just the beginning of a nationwide trend for such security measures. In partnership with several contractors, Caltrans is installing a multimillion-dollar state-of-the-art wireless electronic surveillance system to enhance security. The system, called the Bay Area Security Enhancement, is operational and in the final phases of commissioning. The secure system will enable state public safety agencies to monitor bridges and tunnels for potential security problems using cameras manufactured by San Jose, Calif.-based RVision LLC. The system is more flexible and functional than previous systems, said Dave Brown, a division manager with Royal Electric Co. Inc., one of the contractors working on the system. For Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Proxim Inc., which supplied the wireless technology, security and surveillance has become a more prominent segment of its market since the September 2001 terrorist attacks, said Jeff Orr, product marketing manager for the company's wide-area network division. Until the Caltrans installation, most wireless applications were used on government and military bases for perimeter surveillance. "At this point a lot of applications have been military applications," he said. "In terms of the state-funded level, Caltrans has been pretty early." In regard to the advantages of wireless technology, Orr said that the cost is lower than laying down new fiber and the amount of time to deploy the system is shorter. In addition, wireless transmission speeds are much higher -- 20 megabits/sec to 60 megabits/sec as opposed to 1.4 megabits/sec for a T1 line, he added. Also, wireless equipment is purchased outright, whereas telecommunications companies charge a fee for use of their fiber lines, he said. Wireless also permits flexibility in moving the technology from one location to another rather than rewiring a system. That could be done in a matter of hours instead of weeks or months, he said. 6. Phone-tap buying spree raises alarm Sunday, January 19, 2003 By JENNIFER O'BRIEN, Free Press Reporter Phone-tap sales are going through the roof in London and an expert says the widespread acceptance of such electronic invasions could spark the need for new privacy laws. Joseph Tal, who owns Spy Tech in Galleria London, said he was flabbergasted at seeing his business soar 78 per cent last year when he sold about 500 phone-taps. "For every (surveillance) camera I sell, I probably sell four or five phone taps," he said, during a recent phone interview -- taped, of course. The trend could mean hundreds of Londoners are using phone-taps to keep an eye on spouses, friends and business associates, he says. And that causes concern for those who study the trend's effect on privacy rights. The Internet and private surveillance cameras have softened society's stance on privacy in recent years, says David Canton, a lawyer in the high-tech/e-business practice group at the firm Harrison Pensa. "The Internet has made it far easier than it ever has been to collect information about people," Canton said. And the more information society has access to, the less intrusive gathering it seems, he said. He said in the information age consumers more readily accept the use of items such as surveillance cameras. For example, most people would say hiding a camera in a teddy bear to spy on a babysitter is OK. "It's all done under the guise of security, which may be legitimate or may not," Canton said. "That may be why we are seeing the trend among some privacy commissioners for more privacy legislation," Canton said. Tal said he knows some of his customers use phone taps to catch a cheating spouse -- signs outside his store advertise equipment for the task -- but insists his products are meant for his customers' own protection. The law calls for one person in a conversation to know it's being taped, meaning someone being threatened by an abusive spouse could legally tape the conversation and use it as proof, Tal said. His products can be used for self-protection in other ways. As well as phone taps, he also sells equipment to check for taps and other electronic bugs. Last week, a woman had to seek safety at a women's shelter after using Tal's anti-wire tapping device to discover her estranged spouse was spying on her. "We ran equipment to check it and she found multiple, multiple items in the house," he said. "She is now at a women's (shelter) . . . she was scared out of her skull." London police are investigating the case. Police are concerned about the growing use of phone taps, said London police spokesperson Const. Paul Martin. "It is a concern if they are being used illegally . . . to intercept private communication between two others." Martin said the crime has a penalty of as much as five years in prison. London police laid four charges last year of communication interference. Tal scoffed at questions about the ethics of selling something that can be used by abusive partners or criminals. "Canadian Tire doesn't sell baseball bats for any other purpose other than to have fun. But you can use it to smash somebody's brains out, too." http://www.canoe.ca/LondonNews/lf.lf-01-19-0001.html 7. County school bus cameras malfunction 2003-01-19 by Erin Hudson of The Daily Times Staff [Tenessee] Surveillance cameras on Blount County School buses are not operating correctly. Blount County Schools Transportation Supervisor Stan Burnette said the problem with the cameras was brought to his attention a few days ago due to a parent's complaint. ``It's not something that we can solve overnight, but we are working on it,'' Burnette said. Some cameras are having problems due to electrical problems within the bus, and three cameras are completely inoperable, Burnette said. The system previously reported 19 cameras were installed on Blount County buses before the start of the 2001-2002 school year. The county schools purchased the Canadian-made surveillance cameras from Silent Witness, a Texas-based company, Burnette said. So far, Silent Witness has been true to its name. ``The information we have for (Silent Witness) is only one phone number, and I have been trying to get in touch with them for four weeks,'' Burnette said. ``I have not gotten any response from them.'' The transportation supervisor said he has left repeated messages and made numerous phone calls to Silent Witness, with the latest attempt a few days ago. With the help of a federal grant, the system has accepted bids from various other companies for new cameras. Due to the problems experienced with Silent Witness, that firm was not allowed to participate in the new bid process. The Blount County Board of Education recently awarded the bid to Seon, and the cameras will be put in 67 of the 71 Blount County Schools buses, Burnette said. The cameras will cost $770 each, including installation. ``(Seon) has a better guarantee than Silent Witness,'' Burnette said. While Burnette said he did not remember the cost of the 19 cameras, he knew they cost more than the $770 cameras. School systems across the nation have installed video cameras on buses to monitor child behavior as well as bus drivers in an attempt to ensure the safety of the children. http://www.thedailytimes.com/sited/story/html/118849 8. Eye contact - Web cams are in vogue as security devices By Christine Winter Business Writer Posted January 19 2003 The first documented use of a Web cam was a tiny black-and-white camera trained on a coffee pot in the Cambridge University computer science department in 1991, rigged up by caffeine-starved programmers tired of traipsing across the hall only to find the pot empty. Soon uninhibited "cammers" became Internet stars as they set up cameras in their homes and dorm rooms and then went about their daily lives while broadcasting live to the Web. It wasn't much of a leap for the tiny cameras to become part of the burgeoning online adult entertainment industry, then popular mainstream marketing tools. Eventually, Web cams were trained on everything from the Fort Lauderdale beach via a rooftop camera at the Elbo Room, to traffic jams, weather scenes, NASA feeds and touristy vistas. Now, more than a decade later, thanks to better-quality and lower-priced cameras, more affordable bandwidth and improvements in digital recording and wireless technologies, live video feeds over the Internet have moved from a trendy gimmick with sometimes shady overtones to a legitimate security and monitoring tool for both businesses and home owners. "Remote video surveillance over the Internet gives business owners the power to be in more than one place at one time," said Stuart Cantin, president of Information Consulting Associates Inc. in Coral Springs, a company that specializes in providing voice, video and data products and services to small businesses. "They not only can access ongoing live video but they can easily search recorded video archives as well." Web cam systems consist of digital cameras attached to a computer with software that takes the video frames and turns them into files that can be sent to a Web site. Additional software and a recorder are required for archiving. "Today's systems are not like the ones used in bedrooms," said Adam Cohen, director of marketing for iWATCHLiVE.com, an Internet video surveillance firm based in Hollywood. "We use video servers instead of PCs and closed circuit TV-quality cameras instead of those `toy' PC-based cameras." Low end "consumer" systems usually consist of cheap cameras that can be bought for under $100 online, and plugged into the USB port on any PC. High-end business systems usually use much more sophisticated closed circuit TV-quality cameras that can be activated by motion and have lenses that can zoom for blocks. The cameras are connected to a dedicated video server that feeds the data to a Web site. A video server might cost as much as $2,000, said Cohen, and cameras can range anywhere from $399 to thousands of dollars. Advances in wireless technology mean both the cameras can be wireless and customers can use mobile devices like cell phones and PDAs to access the videos on the Web. Restaurateur Jeff Levine tested Boca Raton-based Cenuco Inc.'s MommyTrack surveillance system so he and his wife could keep an eye on baby sitters taking care of their newborn when they were away from home. MommyTrack, which was officially launched at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, allows users to set up cameras in their homes and access either live video or 48 hours worth of archived video from an Internet-accessible cell phone or other handheld device. Cenuco, which develops wireless software applications, offers a similar product for handheld devices for business use called CenVid. "We use the MommyTrack most when we go out to dinner. We will check it two or three times -- it only takes 10 seconds to pull up the image," Levine said. "It's a godsend. It makes us feel very comfortable." Levine, who owns Lulu's Bait Shack restaurants in Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Atlanta, decided he also liked the idea to keep an eye on what was going on in his eateries when he was traveling. "At work, I have one of the cameras trained on the bars in my restaurants, and it has already paid for itself by saving me lawyers' fees," he said. The system recorded a bar fight, and when one of the participants tried to sue the restaurant, the archived video showed he was the instigator. After seeing it, he dropped his lawsuit. "I keep the cameras out in the open so the system plays the role of deterrent," he said. "Being on camera has resulted in the restaurants' being cleaner and employees' being more honest." A basic MommyTrack system retails for $995, which includes one camera, a base station that supports three more cameras, and software. The Web hosting and archiving cost $19.95 per month. A mini system that runs off only one camera is $499. Systems designed for business use are more expensive. There is also the cost of bandwidth, which is the capacity for transmitting data over a network. "I find the biggest expense is a cell phone plan that covers Internet access," Levine said. Casinos were the first and most obvious customers of sophisticated Web video systems, using the hidden cameras to monitor the millions of dollars constantly changing hands and to watch out for card cheats, but Cohen noted more and more industries are coming online with their monitoring needs. Cohen said "wireless walkthrus" are the buzz in the real estate industry, as agents walk through houses and broadcast the video live to potential buyers. Web cam monitoring has also become popular in the construction industry, in warehouses, and among small mom-and-pop retailers with several locations. He added property managers in upscale developments use video-cam systems to give residents online views of entrances, pool areas and laundry rooms. One variation of the nanny-cam monitor is Bark Ave Pet Resorts' doggie cam. Co-owner Ron Funt uses the iWATCH-Live.com system for his kennel and doggie day-care facility based in Hollywood. Seeing their pampered pets online in the various indoor and outdoor play areas relieves the minds of absent pet owners, he said. "It allows people to feel more comfortable seeing for themselves that the care of their dogs continues after they leave," he said. "They can tune in and see them playing, running and jumping, and not just sitting in a cage. Sometimes when people call us from overseas to tell us they are watching, we hold their dogs up to the cameras for them," he added. Bark Ave's Web cam has become so popular that Funt said he had to increase his bandwidth capacity, and according to Cohen, will have to look into increasing it again soon, or using time-out devices or more frequent updating of passwords to keep the site from getting sluggish and hard to access because of heavy traffic. "We charge $5 a week the world doesn't come in and look at the cute dogs all day," Funt said. Some analysts worry that the growing popularity of nanny cams and doggy cams could eventually contribute to corporate "bandwidth abuse," as employees set up their video sites to run in the background all day while they work, so they can check in periodically. "This kind of bandwidth abuse has already started with workers listening to Internet radio stations at the office," said Lawrence Orans, a senior analyst at Gartner Inc., a technology research and consulting firm. "After all, the goal of the product is for the user to tune in at work and see what is going on at home or at the day care center or the nursing home. Employees who are not that tech savvy don't realize how many resources can be used by constantly streaming video. " Privacy is another issue. The dogs at Bark Ave don't mind the intrusion, Funt said, but the pet resort's owners have been careful to get signed acknowledgements from two-legged employees that they are on camera. That may not be strictly necessary, but informing the people who are being viewed isn't a bad idea, said attorney Bradley Gross, in the Fort Lauderdale office of Becker-Poliakoff. "You are not required to post a sign in a public or quasi-public area, because people have given up a significant amount of their expectation of privacy in these places," he said. However, users should avoid placing a camera anywhere a person would have a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as in a bathroom. He noted, however, that to avoid the headaches of costly claims of intrusions of privacy, businesses that use the cameras "would be well advised to provide notice in a reasonable and conspicuous way," Gross said. Although everybody may not be as enthusiastic as the original "cammers" about having their actions viewed online, privacy issues seem unlikely to thwart the growth of Internet video as a major tool in our security-conscious society. "Just about any industry where something can be vandalized would benefit from this technology," said Gartner's Orans. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-sbsurveillance19jan19,0,7373786.story?coll=sfla-business-front 9. UT sues attorney general to keep surveillance information secret Lawyers cite 'national security' as reason for denying newspaper's request January 17, 2003 By P. Ryan Petkoff Daily Texan Staff The University filed a lawsuit this week challenging a ruling that would require almost complete disclosure of documents related to surveillance cameras on its campuses citing "the protection of national security" as a compelling reason for withholding information from the student newspaper. The suit filed in Travis County District Court Wednesday stated the university's opposition to Attorney General Greg Abbott's opinion that would force the university to release the information under Texas' open records laws. On Oct. 11, The Daily Texan requested information concerning the location, recording hours and technical specifications of surveillance cameras used on the UT campus and the J.J. Pickle Research Campus as well as the amount of money spent on those cameras. The University denied that request, claiming the information "could be used to thwart security and avoid detection" and that "knowledge of the measures and tools currently in place reveals where security may be vulnerable and provides a description of what maximum security for a given area may be, and how detection can be circumvented." The Daily Texan believes the university provided no convincing evidence for withholding information. "The University and its lawyers are grasping at straws by stating that these records should be withheld because of national security," said Ryan D. Pittman, managing editor of The Daily Texan. "I'm confident the court will find that the public's right to know trumps the University's desire to keep public records private." Patricia Ohlendorf, the university's general counsel, said the disclosure of surveillance information compromises campus safety. "It is critical that these records remain private so we can ensure the safety of the public, our employees, our students and staff," Ohlendorf said Friday. The University would likely appeal any court decision that would require the disclosure of security information, Ohlendorf said. "We feel that this is a very, very important issue," she said. In addition to the University's national security argument, lawyers are challenging the attorney general's opinion because of an alleged procedural error. Ohlendorf consulted the UT System general counsel and UT President Larry Faulkner before soliciting the service of Austin law firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, who filed the suit on the university's behalf. This is the first time the University has challenged the attorney general under the Texas Open Records Act, Ohlendorf said. The University submitted a copy of the White House document establishing the Department of Homeland Security as evidence to the court. And the USA Patriot Act is cited by UT System general counsel Cullen M. Godfrey as part of a series of laws that "has actively encouraged the states to increase security over existing infrastructure to protect this country from attacks against terrorists." Mark Goodman, executive director of the Arlington, Va.-based Student Press Law Center, said he has never heard of a university challenging an open records request on the basis of national security. "It's a very disturbing argument," Goodman said. "If the court were to buy that it is a matter of national security, there's no end to where government entities would use that argument to withhold public records." http://www.dailytexanonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/01/17/3e28a556176e9 10. The Finn line that separates crime-busting and privacy Nordic country shrugs off state intrusions for the sake of heightened public safety By MARK MACKINNON Saturday, January 18, 2003 Page A16 HELSINKI -- When Tom Huppunen takes the bus to class every day, the government knows the stop he gets on, the stop he gets off and the time he does so. When Anna Komonen makes a call on her cellphone, the phone company not only can record her call but it can also pinpoint where she is standing at the time she makes it. If she is ever under investigation, the police can use GPS technology to follow her every move, or at least that of her phone. And when Mikko Valimaki was pulled over by the traffic police for speeding last summer, they simply punched a few numbers into a database, found out how much money he makes and fined him accordingly. Welcome to Finland, where almost everything the citizenry does happens under the government's watchful eyes. Such measures might provoke an uproar in other Western countries, but most Finns look Big Brother in the eye and merely shrug. "Yeah, I guess it's a lot, now that you mention it," said Ms. Komonen, 21, looking up as a camera followed her steps along one of Helsinki's many pedestrian shopping streets. "But it keeps crime down, so we don't mind." It's a tradeoff many in this quiet Scandinavian country seem willing to make. Even as the government and private companies roll out a raft of new products that would make George Orwell blush, there's little uproar. Mr. Huppunen, a Canadian of Finnish descent who moved from Niagara Falls to Helsinki two years ago, said most people accept the intrusions as the price of living in a relatively safe society. Still, he can't fathom why he has to punch into an electronic database every time he gets on a bus or train. Or why video cameras are set up on what seems to be every street corner. "It's no big deal for most people here. But I think it's kind of creepy sometimes. I took the metro today to the main train station, and I was on camera at least 12 times." Mr. Huppunen said he still finds it strange that employers are allowed to ask in job interviews about a candidate's marital status and medical history, information most Canadians regarded as private. One reason Finns appear not to be bothered may be that they trust their state not to abuse the information being collected. Admiration for public servants runs deep in Finland, where polls show the police are trusted more than any other institution. "There's no tradition here of worrying about Big Brother," said Kauko Aromaa, head of the Helsinki-based European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, a United-Nations-affiliated organization. "Suspicion as to the goals of the government and public authorities is very low. I have a feeling people in North America would be more paranoid, and maybe with good reason." Last fall, there was little in the way of hue or cry when police confirmed that a large company was using technical means to watch innocent citizens, including employees and journalists. Finnish police charged five executives at Sonera, the country's largest telecommunications operator, for misusing the information their firm collected from its clients. The executives allegedly tracked the movements and telephone calls of employees whom they suspected of leaking information to the press. The executives, who could face up to three years in prison if convicted under information-privacy laws, are also alleged to have tracked several reporters. While surveillance of cellphone users is a relatively new phenomenon, Finland has been a world leader for a while in the use of so-called smart cards that store personal information about citizens on a single computer chip. Introduced on a voluntary basis in 1999, the chips serve as a "mini-passport" that can be used to travel in much of the European Union. Mr. Valimaki, head of the privacy group Electronic Frontier Finland, is livid that a police officer who pulled him over for a traffic offence last year was able to find out how much money he made just by punching in a few buttons. "It's crazy stuff, some of the monitoring that goes on. There are no valid police concerns for collecting this kind of information," he said angrily. But in the next breath, he sounded as resigned as the next Finn, acknowledging that "people are happy because there's not much crime here." http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/TGAM/20030118/UFINNN/International/international/internationalEuropeHeadline_temp/2/2/4/ X-From_: info@notbored.org Sat Feb 1 16:50:55 2003 X-Original-To: info@notbored.org X-Sender: notbored@popserver.panix.com (Unverified) Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 16:40:45 -0500 To: me<info@notbored.org>From: SCP-New York<info@notbored.org>Subject: clipping special: University of Texas Status: RO X-Status: 1. UT Surveillance Cameras Under Fire: City Challenges Abbott's Ruling To Disclose Information Posted: 10:20 a.m. CST January 29, 2003 AUSTIN, Texas -- The city of Austin is suing state Attorney General Greg Abbott, challenging his order that the city comply with a request from the University of Texas student newspaper to disclose information about surveillance cameras. Monday's lawsuit in Travis County district court was the second such lawsuit in less two weeks. The University of Texas sued the attorney general on Jan. 15, opposing his order that the university fully disclose information about surveillance cameras on campus. Last October, The Daily Texan requested information concerning the location, recording hours and technical specifications of surveillance cameras and the amount of money spent on them. David Smith, chief of litigation in the city of Austin legal department, said the city is challenging only the part of the request that seeks the location, hours and technical specifications of the surveillance cameras. Smith said that involves a law enforcement role that is excepted from open records laws. He said cameras are used in "vulnerability assessments" as part of the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act. "In assessing terrorism or potential terrorism, we seek to determine where risks might be," he said. "We use security cameras to protect those areas." He said disclosing information about the cameras would be harmful to this effort. Mike Viesca, spokesman for the attorney general, said Tuesday that the office had not yet seen the lawsuit. 2. City calls for nondisclosure of cameras: 'Texan' requests information on Austin's surveillance cameras By Katherine Sayre (Daily Texan Staff) January 29, 2003 The city of Austin filed a lawsuit against the Texas attorney general Monday challenging a ruling that would require disclosure of the location and operations of all city surveillance cameras as requested by The Daily Texan the second lawsuit in as many weeks in response to the request. The city cites "special circumstances involving public safety, public health and the security of public facilities" in the suit as compelling reasons to withhold the information challenging Attorney General Greg Abbott's original ruling that the documents providing the information be disclosed. The suit was filed in Travis County District Court. The University filed a similar lawsuit Jan. 15 after the attorney general ruled for full disclosure about campus surveillance cameras. The Texan requested the city disclose all information concerning the location, recording hours and technical specifications of surveillance cameras; all contracts with companies to provide and operate such cameras; and the current yearly budget allotted for maintaining the use of such surveillance cameras on Oct. 21, 2002, under the Texas Public Information Act. David Smith, chief of litigation in the City of Austin law department, said the city is only challenging part of the request. "We reject the portion regarding the location, hours of operation, and technical [specifications]," Smith said. He said the cameras are part of law enforcement which is provided an exception by the open records laws, and cameras are used in "vulnerability assessments" as part of the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act. "In assessing terrorism or potential terrorism, we seek to determine where risks might be," he said. "We use security cameras to protect those areas." He said disclosing information about the cameras would be harmful to this effort. Mike Viesca, spokesman for the attorney general, said Tuesday the office had not yet seen the lawsuit. The Daily Texan believes the information should be public knowledge. "We're confident the court, when it hears the case, will determine that we have a right to that information because it is public record," said Ryan D. Pittman, Texan managing editor. "I think the city has a large burden to prove that giving us that information would hamper their security efforts." The attorney general ruled in favor of the Texan's first request for campus surveillance camera information, which the University challenged in a lawsuit citing "the protection of national security" as compelling reason to withhold the information. http://www.dailytexanonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/01/29/3e37fb4d6724f 3. Attorney general pledges to fight to make records public: Promise comes in response to city's suit regarding surveillance request By Katherine Sayre (Daily Texan Staff) January 30, 2003 Attorney General Greg Abbott will fight to make surveillance camera records public in the lawsuit filed by the city of Austin, Angela Hale, spokeswoman for the attorney general, said. The city filed suit Monday in an effort to keep records pertaining to the location, operations and technical specifications of city surveillance cameras closed after The Daily Texan requested the records under the Texas Public Information Act. "The city of Austin is embracing secrecy by trying to keep these records closed," Hale said. "We're going to fight to make these records open to the public." In the lawsuit, the city cites "special circumstances involving public safety, public health and the security of public facilities" as reasons to keep the documents closed. "The attorney general promised he would be a watchdog for open government, and he is keeping that promise by ruling in favor of making these documents open," she said. David Smith, chief of litigation for the City of Austin Law Department, said Monday that the cameras are used in "vulnerability assessments" as part of the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act. "In assessing terrorism or potential terrorism, we seek to determine where risks might be," Smith said. "We use security cameras to protect those areas." This is the second lawsuit filed against the attorney general in response to Texan requests. The University filed suit claiming protection of national security as a compelling reason to keep the documents about surveillance cameras closed in response to an earlier request for information on campus security cameras. http://www.dailytexanonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/01/30/3e38e5932dea7 X-From_: info@notbored.org Sat Feb 1 18:31:24 2003 X-Original-To: info@notbored.org X-Sender: notbored@popserver.panix.com Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 18:25:46 -0500 To: me<info@notbored.org>From: SCP-New York<info@notbored.org>Subject: clipping service: 7 stories Status: RO X-Status: 1. Automatic Number Plate Recognition (England) 2. Foward-Looking Infra Red (Canada) 3. Automated surveillance (USA) 4. Wireless cameras (USA) 5. High schools (New Zealand) 6. High schools 2 (New Zealand) 7. U2 Spy Planes (USA) 1. Cameras nationwide after trials Tuesday, January 28, 2003 http://www.northantsnew.co.uk/ref/news_chron.asp?ID=16208 Surveillance cameras trialled in Northamptonshire are on the brink of being introduced across the UK. The covert digital cameras designed to help police catch the most dangerous criminals saw arrests increase tenfold during a year-long pilot scheme in Northampton. Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) captures individual number plates on video at the rate of 3,000 an hour. The plates are then checked against the Police National Computer and other databases. The Home Office wants to introduce the system across the UK following the success of the Northampton pilot, which saw six officers make 665 arrests, including 210 disqualified drivers and traffic offenders, and the recovery of more than 500,000 of stolen property. Assistant chief constable, Derek Talbot, said: "ANPR technology, together with immediate follow-up police action via dedicated intercept teams, has the potential to deny criminals the use of the roads. It is an enormously effective policing tool which allows us to target known offenders leading to officers engaged on ANPR operations arresting up to 10 times the number of offenders that general duties officers would normally catch in a year." The Government however is reluctant to finance the cost of the scheme, which has led police and the Home Office to press for the expansion of fixed penalty fines to cover a wider range of motoring offences and bring in extra cash. No MOT, no tax, failure to register a vehicle and carrying illegal plates are all set to become punishable by a fixed fine. Chief Constable Chris Fox, who is also deputy chairman of the Association of Police Officers (ACPO), said the extra money would fund the scheme and pay for 2,000 new officers on patrol and interception duties. The group believes ANPR could virtually eliminate all document-related vehicle claims. An ACPO report said: "There is also clear evidence that, because the offenders are captured on video, which they can see, the vast majority plead guilty, resulting in shorter file presentation times, no requirement for officers to attend court, and less time from arrest to conviction." Project Laser, two initial trials, took place in Northampton and the West Midlands and raised the average arrest rates of individual police officers from 10 to 100 a year. Shorter six-month test runs began in nine police forces, including London, Manchester and West Yorkshire, last September. Results will help decide whether the Government gives the go-ahead to national use. Last month the Chronicle & Echo reported ANPR would be used to catch kerb-crawlers. 2. Court shoots down evidence obtained by infrared eye in the sky: Privacy rights trump police war on marijuana growers, judge rules Shannon Kari The Ottawa Citizen Tuesday, January 28, 2003 TORONTO -- The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled yesterday that the privacy protections in the Charter of Rights require police to obtain a search warrant before using infrared aerial cameras during investigations of marijuana grow operations. The appeal court overturned a lower court conviction and ordered an acquittal for Walter Tessling, who was sentenced to 18 months in jail after the RCMP seized marijuana from his home near Windsor, Ont. "This is a significant decision," said Mr. Tessling's lawyer, Frank Miller. "What it does is raise the protection of privacy for everyone. Any kind of intrusive technology is going to be looked at very carefully by the courts." Forward Looking Infra-Red (FLIR) aerial cameras are widely used by law enforcement agencies across North America. The cameras can detect internal heat patterns and they are used in marijuana investigations because the lights used in grow operations give off an unusual amount of heat. James Leising, the federal Justice Department's director of criminal prosecutions in Ontario, argued that the cameras are merely surveillance tools and do not amount to a search as defined by Section 8 of the charter. That position was rejected by Justice Rosalie Abella, who wrote the decision for the three-judge panel, which included Justice Dennis O'Connor and Justice Robert Sharpe. "FLIR technology discloses more information about what goes on inside a house than is detectable by normal observation or surveillance. In my view, there is an important distinction between observations that are made by the naked eye or even by the use of enhanced aids, such as binoculars, which are in common use, and observations which are the product of technology," Judge Abella wrote. Very few courts in Canada have ruled on this issue. But in the Ontario Court of Appeal decision, Judge Abella noted that the United States Supreme Court also found that police use of thermal cameras without a search warrant was unconstitutional. "Obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical intrusion into a constitutionally protected area ... constitutes a search," wrote Justice Antonin Scalia in the U.S. decision. Judge Abella stressed that the court was not suggesting there should be a ban on using the technology in marijuana investigations. However, there must be "prior judicial authorization to protect individuals from unwarranted state intrusion on their reasonably held expectations of privacy," she wrote. In its investigation, the RCMP failed to find enough evidence to obtain a warrant to search Mr. Tessling's home through the use of hydro records, informants or normal surveillance activities. A second judge issued a search warrant because of information gathered during an aerial search of the property with a FLIR camera. The court of appeal said the violation of privacy rights was sufficiently serious to exclude the police evidence. "As between the right of an individual to be assured of protection from the state's unwarranted invasion of privacy in the home, and the state's right to intrude on that privacy to catch marijuana growers, I see public confidence being enhanced more by excluding, rather than admitting, the marijuana evidence in issue," Judge Abella wrote. Copyright 2003 The Ottawa Citizen http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id=%7BC648045E-18BE-44A9-AADC-69F6180CA180%7D 3. Software automates video surveillance By Stephen Lawson IDG News Service, 01/27/03 Companies and government agencies now can keep an eye on their facilities without having guards constantly watch monitors, thanks to software from ObjectVideo, the start-up announced Monday. The company's VEW (Video Early Warning) 1.0 software can interpret what digital video cameras see and set off alarms when something is amiss, said Craig Heartwell, executive vice president and chief strategy officer of ObjectVideo, in Reston, Va. This changes video cameras, which typically today are used as forensic tools after a security breach, into predictive tools for detecting a problem as it develops, Heartwell said. Human monitoring of security using video screens is not only an inefficient use of guards' time but also an ineffective form of security, he said. Studies have shown human operators can only stay sufficiently alert for about 20 minutes watching mostly static images, according to Heartwell. "It's just not a humanly trackable problem. It's really not something a human being can do in real time," he said. With VEW, administrators can define rules for each camera based on expected threats in the area that camera covers. For example, the software can alert security people to a certain kind of object and movement, such as a human being walking across a boundary or dropping something into a ventilation shaft. The software could even be set to automatically detect a person loitering near a certain spot on a sidewalk, even if that sidewalk were crowded with pedestrians. Administrators also could specify a car or object of a certain color. Another possible use of the software is detecting if something that should be stationary, such as an artwork in a museum, becomes mobile. It can also set off an alarm when something that's expected to keep moving, such as a pedestrian's bag at an airport, becomes stationary, Heartwell said. Rather than using automation to reduce the cost of security, organizations are looking to make it tighter, ObjectVideo CEO Clara Conti said. With VEW in place, a guard force that today watches video screens could be deployed to more important jobs such as responding to problems, she said. The software goes beyond simple motion detection. Using technology developed by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), VEW can build a "normative model" of any scene a camera may be aimed at, according to CTO Alan Lipton. That model describes the kinds of movement, such as trees blowing or water rippling, that are normal and shouldn't cause an alarm. However, it isn't designed to identify individuals, Lipton said. There are no biometric capabilities, such as face recognition. With VEW's user interface, administrators can use a combination of graphical and textual language to describe the kinds of threats they are looking for. A wizard guides the user through the process of setting up rules for what to watch. VEW has advantages over some other perimeter security systems, such as laser and vibration-detection systems that detect movement across a line, according to Terry Seaworth, a civil engineer for CH2M Hill Companies Ltd., in Englewood, Colo. Seaworth has advised at least five airport operating companies about perimeter security in recent months as airports face new government mandates and take their own steps to boost security, she said. "What we like about ObjectVideo is that in comparison with other types of systems -- non-software-based systems -- it's a lot more flexible," Seaworth said. Being able to specify a certain size of object crossing a line in a particular direction can reduce false positives, she said. VEW is available in versions for Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP. Digital cameras can send their video streams over any kind of data connection, including an IP network or a USB link. It can be hooked up to existing digital surveillance cameras at a facility. The system can send detailed alarms to PCs, pagers and other devices, turn on a video recorder or set off an existing general alarm system, depending on the urgency of the event, Heartwell said. VEW is available in a $55,000 starter kit that includes software, a two-processor Intel architecture server, client software and system installation and configuration, Heartwell said. The software can also be purchased in the form of licenses for existing servers. http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0127softwautom.html 4. UM installs remote-access security cameras South Florida Business Journal -- Broward Edition - January 29, 2003 http://southflorida.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2003/01/27/daily49.html A wireless technology firm said it has installed a security monitoring network at the University of Miami to provide wireless remote video surveillance using personal digital assistants. Boca Raton-based Cenuco (OTC BB: CNUO) said authorized university personnel will now be able to use a handheld device to remotely view the action on any security camera. The company also said its product allows the cameras to record a digital video of their area, which university personnel will be able to change immediately via a remote pan/tilt/zoom function. Neither the company nor the university said how much UM spent on the security cameras. "The Cenuco solution is a welcome addition to our existing security protocols," said Felix Armas, manager and security analyst for the University of Miami. "We now have the ability to remotely view our new security surveillance cameras from anywhere." Gary Schatz, Cenuco vice-president and chief technology officer, said he is pleased to be working with the University of Miami. "Having an institution of this caliber using our solution stands testament to the viability of wireless security applications," he said. 5. Security cameras installed in schools to trap bullies 31 January 2003 Christchurch's Linwood College has installed security cameras to help fight bullying and vandalism. Linwood installed six cameras for the start of the school year, joining at least two other city schools to adopt surveillance to combat problems. But principals are divided about the growing "jail-like" atmosphere in school grounds. Hagley Community College, which has between 10 and 12 cameras operating at any one time, first installed some five years ago. Burnside High has mobile cameras available for use, but principal Graham Stoop said they were not turned on at the moment. The use of cameras in schools is on the rise nationally, according to School Trustees Association president Chris France, who described them as "a sadly necessary evil". Linwood College spent $2000 installing movable cameras during the holidays. Four of the cameras have been mounted inside school buildings overlooking locker bays and corridors. Principal Rob Burrough has defended what he intends to be a 12-month trial of the surveillance system, saying the cameras were a "fact of life these days". He hoped they would make students feel safer from bullying, and deter vandalism and tagging, which cost the school $14,000 last year. Camera use has been strongly opposed by Hornby High principal Gerald Edmunds. "I think once you start doing that you are turning schools into a jail type of environment, and kids react against that. When you have cameras, it detracts from the atmosphere of the school." Burnside's Dr Stoop agreed surveillance cameras promoted a "jail-type environment" but only if they were on all the time. University of Canterbury law lecturer Kathryn Dalziel, who specialises in privacy, said her main concern with camera use was ensuring notices warned people they were under surveillance. Principals at the three Christchurch schools with cameras say they display such notices, and only review tapes when an incident has happened. http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2229190a11,00.html 6. Rights warning on school cameras SATURDAY , 01 FEBRUARY 2003 By MICHELLE QUIRKE Schools are installing security cameras to combat vandalism and theft but youth advocates warn that children's rights must be protected. New Zealand Principals Federation president Jenny Earle said some primary and intermediate schools had already adopted security cameras and more were considering it. Many schools already had monitored security alarms and some had security fencing. "It's a direction we are going to have to take in the future. It's sad," she said. The Education Ministry does not have a national figure for the cost of vandalism because schools are not required to report on how much is spent on repairs, but $1.4 million was given to schools last financial year in top-up grants for this purpose. If each of New Zealand's 2500 schools spent $100 a year from its own funds on repairing damage the total could be more than $1.6 million. Principals Council chairman Russell Trethewey said some secondary schools had also installed surveillance cameras. Mr Trethewey, principal at Palmerston North's Freyberg High School, said his school had installed about five security cameras during the past four years, primarily to fight theft. Claims that cameras created a jail-like atmosphere were "rubbish", he said. "It diminishes the amount of work that needs to be done by deputy principals and other senior staff investigating offences if they occur. I guess the line we take is they're there in the interests of good students. They're there to protect property, and bicycle thefts have diminished to almost zero." However, Commissioner for Children Roger McClay said adults should ask themselves whether they were comfortable with being filmed before installing cameras monitoring young people. "Let's say the milk is disappearing every day from the staff room. Would they put cameras in there? Children have a right to be treated with dignity and respect. If they're (cameras) for the protection and safety of most people in a reasonable way, I think it's probably okay," he said. Youth Law Project senior solicitor Clair Trainor said there was debate over whether the Privacy Act applied to camera use in the workplace. An information privacy code should be introduced to govern the way schools used and kept private information about pupils, including surveillance footage, she said. However, Privacy Commissioner Bruce Slane said the commission had never had a request for a special code, and there had been no formal complaints about cameras in schools. "We say that if they're setting up a camera surveillance system, they ought to be clear about the purpose, make it clear how it is going to be used, and how it (footage) is going to be secured. We suggest they set out their own policies." http://www.stuff.co.nz/inl/print/0,1478,2231634a11,00.html 7. America's spies-in-the-sky By Tim Ripley Published: January 31 2003 Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix's request for American U-2 spy planes to help him track down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction brought back memories of the Cuban missile crisis when photographs taken by the high flying aircraft were paraded at the United Nations Security Council. The capabilities of US intelligence gathering systems were demonstrated this week when the movement of trucks carrying North Korean nuclear fuel was detected by reconnaissance satellites. But thefailure of inspectors so far to find Saddam Hussein's weapons have highlighted the limits ofAmerica's "spies in the sky" -surveillance planes and satellitesare not all-seeing. In the 40 years since the world stood on the brink of nuclear war in 1962 the capabilities of the U-2 have been transformed to give America the ability to watch what is happening in Iraq minute by minute. When President John F Kennedy sent the U-2s over Cuba they were equipped with high resolution film cameras to allow them to fly at altitudes in excess of 72,000 feet over hostile territory and bring back high detailed still photographs of Soviet missile launchers. Today's U-2 may look like the 1962 version from the outside but it has been dramatically upgraded to give a 21st Century spy capability. The latest U-2s have some of the world's most advanced digital cameras to allow them to photograph targets up to 100 miles away and then transmit the images in real-time to a ground station over a satellite link. In 1962 President Kennedy had to wait several agonising hours while U-2s landed and the film was rushed to the White House before viewing evidence of the Soviet build-up on Cuba. Today President George Bush can view images from Iraq within seconds of them being caught by the U-2's cameras. While the US President is famous for his hands-off approach to such matters, the hawkish US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld loves to watch the pictures from the U-2 in his office and personally direct American spy plane flights. The ability of the U-2 to stream 'live' images of targets back into Iraq back to the Pentagon is the main reason why the UN arms inspectors are keen to get the use of its services. Whenever they head to an inspection site they want to be able to monitor what the Iraqis do to hide or remove evidence of their weapon programmes, as they are doing it. Crucially the UN would benefit from real-time feed back from the USAF about illicit Iraqi activity so they can be caught 'red handed' hiding material from the inspectors. The same technique was used during earlier inspection in the 1990s but relations between American intelligence and the US arms inspectors have cooled since then and Blix wants the services of the U-2s back on stream. The Iraqis refusal to allow give U-2s permission to fly over their country is little more than technicality. They have been flying over Iraq for more than a decade with impunity at altitudes way above the range of Iraq's air defences. While the capability of the U-2 to pry deep in to Saddam's secrets is impressive they suffer from one major short-coming. Before being pointed at a 'target', U-2 mission planners need some indication of where to look. Iraq is a country almost equivalent to the size of Germany and it impossible to watch everywhere at once. Unlike in North Korea, where there only a handful of nuclear weapons sites to be watched, Iraq appears to have dispersed its weapons on mass destruction activities away from fixed locations, making it far more difficult to start an effective aerial search effort. Known sites associated with previous Iraqi weapon of mass destruction programmes are regularly monitored by U-2 flights, however, new intelligence from defectors, electronic eaves dropping or seized Iraqi documents is needed to allow the search to be expanded. The U-2 is like a torch, it can shine a bright light on narrow area but it has limited ability to search across wide areas. http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1042491396051 X-From_: info@notbored.org Fri Feb 7 14:20:56 2003 X-Original-To: info@notbored.org X-Sender: notbored@popserver.panix.com Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 14:16:41 -0500 To: me<info@notbored.org>From: NOT BORED!<info@notbored.org>Subject: clipping service: surveillance Status: RO X-Status: Assembled by the New York Surveillanbce Camera Players https://notbored.org/the-scp.html To unsubscribe, reply and say, "no more clippings" ----------------- --------------------- -------------------- 1. University of Texas (USA) 2. University of Minnesota (USA) 3. Speed camera bombed (England) 4. Bills aim to toughen video voyeur law penalty (USA) 5. Passaic uses cameras to monitor crime (USA) 6. Chinese Police Stream Surveillance in MPEG-4 (China) 7. Traffic cameras (England) 8. Alberta privacy boss wary of school cams (Canada) 9. Military Beefs Up Its Digital Arsenal (USA, of course) ----------------- --------------------- -------------------- 1. University of Texas HOME: VOL.22 NO.23: NEWS: NAKED CITY Cameras: Into the Courtroom BY LEE NICHOLS February 7, 2003: As expected, "homeland security" and the public's right and need to know have butted heads, and Austin has become one of the battlegrounds. Last fall, an investigative reporter with The Daily Texan presented UT and the city of Austin with open-records requests for the locations, recording hours, and technical specifications of surveillance cameras used by UT and Austin police. Both requests also sought info regarding contracts with the security-system providers. Both UT and the city sought Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's opinion, hoping he would allow them to refuse the requests, but Abbott sided with the student journalists and in January ordered both entities to release the info. Both the city and UT have now sued Abbott to keep the info secret, citing law-enforcement exemptions in the state's open-records law. "We have no objection to letting them look at the contracts, but we object to giving out locations, hours of operation, and technical specs," says David Smith, the chief of litigation in the city's Law Dept. "Under the Bioterrorism Act ... municipalities are supposed to identify and protect for risks. In both law enforcement and homeland security it defeats the purpose of surveillance cameras if you give out the location, the hours of operation, and how they work." Patricia Ohlendorf, UT vice-president for institutional relations and legal affairs, says that UT police advised university administrators that revealing locations would interfere with UTPD's ability to keep the campus safe. "We take physical security steps for events on campus, but we don't have the ability to have live law enforcement at everything," she said. Abbott spokeswoman Angela Hale says, "They're trying to use the law enforcement exemption, and it doesn't fall under that." Asked about the two entities' homeland security concerns, Hale said, "Texas doesn't have a homeland security exemption. States have to pass laws to provide that exemption. At this time in Texas law, there is no such exemption." Daily Texan Managing Editor Ryan D. Pittman says UT and the city's concerns are overblown: "We wanted to get a sense of how much they are investing in surveillance cameras, who they contract with, and how many hours they are recording. It's not our goal to locate and map out every single one, our goal is to get a general idea of where they are located ... their proliferation." http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2003-02-07/pols_naked8.html 2. University of Minnesota February 6, 2003 With more than 450 eyes on campus, security keeps watch By Dan Haugen Every week, Stacey Heino takes a ticket, pulls ahead and parks her green Jetta in the Washington Avenue Ramp before trekking off to her Tuesday night class. Heino said she takes common sense steps to stay safe, such as always keeping a cell phone with her after dark. Statistically, her chances of becoming a crime victim are extremely remote. But odds are good that she is being watched. From her fifth-floor parking space, down the elevator and through the tunnel to Moos Tower, Heino passes multiple surveillance cameras all property of the Universitys recently formed Department of Central Security. More than 450 closed-circuit cameras watch the Universitys Twin Cities campus. Coverage is focused in parking facilities but also extends into other locations such as tunnels and research labs. "I prefer having cameras," Heino said. "Sometimes its 10 oclock by the time I get out of here." Via microwaves, copper wire and fiber optic cable, the cameras all feed into a single room on the third floor of the Transportation and Safety Building, home base for central securitys surveillance operations. The interim department was born out of the Universitys post-Sept. 11 public safety restructuring, announced one year ago by then-University President Mark Yudof. Bob Janoski a 19-year veteran of the University Police Department was chosen to lead the department by George Aylward, interim assistant vice president for public safety and University police chief. "The goal was to integrate the design, installation, service and monitoring of security systems on campus," Janoski said. "In the past, if I needed a card access system, an alarm system and video surveillance installed in my department, I might need to make three calls." Central security is now charged with managing all three of those systems, which were previously handled by Facilities Management, Classroom Management and Parking and Transportation Services, respectively. Along with all security duties, the University also shifted personnel and salaries from those departments to central security. The departments budget consists of the transferred salaries and an approximately $2 million, one-time internal University appropriation. Because its services were all previously available from other departments, most of central securitys infrastructure was already in place when it began operations July 1, 2002. Besides establishing a business office and rearranging the public safety hierarchy, the biggest change has been adding digital surveillance cameras to Parking and Transportation Services already extensive closed-circuit network. Steve Frisk, who has worked with the surveillance system since its inception, said the University first started installing security cameras in the late 1980s. "The unfortunate part is that all of this grew out of rape and murder," Frisk said. "At one time there was a serious problem with a rash of sexual assaults that took place on campus and that included parking structures. That led to a lot of people taking a long, hard look at security in parking structures." In 1989, the Minnesota Supreme Court found a parking garage operator liable after a woman was raped in her parked car. Frisk said the case Erickson v. Curtis Investment Co. opened the possibility of lawsuits against the University if it did not take certain steps to keep its parking facilities safe. The University already had a head start, Frisk said, installing its first cameras five years earlier in the 21st Avenue Ramp. Other parking facilities were equipped as they were built, he said. Of the more than 450 security cameras in operation today, 90 percent are still located in parking facilities. Before there was a central organization like this, and before there was central funding, Parking and Transportation Services recognized the need to do this, Aylward said. They realized that if its 4 oclock in the morning and someone parks their car in a ramp, there should be a mechanism for making sure they're safe. At least two employees are on duty 24 hours per day, seven days per week and 365 days per year monitoring the cameras from the third floor of the Transportation and Safety Building. "(The cameras) have been used to help catch people breaking into cars. They've been used on some low-level fraud and some vandalism, but the primary goal of putting these in is protecting people," Frisk said. Hundreds of camera images cycle through 22 television screens in the surveillance room. If employees notice something out of the ordinary, they can lock in on a certain camera, begin recording in higher quality and zoom in on subjects. "You spend lots and lots of time looking at empty elevator cars, empty stairwells," Frisk said. "You're basically just sitting around waiting for something to happen." Typically one to two incidents a week are reported to police. Many of them are minor infractions such as skateboarding or rollerblading in parking facilities. Last summer, equipment was added to the surveillance room to view video from new digital cameras being installed in sensitive science and research areas. Much of the new investment went into the new Molecular and Cellular Biology Building, which opened in the fall. Central security spent $350,000 on cameras, card access and alarm systems for the science building. "Research programs are where I think our greatest vulnerability and risk was, and still is," said Richard Bianco. As assistant vice president for regulatory affairs, Bianco is in charge of making sure University research follows all the rules, including many federal mandates dealing with research lab security. At a University Senate research committee meeting in November, Bianco expressed frustration with the way University security spending had been handled since Sept. 11, 2001. "I was a little discouraged last year. I didnt know how to apply for funds to do things. There were no procedures," Bianco said. "It really delayed the implementation of some of the security in the research programs." Bianco told the research committee the Sept. 11 attacks did not change the threat to University research, but they did change how research security projects were funded. Bianco said that before Sept. 11, he would beg for money from a number of different departments. "You couldnt do that after Sept. 11. Everybody said, 'You've gotta go talk to George (Aylward).' The problem was that, overnight, (central security) wasn't organized to do that," Bianco said. Bianco said funds for security spending were in limbo for much of 2002 as the University sorted out its priorities. "I was working on these issues for a long time. We were moving with steady progress. I didn't want to take six months off," he said. "Its not their fault. I agree that eventually it will be easier. It is already, now that its gotten organized." Bianco credited Kathleen OBrien, who took over as vice president for University Services in September, for improving the central security effort. "She has really refocused and organized it," Bianco said. "We needed that leadership." His praise for OBrien focused on her efforts to help set a list of security priorities for central security to work from. OBrien to whom Aylward reports said she will make the decision this spring on the future of central security and the new public safety structure. "My work this fall has been working with the public safety units, assessing what work were getting done and determining if this is a good structure to stay in place permanently," she said. OBrien declined to give a preliminary review of the department but said she'll be considering a variety of factors in making her decision. "I'll be looking at whether were providing services that the University needs whether we have the competencies the University needs to stay safe and prepared," she said. "And also, I will be looking at financial issues because of the budget." Central security director Janoski said the department is financially streamlined compared to the earlier, decentralized security structure. "Theres an increased level of efficiency and lower overhead costs," he said. By bringing these groups under one roof, the administrative costs have been reduced. With the University facing tough budget cuts next year, central security's value could be questioned. But Frisk said security is worth the investment. "If you look at the statistics, this is a very safe place, and thats just great, unless you're the statistic." http://www.mndaily.com/new_site/article.php?id=4789 3. Speed camera destroyed by bomb Tuesday, 4 February, 2003, 19:21 GMT http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2726571.stm A speed camera has been destroyed by a bomb planted on the main box. The blast sent shards of metal flying more than 50 feet. Detectives said that if anyone had been driving past at the time, they could have been killed. Bomb disposal experts are investigating how the sturdy 10-foot-tall piece of equipment on the A605 at Thrapston, Northamptonshire, was wrecked. The incident is the latest in a series of deliberate attacks on speed cameras across the country, which has been blamed on frustrated motorists. Dozens of cameras have been burned, toppled and driven into, but the A605 camera was believed to be the first that had been bombed. Detective Constable Alison Farr, of Kettering CID, said on Tuesday night: "We are treating this crime extremely seriously, it was an unbelievably irresponsible act. The force of the explosion forced metal right across the road and had someone been driving past at this time, the occupants would have been seriously injured or killed and we could have been looking at a murder inquiry." 4. Bills aim to toughen video voyeur law penalty Felony status, increase in prison time proposed http://www.sunspot.net/news/local/howard/bal-ho.voyeur06feb06,0,92210.story?coll=bal-local-howard By Lisa Goldberg Sun Staff February 6, 2003 Two Howard County legislators filed bills yesterday that would strengthen the penalties for violators of Maryland's 3-year-old video voyeurism law in an effort to recognize what one called the "extraordinary trauma" inflicted in such cases. The proposed legislation from Democratic Del. Neil Quinter and Republican Sen. Sandra B. Schrader would increase video-peeping violations from misdemeanor to felony crimes, and the maximum penalty from six months and a $1,000 fine to five years and a $10,000 fine. The legislators said the changes, which were introduced at the request of Howard prosecutors, would place the crime more on par with the state's felony wiretapping statute, which allows for a five-year sentence. "It essentially makes watching equal to listening," Quinter said. The bill is being co-sponsored by most of Howard County's delegates, he said. It was the disparity between the penalties in the state's wiretap law - used in Howard County in the unsuccessful prosecution of Linda R. Tripp in 2000 - and the video-peeping law that jumped out at the Howard prosecutor who won convictions in two cases involving hidden video cameras. Assistant State's Attorney Lynn Marshall, who tried the cases, noted in a recent memo to her bosses that the wiretap law applies to even the most "innocuous" of conversations while both of her video cases involved cameras that had been secretly installed in bathrooms and had "sexual overtones." "In many ways, the videotape was a more egregious invasion of their privacy," Howard State's Attorney Timothy J. McCrone said. "Of course, in meeting with the victims, they were really traumatized by this and felt almost sexually assaulted." McCrone and Quinter also noted that the tougher penalty would allow prosecutors to introduce video-peeping cases at the Circuit Court level, which is more detail-oriented and allows greater interaction between victims and prosecutors, instead of the busy District Court with its crammed dockets. Upgrading the crime to a felony also would eliminate the one-year statute of limitations for filing misdemeanor cases, they said. In the Howard cases, it was easy to figure out when the video had been taken, but in some cases victims might not discover the cameras or tapes for years, prosecutors said. Former Del. Dana L. Dembrow, a Montgomery County Democrat and the current law's chief sponsor, questioned the need for a change to felony status and an increase in prison time. The felony designation should be saved for the most serious crimes, he said, and while such a privacy invasion "is a serious offense," it doesn't reach the same level as a rape or robbery. And he said he believes five years is too much for a "single offense" given that such cases often include multiple counts - which could result in several consecutive six-month sentences. Dembrow said early drafts of the current law included harsher penalties that were reduced in an effort to secure the legislation's passage. "It took three years to get that bill passed," he said. "This one was very tricky because there's a very fine line between everything from free press and freedom of observation ... and capturing the prohibited conduct we're trying to target." In Howard County, Edward George Campion III, an Elkridge landlord, was sentenced to six months in jail in July 2001 after he was convicted on four separate video surveillance charges. After one of two women who had rented rooms in Campion's house discovered a tape showing the other woman's bathroom, police found pinhole cameras that had been hidden in bathrooms and bedrooms. In a separate case, Wade Carl Hoffarth, a former maintenance technician at the Phillips School in North Laurel, pleaded guilty to three counts in August, admitting that he had videotaped his co-workers using a school bathroom. It was unclear how many cases have been prosecuted using the video voyeurism law, although records indicated yesterday at least one other case could not be prosecuted successfully because of limitations in the law. Del. Susan K. McComas, a Harford County Republican, said she filed a bill yesterday adding tanning rooms to the places where such cameras could not be secretly installed after hearing about an unsuccessful prosecution involving a salon. "This is just to protect folks who want to go in and get a tan," she said. When they're videotaped, "they feel horribly violated." Copyright 2003, The Baltimore Sun 5. Passaic uses cameras to monitor crime (02/05/03) PASSAIC - Surveillance cameras on Main Street in Passaic monitor everything from gang activity to drug deals. Police say they have made several arrests because of cameras and hope to install more video equipment throughout the city. As part of Mayor Sammy Rivera's "Clean Street Passaic" program, four cameras have been installed in the city's downtown area. The cameras can shift positions and zoom in and out. Images are monitored at police headquarters and recorded. Passaic police say by the start of summer, they hope to have 32 cameras in place throughout the city. The cost of the project is $500,000 and police are reluctant to reveal information about where the cameras are located. The cameras have a function on them, which does not allow them to zoom into windows, so police say residents should not be concerned about privacy issues. 6. Chinese Police Stream Surveillance in MPEG-4 PALO ALTO, Calif., February 5, 2003 Amnis, a leading global provider of networked streaming video systems, today announced that its MPEG video network products have been deployed at the Changzhou Police Department Traffic Control Center in China. The surveillance application will allow the police department to implement road traffic controls throughout Changzhou City over their fiber network. Amnis partnered with Longcent Technology as a system integrator, which provided design, installation and support for the solution utilizing Amnis network attached video appliances. Amnis Systems fully interoperable suite of products support multiple channels of compressed high quality digital video. The MPEG video over IP streams are distributed throughout Changzhou City's fiber optic backbone. Cameras are mounted at point of capture traffic intersections and connected directly to the Amnis NAC-3000 streaming video system. Cameras are remotely controlled from a central site with pan, tilt and zoom capability. Additionally, Amnis' ultra low latency capability was a critical requirement to support quick camera respons times for capturing rapid changes in the video scene. Superior quality and low latency video is required for capturing picture details, fast motion and identifying objects and personnel. The central police station installed Amnis NAC-4000 network streaming video receivers connected to Cisco network switches for display to TV monitors. "Amnis continues to increase market penetration in China with real-time, network centric video applications. Our solution enables the City of Changzhou Police Department to better monitor and improve traffic safety in this mission critical project," said Rich Falcone, Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing for Amnis Systems. "Amnis offers powerful, customizable and flexible end-to-end solutions essential to governments, defense and military operations worldwide. We look forward to working with the City of Changzhou and other local government agencies in China for future deployments." http://www.streamingmagazine.com/viewentry.asp?ID=250937&PT=Daily+Digest&TI=dailydigest 7. Big Brother Takes to the Streets of Central London Tue February 04, 2003 01:06 PM ET By Jeremy Lovell LONDON (Reuters) - One of the biggest urban surveillance systems in the world goes live in central London this month, prompted not by fears of terrorism but traffic that averages less than 10 miles an hour. The London program involves 800 cameras at 400 points in and around an eight-square-mile chunk of the city center which will relay images of vehicles and their number plates to a control center. Starting Feb. 17 some 250,000 motorists who each day enter or leave the area that stretches from Hyde Park in the west to Tower Bridge in the east and from St. Pancras in the north to Vauxhall south of the river will pay a fee of $8 a day to do so from 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday to Friday. "There is no alternative strategy to cutting congestion," transport expert David Begg told Reuters. "To an extent it is an experiment, but the alternative is Bangkok-type congestion, where traffic averages 2.5 miles an hour at peak, in a decade." The London plan -- for which residents inside the area qualify for a 90 percent discount -- is the largest congestion charge system in the world, dwarfing Oslo and Singapore which have tolls for city center access. It also bears no relation to anti-pollution schemes such as in Mexico City where cars with odd-numbered number plates are allowed in on some days and even-numbered on others. This project, instead of cutting pollution, has prompted people to buy two cars so they can always enter the city. London taxi drivers -- who along with motorcyclists, the disabled, emergency vehicles, and green fuel cars will be exempt from the charge -- welcomed the plan in principle. "Basically it should be helpful to the cab trade -- as long as it works," Richard Massett of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association told Reuters. "Traffic is awful. There is a great need to deal with congestion in central London." While small businesses have complained about the extra cost burden the program will place on them, their larger counterparts reserved judgment. "We are neutral," said London Chamber of Commerce spokesman Piers Merchant. "If congestion is reduced, it will be good news. But in truth no one knows what will happen." Foreign diplomats in London have also complained that the scheme infringes their diplomatic immunity to paying parking fines. Mayor Ken Livingstone has pinned his turbulent political career on the success of the plan which aims to cut vehicle numbers by 10 to 15 percent and congestion by 20 to 30 percent. The biggest congestion charge in the world has sparked cheers of victory from the city's growing number of cyclists who claim the moral high ground against polluting car commuters. But it has angered motorists and shift workers who complain their working hours make public transport impractical and force them to use their cars. They point to underground trains and buses that are already crammed to capacity at peak times, and note the rising levels of crime on the city's streets after dark. There have been court cases to try to stop the plan, and protest Web sites reveal a variety of plots ranging from trying to swamp the system by repeatedly driving back and forth through the check points to threats to wreck the cameras. On the Web site forums there are even graphic discussions about plans to attack cyclists who are blamed for the introduction of the scheme in the first place. But Derek Turner, the Transport For London manager in charge of the system, takes it all in his stride. "I am quietly confident," he told Reuters during a recent visit to the data center where the continuous streams of images from all the cameras will be processed. "The system works. We are averaging a 90 percent recognition rate for all the vehicle number plates," he said, standing in front of one of the banks of data processors in the secret location just outside the eastern edge of the congestion area. "That means a 90 percent chance of getting caught. I call that strong odds," he added. Behind him television monitors steadily recorded passing vehicles and their number plates, noting the number, vehicle color, type, date, time and location. Once the system goes live, each package of data will be stored between 0700 and 1830 and then matched against another database in a separate location where the number plates of all those who have paid the fee will be held. All matching numbers will automatically be erased from the system, while all those that are caught on camera but do not appear on the paid-up list by midnight face a fine of 80 pounds ($130), falling to 40 on prompt payment but rising to 120 for late payment. People will be able to pay the charge at machines, gas stations, shops, over the Internet and even via text message on mobile phones. Brushing aside the potential Orwellian Big Brother aspects of the scheme, Turner said all matched numbers would be erased, and only under special anti-terror circumstances would police have access to numbers they had specifically requested. Turner, who said he expected the system to take up to six months to fine tune, said he expected a few setbacks on the way but was sanguine about threats to sabotage the cameras. "For a start they are on top of eight-meter-high poles, and secondly they are closed-circuit television cameras not still cameras so they will record the image of the person trying to damage them." Turner said he expected the scheme to make a net profit of 180 million pounds ($113 million) a year from a combination of fees and fines -- money which he said would be used for road programs. He also said he expected it to save the city's businesses the estimated 4 million pounds ($2.5 million) a week congestion was currently costing them. Road accidents were also expected to fall as a result of fewer vehicles, he said. However, doubters question that assertion, noting a switch to scooters by motorists attempting to avoid the charge. "Many of these people are inexperienced riders, so they pose a greater risk of accidents," Motorcycle News reporter Rich Beach told Reuters. "Also the big letter 'C' they have painted on the roads to mark the perimeter of the charge area turns into skid tracks in the wet," he added. ($1=.6088 Pound) http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=ourWorldNews&storyID=2167761 8. Alberta privacy boss wary of school cams By CP EDMONTON -- Alberta's privacy commissioner says he has grave concerns about the installation of surveillance cameras in some of the province's schools. Frank Work says in his annual report that the proliferation of surveillance cameras, along with rules requiring students to wear identification cards, the use of drug-sniffing dogs and random drug testing is turning Alberta schools into "miniature surveillance states." "Are our schools hotbeds of crime and anarchy? Are there sufficiently real and grave threats to justify this surveillance? Or do we do it because we can?" He wonders what message that sends to children. "Does it say students don't have the morals to conduct themselves honourably or that schools are so unsafe the security measures are necessary?" he asked. He conceded there are times when a camera may be justified to perform a certain function, but questioned who, if anyone, is watching and for what purpose is the data collected. "Their purpose is narrow and limited and I would like to see it justified," he said. http://www.canoe.ca/CalgaryNews/cs.cs-02-03-0031.html 9.Military Beefs Up Its Digital Arsenal Higher-tech innovations than those used in the '91 Persian Gulf War are aimed at Iraq now. By Peter Pae Times Staff Writer February 2 2003 Even with a roomful of other high-tech wizardry, the show-stopper at a recent defense electronics conference in San Diego was a three-dimensional aerial image of Baghdad shown on a big-screen TV. As a defense contractor gently moved the joystick, a mock aircraft nose-dived a few hundred feet above the city and the view from the cockpit changed significantly. The drab outlines of Baghdad quickly gave way to vivid satellite images of rooftops and tree-lined streets before the plane swooped over a car parked in front of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard headquarters. This computer simulator is a commercial version based on defense work that has been declassified. But industry and military sources say U.S. forces are relying on digital information technology at an unprecedented level for a war against Iraq. U.S. fighter pilots in the Middle East and Europe are now rehearsing for airstrikes against Iraq by using even more sophisticated computer simulators that project images of Baghdad and other potential targets, sources said. They offer three times more detail than commercial systems, with some shots taken by satellites only a few hours earlier, and are so precise that even slender electrical power lines are visible. "Digital technology has permeated every facet of the military," said Loren Thompson, defense analyst for the Lexington Institute and a lecturer at Georgetown University. "Every step in mounting a mission, executing it and planning the next one is being digitalized." Army commanders in Kuwait are also using a new computer system that allows them to instantly see on a laptop screen the precise location of U.S. tanks, artillery and other vehicles as well as information about their fuel level and supply of ammunition. Their orders are issued not from crackling radios, but from e-mails popping up on the computer screen. They also come from M-1 Abrams tanks fitted with hardened laptops, and remotely controlled spy planes with real-time video cameras. The move to digitize U.S. forces started in earnest after the 1991 Persian Gulf War as computer processing power and the advent of satellite-based navigation systems raised the possibility of getting accurate information and then processing it instantly. Among other things, the Pentagon hopes that digital communications will reduce the number of soldiers who mistakenly shoot their own. During the Gulf War, of the 148 U.S. soldiers killed, 35 died from "friendly fire." The ultimate goal of using supercomputers and Internet-like networks is to instantly link spy planes, satellites, fighters, bombers, tanks and ships so they can quickly identify targets and coordinate an attack -- within minutes, compared to hours or days in past conflicts. A decade ago pilots prepared for missions over Iraq using still photographs and maps while commanders used wall-size boards to chart troop movements based on radio communications that were prone to delays and mistakes. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who attended the San Diego conference, described how in December the 82nd Airborne Division commander in Afghanistan was able to quickly respond to a report of U.S. soldiers coming under fire by merely looking at his computer. "The folks in Afghanistan get the information in a matter of minutes, a very accurate picture," Myers said, noting how just a year earlier, the ground commander relied on grease pens and plastic-wrapped maps to figure out where everyone was. "It's in this area of shared knowledge that I think technology offers the promise of really transforming the military," Myers added. "History is pretty clear: The ones that can do that the fastest usually win." It's not clear how much the Pentagon has spent on information technology programs, but it has earmarked $30 billion over the next six years to continue beefing up the military's communication and command and control systems. Another $50 billion is slated for new surveillance and reconnaissance systems. Having superior knowledge has been a dream of military planners for centuries. Napoleon relied on reports from scouts in balloons for intelligence and room-size models of cities, down to a horse cart on a particular cobblestone street, to plan a military operation. During battles, Napoleon received battlefield reports via pigeons carrying small pieces with handwritten notes. Against Iraq, U.S. forces are likely to use at least half a dozen different unmanned aircraft that have been developed over the last decade, including the Predator and Global Hawk as well the shorter endurance craft, Dragon Eye and Shadow, to give them aerial intelligence unlike ever before. High-altitude Global Hawks will provide wide-ranging, satellite-like images, while hand-launched Dragon Eyes will be able to provide live video images of a road or a clearing beyond a ridge or a forest. "There has been a dramatic uptick with the advent of unmanned air vehicles and the ability to transmit videos," said Steven J. Zaloga, a military technology analyst for the Fairfax, Va.-based aerospace research firm Teal Group. "Now you don't need to build a model of Baghdad. You can use computers." At the San Diego conference, Joseph M. Nemethy, the product manager for defense contractor Harris Corp., used the joystick to fly over the Tigris River and head out of the city. The system used a computer program developed by Harris, and images taken by commercial satellites using 3-meter-resolution cameras. By comparison, military satellites can generate images with three times more detail. The Harris software is incorporated into supercomputers developed by Mountain View, Calif.-based Silicon Graphics Inc., which turns the data into 3-D images. Nemethy declined to talk about the military version of the system, but he said the technology is a dramatic improvement over the simulators that use animation to train commercial pilots. "The difference is the accuracy," Nemethy said. "We actually use the imagery from satellites. We don't fake the imagery." In Kuwait, U.S. tanks preparing for a possible invasion of Iraq have been fitted with computers that allow not only the commander miles away to see where his troops are and what they are doing but also give the tank driver the location and movement of other U.S. vehicles. The screen displays a topographical map, either in 2-D or 3-D, with moving squares and triangles identifying the vehicles. Touching a particular square or triangle prompts the screen to display details of the vehicle, including the names of its occupants. If a tank crew spots the enemy, they alert others by touching another icon and typing in the enemy's coordinates. Recently, 12,500 soldiers from the Army's 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized), based at Ft. Hood, Texas, were deployed to the Middle East. The unit is considered the army's most modern combat division and has been testing the new system for more than three years in their M-1 tanks. The system, developed by Northrop Grumman Corp., was deployed late last year. And each computer unit, which resembles a laptop screen, is linked by satellites as well as secure radio and a global positioning system navigation device. Defense analysts believe the latest information technology systems will come in handy if the conflict ends up in Baghdad, where house-to-house fighting could ensue. The Pentagon is betting that better communications and highly sophisticated information technology will provide an edge. "The place where all this comes together is in the cockpit of a single fighter pilot or the tank driver penetrating hostile territory," Thompson, the defense analyst, said. Soldiers will "have access to intelligence from satellites, ground sensors, a comprehensive awareness of where all the [friendly forces] and adversaries are, and he never loses contact with people below or above. It's as though he has never left the command center." Eventually, the Pentagon envisions having all four services -- the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marines -- linked seamlessly, despite their disparate systems. All the major defense contractors, including Northrop Grumman, Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Corp., have been vying for contracts to develop systems that would give the military so-called integrated battle space. Analysts believe the Pentagon could spend up to $100 billion in the next decade to digitize its forces. Northrop, for instance, last fall created a Cyber Warfare Integration Center in El Segundo where a room resembling NASA's mission control is filled with wall-to-wall screens and dozens of tables with computers. However, there isn't enough bandwidth to handle all the information the Pentagon wants to have, including transmitting live video images. Some military planners are worried that commanders might micromanage squad leaders in the field. "Somebody sitting behind a desk at the Pentagon will be able to see in real time this stuff being fed to them by the soldier in the field and he may want to start telling the soldier what to do," Zaloga said. "How they handle this is going to be one of the more interesting elements of the campaign." http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la%2Dna%2Ddigitalwar02feb02&section=%2Ftechnology ----------------- --------------------- -------------------- ----------------- --------------------- -------------------- ----------------- --------------------- -------------------- X-From_: info@notbored.org Wed Feb 12 16:53:07 2003 X-Original-To: info@notbored.org X-Sender: notbored@popserver.panix.com (Unverified) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 16:48:49 -0500 To: me<info@notbored.org>From: NOT BORED!<info@notbored.org>Subject: clipping service: focus on Johannesburg Status: RO X-Status: 1. Cameras in Joburg cut crime by 80% By Anna Cox Crime in the Johannesburg CBD, where CCTV cameras have been installed, has dropped by a whopping 80 percent. Serious and violent crime is down by 75 percent, non-serious crime by 90 percent and the city's facilities management capability is up by 100 percent. A total of 184 cameras have been installed by the City of Johannesburg and Business Against Crime (BAC), in collaboration with the Metro Police and the SAPS. A further 360 cameras will be operational in downtown Joburg by the middle of this year. It is also hoped to further expand the network to other areas such as Joubert Park, Hillbrow and Berea. The cameras not only pick up criminal incidents but also assist with city management. The response time to incidents is 60 seconds. The range of facilities include: the detection of fire, power failures, damage to property, faulty street lights, refuse accumulation, open and leaking drains, water leaks, traffic offences and obstructions, general medical assistance and special assistance to mentally-disturbed people. The private sector has also joined forces in the initiative. First National Bank and Spoornet contributed to the installation of an extra 200 cameras. FNB asked the operational centre in the Carlton Centre to monitor its branches in the CBD and only one bank robbery took place last year as opposed to nine in the same area the previous year. In July last year Spoornet introduced cameras at its City Deep terminal where theft was of serious concern. Within four months of the installation, theft had declined by 95 percent. "The results of camera surveillance have been remarkable. This initiative provides a sustainable plan for social and economic renewal strategies and meaningful participation in the creation of new job opportunities," said Neville Huxham of BAC. 2. Big Brother plays on crime to catch your eye By Jonty Mark A Johannesburg advertising company wants to install 258 massive, illuminated billboards at many major intersections and main roads in the north - a move that could change the face of the city's suburbs for ever. Big Brother (Pty) Ltd this week published its application to the Johannesburg council in a daily newspaper and called for objections before February 28. The application says the billboards will be 4 metres in height and 2 metres in width and will be lit from within. Living up to its name, Big Brother promises that the signs will each contain a closed-circuit TV camera for crime prevention. Almost all of the signs are scheduled for the northern suburbs residential areas. According to the two-page advertisement, the signs will be erected on land that is owned by the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA). A receptionist at Big Brother's offices said the directors would only respond to requests for comment on Monday. However, the JRA appears unaware of the application. "I haven't heard anything about this," said Liam Clarke, of the JRA's outdoor advertising department. The sales director of Primedia Outdoor, Skhumbuzo Nkosi, expressed his own doubts as to whether such an advertising campaign would be allowed. Furthermore, Nkosi warned that it would be difficult for Big Brother to find clients for such a vast number of advertisements. "The advertising market is going through quite a depression at the moment," he said. "If Big Brother do not have the advertisers, the legislator must consider whether they want ugly structures just sitting there with no advertising on them." However, Nkosi still believes the council could approve Big Brother's plans. "They need to generate cash," he said. "And a project like this, with crime prevention included in it, will appeal to them." Barry Sayer, group managing director of outdoor advertising giant Clear Channel Independent, questioned the wisdom of putting closed-circuit TV cameras in the northern suburbs. "Surely if there is to be a plan like this, it would be better to put cameras in areas like Soweto or Alexandra, where crime is at its highest," he said. 3. Cameras catch 50 crimes a week By Solly Maphumulo Criminals don't stand a chance in Johannesburg's city centre because cameras are watching their every move. As shoppers and office workers readied themselves to leave for home on Wednesday afternoon, two serious crimes were in progress in the city centre. Unbeknown to the perpetrators, their activities were being captured by the closed-circuit television cameras operated by Business Against Crime. Police acted swiftly, and the suspects landed in the clutches of the law. Six men mugged Imdati Bhatti, believed to be a Pakistani, who had just come back from holiday. They snatched his cellphone, watch, and wallet containing R300, and strolled away. Business Against Crime immediately alerted the police, who arrested the suspect. Bhatti fled in a taxi to Pretoria, but police managed to track him down and got him to lay charges. The traumatised Bhatti hesitated for a moment, but after he calmed down, he agreed to lay the charges. The second incident happened in Booysens, where a mugger snatched a cellphone from an unidentified woman through the window of her car. He was arrested on the corner of Sauer and Anderson streets and the cellphone was recovered. The police were last night still trying to trace the victim. Riyaan Parker, executive director of Business Against Crime said the crime rate had dropped by 50 percent in the city centre. "We capture 50 incidents a week," Parker said. He added that the crime rate in the CBD had dropped during this festive season compared with previous years. "We try our best to monitor criminal incidents in all the camera-covered areas, pick the incidents as they happen and alert the police." All three stories published on the Web by IOL 9 January 2003