X-From_: info@notbored.org Tue Mar 4 21:06:55 2003 X-Original-To: info@notbored.org X-Sender: notbored@popserver.panix.com (Unverified) Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 20:54:25 -0500 To: me<info@notbored.org>From: Surveillance Camera Players<info@notbored.org>Subject: clipping service Yes, this is a service of the Surveillance Camera Players https://notbored.org/the-scp.html To unsubscribe, reply with the words, "I'd really rather not know about all this stuff: it's depressing." ****************************************************************** 1. FBI: Al-Qaida has sophisticated methods (USA) 2. Police won't use satellites to find drugs (Canada) 3. Bird-size spy planes see, hear and even smell the enemy (USA) 4. Cameras at schools (USA) 5. Wireless video surveillance in use at Newark airport (USA) 6. Classroom cameras allow parents to watch children (Australia) 7. FBI Acknowledges Ind. Plane Is Monitoring (USA) ****************************************************************** 1. FBI: Al-Qaida has sophisticated methods Posted on Thu, Feb. 27, 2003 By CURT ANDERSON Associated Press WASHINGTON - Al-Qaida operatives plotting U.S. attacks may use sophisticated surveillance techniques that are difficult for local security and police officials to detect, the FBI cautions. An FBI bulletin circulated this week to law enforcement agencies nationwide says that al-Qaida operatives are highly trained in surveillance methods ranging from using hidden cameras to posing as beggars or tourists. "Al-Qaida operations have been characterized by meticulous planning, a focus on inflicting mass casualties and multiple, simultaneous suicide attacks," says the bulletin, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. Release of the bulletin coincided with the Bush administration's decision to lower the nation's terrorism threat level from orange, the second-highest level, to yellow, the middle level on a five-point scale. Yet officials said the risk remains and the weekly bulletins help local officials get a better idea of how to protect the areas they cover. The surveillance bulletin describes several techniques al-Qaida is known to have used in the past to plan bombings or other attacks. Among the group's methods are what is called "prolonged static surveillance," in which people are "disguised as panhandlers, demonstrators, shoe shiners, food or flower vendors, news agents or street sweepers." Police and security officials have also been told to watch for: -Unusual or persistent interest in security personnel, access controls, or perimeters such as fences or walls. -An increase in anonymous telephone or e-mail threats, which could be a way of testing reaction. -Use of hidden still or video cameras and sketchpads, especially in non-tourist areas. -Use of multiple sets of clothing, identification and the like. Al-Qaida has also used teams of two or three people doing surveillance together on foot, as well as mobile methods including scooters, bicycles, cars and trucks, boats and even small aircraft, the FBI bulletin says. The bulletin also says that the FBI has no evidence to suggest that al-Qaida might plan a new attack to coincide with this week's anniversary of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people and injured 1,000 others. Al-Qaida, the FBI says, is "not known to use anniversary dates as a factor in timing terrorist operations." http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/breaking_news/5278063.htm 2. Police won't use satellites to find drugs Advanced technique of limited use, as many marijuana crops hidden in legitimate fields or grown indoors Jim Bronskill The Ottawa Citizen Sunday, March 02, 2003 Canadian police are no longer high on the idea of using space satellites to detect illicit marijuana fields. Following a trial of the experimental method in British Columbia, the RCMP and other law enforcement officials have yet to be persuaded the advanced tools can easily expose illegal marijuana production. The technique has proved to be of limited use in Canada because marijuana crops are often disguised among legitimate fields. In addition, increasingly large amounts of the plant are being cultivated indoors. "In Canada, the problem that we've encountered is the mixture of cannabis in with traditional crops such as fields of corn and things of that nature," said Paul Kennedy, senior assistant deputy solicitor general. "Satellite imagery is not going to really help you." In early March 2000, the RCMP's drug enforcement branch in B.C. began discussions with Radarsat International of Richmond, B.C., about using the technology to zero in on crops under a cannabis eradication program known as Operation Sabot. The national police force had relied on sometimes spotty intelligence to guide aircraft supplied by the Defence Department to ferret out marijuana crops. In 1999, an eight-day eradication mission cost the RCMP about $19,000, excluding fees for use of the aircraft. Under the experimental approach, officials tried using high-resolution satellite imagery, together with other data and special geographic mapping techniques, to identify probable crop sites at an early stage. In August 2000, the project team acquired images of four sites in the southern interior of B.C. -- Seymour Arm, Slocan Valley, Upper Kettle and Christina Lake -- using the Ikonos high-resolution satellite, equipped with state-of-the art sensors capable of capturing pictures that reveal objects as small as four metres in diameter. However, in viewing some of the images it was difficult to identify marijuana plants, which closely resembled surrounding wetland vegetation. The results, although inconclusive, showed promise. A report on the project said it was difficult to pin down the potential cost savings of using the method, but "it is very likely to reduce the amount of flight time required" to locate illicit crops. A follow-up study involving Radarsat and the Canadian Space Agency was completed last December. But it seems the RCMP and Solicitor General's Department aren't convinced the method is worth pursuing in heavily forested areas of Canada. "We're still doing the traditional aerial surveillance with our helicopters based out of Vancouver and Victoria," said Cpl. Grant Learned, a B.C.-based RCMP spokesman. "But no one here is working on anything that deals with satellite imaging." Mr. Kennedy said the space-based method is more suited to the "large swaths of land" used to cultivate plants for cocaine and heroin production in countries like Bolivia and Colombia. Another key consideration is that a large portion of the approximately 800 tonnes of marijuana grown annually in Canada is cultivated indoors, escaping satellite detection. Police aircraft outfitted with special cameras have been used in Canada to detect indoor marijuana growing operations based on the heat emanating from a home. In January, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that police require a warrant to employ the technique since it amounts to conducting a search of a residence. http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id=91F9A052-5059-4EA2-A599-94A95C5BDE0A 3. Bird-size spy planes see, hear and even smell the enemy Posted on Mon, Mar. 03, 2003 BY J. LYNN LUNSFORD The Wall Street Journal At an air base near Kandahar, Afghanistan, an electrically powered airplane the size of a buzzard hovers near the runways. In its nose, a tiny camera beams a video stream back to a laptop computer being operated by a U.S. military team overseeing security. They're keeping an eye out for potential assailants while testing the abilities of a small airplane, part of a flock of bird-size unmanned aerial vehicles known as mini-UAVs. Although they resemble the model airplanes built and operated by hobbyists, these are anything but toys. Autopilot systems the size of cigarette lighters are connected to a tiny satellite navigation system that enables the planes to fly a preprogrammed route without someone on the ground constantly fiddling with handheld controls. Some of the mini-UAVs can carry microphones to listen for enemy vehicles or sniffers that could detect a chemical agent. Other mini-UAVs are as simple as a camera that can be launched from a mortar, sending back a quick glimpse of the countryside as it climbs and then crashes back to earth. PEERING OVER THE HILL This miniaturization of surveillance will play a big role in the future of ground warfare. While most of the military's attention in recent years has been focused on larger UAVs that can fly for hundreds of miles and fire missiles, scientists and military planners are trying to build aircraft that can fit in a backpack. The idea is to give individual soldiers a better idea of what might be over the next hill or, in the case of urban combat, what's around the next corner. ''For all of the high-tech intelligence that was available at upper levels during Desert Storm, a company commander had no more situational awareness of his immediate surroundings than a commander working for Robert E. Lee had during the Civil War,'' says Col. Barry Ford, chief of staff for the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab in Quantico, Va. ``We think these mini-UAVs will fill a critical capability gap.'' In the past three years, the warfighting lab has been among the military facilities testing a new generation of mini airplanes riding thermal air currents much like a bird of prey. As part of their Dragon Eye program, the Marines plan to run extended tests in the Middle East of two rival UAV prototypes, which they say may be used in the event of a war with Iraq. AeroVironment, in Monrovia, Calif., is competing against BAI Aerosystems, of Easton, Md., for the Dragon Eye contract. Lockheed Martin Corp.'s advanced technology unit in Palmdale, Calif., also is at work on a small aircraft, the Sentry Owl, under an Air Force program. $1.5 BILLION IN 2004 The Defense Department is expected to spend about $1.5 billion for all UAVs for 2004. That includes larger craft like General Atomic Aeronautical System's Global Hawk, Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Predator, United Industrial Corp.'s Shadow and Boeing Co.'s Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle, and AeroVironment's Pointer, which has been in service with the Army and Marines since 1989. Pointer, a glider-like airplane with an 8-foot, 4-inch wingspan and a 300-watt electric motor, has proved the usefulness of a mini-UAV that can operate close to front lines. Martyn Cowley, research-and-development marketing manager for AeroVironment, says the enthusiasm surrounding the Dragon Eye program ''has been a big boost'' to mini-UAVs. ``All of the services are beginning to think of ways to use them for specific missions.'' The new generation of mini-UAVs is designed to require less than a week of training for soldiers to be able to operate them. The aircraft themselves are made of lightweight Styrofoam-like material designed to be easily repaired or reassembled in the event of a crash. Each aircraft weighs about five pounds with a wingspan of about 45 inches. It can break into small enough pieces to fit into a backpack. FIVE-MILE VIEW One of the Dragon Eye prototypes is launched by a 30-foot bungee slingshot. Once it is airborne, a tiny onboard computer controls it by a series of preprogrammed map coordinates. The Dragon Eye can soar silently at about 40 mph from point to point as it sends video to the ground for as long as an hour. Its onboard black-and-white camera can capture images as far as five miles away. Sentry Owl uses a color camera with zoom capabilities of about five miles. The Marines' Col. Ford says each Dragon Eye package includes two aircraft, four cameras, two noses and one ground-control station, costing about $70,000. Compared with a multimillion-dollar jet fighter, the units are ''so cheap that they are really disposable, or at least expendable,'' he says. STURDY MACHINES In testing the Dragon Eye models have been remarkably rugged. ''One of them has 50 crashes on it, and it is still flying,'' a Marine official says. The ultimate goal in developing mini-UAVs is to someday create a micro-UAV the size of a bug. Any soldier could slip one out of its package and turn it loose to flit around corners or perch on windowsills as it beams back video to his special eyepiece. Although more than 150 private companies and university research departments are chasing that dream, early tests of smaller vehicles have shown that they are so susceptible to tiny wind currents that their video data aren't usable. Also, developers are struggling with the same issues that have plagued every aircraft design: Each new feature adds more weight, which increases pressure to make the aircraft larger -- exactly the opposite of their goals. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/5289896.htm 4. Cameras at schools The Daily Leader 2003 Brookhaven Elementary School and Mamie Martin Elementary School are leading the state in at least one aspect of technological advances while also showing parents and the community that safety is a top priority. Surveillance cameras have been placed throughout both schools allowing principals and other school officials to keep a closer watch on all the activities -- even away from campus. "We just started seeing a need for cameras, and we found the best system out there, one that allows us to access the cameras off-site," said Martin Principal Danita Hobbs. The cameras are connected to each principal's office computer, but can also be accessed through a secure website by the principals, Superintendent Dr. Sam Bounds and other selected officials. Scott Campbell, the district's technology specialist, said the principals can even look in on different areas of the schools through handheld personal computers, which will possibly be purchased at a later time. "The long range goal is that every school will be covered with cameras, and the police department will be able to access the cameras if necessary," added Campbell. Every school in the district has security cameras, but only the ones at BES and Martin can be accessed off campus. District officials pointed out that the cameras are only there as a preventive measure to ensure the utmost of accountability and safety in the schools. "This is just another way to show our parents we're doing our best to provide a safe environment for our kids," said Bounds. Other district officials complimented Bounds for his push to have cameras in all the schools. "He wants the district to be on the leading edge of technology," said Campbell. "This is the newest technology. It only records when there's movement." Campbell said only two other schools in the state have similar systems. Cameras have been placed in domes hanging from the ceilings of hallways and offices in the schools, and some are also mounted on the walls. "They're pretty small cameras, and they're not that noticeable," said Campbell. The Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) at BES provided the 20 cameras there, while the activities fund at Martin funded the installation and costs of that school's 30 cameras. More will be added later to more accurately cover the campus. The cameras complement the new interactive intercom systems that allow teachers to contact the front office rather than just being allowed to answer a call. The systems were recently placed throughout the district. School officials say the boost in technology helps them better monitor visitors on campus, parent pick-up areas and any other areas the principals or faculty members are not in during a specific time. "With large buildings, we're able to better watch the halls for any unusual activity," said Hobbs. "You always want to be on top of things. A principal needs to be aware of what's going on all over the campus." The recorded material from the cameras stays on memory for about a week but can be backed up on compact discs if necessary. Brookhaven High School was dotted with surveillance cameras during its renovation last year, while Lipsey Middle School has had a security system in place for two years. Alexander Junior High School is the next scheduled for an upgrade. http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=7245505&BRD=1377&PAG=461&dept_id=172922&rfi=6 5. Wireless video surveillance in use at Newark airport March 03 12:15:00, 2003 NEWARK, N.J.Secure Parking Systems, Vanguard Managed Solutions and OmniSystems have collaborated on deployment of a wireless video surveillance system in four employee parking lots and at six employee bus stops at Newark Liberty Airport. The system, comprised of 24 cameras and 12 call boxes wirelessly connected to a converged voice, data and video network, allows security guards to respond faster to emergencies and other situations requiring their assistance. http://rcrnews.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?newsId=7390 6. Classroom cameras allow parents to watch children 04.03.2003 - By RICHARD WOOD Parents at a new Japanese-funded Auckland secondary school will be able to view their children across the internet using surveillance webcams in the classroom. The webcam system at the Auckland International College in Airedale St is part of the school's widespread use of technology that includes web access to student test results, teacher comments, and attendance record. There are six webcams with a further 24 planned by the end of the year. Executive principal Doug Haynes said privacy aspects have been thoroughly explored with lawyers. Parents and students will be made aware of the webcams before they enrol. Parents will be able to log in with a unique ID to see the webcam view of their child's class and child's records. Haynes said the focus was on giving parents "the knowledge that the kids are in a secure environment". Parents are limited to 10 minutes webcam viewing at a time to keep the load on the server low. They will also be able to chat online with teachers. Students will have an intranet setup for resources, lessons, and forums. Besides the web technology, every classroom also has a Datashow projector and each teacher a laptop computer with Powerpoint for presentations. Rodney Featherstone of IT firm Connect NZ has headed implementation of the network and software solution, including putting a web-based front end on to EnrolPro educational administration software from local software development firm Z&M Numerics. The Auckland International College is the foundation school for a group of 30 International schools planned by the Oshu Corporation. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3198789&thesection=technology&thesubsection=general 7. FBI Acknowledges Ind. Plane Is Monitoring Friday February 28, 2003 4:30 PM BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - An airplane that raised questions in this college town is being used by the FBI to monitor people who might have terrorist connections, agency officials acknowledged. The FBI denied knowledge of the plane earlier this week after aviation officials disclosed that the aircraft was conducting law enforcement surveillance. Agent Thomas V. Fuentes said the FBI issued the denial because a reporter asked if the airplane is doing electronic surveillance, which it is not. Fuentes and agent James H. Davis said the FBI is not aware of any threat to Bloomington or the state, but is watching many foreign nationals. Besides individuals, they said, the aircraft is monitoring vehicles and businesses - particularly those open late at night from which faxes or e-mails can be sent. Residents in this city of 69,000 have seen the white, single-engine Cessna 182 at least since Feb. 19 making passes overhead about noon, in the late evening and after midnight. Fuentes said the aircraft is conducting surveillance flights over several communities near Indianapolis. Bloomington is about 40 miles south of Indianapolis and home to the flagship campus of Indiana University, where more than 3,300 foreign students attend. Several of the university's students have been questioned by FBI agents, university and agency officials confirmed. Agency spokesman Doug Garrison, however, would not say if those interviews were related to national security or the airplane's flights. Guardian Unlimited Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-2442162,00.html X-From_: info@notbored.org Mon Mar 17 21:36:13 2003 X-Original-To: info@notbored.org X-Sender: notbored@POPserver.panix.com Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 21:31:11 -0500 To: me<info@notbored.org>From: Surveillance Camera Players<info@notbored.org>Subject: clipping service Status: RO X-Status: Yup, this is a service of the Surveillance Camera Players https://notbored.org/the-scp.html To unsubscribe, reply with the words, "Out! Out, damn spot!" **************************************************** 1. Protesters cry foul over police videotaping (USA) 2. Guards, cameras, action (Australia) 3. Tape expected to stand court test (USA) 4. Surveillance cameras add security (USA) 5. Are cops spying on cops? (USA) 6. Governor promises TBI won't abuse surveillance powers (USA) 7. A new angle on traffic congestion (USA) **************************************************** 1. Protesters cry foul over police videotaping By Dorothy Korber -- Bee Staff Writer - (Published March 5, 2003) Flanked by three uniformed Sacramento police officers, a woman moved through a peace rally at the Capitol, sweeping the crowd with a video camera. Her shirt proclaimed her role: Identification Technician. Nothing covert about it. The Sacramento Police Department was openly filming the Feb. 15 demonstration. Videotaping is a routine procedure at big gatherings, police say, one used both as a deterrent to troublemakers and as a way of documenting the behavior of the officers themselves. "Let me tell you how it looks from our perspective," said Albert Najera, Sacramento's interim police chief. "A public protest can very quickly and very unpredictably become volatile. But the camera doesn't blink, and it's all on tape. This protects everyone." The perspective changes on the other side of the viewfinder. Activists say that police videotaping chills dissent and they worry that the images will be filed away to use against them someday. "I think it's intimidation," said Maggie Coulter, one of the organizers of the February rally, which drew 5,000 people from Northern California. "What in God's name are the police doing there, walking through the crowds in their black uniforms, filming everyone? It sends chills through you." The issue is playing out in cities across America. With a showdown on Iraq looming, the anti-war movement is burgeoning. At the same time, national security is tight and dissenters are under new scrutiny. The upshot, for peace activists, is increased sensitivity toward police videotaping of their events. In Maine and Massachusetts, activists have asked for curbs on police videotaping of demonstrations. In Washington, D.C., the City Council passed an ordinance in November that limits video surveillance by police in public places. Wherever the question arises, law enforcement argues that filming is a legitimate way of keeping the peace. Video cameras are deployed partly because of their psychological impact in a potentially unruly situation, said Sgt. Justin Risley of the Sacramento Police Department. "What happens in a crowd is that there is a sense of anonymity, a lessening of personal responsibility," Risley said. "A riot mentality can develop. But, if somebody feels they're being filmed, their behavior suddenly improves." Law professor Kevin Johnson finds that sentiment -- and the whole situation -- alarming. "Under the current climate, with civil liberties being limited in the name of national security, such conduct by police may well cause concern among peaceful protesters," said Johnson, associate dean of the law school at the University of California, Davis. "Political activists may feel threatened, especially immigrants who may be subject to deportation for political activities. Those fears are very realistic right now." Seeing a photo of the Sacramento identification technician and her police guard, Johnson questioned why a peaceful rally required such a display of authority. "The whole setup is designed to intimidate at some level," said Johnson, a specialist in civil rights and immigration law. "If there was any inkling of potential violence, I'd say maybe it was justified. Otherwise, no." There was nothing unusual in the videotaping that day, Najera said. His officers routinely film Capitol rallies. They've taped motorcyclists protesting the helmet law, abortion-rights opponents and proponents, Republicans cheering President Bush, gay pride parades and pro-marriage rallies, he said. Najera said the decision on when to dispatch the video team typically is made by the watch commander on duty, who takes into account the size of the gathering and the potential for conflict. "You have to understand: This is the state capital," Najera said. "We have a protest or rally virtually every week. We're not rookies at this, and we've been incredibly successful in not having demonstrations go awry. Some of these peace protesters, however, are rookies." Yet the California Highway Patrol, charged with policing the Capitol, does not videotape, according to David Brunelle, public affairs officer for the CHP's Office of Capitol Protection. Coulter, a veteran activist and no rookie at demonstrating, said she asked the identification technician why police were taping the crowd. "She told me: 'This is a crime scene,' " Coulter recounted. "Since when is people exercising their right of speech and assembly a crime? Now democracy is a crime?" Najera said the technician -- who is not a sworn officer -- misspoke. "Our first-line people, our doers, are not always the best interpreters of public policy," he said. Crime scene or not, the tapes are booked into evidence and kept for 18 months in the event a criminal or civil case arises, according to Najera. He said the tapes are not kept longer than that -- or shared with other agencies -- unless a criminal investigation occurs. Najera emphasized that police officers are within their legal rights when they photograph people in public places. He noted that private citizens and news organizations are videotaping such scenes all the time. Criminology professor William Vizzard agreed, but added that a community still can set its own policy on where and when police videotaping can occur and what happens to the tapes afterward. "From a legal standpoint, it's not illegal for police to videotape in public," said Vizzard, who teaches at California State University, Sacramento. "Instead, it's a question of public policy, a value judgment for every community to make." A major question, Vizzard said, is the potential for misuse of the information once it is collected. He noted that the Denver Police Department has been under political fire for gathering secret files since 1999 on 3,200 citizens it deemed subversive. "It's well known that government can misuse information it collects," Vizzard said. "Some people argue -- if they can't collect it, they can't misuse it. The question is: How much do you bar the police from engaging in a lawful activity because they may misuse it down the line?" Historically, police surveillance was used against dissenters during the McCarthy era and again during Vietnam War protests. In the early 1970s, public outrage at the activity led Congress to limit police authority. The nation's mood changed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The federal government has eagerly sought the help of local law enforcement in tracking down would-be terrorists. Meanwhile, modern technology makes the collection of personal data far easier, said Cedric Laurant of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public-interest research organization in Washington, D.C. "With a digital camera, police can store these images easily, plug them into face-recognition software, apply an indexing system for identification and use them later to build a case against a person," he said. "Citizens should be wary of that kind of scenario." In Washington, Laurant said, the new city ordinance prohibits city police from using zoom lenses, audio recordings or facial recognition databases. The cameras can be used only to monitor events, not to identify participants. Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo said she would be willing to consider a police videotaping policy for the city -- if residents raise the issue. "I can see why people involved in protests would have a concern," Fargo said. "A lot of people in our community can be intimidated by people in uniform. We have to keep that in mind and keep things in balance. "My understanding is that the filming our officers do is to monitor and be a deterrent -- and to assure that others with an opposing position don't get out of line. Part of the rationale for videotaping is to protect people's right to assembly." She advised residents to bring any concerns to Don Casimere, the city's police accountability officer, at (916) 808-5704. Casimere said last week that no complaints about police surveillance had been filed with his office. "We have marches here all the time -- if there isn't a city policy on where and when to film, there should be," Fargo said. "There are questions we should ask: Does it make sense to film everything? What happens to the tapes? It's certainly not our job as a city to intimidate people into thinking they cannot protest." http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/6218854p-7173447c.html 2. Guards, cameras, action By Steve Dow Sydney March 9 2003 It's 7pm on the platform of Penrith station, more than an hour's ride west of Sydney. A train driver and a guard are chatting to passengers near their city-bound train that awaits its scheduled departure. Closed-circuit cameras can be seen everywhere and a woman's voice on the public address system announces: "This station is under 24-hour video surveillance." The platform is well and evenly lit, and there is little graffiti. From the start till the finish of daily rail services, every train is meant to have two contract security guards from the private firm Chubb on board, whose job is to patrol carriages. There are about 500 of these security guards who are employed to prevent crime. That, at least, is the theory. But on this journey, while I see a Chubb security guard get on board, he does not enter my carriage during the trip. It is unclear on this old double-decker train exactly how you would contact the security officers on board if in trouble. Passenger Kym Smith, 21, who travels this line four nights a week, says she has never seen a Chubb guard walk through the train. Ms Smith says she has been mugged three times at Redfern station in the inner-east. Last year she was punched in the head while standing next to a guard's booth on the platform. "I yelled 'guards, guards, someone help us'." The guards emerged from the booth after the incident, apologising for not responding sooner, she says. It was a point echoed by the NSW Auditor-General, Bob Sendt, whose report in mid-February made rail crime an issue in the March 22 state election. Mr Sendt found the Chubb guards were absent from duty 239 times in five weeks. The audit report also found that while the NSW Government had spent an extra $220 million improving security across Sydney's rail network, results had been "mixed". Serious and violent rail crimes had risen 28 per cent in five years. State Rail spokesman Michael Gleeson says the improved security means more crime has been reported. He says the Chubb guards are being replaced by 500 state-employed transit officers who will patrol carriages, issued with batons and handcuffs and with powers of arrest. But Ms Smith says these transit officers, of whom more than 100 have already begun duty, are only known for checking tickets. Rail, Tram and Bus Union NSW lead organiser Phil Kessey says only 57 of 310 Sydney rail stations are unmanned, a significantly lower percentage than in Melbourne. Action on Public Transport NSW convenor Kevin Eadie says it is a "furphy" to blame Melbourne's rail crime and service problems on privatisation. "Both governments have treasuries which focus on reducing cost of services," he says. "Sydney does it directly, Melbourne does it through contracting." This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/08/1046826571819.html 3. Tape expected to stand court test A secret tape of a woman having sex with a 16-year-old boy while her children were in the house would appear to be admissible, experts say. By SUZANNAH GONZALES St. Petersburg Times, published March 8, 2003 INVERNESS -- He said he did it out of concern for his kids. He did it because he didn't know what was going on. And he did it to get proof, after detectives told him they couldn't do anything because they didn't have any. But when Stephen Finegan secretly videotaped his estranged wife in the Inverness home they once shared and consequently caught her having sex with a 16-year-old boy she taught at the Debbie Cole School of Dance, he setto motion a number of legal and ethical issues. First, the videotape led to the Feb. 28 arrest of Finegan's estranged wife, Kelly. She is free on bond and awaiting trial on a charge of having unlawful sexual activity with certain minors. The arrest, and the tape that led to it, could figure prominently as Stephen Finegan seeks temporary custody of the couple's children, ages 5 and 2. The couple have shared custody while their divorce is pending; a judge on Tuesday is scheduled to consider the father's request for temporary custody. The video also apparently left the potential for Kelly Finegan, 25, to face an additional charge of perjury because she denied the sexual affair during a deposition last month, a police record showed. And then there's the issue of the legality of Stephen Finegan's actions, and whether the videotape can be used as evidence in court. After becoming suspicious of his estranged wife's relationship with her danyce student, and after hearing hints from neighbors and his daughter, Stephen Finegan installed video surveillance equipment, without audio, on Feb. 12 in some of the rooms of the Inverness home that he owns and they share. The next afternoon, the equipment recorded Kelly Finegan having sex with the 16-year-old boy in the master bedroom while the Finegan children were in their rooms. Stephen Finegan reviewed the tape a few days after the incident occurred, and turned it over to his lawyer, who later contacted the Citrus County Sheriff's Office. During an interview with Citrus County Sheriff's Office detectives, Kelly Finegan initially denied having sexual contact with the 16-year-old, an arrest report showed. Then, after she was told about the video, she changed her story and admitted to a sexual relationship with the boy, and 20 or more occurrences of sexual activity, since about November. Authorities charged Kelly Finegan with one count of unlawful sexual activity with certain minors. The law makes it a second-degree felony for anyone age 24 or older to engage in sexual activity with a person age 16 or 17. Finegan's lawyer, Michael Blackstone, declined to discuss the case in detail when contacted earlier this week. While the couple is separated and in the process of divorcing, they currently share custody of the children. He stays with the children half the week at the marital home and she stays there with them the other half of the week, according to court documents. Following the arrest, Stephen Finegan filed an emergency motion in an attempt to gain temporary custody of the children, temporary exclusive use of the marital home, temporary supervised visits for Kelly Finegan and temporary child support, according to court documents. "In conducting this affair, (Kelly Finegan) has allowed the minor to spend the night with her (repeatedly) while the minor children of the marriage are present in the same household," said a document signed by Stephen Finegan's lawyer. ". . . Most disturbingly, (Kelly Finegan) has engaged in sexual activity with the aforementioned 16-year-old minor child in the daytime, while her children were awake and present in the same home (as shown on the aforementioned videotape recorded in February, 2003,)" the document said. Stephen Finegan also wants a copy of the videotape, court records show. A hearing on the requests is scheduled for Tuesday. Meanwhile, a perjury charge may be on the horizon. The report showed Kelly Finegan also admitted to lying during a Feb. 24 deposition that was part of her divorce proceedings. During that deposition, she said she had never had sexual intercourse with the boy. But should Stephen Finegan have taped in the first place? In general, there is no state law saying that he is prohibited from doing so, according to Chief Assistant State Attorney Ric Ridgway, who spoke generally about the law and not specifically about the Finegan tape. It's lawful "as long as you don't record the audio version," he said. State statutes do prohibit voyeurism, such as a merchant hiding video cameras in changing rooms and restrooms, Ridgway explained. And he said the law does not allow videotaping when the person recorded has an expectation of privacy and the person recording has a lewd and lascivious or indecent intent, like in the case of a peeping toms. Whoever owns the property -- Stephen Finegan owns the Inverness home where the taping took place -- does not matter, Ridgway said. What does "depends on the person's expectation of privacy and whether and why it's being done." He said the tape could be used as evidence in a criminal case. Unlike a secret wiretap, which is excluded as evidence, he said a videotape is not prohibited by statute. If used as evidence, the tape could become public record, but, Ridgway said, the identity of the minor victim of any sexual crime captured on the tape would need to be protected. Professor Joseph W. Little of University of Florida Law School agreed that the video could be used as evidence. He also spoke about the law in general and not this case specifically. "There is a good chance that it would be admissible," he said. ". . . don't see any strong reason to exclude it." 4. Surveillance cameras add security: The Internet-based system can be seen away from campus. March 8, 2003 By Susan Atteberry Smith News-Leader From a computer in Republic schools central office, Jerry Bennett can read the license plates of cars sitting blocks away in the parking lot of the high school, using a sophisticated new Internet-based surveillance system installed in January. The more than two dozen cameras trained on schools entrances and exits, parking lots, sports facilities and cafeterias allow top school officials like Bennett, director of safety and security, to keep an electronic eye out for campus crime. The cameras wont be found inside classrooms or rest-rooms. Administrators say the cameras arent for spying and they arent for catching kids for minor infractions although a lone boy hurrying down a corridor in an elementary school did catch Superintendent Pam Hedgpeths attention as she watched from the central office earlier this week. "He's running in the hall," Hedgpeth noted. Bennett said the cameras are there to prevent serious incidents such as theft, bullying and harassment. Developed by a Springfield company, the Digital Technology & Surveillance system using Axis cameras is now in only one other Ozarks district, Reeds Spring, said DTS President Dan Moore. Although many schools have security cameras, Republic had the fiber-optic infrastructure needed for the DTS system, which allows Bennett, Hedgpeth and Assistant Superintendent Carol Morgan to watch whats happening on district property from office -- even home -- computers. School principals can see whats going on in their buildings. The system protects elementary students by recording the presence of unauthorized school visitors a concern in child custody cases and is making a difference in some secondary students behavior, administrators say. Republic's old security network had half as many cameras, and most of them were broken when the school year started. "We were having a lot more incidents of vandalism going up because kids knew the cameras weren't working," Hedgepeth said. Then, it was typical for security problems to take hours or days to solve, Bennett said, but the new system is cutting the time he used to spend on investigations. Within three hours of this being operational, we solved a theft, Bennett said. After a physical education class, a student reported $44 missing from her locker. A new camera outside the girls' locker room door captured photos of the only person to enter the room during the students class period. By the time Bennett confronted the suspect, half the money had been spent on lunches for friends in the school cafeteria, but the girl did get $21 back. These days, he's also spending less time wondering who's telling the truth when stories don't match. In fact, cameras showed that one student claiming to be a victim of harassment was the instigator of conflict with another student, he said. Yet Bennett hopes the system will help him step in before such conflicts escalate. "One of my personal challenges is this harassment and bullying," said Bennett, a former Los Angeles police officer. "It gets to me more than anything to see kids get picked on or bullied." The shootings at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, along with reports of child abductions across the country, are what got to DTS Moore, former information technology director for Mount Vernon schools. Because images from the Colorado schools security cameras couldn't be accessed outside the high school, Moore said, the SWAT team outside didn't know where to enter the building to best help students. Moore wanted to make the world safer for his 3-year-old daughter, especially in a school lockdown, so he developed the Internet-based surveillance system with the help of an old friend, Matt Hartzell, chief technical officer for DTS. "Had our system been in Columbine, they would've been able to pull (images) up from another location," Moore said. That's what Reeds Spring Superintendent Gordon Pace likes best about the DTS system, in place at K-8 schools there since last August. "If something were to happen inside the building and you couldn't get inside the building, you would have a way from the outside world to see whats going on before people went charging in," he said. "You'd have a little heads-up." When the system first went in at Republic, some students compared it to an intrusive Big Brother, Hedgpeth said. Some adults criticized the cost of the almost $100,000 system, although it was less expensive that others that werent as sophisticated. The districts capital projects fund paid for part of the system. Still, in a time of concern about campus intruders and national security, Hedgpeth said she's glad the district made the purchase. We placed a value on student safety above anything else and made a commitment to purchase those cameras, she said. To me, thats worth every penny weve invested in it, to be able to find an intruder. http://news.ozarksnow.com/news/republic030803.html 5. Are cops spying on cops? Mar 7 2003 Mike Underwood, Evening Gazette Startling allegations that police chiefs are spying on Middlesbrough officers using hidden video cameras and listening devices could lead to legal action, the Gazette has learned. The powerful Police Federation is seeking advice from its lawyers over claims of an undercover surveillance operation at the town centre police station. The force has issued a statement dismissing the allegations as "complete and utter rubbish". Morale at the station hit an all-time low at the height of the long-running Operation Lancet malpractice inquiry, but confidence had been returning in recent months, according to police sources. But the spying claims lodged with Federation officials follow the arrest of a Middlesbrough detective and a civilian support worker last week as part of a long-running undercover inquiry. The pair were released on bail and have been suspended from duty. The news comes just days after the final Operation Lancet discipline hearing was held at police headquarters in Ladgate Lane. Chief Inspector Paul Rider, chairman of the Cleveland branch of the Police Federation, said officers should not have to work in an "atmosphere of mistrust". He said: "The Police Federation is unable to comment on individual cases still under investigation. "However, I can confirm that officers working at Middlesbrough police station have raised a number of concerns through their Federation representatives. "The Federation fully supports the standards set out in the code of conduct for police officers and it is of paramount importance that the public has faith in the honesty and integrity of police officers. "We accept there must be appropriate checks and balances to scrutinise the conduct of officers. "However, we must strike the right balance to ensure that all members of staff, police officers and support staff are able to carry out their jobs and do not have to work against an atmosphere of mistrust and apprehension. "We must treat our staff with dignity and respect. "They must have trust in their workplace and be able to get on with their jobs without looking over their shoulders, because an environment of this nature will undoubtedly undermine morale and confidence in their managers." Mr Rider said the force should be careful not to repeat mistakes made in the Operation Lancet inquiry. He added: "The Home Office has acknowledged that mistakes were made in the Operation Lancet inquiry and we must be determined not to repeat them. The inquiry had a significant cost impact on policing resources and damaged the reputation of the force. The staff at Middlesbrough have been through a lot and we must not undermine the progress we have made in recent months. Crime is coming down and we appear to have turned the corner. We must all work together for the benefit of the communities we serve and not expend our energies working against each other. We are in the process of writing to our legal advisors to highlight our concerns with them to ensure that professional standards investigators are fair and proportionate in their actions and don't intrude unreasonably into the work environment of other members of staff." But Cleveland Police have strenuously denied 'bugging' Middlesbrough police station. A spokesman dismissed the allegations as "complete and utter rubbish". He said: "There never have been any hidden cameras or listening devices at Middlesbrough Police Station." http://icteesside.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0001head/page.cfm?objectid=12711288&method=full&siteid=50080 6. Governor promises TBI won't abuse surveillance powers By J.J. STAMBAUGH stambaugh@knews.com March 6, 2003 Gov. Phil Bredesen said Thursday that information gathered on antiwar protesters this week by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation won't be used to harass or intimidate those who disagree with President Bush's policies toward Iraq. "I have asked (Deputy Governor) Dave Cooley to meet with the TBI and the troopers as well - the Highway Patrol - just to make sure that something that borders on harassment doesn't happen," Bredesen said. The TBI was present during at least one of three loosely connected anti-war rallies staged Wednesday at University of Tennessee campuses in Knoxville and Chattanooga as well as Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. It remained unclear Thursday if the TBI also conducted surveillance at the Knoxville demonstration. "I'm a child of the Vietnam era. I remember very vividly those years," Bredesen said. "Obviously, we're interested in public safety. But these kids are Tennessee kids, and they're the sons and daughters of an awful lot of people who care very much about our state and care very much about our nation." TBI Director Larry Wallace said the information collected won't be retained. He said his agency was wrong to gather the names of campus peace protesters and apologized Thursday. "I extend my apologies to the people in this case," Wallace said during a news conference at the agency's headquarters. Protesters at a Wednesday rally at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro described a TBI agent working the crowd of about 300 asking for demonstrator's names. Michael Principe, an MTSU philosophy professor, said after he spoke to the crowd, he was approached by a "very friendly" man wearing a Titans ball cap. The man asked for Principe's name and verified he was a professor. "I made a joke 'You're not with the FBI or anything?"' Principe recalled Thursday. "He said, 'No, I'm with the TBI.' " TBI officials identified the agent as Greg Elliott, a 17-year agency veteran, who is being reassigned within the criminal investigative unit, Wallace said. "He's worked hard ... and done a lot of good work. But I don't know what he was thinking," Wallace said. TBI officials say Elliott broke no laws and violated no one's civil rights. Elliott was there to gather intelligence and to make sure that no one was being threatened, officials said. Elliott gathered the names because he needed them to file a thorough report, TBI Assistant Director David Jennings said. "He went from a covert operation to an overt operation," Jennings said. Principe said at first he considered the episode almost comical because "normally you wouldn't be telling people you're with the TBI." The report of government agents collecting information at anti-war rallies has upset local activists, who believe such tactics are inherently threatening. UT philosophy professor John Nolt, who spoke at the UT rally, said the prospect of law enforcement agencies monitoring demonstrations is reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s, when agents kept files on alleged dissidents. "That's extraordinary," Nolt said after learning of the MTSU incident. "There's no reason I can think of why TBI agents would be monitoring a public, peaceful demonstration. To have an agency of that sort overlooking a demonstration like this comes close to being intimidation." According to Nolt, surveillance of those who disagree with government policies is a type of subtle threat leveled against dissidents. "The danger is that citizens who are trying to express their constitutionally guaranteed rights may be intimidated into not doing so because the government is collecting information on them in a way that may ultimately be used to threaten them later," he said. When asked Thursday if any agents had been assigned to the UT rally, TBI spokesman T.J. Jordan said he couldn't discuss the matter. Holly Buentie, an activist who attended both the Wednesday rally at UT and a Feb. 15 demonstration at West Town Mall that drew more than 500 people, said she'd heard no complaints from any of her fellow protesters. Buentie said she was unaware of any suspicious persons at the UT demonstration, but she said that Knoxville Police Department officers took pictures of protesters from a crime-lab van at the Feb. 15 event. "They were just running their cameras," she said. "They were trying to pick us out. It's interesting, definitely." KPD Chief Phil Keith said police officers routinely videotape demonstrations to ensure they have evidence if a fight should break out or some other type of disruption should occur. At the Feb. 15 rally, officers were especially concerned because several young children were packed together on a sidewalk near traffic, and police wanted to make sure they had photographic evidence if there was an accident. "We don't do this for information purposes," Keith said. "If we don't have reports of assaults or complaints, we don't retain the tapes." UT Police Chief Ed Yovella said Thursday that none of his officers conducted surveillance activities and he was unaware of any TBI agents attending the rally. FBI Special Agent Randy Krigger, spokesman for the FBI's Knoxville office, said he was unaware of any agents being assigned to the UT rally. http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/politics/article/0,1406,KNS_356_1792724,00.html 7. A new angle on traffic congestion 360-degree cams could aid accident response By Jeff Ristine UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER March 9, 2003 A tractor-trailer overturns on state Route 94 and the 911 calls start. One witness describes it as a fender-bender, but others speak of a "flaming ball of who-knows-what (and) everything in between," Caltrans spokesman Tom Nipper said in recounting an actual accident. "With this range of description, whom do you send to the scene?" Nipper said. It's a question professor Mohan Trivedi of UC San Diego believes someday could be answered quickest by turning to the Internet. Trivedi and his team at the university's Computer Vision and Robotics Research laboratory are trying to determine whether a network of highway cameras, sending digital images over a high-speed, wireless Internet connection, could work well enough to help coordinate response to traffic emergencies. A pair of cameras trained on a section of Interstate 5 have been testing the technology for about a year. Highway cameras are nothing new streaming video has been available on the Internet for more than three years but Trivedi's equipment is more sophisticated, generating a 360-degree image that is processed by a computer to show multiple angles. The results have been promising enough that the lab was asked to deploy cameras during the Super Bowl in January around Qualcomm Stadium and in the Gaslamp Quarter and Seaport Village. Law enforcement authorities were able to operate cameras from two security command centers, watching the stadium's riverbed perimeter for intruders. Trivedi believes the cameras can be used to glean information within moments of an accident, enabling authorities to issue alerts that would help relieve congestion long before law-enforcement or emergency personnel arrive. Authorities could determine how badly a freeway is blocked, for instance, and might be able to tell whether anyone is likely to need medical help. Trivedi even sees "mobile interactive avatars" robot-like devices, although he shuns the term being dispatched to establish two-way voice or video communications with a doctor or relative of someone who is injured. Trivedi's research aims to trim some of an estimated $20 billion cost associated with wasted fuel, lost productivity and increased pollution brought about by traffic congestion in California. "If I can reduce the congestion and even accident clearance times by 10 percent, that's not bad," said Trivedi, director of the computer vision lab. "If it's going to reduce pollution 10 percent, if it's going to make fuel efficiency go up 10 percent, I think those are practical numbers. "If there's anything that we can do which would make our roads less congested, that means we don't have a need to build more roads." Trivedi's lab on the ground floor of UCSD's Science and Engineering Research Facility is involved in a wide range of automobile and security-related work, including experiments with the use of tiny cameras to improve the way air bags are deployed and to monitor driver alertness through eye movements and facial expressions. The key to Trivedi's traffic monitoring is an omnidirectional camera that offers a panoramic view of its surroundings. Originally developed for use indoors, the camera caught the interest of Caltrans during a presentation in Santa Barbara about four years ago. A research director "invited us to think about it and propose something. . . in an outdoor domain," Trivedi said. Big backers Since then, the lab has spent roughly $900,000 on its activities, with major contributions from Caltrans (about $200,000 in funds and equipment) and the University of California's Digital Media Innovation Program ($600,000), which matches UC researchers with private-industry partners. The lab has continued to draw support for related research, including homeland security, from other agencies. As its work got under way, the UCSD team began thinking about cameras as tools to gather information well before the Highway Patrol arrives at an accident scene. Nipper said Caltrans invested in Trivedi's research as a possible advance on the agency's growing network of cameras, used online and in TV traffic reports mainly to show freeway speeds. Nipper said as many as half of a typical day's freeway tie-ups have nothing to do with traffic volume or capacity shortfalls. "Nonrecurrent congestion," as it is called, instead stems mainly from accidents, disabled vehicles, road debris, construction, special events and bad weather. Caltrans today monitors congestion primarily through loop detectors electronic sensors embedded in the freeways. But Ramez Gerges, a principal engineer with the Caltrans Division of Intelligent Transportation Systems who is familiar with Trivedi's work, said omnidirectional cameras could become an affordable alternative. Countless views The omnidirectional camera allows multiple users to draw different views at the same time. Teamed up with a traditional pan/tilt/zoom video camera, onewas installed about a year ago along Interstate 5 between Genesee Avenue and Voight Drive. What the cameras look for "really depends on what you identify as an event," Trivedi said. "Stalled vehicles is a good one. Somebody in the emergency lane is a good one." Transmitted through a wireless Internet connection, an initially distorted and partly upside-down image is processed and "unwarped" by a computer to resemble a normal picture. The software tweaks developed in Trivedi's lab and patented by UCSD allow "an infinite number of different perspectives and resolutions of the same site," he said. A police officer and a rescue worker, for example, could view different camera angles at the same time. And Trivedi's team imagines the monitoring used in ways that don't require humans. Graduate student Ofer Achler said a computer could count vehicles and then send messages via telephone or pocket PC to alert motorists to a tie-up. "Nobody has to stay up and watch the thing," Achler said. For the Super Bowl, planned amid an atmosphere of terrorism jitters, Trivedi's team deployed a working system of cameras with technical assistance from San Diego State and UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In addition to keeping an eye on parts of Qualcomm Stadium, the cameras enhanced surveillance of crowds around Sixth and G streets in the Gaslamp Quarter, a center of party activity, and at a temporary command center in Seaport Village. Role of robots Meanwhile, cameras on Friars Road allowed Achler to test visually based software that counts cars and measures vehicle speed. The equipment worked day and night. Trivedi's research already had captured the attention of homeland security authorities, and the Super Bowl test worked well enough to draw interest from Jacksonville, Fla., host city for the 2005 Super Bowl. The lab wasn't expected to perform any kind of systematic study demonstrating how traffic efficiency could be improved with cameras. But Trivedi believes the team already has shown that a multicamera, interactive video network is "the way to go," and that the wireless communications explosion of the past few years has made the notion financially feasible. The cameras are less prone to breakdown than loop detectors, he said. But it's up to someone else to decide when and where to deploy Trivedi's cameras. For now, Caltrans plans to continue investing in conventional cameras and loop detectors. Omnidirectional cameras aren't yet in the agency's long-term plans, although engineer Gerges and Trivedi said they will cost only one-fifth to one-fourth as much. Trivedi places current costs at $300 to $2,000 per camera, but said prices will come down if they are ordered and produced in large numbers. While covering every mile of freeway would surely prove financially prohibitive, Trivedi said the cameras might be tried where conditions tend to be worst at the Interstate 5/805 merge, for instance. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20030309-9999_1m9traffic.html 1. Private eyes, watching you (USA) 2. Intersections in camera's eye may not be largest (USA) 3. Utah schools add security to prevent student violence (USA) 4. New surveillance systems can do more than just see (USA) 5. Crime-Plagued D.C. Neighborhoods Ask for Cameras (USA) 6. 'Nightstalkers' track terror suspects (USA) **************************************************** 1. Private eyes, watching you Thursday, March 6, 2003 Private eyes, watching you By Ben Hellman They're not the law. They're not the government. But they are watching residents in Andover and it's perfectly legal. They are private investigators and they operate regularly in town. "We fill the void where local authorities don't have the man power or the resources," said Andover private investigator Jack DeCourcy. Police say PIs that come to Andover are usually investigating marital problems, but workman's compensation cases are also common. "Most of the time it's domestic," said Lieutenant William Mackenzie. When residents notice that a car has been sitting on their street for a long time, sometimes they report it to the police. Usually there's a couple of calls about private investigators each month. Police Lt. James Hashem says private investigators don't even have to register with the local police, but they sometimes do out of courtesy. "If they're watching someone, it's not to their advantage to have a police car come up on them," he said. DeCourcy says he tries to avoid watching people from cars. He says it's the most expensive means of surveillance and yields the fewest results. The retired FBI agent is the president of Bentley Associates Inc., and he does most of his work from a computer. DeCourcy's company does the majority of its work with corporate clients. DeCourcy specialized in white collar crime investigations at the bureau. His partner is Bob Parisien, also a retired FBI agent who specialized in organized crime and was trained in electronic surveillance and electronic counter measures. Now they track down missing property, investigate corporate fraud, run background checks and find people. An example DeCourcy gave of a job Bentley Associates cracked in Andover involved a scam to sell stolen corporate property on eBay. DeCourcy got online and won the bid for the materials. Then he set up a meeting with the suspect at a room in the Tage Inn in Andover. Parisien set up hidden cameras in the room before the meeting to record the sale. They handed over the evidence to their client's law firm and testified against the suspect in court. "The guy was found guilty," said DeCourcy. Parisien has set up pin-hole cameras in corporate counting rooms. "We've caught people with their fingers in the till," said DeCourcy. When a company has the proof on video, it's not hard to prosecute or to fire the employee, says DeCourcy. Bentley Associates usually does not do divorce cases, but DeCourcy told one story of a dead-beat dad case they solved. "One of the things we're exceptionally good at is finding people," he said. DeCourcy belongs to a network of retired FBI agents called the Trapline, which helped him find the father not paying child support. Searches for the man were started in a number of places in the country but didn't pan out. DeCourcy's contacts finally picked up the scent in South Carolina. "He was living on a 52-foot boat," said DeCourcy. "It was one of those cases where they never would have found him." Searching for birth parents is also something DeCourcy does. One of his clients was a young man searching for his mother who knew her name and the hospital he was born in. It turned out the mother had left birthday cards and instructions for the adoption agency to give him her address if he ever came looking for it. DeCourcy doesn't carry a gun. "(In investigating) you don't have your life-and-death (situations) that you did in the FBI," he said. But DeCourcy does get some of the thrill he did in his former line of work. "It's the challenge. There's a situation for you to resolve," he said. And that's what DeCourcy says he does it for. http://www.andovertownsman.com/news/20030306/FP_001.html 2. Intersections in camera's eye may not be largest By JOHN WARREN AND KATE WILTROUT, The Virginian-Pilot March 6, 2003 VIRGINIA BEACH - From his window at the Sundial Inn, Kay Desai can't see the intersection of 21st Street and Arctic Avenue. But he can hear it. ``I can hear the crunching,'' said Desai, manager of the motel on 21st Street, the front window of which faces the Oceanfront. After he hears, he sees -- police cars and ambulances rushing to the accident-ridden intersection, among the city's most dangerous. Arctic and 21st is among the intersections Virginia Beach is considering for red-light cameras. The cameras would take still photographs of red-light runners, who would then receive citations in the mail. There were seven accidents related to running red lights at the intersection in 2001, making it the fifth-worst citywide. Capt. Tom Baum said heavy pedestrian traffic, combined with gridlock, make 21st and Arctic and other Oceanfrontintersections among the city's most dangerous. From 1999 through 2001, six Oceanfront intersections were among the city's top 10 in total accidents. ``Pedestrians try to cross one way or another,'' said Baum, who commands the 2nd Police Precinct. ``Then you've got someone, still a little speedy from the interstate, trying to beat that light. The next thing you know, you're coming close to catastrophe.'' The intersection is evidence that the five locations selected for cameras -- if the City Council approves the measure -- won't necessarily be among the city's largest. ``Traditionally, we look at intersections like Virginia Beach Boulevard and Independence Boulevard as the most dangerous intersections,'' said Lt. Tony Zucaro, who led the Police Department's yearlong study of the technology. ``But there are some other intersections you wouldn't think of that have a lot of accidents, also.'' Zucaro said intersections will be selected based on red-light-running violations; accidents related to red-light running; and also intangibles, such as intersection design and how difficult the intersection is for officers to enforce. That could place the relatively minor intersection of Providence Road and Lord Dunmore Drive in the running for cameras. In 2001, the intersection had eight accidents related to red-light running, making it the second-worst citywide. Mary Sundberg, manager of a TCBY shop in Fairfield Shopping Center, said she watches people running red lights at Providence/Lord Dunmore all day from behind her counter. ``I know I've done it once or twice,'' Sundberg said. She also said she's nearly been struck. ``I think they should put cameras out everywhere,'' Sundberg said. ``That would get a lot more people in trouble, but I think it's a good idea. Less accidents.'' David Johnson, a Chesapeake builder, feared that surveillance cameras would chip away at individual privacy. ``I don't think that's fair,'' Johnson said. ``It's like you live in a communist country. It's crazy.'' Councilman Harry E. Diezel drives through the intersection daily. He said he's witnessed many ``crunchers.'' ``If the cameras reduce accidents by 40 percent, like they say they will, we should give it a shot and see what happens,'' Diezel said. Four years ago, the council rejected a proposal for red-light-running cameras. Now, the measure is getting a warmer reception. ``We've read more and learned more,'' said Councilwoman Reba S. McClanan, who was on the council in 1999. The biggest boost to the Police Department's case may be the council's firsthand knowledge of the city's red-light-running problem. ``Sometimes, I'd like to get out of my car and go after them, I get so angry,'' McClanan said. http://www.pilotonline.com/news/nw0306red.html 3. Utah schools add security to prevent student violence By Faye Vergara NewsNet Staff Writer 5 Mar 2003 Schools all over the country are improving their security systems because of school shootings. Although Utah has not had any school shootings, school districts are still preparing their schools to have up-to-date security systems and to be aware of the nation's problems. "We have just one door open during school hours," said Steve Carter, Building Supervisor of Nebo School District. "We don't have metal detectors, we have a camera set up at every entrance in our elementary schools. We're working to get them into our secondary schools. It'll be a couple of years before we have them installed in all of them." In Fresno, Calif., schools are installing cameras on walls and ceilings, which can capture the video image of the students walking in and out of hallways, computer labs and other places in the schools. The video images can be seen from monitors in the main building's reception center and also over the Internet. Someone from the company who installed the cameras watches over the buildings every night. The schools installed the cameras to be able to capture graffiti vandals, who began defacing the buildings after two of the schools opened in 2000. Utah county schools have not had as many vandalism cases. "We haven't had any trouble here," Carter said. "We haven't had as much vandalism in our schools as California has." However, schools in Utah County are not taking any chances. They are updating their security systems as soon as possible. "We are doing it as our budgets will allows us and it'll take at least three years to finish throughout the district," Carter said. Carter said the average system that they are installing into the elementary schools have motion sensors and cameras and cost an average of $16,000 to $17,000. Alpine school district is also picking up the pace with the installation of security systems. "There's no doubt that the schools are becoming more secure," said Capt. Cody Cullimore of Pleasant Grove. "There are a lot of cameras. Our junior high schools and our high schools are all equipped. There is also technology out there that we are just stepping into in the very near future." Cullimore said patrol cars would be able to see what the cameras are videotaping in the schools, through a wireless technology. "If there's an incident in the school, the police cars will be able to hook into the streaming video feed and actually manipulate the cameras from the cars," Cullimore said. Schools in the Spanish Fork area are also making sure their schools are safe. "Our high school and junior high and middle schools all have video surveillance systems in them," said Lt. Johnston of Spanish Fork. According to a 2002 study done by the National Association of School Resources, 95 percent of respondents described their schools as vulnerable to terror. "It's getting pretty bad in other places," Cullimore said. "We're very, very lucky here." http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/42791 4. New surveillance systems can do more than just see By Seth Schiesel New York Times Monday, March 10, 2003 - In a world of growing security threats, ever cheaper technology and general unease, it is a truism that surveillance has become more widespread. From street corners to department stores, not to mention banks, airports and casinos, there is often - perhaps even usually - a video camera watching and recording. And soon, if you leave a bag unattended in an airport or pull into a no-standing zone, a video surveillance camera might not only take note but react as well. Most camera systems in public places have no way of responding to what they observe. They simply record what is happening within the lens' field of view. Later, after an accident, a holdup, a break-in or a terrorist attack, a human has to review the video. But that is starting to change, as camera systems learn to take what they are looking at into account. Video companies are beginning to deliver technologies that allow the systems to analyze what they are watching and recording, even as the activity is taking place. Some of the first versions of these technologies were displayed here this week at the Homeland and Global Security Summit meeting, a gathering of security professionals and the companies that want them as customers. NICE Systems, an Israeli company that is a leader in the commercialization of the new technology, demonstrated a camera system that can tell when a box or suitcase is left unattended in a public space like an airport or train station, or when a driver crosses into the wrong lane to pass. The new systems are based on a technique called content analysis that has been used by government agencies for years. Rather than simply record telephone transmissions, for example, the National Security Agency can pick out certain conversations based on individual words being spoken. NICE Systems got its start in the 1980s developing advanced audio recording technology, and company executives said they were already working with government agencies involved with surveillance, although they refused to be more specific. The New York City 911 system uses NICE's audio-recording technology, as do airport authorities in 38 countries. The Federal Aviation Administration has installed NICE gear at air-traffic control sites in more than 600 airports in the United States. Until now, however, all of those systems simply recorded information. Now, they can begin to comprehend it. NICE executives said its abandoned-baggage video system had been tested for several months at one airport in the United States and at one airport in Israel. The company plans to make the technology commercially available at the end of this month. "The system uses proprietary mathematical formulas to analyze the picture content on a pixel-by-pixel basis," said Aaron H. Chesler, head of North American sales for the company's video and audio recording division. "It memorizes the scene and it also learns repetitive movement, like trees waving and flags flapping and waves crashing, so that those activities do not set off an alarm." Put simply, the systems work by figuring out what elements have changed in each frame of video and then analyzing the movement, speed, direction and duration of the activity. A camera at a security checkpoint, for instance, might not set off an alarm if a new object appeared at the scene and remained there for 30 seconds, but it might alert a human supervisor if the object remained for three minutes. (The company's systems can already be configured to, say, record people leaving a building but not those entering.) Chesler said that a major airport system might include 800 cameras. NICE's systems might already be recording the video feeds from all of them, but the abandoned-luggage or no-parking systems might be installed only on a dozen cameras in crucial areas. Part of the reason is that the new systems require substantial computing power; a separate computer must be used for every two camera feeds. In addition, even the smallest professional-grade video recording systems without the content analysis component often cost $15,000, and can cost above $1 million in a large installation like a casino. The pricing of the new systems is not final, but they are certain to cost thousands of dollars. While such technologies are meant to protect the public, it seems unlikely that they will enter everyday homes anytime soon. "Look, even I don't have closed-circuit television at home," said Chesler, who lives in Bedminster, N.J. "I have a standard home-security system, but what do I need cameras for?" http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~26641~1233694,00.html# 5. March 10, 2003 Cameras to fight crime in capital RICHMOND Richmond will soon join a handful of cities, including the District and Baltimore, that use cameras to prevent crime. On Jan. 27, the City Council gave Police Chief Andre De Parker the go-ahead to spend $375,000 on 20 to 30 video-surveillance cameras for high-crime areas. Mr. Parker and supporters hail the cameras as the latest crime deterrent. Opponents, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, argue the cameras are an invasion of privacy. Mr. Parker contends, however, that the cameras and the Constitution are compatible. "We monitor spaces where there's no constitutional right to privacy," he said in an interview published yesterday in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "We reserve the right to decide how we deploy them." The cameras will be movable and concealed. Sometimes, an officer will monitor them, sometimes not. They will be installed in high-crime areas and places where residents say they are needed. "We will use them as we feel they are tactically feasible," Mr. Parker said. "The addition of cameras allows us to do more, to follow up and be places we can't be." Tom Yeager investigated crime in Baltimore's roughest neighborhoods for almost 30 years as part of the city's police department. Now, he is watching it happen from a renovated brick office building that houses the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore. He can turn on the television and monitor 16 surveillance cameras run by the partnership, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cleaning up the city. In all, four sets of 16 cameras provide 24-hour watch over 106 blocks of downtown Baltimore. Two more networks are in the works. The cameras are on all day, every day. "You can't put a cop on every block, but you can put a camera there," Mr. Yeager said. There, the technology is used primarily to prevent car break-ins on city streets. Mr. Parker's plan is to use cameras in downtown Richmond to deter drug-related and violent crime. In Baltimore, each camera is marked clearly as a video-surveillance area. "The idea is, if someone commits a crime, they're going to run past a camera somewhere," Mr. Yeager said. "If you're foolish enough to commit a crime underneath a camera, we'll be more than happy to have you arrested." City police can request a specific videotape from the Downtown Partnership when they believe a crime may have been caught on tape. After a week, if no police agency has claimed the tape, the cameras record over it. Baltimore police have their own covert cameras throughout the city, said John Pignataro, chief of information technology for the Baltimore Police Department, but those are used mainly for narcotics investigations. In Washington, 14 globe-shaped cameras peek out from the tops of tall buildings across the city. They offer 360-degree views. One person familiar with them said, "You can read someone's belt buckle from a mile away. Their range is tremendous." The ACLU's D.C. office is pushing city leaders to abandon the cameras. "Tell me one terrorist that's been ferreted out by cameras," Executive Director Johnny Barnes said. "Tell me one crook that's been caught, one crime that's been prevented. Studies conclude these cameras have little or no effect on crime." Two years ago, the International Association of Chiefs of Police surveyed police departments across the country about their use of cameras. It found that more than 700 agencies used the technology. The study also found that 96 percent of agencies using cameras had no system in place to analyze whether the cameras were effective in reducing crime. Of the eight agencies that measured the cameras' effectiveness, three said they had a "great" effect on crime, four said their effect was moderate and one said the cameras had a marginal effect on crime. In Richmond, ACLU Executive Director Kent Willis said he plans to lobby City Council and Mr. Parker to change their minds about the cameras. "It's pretty clear that it is not considered unconstitutional to place cameras in public places," he said. "Our argument is almost entirely a public-policy argument. It may not be a legal invasion of privacy, but it is part and parcel of the use of new technology to significantly erode the privacy of individuals of the United States." http://washingtontimes.com/metro/20030310-68452450.htm 5. Crime-Plagued D.C. Neighborhoods Ask for Cameras By David A. Fahrenthold Washington Post Staff Monday, March 10, 2003; Page B01 Last month, a gang of young auto thieves was marauding through the Benning Ridge neighborhood of Southeast Washington, tearing up and down residential streets, then crashing the cars and disappearing into nearby public housing. Terrified homeowners knew exactly what they wanted: a police surveillance camera. If D.C. police put a zooming, night-vision-equipped eye on the streets of Benning Ridge, the residents were certain the thieves would go away. But for now, that is not an option. Although the District has one of the most sophisticated police camera systems in the nation, the surveillance is focused on downtown and commercial areas in Northwest. The closest camera to Benning Ridge is five miles away, watching the plazas near Union Station. That could change this year, as the D.C. Council considers a pilot program to mount police cameras in residential neighborhoods. Instead of watching for terrorists or unruly demonstrators, these cameras would look for the common crimes, such as drug dealing, vandalism and auto theft, that bedevil neighborhoods. Many city residents say they share the optimism of those in Benning Ridge, and believe that cameras could help restore order to their neighborhoods when police patrols are stretched thin. But despite their high-tech potential, the track record for cameras is mixed. Some police departments have tried using surveillance systems but given up because they cost too much and get varied results. Other departments, including Baltimore's, have credited cameras with helping to cut crime when used in a targeted way. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said cameras could be useful but he cautioned residents against expecting too much. Cameras already are widely used for various purposes in the District. D.C. police have 14 cameras in place. The U.S. Park Police force has cameras trained on the Mall. U.S. Capitol Police have cameras on Capitol Hill. The city has 39 cameras that take photographs of motorists running red lights and five mobile cameras that snap pictures of speeders. The D.C. government also uses video cameras to monitor traffic at key intersections. No police departments in the Washington region use video surveillance to look for neighborhood crime; city officials in Richmond recently approved spending $375,000 to purchase as many as 30 such cameras for high-crime areas. The pleas for cameras in Benning Ridge persisted even after police arrested seven people in the car thefts. Residents say they want to stop tire-slashing and window-breaking. In Northeast Washington's Lincoln Heights neighborhood, homeowners say they want a camera on a street where drug dealers run their business like a lemonade stand. Other residents want cameras to deter thefts and car break-ins. "There aren't enough officers," said Kathy Smith, raising the prospect of putting cameras along busy Wisconsin Avenue NW in the Friendship Heights area. Kathy Chamberlain, who lives in the Hillcrest area, said a camera might help police catch people who dump cars and tires off Texas Avenue SE and prevent crimes near a neighborhood recreation center. "For crying out loud, we need one," she said. "If we had double the number of police that we have now, they still couldn't be everywhere at every time." Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, said neighborhood cameras are attractive to many police departments, which are guarding against street crime and the threat of terrorism simultaneously. He said cameras can be "a force multiplier." City officials have said that the current cameras cost $15,000 each to purchase and install. That's compared with the $39,644 starting salary for a rookie officer, plus tens of thousands of dollars for training. D.C. police cameras are turned on only during large demonstrations and times of heightened security. The cameras have zoom capabilities, and some also use night-vision technology. The department has more than 20 such cameras in storage, and officials say they probably would be used in any neighborhood surveillance. When the D.C. police cameras are on, they are watched by officers in a high-tech command center at police headquarters. The cameras record images to a computer hard drive that can be checked later. The recordings are kept for 10 business days, or longer if needed for evidence. The command center also would monitor cameras posted in neighborhoods. The D.C. Council first discussed using neighborhood cameras in the fall and considered a bill that would allow police to set up pilot programs in two residential areas for a year. The debate became heated, with some members saying they worried that government employees would use the cameras to play Big Brother -- or worse, peeping Tom. The discussion probably will resume this year. At least two council members, Kevin P. Chavous (D-Ward 7) and Sandy Allen (D-Ward 8), said they plan to oppose the idea. "I'm not sure the Metropolitan Police Department is sophisticated enough to use them for the real criminals," Allen said. The American Civil Liberties Union has argued against neighborhood cameras, citing privacy concerns. The ACLU and other activist groups also have raised objections about the current D.C. police cameras, which were first activated the day of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Criminal justice specialists, meanwhile, say cameras are by no means a cure-all. University of Florida law professor Christopher Slobogin, who has studied the issue, said criminals can shoot out cameras or commit crimes out of view of the devices. Police cannot always respond quickly enough to catch suspects, he said. Some cities -- including Detroit, Miami and Oakland -- discontinued neighborhood camera programs because they were "not cost-effective," Slobogin said. Then there is the tedium factor: Most of the time, nothing is happening for officers to watch. Experts say the next generation of equipment will take boredom out of the equation by having computers keep track of the action, instead of police officers. Equipment sold by one Italian company watches for movement on video screens and can be programmed to spot someone leaving a suspicious package or a burglar going from car to car in a parking garage, the company says. Some police officials say the cameras are useful -- whether or not they are monitored. At the Tacoma, Wash., police department -- which has been doing neighborhood surveillance for about 10 years -- the cameras broadcast images to a station house break room, and usually no one is watching. As long as criminals think they're being watched, Tacoma police say, the cameras have a deterrent effect. In Baltimore, too, police say the cameras have curbed crime. Officers there use permanent cameras near the Inner Harbor and downtown and mobile cameras to look for street crime on the city's east side. John Pignataro, Baltimore's chief of information technology, said that he also supervised anti-crime cameras with the New York City police and that in both places, officers were able to watch drug transactions on camera, then send police to make arrests. On Baltimore's east side, the mobile cameras are positioned according to crime patterns, and police reported a 30 percent decrease in violent crime in the neighborhoods where cameras were used. During last year's debate in Washington, Ramsey told the D.C. Council that the police department's existing cameras had provided "limited anecdotal evidence" that they could stop street crime. The evidence is limited to one anecdote: During the 2001 NBA All-Star Game, before the 14 current cameras were operating, police hired a contractor to set up cameras around MCI Center. Onecamera showed a man breaking into cars, and officers arrested him. This is the only street-crime arrest that D.C. police officials credit to cameras -- so far. "Part of the problem is unrealistic expectations," Ramsey said last week. "It's going to help us, [but] it's not going to be something that's going to eliminate all crime." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2342-2003Mar9.html 6. 'Nightstalkers' track terror suspects Friday, March 14, 2003 Posted: 2352 GMT ( 7:52 AM HKT) WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI has a fleet of aircraft, some equipped with night surveillance and eavesdropping equipment, flying America's skies to track and collect intelligence from suspected terrorists. The FBI will not provide exact figures on the planes and helicopters, but more than 80 are in the skies. There are several planes, known as "Nightstalkers," equipped with infrared devices that allow agents to track people and vehicles in the dark. Other aircraft are outfitted with electronic surveillance equipment so agents can pursue listening devices placed in cars, in buildings and even along streets, or listen to cell phone calls. Still others fly photography missions, although officials would not describe precise capabilities. The FBI, which has made counterterror its top priority since Sept. 11, 2001, has sharply increased its use of aircraft. "You want to watch activity, and you want to do it discreetly. You don't want to be sitting around in cars," said Weldon Kennedy, a former FBI deputy director who retired in 1997 after 33 years with the bureau. "Aviation is one way to do that. You don't need to get close to that person at all." Some critics say the surveillance technology further blurs the boundaries on domestic spying. They point to a 2001 case in which the Supreme Court found police had engaged in an unreasonable search by using thermal imaging equipment to detect heat lamps used to grow marijuana plants indoors. "The cop on the beat now has Superman's X-ray eyes," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union. "We need to fundamentally rethink what is a reasonable expectation of privacy." All 56 FBI field offices have access to aircraft, piloted by FBI agents who have other investigative duties as well. Most aircraft are propeller-driven civilian models, favored for their relatively slow speed and unobtrusive appearance. Legally, no warrants are necessary for the FBI to track cars or people from the air. Law enforcement officials need warrants to search homes or to plant listening devices or monitor cell phone calls -- and that includes when the listener is flying in an airplane. A senior FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the FBI does not do flyovers to listen to telephone calls and gather electronic data from random citizens in hopes the data will provide leads. Rather, the planes are used to follow specific individuals, some of whom may already have been bugged or for whom the FBI has a warrant to listen to cell phone calls. Still, the idea of an FBI air force gives at least some people pause. The FBI will not disclose where the planes are being used. This month, however, in the college town of Bloomington, Ind., residents spotted a Cessna aircraft flying overhead at roughly the same times every day for more than a week. After first issuing denials, local FBI agents admitted it was their plane, involved in a terrorism investigation. FBI officials also were quick to say it was not doing electronic eavesdropping. "There should be no concern that the aircraft is doing anything other than assisting with physical surveillance," said FBI agent James Davis. The FBI has been using airplanes since 1938, when an agent in a Stinson monoplane helped stop an extortion attempt that involved a payoff package thrown from a moving passenger train. The first major deployment happened in 1975 during the investigation of the killings of two FBI agents at the sprawling Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The program has been particularly useful in investigations of organized crime and drug trafficking. Mobsters who suspected their homes and telephones were bugged frequently held meetings in moving cars, not realizing that bugs also were placed there and were being monitored from the air. Aircraft are now seen as ideal in the FBI's domestic war on terror. FBI Director Robert Mueller said last year there was a 60 percent increase in field office requests for airplanes in the year after the September 11 attacks, with almost 90 percent of air missions now dedicated to surveillance. "You don't have a criminal case. You don't necessarily have a terrorism case. You want to know what they are doing, who their associates are, who they are meeting with," retired agent Kennedy said. "Surveillance is going to have a pretty big role in that." Congress approved this year a $20 million increase in the FBI's aviation budget but denied a request for two new Black Hawk helicopters. It also ordered the bureau to develop a master plan for its aviation program. The FBI also can request aviation help from the Defense Department. That can involve a great deal of bureaucracy and care, however, to ensure the military does not violate laws preventing them from doing law enforcement work within the United States. X-From_: info@notbored.org Fri Apr 4 13:12:34 2003 X-Original-To: info@notbored.org X-Sender: notbored@POPserver.panix.com Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 12:53:44 -0500 To: me<info@notbored.org>From: Surveillance Camera Players<info@notbored.org>Subject: clipping service, 1 Status: O X-Status: this will have to be done "down and dirty," because we're waaaaaaay behind on this news-clipping service and wanta catch up quickly . . . . -- Surveillance Camera Players ******************************* 1. Here's looking at you Smile, you're on hidden camera Sunday, March 16, 2003 BY PETER GENOVESE Star-Ledger Staff As his brother, Eric, rigged a hidden camera inside a jacket to be worn by an animal rights activist for an undercover investigation, Mitchell Wagenberg talked about one of the recent jobs handled by their Manhattan-based company, StreeTVision Remote. "Just got back from India," says the ponytailed Wagenberg, standing inside his Lower West Side loft/office, crammed with monitors, cameras and cable. "I rigged two guys up (with hidden cameras). I don't know where they were going or what they were doing. It was government work. I can't be any more specific than that." StreeTVision Remote, which builds and rigs hidden cameras for law enforcement investigations and network-TV special reports, is just one small segment of the rapidly expanding surveillance camera/Web cam industry. In George Orwell's "1984," Big Brother was all-powerful, all-knowing, and The Party had total control over citizens' thoughts and actions. Today, Big Brother, if he exists, is more likely to be you and me. Homeowners are installing hidden cams to protect their property. At-work mothers are checking on their children and baby-sitters through "nanny cams." Schools are watching the comings and goings of students. Housing developments -- even entire neighborhoods -- are screening for drug dealers and other undesirable elements with the use of cameras. There are more than 3 million surveillance cameras in use in the United States, according to David Saddler, associate executive director of the Security Industry Association. "My guess is that that's a conservative estimate," Saddler said. "We can stop and pause for 10 seconds and in that time 200 more cameras will be sold." The surveillance camera/Web cam industry includes cutting-edge companies such as Identix (formerly Visionics) in Jersey City, whose facial-recognition software, teamed with surveillance cameras, has been installed in Virginia Beach, Tampa, and the Fresno, Calif., and Reykjavik, Iceland, airports. It includes everyday businesses -- banks, groceries, supermarkets and drug stores -- that use surveillance cameras to curtail theft. Then there is the sometimes wonderful, sometimes weird world of the Web cam -- cameras that give "cyber-tourists" front-row seats at everything from the Super Bowl to sunrise over the Grand Canyon. The most popular Web cam site, EarthCam, is headquartered in Hackensack; it receives 300 million page views every month. And it includes retail outlets like the Counter Spy Shop in midtown Manhattan, where you can buy gadgets that would do James Bond proud. "We have camera ties, camera glasses, camera pens," said Dan Gallo, sales manager at the Madison Avenue store. Most uses of surveillance cameras, of course, are more mundane. Rutgers University, which installed its first closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera on its New Brunswick-area campuses in 1995, is in the process of installing surveillance cameras in parking lots on the Livingston College campus in Piscataway. "We're picking a couple parking lots where there have been thefts," said Thomas Giordano, deputy chief in the Rutgers University Police Department. In addition, cameras will be installed this year at the main entrances of several dormitories, not for the purpose of around-the-clock monitoring but to control access into the dorms, according to Giordano. Last summer, Omni Security and Vanguard Managed Solutions installed 24 wireless cameras at four parking lots, owned and operated by Secure Parking Systems, near Newark Liberty International Airport. The parking lots are used by airport and Continental Airlines employees. "We have always had cameras here, but with (video) tape," explained Dorothy DiTommaso, president of Omni Security. "Before, if something happened, it would take up to eight hours to rewind the tape to find it. Now, you just punch in a date and time range and you get film clips (immediately). We're finding before we even get a complaint, we know what's going on. We've eliminated theft almost down to zero." No one is sure exactly where the first surveillance camera was installed, but today they are so ubiquitous it's difficult to go through an average day without encountering a camera along the way. Next time you're at the checkout line at your local supermarket, look up; chances are there is a bank of surveillance cameras on the facing wall. Never noticed them before? That's what their owners are counting on. Some see surveillance cameras as important security and anti-crime tools; others see them as unwarranted, even sinister, invasions of privacy. Cameras can be a "huge" deterrent to crime, according to John Fannin, CEO of SafePlace Corp., an independent provider of safety/security accreditation for hotels, hospitals, assisted living communities, schools and commercial buildings. "I don't care what you see me doing on a camera; I'm not going to break the law," said Lou Palumbo, owner of the Elite Group, a private security firm whose clients have included the Empire State Building and Golden Globe awards. "If they're not looking through your window, who gives a - - -? You have to decide whether you're willing to give up a few rights to feel safe. If the block you live on is under (video) surveillance and you have a kid and someone takes your kid, they're going to have that car (on tape), they're going to have the license plates." "Doesn't bother me in the least," Mitchell Wagenberg said of surveillance cameras on streets and in public areas. "I have nothing to hide." But the American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy-rights organizations see the proliferation of surveillance cameras as one chilling step towards a true Big Brother society. "Many Americans still do not grasp that Big Brother surveillance is no longer the stuff of books and movies," said Barry Steinhardt, director of ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program and a co-author of a recent ACLU report on surveillance cameras. "With the tremendous explosion in surveillance-enabling technologies, including databases, computers, cameras, sensors, wireless networks, implantable microchips, GPS and biometrics. . .Orwell's vision of Big Brother is for the first time technologically possible." The ACLU, according to Steinhardt, "has no objection to cameras at specific, high-profile public places that are potential terrorist targets, such as the U.S. Capitol. But the impulse to blanket our public spaces and streets with video surveillance is a bad idea. Video surveillance has not been proven effective. It is far from clear how the proliferation of cameras through public spaces in America would stop a plot like the attack on the World Trade Center." One group, the Surveillance Camera Players, maps surveillance cameras in New York City. Members perform specially-adapted plays in front of the cameras, and even hold weekly walking tours of heavily surveilled neighborhoods. On a recent tour, co-founder Bill Brown pointed out dozens of surveillance cameras along Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 52nd streets; many of the cameras resembled lighting fixtures. "It is not reasonable that we are being surveilled in public," said Brown, a freelance proofreader. He and other group members like to hold up signs in front of cameras reading "We're watching you watching us." A New York Civil Liberties Union 1998 count in the area bordered by Eighth and Fifth avenues and 42nd and 50th streets revealed 75 public surveillance cameras. In 2000, Brown canvassed the same area and found 130 surveillance cameras. At the end of 2002, he discovered 258 cameras -- most of which, he said, are never noticed by passersby. The Surveillance Camera Players are opposed to public Web cams ("they violate the privacy of the people who are unwittingly videotaped by them," according to the group's Web site) and seek to "explode the cynical myth that only those who are 'guilty of something' are opposed being surveilled by unknown eyes." Whether invasions of privacy or not, surveillance cameras can be put anywhere and just about on anything. "We have installed covert cameras in functioning alarm clocks, coffee makers, a pet cage and ceiling tile," said former FBI agent Harold Copus, speaking of his Atlanta-based firm, Investigative Solutions. "You are merely limited by your imagination." Once his firm was hired by a carpet manufacturer to investigate burn holes on a carpeted warehouse floor. Hidden cameras revealed employees engaging in after-hours forklift races. In another case, cameras caught a warehouse worker tossing a cigarette near a propane tank -- and the resulting explosion and fire. "Best video I've ever seen," Copus said. Surveillance cameras are only as useful -- or ethical -- as the person or company operating them. There have been scores of cases nationwide of landlords and store owners using hidden cameras to watch women's bathrooms and dressing rooms. The people who walk through the doors of the Counter Spy Shop have many reasons for buying surveillance cameras. One customer installed a camera just inside his door to make sure the person he paid to walk his dog was giving Fido adequate time. Another customer, going through a divorce, installed a hidden camera in a car parked outside his former house so he could watch who his ex-wife was bringing home. Gallo pointed to an array of everyday items on a shelf -- alarm clock, pencil sharpener, lamp, briefcase. "There's a camera in everything here," he said. Want to record that top-secret sales meeting? An ordinary-looking briefcase, available at the Counter Spy Shop, features a built-in camera and video recorder. Other company products: The Wireless Video Pen, the Gym Bag Covert Recorder, the Stuffed Animal Nanny Cam and the CS-3500 Covert Video Sunglasses. "The CVS 3500 is by far the most discreet way to record important events, meetings, confrontations, etc., with your subjects being none the wiser," according to a Counter Spy Shop brochure. "As long as you're wearing your shades, everything you look at will be captured on video. You need not worry about focusing a camera; you are a walking tripod. You get it all on tape and you look cool too." The market leader in networked cameras and video servers for security uses is Axis Communications, which has installed systems for the Washington, D.C., police department, the New York City Department of Transportation and at more than 100 schools around the country, including Teaneck. The company has sold more than 200,000 cameras and video servers worldwide, according to Michael Engstrom, general manager of Axis Communications. Among company clients: movie director Steven Spielberg. Axis cameras are used to keep direct access on movie sets to a minimum while allowing staff to view the proceedings. Spielberg's kids can log in from their computers and see what dad is up to. Indentix, whose corporate research headquarters is in Jersey City, bills itself as "the world's leading multi-biometrics security technology company." Biometrics involves using a characteristic unique to an individual -- a fingerprint, a signature, an iris -- for identification. The company's FaceIt system was installed in Tampa, Fla., two years ago to match images caught by dozens of cameras in the city's Ybor City entertainment district against mug shots of known criminals. FaceIt identifies the face by analyzing the triangle from the eyebrows to the base of the nose. The software divides that facial region into a 64-piece jigsaw, and, according to company officials, needs only 18 of those 64 components to make a 99-percent positive identification. Joseph Atick, co-founder of Visionics (the company later merged with Identix), foresees the mass installation in airports of face scanners -- networked computers that convert streaming video images caught by cameras to digital face-prints for use by law enforcement officials. "We should not shy away from technology that protects people's privacy," said the Israeli-born Atick. Surveillance cameras in public areas do not bother him, but he says that people "need to be told where they are." "We're so spread out as a nation, a million cameras won't do you any good," he added. "But a million cameras in our airports, borders (and other high-security spots) will do a world of good." For Mitchell and Eric Wagenberg, of StreeTVision Remote, several well-placed cameras often are enough to do the job. They installed six hidden cameras in a car for a Dateline report on crooked Louisiana cops in 1996; placed two cameras in a house used by Aryan Nation members for a government undercover investigation five years ago; and hid tiny cameras on three bicyclists and three joggers, who spent six days circling the house of a corrupt insurance executive for a 60 Minutes report. The brothers have won several Emmy Awards for their work. Among the products available from their catalogue are ScrewCam (a miniature camera hidden in a pewter-colored screw) and GlassesCam. "We also have a beautiful line of undercover necklace cams," he said. And then there's the ButtonCam. Invented by the two brothers, ButtonCam was worn by a female patient during a soon-to-be-aired special news report on a dentist shown fondling his patients. "ButtonCams have taken off big time," Wagenberg said. "Buttons can be worn anywhere. They look normal practically everywhere." http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/living-1/1047799353161380.xml?starledger?life 2. Terror attacks, looming Iraq war fuel Canadian privacy drain, say watchdogs DIRK MEISSNER Canadian Press Monday, March 17, 2003 VICTORIA (CP) - Terrorist attacks in the United States and a looming war in Iraq are fuelling a dangerous erosion of privacy for everyday Canadians, say worried privacy watchdogs. Canadians overwhelmingly supported increased civil rights restrictions following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. But privacy organizations now are raising alarms about the Big Brother tendencies of governments and law enforcement agencies. Three recent examples in British Columbia alone: -A Vancouver-area municipal council is challenging the medical privacy of drug users; -The RCMP has defied the federal privacy commissioner's demand it remove a surveillance camera in downtown Kelowna, and -Civil liberties groups are concerned the B.C. government's changes to privacy legislation is making it easier for police to view confidential records held by public bodies. The federal government, partly under pressure from the United States, passed laws that track the travel habits of Canadians and make it easier for Ottawa to develop in-depth, secret profiles of citizens, says David Loukidelis, B.C. information and privacy commissioner. The government is also considering some form of national identification. "I am concerned that there may have been a strong reaction on the part of legislators around the world immediately post 9-11," he says. "What needs to happen is we need to have a sober second look in the next couple of years to decide whether these new powers have been necessary or effective." Loukidelis says he remains concerned Ottawa could use its anti-terrorism initiatives to probe beyond its security concerns to develop deeper profiles of the everyday lives of Canadians. "My concern is they are using anti-terrorism as a justification for something that goes much further than that," he says. "I suggest that people should be vigilant, be engaged, look into these issues." Ottawa's recent air travellers data base, monitored by Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, could be used to supply information about Canadians to other countries and foreign agencies, Loukidelis says. He says he has delivered his concerns about possible misuse of travellers data base information to Elinor Caplan, national revenue minister. "The justifications and possible uses for this information keep shifting and indeed expanding and they aren't limited by law," says Loukidelis. "It can be disclosed to any government or agency in the world if the minister thinks it's in the public interest." A spokesman for the Vancouver-based B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association says governments are using security concerns as excuses to restrict privacy rights. "We are wading into unknown territory and the psychological impact of it, and what it will do to government when something like Sept. 11 happens," says Darrell Evans, association executive director. "I really fear for freedom on this planet." Ottawa's decision to track air travel habits of Canadians is part of a larger government plan to gather personal information, he says. "This is a bureaucrat's wet dream to have unlimited ability to match data about the citizens and develop massive dossiers and profiles," Evans says. British Columbia is currently in the front line of several privacy issue battles, Evans says. City council in Surrey, one of Vancouver's largest suburban communities, passed a controversial bylaw last week that gives senior police officials the power to examine the medical records of methadone patients without a search warrant. "It just shows how narrow the views are of the politicians and the lawyers who advise them and how little they are on guard for our civil liberties," says Evans. Colin Hansen, B.C. health services minister, says he's deeply concerned about the bylaw and its potential to erode the privacy rights of medical patients. "It's important that we reassure British Columbians that patient records are kept in the highest level of confidentiality," he says. Loukidelis launched an investigation focusing on local government bylaws that compel businesses to compile personal information about their customers or clients and make that information available to law-enforcement authorities. In Kelowna, federal lawyers argued in B.C. Supreme Court last week that federal Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski shouldn't go to court to try and shut down an RCMP surveillance camera aimed at a park in the Okanagan city. Radwanski said earlier he wants the court to declare the surveillance camera an infringement of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Evans says the Kelowna case is bound to set precedents that involve where, when and how police can operate surveillance cameras in Canada. Loukidelis says surveillance cameras are widely used in major cities in Europe, with mixed results. "In London you are on camera, and I'm talking about public surveillance camera, estimates are 300 plus times a day," he says. "It's got to the point that in downtown London, so I'm told, you are more or less followed around by these cameras." In Victoria, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association called on the government to tighten proposed wording to an amended Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The amended law could give police easier access to private information held by public bodies or private firms handling public information, says association spokesman Murray Mollard. "It shouldn't be the case that any personal information collected by the government for particular purposes is now open season for the police in their investigations," he says. Sandy Santori, B.C. management services minister, says the government consulted widely on its amendments, including with Loukidelis, and found no opposition. "Obviously as an advocacy group they (the Civil Liberties Association) are going to have an extreme possible solution to some of the things we are trying to do and we respect that," he says. "We are trying to find some balance on something that's workable." Santori agrees government must ensure it does not allow itself or other agencies to step over privacy boundaries. "People have come to an acceptance within themselves that unfortunately under the conditions that this world finds itself in we have to give up some things in order to better protect ourselves," he says. Loukidelis and Evans say people need to guard their privacy rights themselves. 3. Mar. 17, 2003. 01:00 AM Finger on the future Biometrics gets a boost from the release of a new personal digital assistant TYLER HAMILTON TECHNOLOGY REPORTER Hewlett-Packard Co.'s new iPAQ 5450 is easily the Cadillac of hand-held computers, complete with bells and whistles that any hard-core road warrior would drool over. It has built-in 802.11b - or "Wi-Fi" - wireless technology, just in case you need to send e-mail while waiting for a train at Union Station or Pearson airport. It can connect to other devices - headsets, printers, mobile phones and desktops - using a short-range wireless standard called Bluetooth. It plays video. Displays digital photos. Acts as a universal remote control for your home entertainment products. And, like any trusty organizer, it keeps track of your appointments, contacts and e-mail communications. But the real head-turner for this ber-pocket PC is a tiny sensor at the bottom that can scan fingerprints, making it the first hand-held computer on the market with built-in biometric security. That means corporate data, personal information, e-mails and business contacts stored inside the device are kept secure without needing to remember yet another password. "A large number of mobile devices are lost," said Marwin Najjar, marketing manager for the iPAQ product line in Canada. "We're seeing an increase in the number of mobile professionals who are conscious of the information they have in their devices." At $1,069, the iPAQ 5450 isn't cheap. Still, with identity theft rampant and corporate espionage a growing concern, mobile professionals in fields such as the financial, health-care and insurance sectors might choose fingerprints over frugality. Experts say HP's decision to integrate biometric technology into a hand-held is an industry milestone and a sure sign of things to come as device makers draw up plans for next-generation products that blend tight security with one-swipe convenience. "The credibility you get from going into a consumer product like this is really high," said Michael Thieme, director of special projects for International Biometrics Group LLC, a New York-based consultancy that focuses on the biometric market. "I think it's reflective of what we're going to start seeing over the next 18 to 24 months." For biometric software and hardware developers, it's been a long time coming. Biometrics - a way of identifying people through a fingerprint, iris pattern or some other unique biological characteristic - has for years been touted as a perfect fit for consumer electronic devices, keyboards and that mouse beside your home computer. But PC and gadget manufacturers have been slow to jump aboard, citing concern over the cost, payback, reliability and accuracy of biometric readers. Hardware is already a low-margin business. For most, it's been a game of wait and see, with the emphasis on "wait." "The hardware and cellphone manufacturers in the last few years have been going through very difficult times, and that's put a lot of projects on hold," said Pierre Donaldson, president and chief executive officer of Toronto-based Bioscrypt Inc., one of the world's top providers of fingerprint recognition software. "It's not that we haven't been working on (that market), it's that the level of interest and funding hasn't been there," he added. Bioscrypt, renamed from Mytec Technologies Inc. after its acquisition two years ago of Sherman Oaks, Calif.-based Biometrics Identification Inc., took top spot in a fingerprint verification competition last August, winning 19 of 24 gold medals for accuracy and speed. The company gained public exposure after it began work with firearms manufacturer Smith & Wesson three years ago on a biometric trigger that activates when the owner swipes a finger. The project, while groundbreaking, has since petered out. To boost sales in the near term, Bioscrypt has been selling its fingerprint technology as part of security control systems for governments and large corporations, such as American Express Co. and Continental Airlines Inc. These systems - in greater demand after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - might include physical access into buildings, employee time clocks or fingerprint-protected safes. "We still need to feed the kids," joked Donaldson, making clear that the company still has eyes on the consumer device market. "The technology works. It is very much part of our strategy." During the past 90 days some deals that were previously on hold have been resurrected, he said, adding that the first mobile phones with fingerprint biometrics could, if "rumours" pan out, become available by the end of this year or early next. "We believe capital expenditures will start picking up once what's happening in Iraq is out of the way. Then we should see a stronger finish in 2003." A few have already dipped their toes. Asian computer giant Acer Inc. built a fingerprint reader into one of its TravelMate laptop computers two years ago, followed by International Business Machines Corp. Targus Inc., the leader in computer accessories, currently sells a PC card fingerprint reader - the "DEFCON Authenticator" - for use with laptops and a reader "pod" that can connect to any computer through a USB connection. "We are looking to expand the range of products," Targus product manager Daniel Wong said. For example, the company will soon sell a portable storage stick, a keyboard, a mouse and, potentially, a smart card that's integrated with a fingerprint reader. BioLink Technologies International Inc. of Miramar, Fla., has sold its U-Match fingerprint-reading mouse for more than two years. "I guess from a consumer perspective, trying to manage passwords is just crazy, and this alleviates a lot of that," Wong said. "On the corporate side it's more about high-level security and data protection, but for consumers, convenience plays a big part." Few believe biometrics for consumer devices will explode on to the scene overnight, but San Jose, Calif.-based Atmel Corp., maker of the world's smallest fingerprint imaging sensor, sees reason for optimism. "In consumer electronics, you can safely say that Atmel is in negotiations with the majority, if not all, of the manufacturers of hand-held devices, which would include PDAs and mobile phones," company spokesperson Clive Over said. Atmel's technology, called the FingerChip, is embedded in HP's iPAQ 5450. Users, when prompted, simply swipe their finger past a sensor bar. It works, but achieving a proper swipe takes some practice. The sensor measures the heat differential between the valleys and ridges of a person's fingerprint. In addition to HP, companies such as Palm Inc. have considered integrating fingerprint readers into their hand-held products, particularly high-end models. Industry observers say Palm - which controls 40 per cent of the hand-held market - got cold feet last year because of financial difficulties, but the company is now giving the technology a second thought. "I do know they still aim to consider these options," Over said. "They've been one of the companies we've been in conversation with." Other players taking a serious look at biometrics come from the automotive industry, adds Over, pointing out that luxury car manufacturers see fingerprint technology as a practical way of providing secure access to vehicles without the use of keys. A scan of the thumb could also be used to start a car's ignition. Facial, iris and voice recognition technologies continue to capture headlines - getting a boost no doubt from movies like Minority Report, where biometric surveillance makes it difficult for Tom Cruise to evade authorities. In the real world, there's been talk of using the cameras built into new "smart" phones to scan and verify the owner's iris or retina. But fingerprint scanners continue to grab the lion's share of the market. Frost & Sullivan Inc., a San Jose-based technology research firm, predicts the market will grow to $700 million (U.S.) in 2006 from $185 million this year. By 2005, International Biometrics Group expects the over-all biometrics market will hit nearly $2 billion. "The prices have dropped, and the actual core of fingerprint technology is now inexpensive enough that you can build it into the product without having a huge over-all price impact," International Biometrics Group's Thieme said. Still, the industry is grappling with a classic chicken-and-egg scenario. Companies such as Atmel and Bioscrypt need volume orders to reduce the cost, but with manufacturers limiting their orders to high-end products - such as the iPAQ 5450 - chances of driving the feature down to low-cost devices are slim, at least in the short term. Maxine Most, a biometric specialist with Acuity Market Intelligence in Boulder, Colo., says consumer fear and the need to properly authenticate people for online transactions will ultimately drive biometric technology into the mainstream. "We're very exposed in terms of accessibility and visibility across networks," she said. "We've built this tremendously powerful infrastructure that, at the same time, has broken down all the systems in place that protected us." Biometrics, Most said, is the only way to truly authenticate consumers wanting to buy items over the Internet or citizens wanting to access government services online. "Any token, methodology, password or anything else, it's all something someone can potentially possess or know," she explained. "Granted, you can spoof biometrics. (It's) not 100 per cent reliable, but it's the only indication that I am who I say I am." At the same time, personal electronics devices are increasingly becoming localized lifelines for people - those "digital wallets" we envisioned in the 1990s. They carry more and more personal information that can be used against us if it ends up in the wrong hands. "This whole notion of identity theft is powerful," she added. "Consumer fear will be a huge driver of (biometrics) adoption." http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1035779353363&call_pageid=968332188492 4. Surveillance Nation Webcams, tracking devices, and interlinked databases are leading to the elimination of unmonitored public space. Are we prepared for the consequences of the intelligence-gathering network we're unintentionally building? By Dan Farmer and Charles C. Mann April 2003 Route 9 is an old two-lane highway that cuts across Massachusetts from Boston in the east to Pittsfield in the west. Near the small city of Northampton, the highway crosses the wide Connecticut River. The Calvin Coolidge Memorial Bridge, named after the president who once served as Northampton's mayor, is a major regional traffic link. When the state began a long-delayed and still-ongoing reconstruction of the bridge in the summer of 2001, traffic jams stretched for kilometers into the bucolic New England countryside. In a project aimed at alleviating drivers' frustration, the University of Massachusetts Transportation Center, located in nearby Amherst, installed eight shoe-size digital surveillance cameras along the roads leading to the bridge. Six are mounted on utility poles and the roofs of local businesses. Made by Axis Communications in Sweden, they are connected to dial-up modems and transmit images of the roadway before them to a Web page, which commuters can check for congestion before tackling the road. According to Dan Dulaski, the system's technical manager, running the entire webcam system-power, phone, and Internet fees-costs just $600 a month. The other two cameras in the Coolidge Bridge project are a little less routine. Built by Computer Recognition Systems in Wokingham, England, with high-quality lenses and fast shutter speeds (1/10,000 second), they are designed to photograph every car and truck that passes by. Located eight kilometers apart, at the ends of the zone of maximum traffic congestion, the two cameras send vehicle images to attached computers, which use special character-recognition software to decipher vehicle license plates. The license data go to a server at the company's U.S. office in Cambridge, MA, about 130 kilometers away. As each license plate passes the second camera, the server ascertains the time difference between the two readings. The average of the travel durations of all successfully matched vehicles defines the likely travel time for crossing the bridge at any given moment, and that information is posted on the traffic watch Web page. To local residents, the traffic data are helpful, even vital: police use the information to plan emergency routes. But as the computers calculate traffic flow, they are also making a record of all cars that cross the bridge-when they do so, their average speed, and (depending on lighting and weather conditions) how many people are in each car. Trying to avoid provoking privacy fears, Keith Fallon, a Computer Recognition Systems project engineer, says, "we're not saving any of the information we capture. Everything is deleted immediately." But the company could change its mind and start saving the data at any time. No one on the road would know. The Coolidge Bridge is just one of thousands of locations around the planet where citizens are crossing-willingly, more often than not-into a world of networked, highly computerized surveillance. According to a January report by J.P. Freeman, a security market-research firm in Newtown, CT, 26 million surveillance cameras have already been installed worldwide, and more than 11 million of them are in the United States. In heavily monitored London, England, Hull University criminologist Clive Norris has estimated, the average person is filmed by more than 300 cameras each day. The $150 million-a-year remote digital-surveillance-camera market will grow, according to Freeman, at an annual clip of 40 to 50 percent for the next 10 years. But astonishingly, other, nonvideo forms of monitoring will increase even faster. In a process that mirrors the unplanned growth of the Internet itself, thousands of personal, commercial, medical, police, and government databases and monitoring systems will intersect and entwine. Ultimately, surveillance will become so ubiquitous, networked, and searchable that unmonitored public space will effectively cease to exist. This prospect-what science fiction writer David Brin calls "the transparent society"-may sound too distant to be worth thinking about. But even the farsighted Brin underestimated how quickly technological advances-more powerful microprocessors, faster network transmissions, larger hard drives, cheaper electronics, and more sophisticated and powerful software-would make universal surveillance possible. It's not all about Big Brother or Big Business, either. Widespread electronic scrutiny is usually denounced as a creation of political tyranny or corporate greed. But the rise of omnipresent surveillance will be driven as much by ordinary citizens' understandable-even laudatory-desires for security, control, and comfort as by the imperatives of business and government. "Nanny cams," global-positioning locators, police and home security networks, traffic jam monitors, medical-device radio-frequency tags, small-business webcams: the list of monitoring devices employed by and for average Americans is already long, and it will only become longer. Extensive surveillance, in short, is coming into being because people like and want it. "Almost all of the pieces for a surveillance society are already here," says Gene Spafford, director of Purdue University's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security. "It's just a matter of assembling them." Unfortunately, he says, ubiquitous surveillance faces intractable social and technological problems that could well reduce its usefulness or even make it dangerous. As a result, each type of monitoring may be beneficial in itself, at least for the people who put it in place, but the collective result could be calamitous. To begin with, surveillance data from multiple sources are being combined into large databases. For example, businesses track employees' car, computer, and telephone use to evaluate their job performance; similarly, the U.S. Defense Department's experimental Total Information Awareness project has announced plans to sift through information about millions of people to find data that identify criminals and terrorists. But many of these merged pools of data are less reliable than small-scale, localized monitoring efforts; big databases are harder to comb for bad entries, and their conclusions are far more difficult to verify. In addition, the inescapable nature of surveillance can itself create alarm, even among its beneficiaries. "Your little camera network may seem like a good idea to you," Spafford says. "Living with everyone else's could be a nightmare." The Surveillance Ad-Hocracy Last October deadly snipers terrorized Washington, DC, and the surrounding suburbs, killing 10 people. For three long weeks, law enforcement agents seemed helpless to stop the murderers, who struck at random and then vanished into the area's snarl of highways. Ultimately, two alleged killers were arrested, but only because their taunting messages to the authorities had inadvertently provided clues to their identification. In the not-too-distant future, according to advocates of policing technologies, such unstoppable rampages may become next to impossible, at least in populous areas. By combining police cameras with private camera networks like that on Route 9, video coverage will become so complete that any snipers who waged an attack-and all the people near the crime scene-would be trackable from camera to camera until they could be stopped and interrogated. The unquestionable usefulness and sheer affordability of these extensive video-surveillance systems suggest that they will propagate rapidly. But despite the relentlessly increasing capabilities of such systems, video monitoring is still but a tiny part-less than 1 percent-of surveillance overall, says Carl Botan, a Purdue center researcher who has studied this technology for 15 years. Examples are legion. By 2006, for instance, law will require that every U.S. cell phone be designed to report its precise location during a 911 call; wireless carriers plan to use the same technology to offer 24-hour location-based services, including tracking of people and vehicles. To prevent children from wittingly or unwittingly calling up porn sites, the Seattle company N2H2 provides Web filtering and monitoring services for 2,500 schools serving 16 million students. More than a third of all large corporations electronically review the computer files used by their employees, according to a recent American Management Association survey. Seven of the 10 biggest supermarket chains use discount cards to monitor customers' shopping habits: tailoring product offerings to customers' wishes is key to survival in that brutally competitive business. And as part of a new, federally mandated tracking system, the three major U.S. automobile manufacturers plan to put special radio transponders known as radio frequency identification tags in every tire sold in the nation. Far exceeding congressional requirements, according to a leader of the Automotive Industry Action Group, an industry think tank, the tags can be read on vehicles going as fast as 160 kilometers per hour from a distance of 4.5 meters. Many if not most of today's surveillance networks were set up by government and big business, but in years to come individuals and small organizations will set the pace of growth. Future sales of Net-enabled surveillance cameras, in the view of Fredrik Nilsson, Axis Communications' director of business development, will be driven by organizations that buy more than eight but fewer than 30 cameras-condo associations, church groups, convenience store owners, parent-teacher associations, and anyone else who might like to check what is happening in one place while he is sitting in another. A dozen companies already help working parents monitor their children's nannies and day-care centers from the office; scores more let them watch backyards, school buses, playgrounds, and their own living rooms. Two new startups-Wherify Wireless in Redwood Shores, CA, and Peace of Mind at Light Speed in Westport, CT-are introducing bracelets and other portable devices that continuously beam locating signals to satellites so that worried moms and dads can always find their children. As thousands of ordinary people buy monitoring devices and services, the unplanned result will be an immense, overlapping grid of surveillance systems, created unintentionally by the same ad-hocracy that caused the Internet to explode. Meanwhile, the computer networks on which monitoring data are stored and manipulated continue to grow faster, cheaper, smarter, and able to store information in greater volume for longer times. Ubiquitous digital surveillance will marry widespread computational power-with startling results. The factors driving the growth of computing potential are well known. Moore's law-which roughly equates to the doubling of processor speed every 18 months-seems likely to continue its famous march. Hard drive capacity is rising even faster. It has doubled every year for more than a decade, and this should go on "as far as the eye can see," according to Robert M. Wise, director of product marketing for the desktop product group at Maxtor, a hard drive manufacturer. Similarly, according to a 2001 study by a pair of AT&T Labs researchers, network transmission capacity has more than doubled annually for the last dozen years, a tendency that should continue for at least another decade and will keep those powerful processors and hard drives well fed with fresh data. Today a company or agency with a $10 million hardware budget can buy processing power equivalent to 2,000 workstations, two petabytes of hard drive space (two million gigabytes, or 50,000 standard 40-gigabyte hard drives like those found on today's PCs), and a two-gigabit Internet connection (more than 2,000 times the capacity of a typical home broadband connection). If current trends continue, simple arithmetic predicts that in 20 years the same purchasing power will buy the processing capability of 10 million of today's workstations, 200 exabytes (200 million gigabytes) of storage capacity, and 200 exabits (200 million megabits) of bandwidth. Another way of saying this is that by 2023 large organizations will be able to devote the equivalent of a contemporary PC to monitoring every single one of the 330 million people who will then be living in the United States. One of the first applications for this combination of surveillance and computational power, says Raghu Ramakrishnan, a database researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be continuous intensive monitoring of buildings, offices, and stores: the spaces where middle-class people spend most of their lives. Surveillance in the workplace is common now: in 2001, according to the American Management Association survey, 77.7 percent of major U.S. corporations electronically monitored their employees, and that statistic had more than doubled since 1997 (see "Eye on Employees," below). But much more is on the way. Companies like Johnson Controls and Siemens, Ramakrishnan says, are already "doing simplistic kinds of 'asset tracking,' as they call it." They use radio frequency identification tags to monitor the locations of people as well as inventory. In January, Gillette began attaching such tags to 500 million of its Mach 3 Turbo razors. Special "smart shelves" at Wal-Mart stores will record the removal of razors by shoppers, thereby alerting stock clerks whenever shelves need to be refilled-and effectively transforming Gillette customers into walking radio beacons. In the future, such tags will be used by hospitals to ensure that patients and staff maintain quarantines, by law offices to keep visitors from straying into rooms containing clients' confidential papers, and in kindergartens to track toddlers. By employing multiple, overlapping types of monitoring, Ramakrishnan says, managers will be able to "keep track of people, objects, and environmental levels throughout a whole complex." Initially, these networks will be installed for "such mundane things as trying to figure out when to replace the carpets or which areas of lawn get the most traffic so you need to spread some grass seed preventively." But as computers and monitoring equipment become cheaper and more powerful, managers will use surveillance data to construct complex, multidimensional records of how spaces are used. The models will be analyzed to improve efficiency and security-and they will be sold to other businesses or governments. Over time, the thousands of individual monitoring schemes inevitably will merge together and feed their data into large commercial and state-owned networks. When surveillance databases can describe or depict what every individual is doing at a particular time, Ramakrishnan says, they will be providing humankind with the digital equivalent of an ancient dream: being "present, in effect, almost anywhere and anytime." Garbage In, Gragbea Otu In 1974 Francis Ford Coppola wrote and directed The Conversation, which starred Gene Hackman as Harry Caul, a socially maladroit surveillance expert. In this remarkably prescient movie, a mysterious organization hires Caul to record a quiet discussion that will take place in the middle of a crowd in San Francisco's Union Square. Caul deploys three microphones: one in a bag carried by a confederate and two directional mikes installed on buildings overlooking the area. Afterward Caul discovers that each of the three recordings is plagued by background noise and distortions, but by combining the different sources, he is able to piece together the conversation. Or, rather, he thinks he has pieced it together. Later, to his horror, Caul learns that he misinterpreted a crucial line, a discovery that leads directly to the movie's chilling denouement. The Conversation illustrates a central dilemma for tomorrow's surveillance society. Although much of the explosive growth in monitoring is being driven by consumer demand, that growth has not yet been accompanied by solutions to the classic difficulties computer systems have integrating disparate sources of information and arriving at valid conclusions. Data quality problems that cause little inconvenience on a local scale-when Wal-Mart's smart shelves misread a razor's radio frequency identification tag-have much larger consequences when organizations assemble big databases from many sources and attempt to draw conclusions about, say, someone's capacity for criminal action. Such problems, in the long run, will play a large role in determining both the technical and social impact of surveillance. The experimental and controversial Total Information Awareness program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency exemplifies these issues. By merging records from corporate, medical, retail, educational, travel, telephone, and even veterinary sources, as well as such "biometric" data as fingerprints, iris and retina scans, DNA tests, and facial-characteristic measurements, the program is intended to create an unprecedented repository of information about both U.S. citizens and foreigners with U.S. contacts. Program director John M. Poindexter has explained that analysts will use custom data-mining techniques to sift through the mass of information, attempting to "detect, classify, and identify foreign terrorists" in order to "preempt and defeat terrorist acts"-a virtual Eye of Sauron, in critics' view, constructed from telephone bills and shopping preference cards. In February Congress required the Pentagon to obtain its specific approval before implementing Total Information Awareness in the United States (though certain actions are allowed on foreign soil). But President George W. Bush had already announced that he was creating an apparently similar effort, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, to be led by the Central Intelligence Agency. Regardless of the fate of these two programs, other equally sweeping attempts to pool monitoring data are proceeding apace. Among these initiatives is Regulatory DataCorp, a for-profit consortium of 19 top financial institutions worldwide. The consortium, which was formed last July, combines members' customer data in an effort to combat "money laundering, fraud, terrorist financing, organized crime, and corruption." By constantly poring through more than 20,000 sources of public information about potential wrongdoings-from newspaper articles and Interpol warrants to disciplinary actions by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission-the consortium's Global Regulatory Information Database will, according to its owner, help clients "know their customers." Equally important in the long run are the databases that will be created by the nearly spontaneous aggregation of scores or hundreds of smaller databases. "What seem to be small-scale, discrete systems end up being combined into large databases," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit research organization in Washington, DC. He points to the recent, voluntary efforts of merchants in Washington's affluent Georgetown district. They are integrating their in-store closed-circuit television networks and making the combined results available to city police. In Rotenberg's view, the collection and consolidation of individual surveillance networks into big government and industry programs "is a strange mix of public and private, and it's not something that the legal system has encountered much before." Managing the sheer size of these aggregate surveillance databases, surprisingly, will not pose insurmountable technical difficulties. Most personal data are either very compact or easily compressible. Financial, medical, and shopping records can be represented as strings of text that are easily stored and transmitted; as a general rule, the records do not grow substantially over time. Even biometric records are no strain on computing systems. To identify people, genetic-testing firms typically need stretches of DNA that can be represented in just one kilobyte-the size of a short e-mail message. Fingerprints, iris scans, and other types of biometric data consume little more. Other forms of data can be preprocessed in much the way that the cameras on Route 9 transform multimegabyte images of cars into short strings of text with license plate numbers and times. (For investigators, having a video of suspects driving down a road usually is not as important as simply knowing that they were there at a given time.) To create a digital dossier for every individual in the United States-as programs like Total Information Awareness would require-only "a couple terabytes of well-defined information" would be needed, says Jeffrey Ullman, a former Stanford University database researcher. "I don't think that's really stressing the capacity of [even today's] databases." Instead, argues Rajeev Motwani, another member of Stanford's database group, the real challenge for large surveillance databases will be the seemingly simple task of gathering valid data. Computer scientists use the term GIGO-garbage in, garbage out-to describe situations in which erroneous input creates erroneous output. Whether people are building bombs or buying bagels, governments and corporations try to predict their behavior by integrating data from sources as disparate as electronic toll-collection sensors, library records, restaurant credit-card receipts, and grocery store customer cards-to say nothing of the Internet, surely the world's largest repository of personal information. Unfortunately, all these sources are full of errors, as are financial and medical records. Names are misspelled and digits transposed; address and e-mail records become outdated when people move and switch Internet service providers; and formatting differences among databases cause information loss and distortion when they are merged. "It is routine to find in large customer databases defective records-records with at least one major error or omission-at rates of at least 20 to 35 percent," says Larry English of Information Impact, a database consulting company in Brentwood, TN. Unfortunately, says Motwani, "data cleaning is a major open problem in the research community. We are still struggling to get a formal technical definition of the problem." Even when the original data are correct, he argues, merging them can introduce errors where none had existed before. Worse, none of these worries about the garbage going into the system even begin to address the still larger problems with the garbage going out. The Dissolution of Privacy Almost every computer-science student takes a course in algorithms. Algorithms are sets of specified, repeatable rules or procedures for accomplishing tasks such as sorting numbers; they are, so to speak, the engines that make programs run. Unfortunately, innovations in algorithms are not subject to Moore's law, and progress in the field is notoriously sporadic. "There are certain areas in algorithms we basically can't do better and others where creative work will have to be done," Ullman says. Sifting through large surveillance databases for information, he says, will essentially be "a problem in research in algorithms. We need to exploit some of the stuff that's been done in the data-mining community recently and do it much, much better." Working with databases requires users to have two mental models. One is a model of the data. Teasing out answers to questions from the popular search engine Google, for example, is easier if users grasp the varieties and types of data on the Internet-Web pages with words and pictures, whole documents in a multiplicity of formats, downloadable software and media files-and how they are stored. In exactly the same way, extracting information from surveillance databases will depend on a user's knowledge of the system. "It's a chess game," Ullman says. "An unusually smart analyst will get things that a not-so-smart one will not." Second, and more important according to Spafford, effective use of big surveillance databases will depend on having a model of what one is looking for. This factor is especially crucial, he says, when trying to predict the future, a goal of many commercial and government projects. For this reason, what might be called reactive searches that scan recorded data for specific patterns are generally much more likely to obtain useful answers than proactive searches that seek to get ahead of things. If, for instance, police in the Washington sniper investigation had been able to tap into a pervasive network of surveillance cameras, they could have tracked people seen near the crime scenes until they could be stopped and questioned: a reactive process. But it is unlikely that police would have been helped by proactively asking surveillance databases for the names of people in the Washington area with the requisite characteristics (family difficulties, perhaps, or military training and a recent penchant for drinking) to become snipers. In many cases, invalid answers are harmless. If Victoria's Secret mistakenly mails 1 percent of its spring catalogs to people with no interest in lingerie, the price paid by all parties is small. But if a national terrorist-tracking system has the same 1 percent error rate, it will produce millions of false alarms, wasting huge amounts of investigators' time and, worse, labeling many innocent U.S. citizens as suspects. "A 99 percent hit rate is great for advertising," Spafford says, "but terrible for spotting terrorism." Because no system can have a success rate of 100 percent, analysts can try to decrease the likelihood that surveillance databases will identify blameless people as possible terrorists. By making the criteria for flagging suspects more stringent, officials can raise the bar, and fewer ordinary citizens will be wrongly fingered. Inevitably, however, that will mean also that the "borderline" terrorists-those who don't match all the search criteria but still have lethal intentions-might be overlooked as well. For both types of error, the potential consequences are alarming. Yet none of these concerns will stop the growth of surveillance, says Ben Shneiderman, a computer scientist at the University of Maryland. Its potential benefits are simply too large. An example is what Shneiderman, in his recent book Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies, calls the World Wide Med: a global, unified database that makes every patient's complete medical history instantly available to doctors through the Internet, replacing today's scattered sheaves of paper records (see "Paperless Medicine,"). "The idea," he says, "is that if you're brought to an ER anywhere in the world, your medical records pop up in 30 seconds." Similar programs are already coming into existence. Backed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a team based at Harvard Medical School is planning to monitor the records of 20 million walk-in hospital patients throughout the United States for clusters of symptoms associated with bioterror agents. Given the huge number of lost or confused medical records, the benefits of such plans are clear. But because doctors would be continually adding information to medical histories, the system would be monitoring patients' most intimate personal data. The network, therefore, threatens to violate patient confidentiality on a global scale. In Shneiderman's view, such tradeoffs are inherent to surveillance. The collective by-product of thousands of unexceptionable, even praiseworthy efforts to gather data could be something nobody wants: the demise of privacy. "These networks are growing much faster than people realize," he says. "We need to pay attention to what we're doing right now." In The Conversation, surveillance expert Harry Caul is forced to confront the tradeoffs of his profession directly. The conversation in Union Square provides information that he uses to try to stop a murder. Unfortunately, his faulty interpretation of its meaning prevents him from averting tragedy. Worse still, we see in scene after scene that even the expert snoop is unable to avoid being monitored and recorded. At the movie's intense, almost wordless climax, Caul rips his home apart in a futile effort to find the electronic bugs that are hounding him. The Conversation foreshadowed a view now taken by many experts: surveillance cannot be stopped. There is no possibility of "opting out." The question instead is how to use technology, policy, and shared societal values to guide the spread of surveillance-by the government, by corporations, and perhaps most of all by our own unwitting and enthusiastic participation-while limiting its downside. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/farmer0403.asp?p=0