Surveillance and Security Systems

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Wed, 23 May 2012 13:35:00 +0000

Helicopters used by the Air Support Unit of London's Metropolitan Police will be keeping a close watch on potential security threats during this summer's Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations and the Olympic Games.

By Michele Neubert and Rachele Webb, NBC News

LONDON -- Helicopter-mounted cameras capable of identifying the color of a suspect's shoelaces on the ground from almost a mile away have been unveiled as a key weapon for security officials preparing of this summer's London Olympics.

The U.K. capital's Metropolitan Police plan to use the airborne cameras to monitor large areas that would otherwise need to be secured by dozens of officers on the ground. They will also be utilized during Diamond Jubilee celebrations -- which recognize Queen Elizabeth II's 60 years on the throne.

The devices feature powerful zoom functions which can even allow officers flying in helicopters to see the color of a suspect's eyes on the ground.

The aircraft will be used to monitor open public areas such as the River Thames, where huge crowds are expected to congregate to watch a royal flotilla as part of the Jubilee events. Images will then be fed back to police command centers on the ground.

Metropolitan Police Constable Ian Miller told NBC News: "We'll be able to deal with most threats. Primarily, it's going to be public safety -- the river itself is a hazard and there's going to be a lot of crowds.

Oda / Getty Images

From Wimbledon to Wembley Stadium to The Dome, a look at the venues for the
2012 London Olympic Games.

"From a good distance, you can have good clothing description and we're talking shoelace description…we're talking a kilometer (1,094 yards) away at least."

More than 300,000 extra visitors are expected in London over the weekend of June 2-5, when most of the Diamond Jubilee events will take place.

They may not have Q in their corners, but real spies do have gadgets that would fit right into a James Bond movie.

"We provide an aspect of the security plan that's not easily achieved on the ground so we can see rooftops, we can see inaccessible places and we can do so very, very quickly and efficiently from the helicopter," police Sergeant Richard Brandon added. "If we were to try and search all of those areas with conventional search teams, it would take weeks -- if not months -- to fully clear those sites.

"We're looking for people on rooftops, we're looking for people who are in places they shouldn't be, perhaps."

Firm Romney Founded Is Tied to Chinese Surveillance

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:46:00 +0000

Cities in China are installing surveillance systems with hundreds of thousands of cameras like these at a Beijing building site.

BEIJING — As the Chinese government forges ahead on a multibillion-dollar effort to blanket the country with surveillance cameras, one American company stands to profit: Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney।

In December, a Bain-run fund in which a Romney family blind trust has holdings purchased the video surveillance division of a Chinese company that claims to be the largest supplier to the government’s Safe Cities program, a highly advanced monitoring system that allows the authorities to watch over university campuses, hospitals, mosques and movie theaters from centralized command posts.

The Bain-owned company, Uniview Technologies, produces what it calls “infrared antiriot” cameras and software that enable police officials in different jurisdictions to share images in real time through the Internet. Previous projects have included an emergency command center in Tibet that “provides a solid foundation for the maintenance of social stability and the protection of people’s peaceful life,” according to Uniview’s Web site.

Such surveillance systems are often used to combat crime and the manufacturer has no control over whether they are used for other purposes. But human rights advocates say in China they are also used to intimidate and monitor political and religious dissidents. “There are video cameras all over our monastery, and their only purpose is to make us feel fear,” said Loksag, a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Gansu Province. He said the cameras helped the authorities identify and detain nearly 200 monks who participated in a protest at his monastery in 2008.

Mr. Romney has had no role in Bain’s operations since 1999 and had no say over the investment in China. But the fortunes of Bain and Mr. Romney are still closely tied.

The financial disclosure forms Mr. Romney filed last August show that a blind trust in the name of his wife, Ann Romney, held a relatively small stake of between $100,000 and $250,000 in the Bain Capital Asia fund that purchased Uniview.

In a statement, R. Bradford Malt, who manages the Romneys’ trusts, noted that he had put trust assets into the fund before it bought Uniview. He said that the Romneys had no role in guiding their investments. He also said he had no control over the Asian fund’s choice of investments.

Mr. Romney reported on his August disclosure forms that he and his wife earned a minimum of $5.6 million from Bain assets held in their blind trusts and retirement accounts. Bain employees and executives are also among the largest donors to his campaign, and their contributions accounted for 10 percent of the money received over the past year by Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney “super PAC.” Bain employees have also made substantial contributions to Democratic candidates, including President Obama.

Bain’s decision to enter China’s fast-growing surveillance industry raises questions about the direct role that American corporations play in outfitting authoritarian governments with technology that can be used to repress their own citizens.

It also comes at a delicate time for Mr. Romney, who has frequently called for a hard line against the Chinese government’s suppression of religious freedom and political dissent.

As with previous deals involving other American companies, critics argue that Bain’s acquisition of Uniview violates the spirit — if not necessarily the letter — of American sanctions imposed on Beijing after the deadly crackdown on protests in Tiananmen Square. Those rules, written two decades ago, bar American corporations from exporting to China “crime-control” products like those that process fingerprints, make photo identification cards or use night vision technology.

Most video surveillance equipment is not covered by the sanctions, even though a Canadian human rights group found in 2001 that Chinese security forces used Western-made video cameras to help identify and apprehend Tiananmen Square protesters.

Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, who frequently assails companies that do business with Chinese security agencies, said calls by some members of Congress to pass stricter regulations on American businesses have gone nowhere. “These companies are busy making a profit and don’t want to face realities, but what they’re doing is wrong,” said Mr. Wolf, who is co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.

In public comments and in a statement posted on his campaign Web site, Mr। Romney has accused the Obama administration of placing economic concerns above human rights in managing relations with China. He has called on the White House to offer more vigorous support of those who criticize the Chinese Communist Party.

“Any serious U.S. policy toward China must confront the fact that China’s regime continues to deny its people basic political freedoms and human rights,” according to the statement on his Web site. “The United States has an important role to play in encouraging the evolution of China toward a more politically open and democratic order.”

In recent years, a number of Western companies, including Honeywell, General Electric, I.B.M. and United Technologies, have been criticized for selling sophisticated surveillance-related technology to the Chinese government.

Other companies have been accused of directly helping China quash perceived opponents. In 2007, Yahoo settled a lawsuit asserting that it had provided the authorities with e-mails of a journalist who was later sentenced to 10 years in prison for sending an e-mail that prosecutors charged contained state secrets.

Cisco Systems is fighting a lawsuit in the United States filed by a human rights group over Internet networking equipment it sold to the Chinese government. The lawsuit asserts that the system, tailored to government demands, allowed the authorities to track down and torture members of the religious group Falun Gong.

Bain defended its purchase of Uniview, stressing that the Chinese company’s products were advertised as instruments for crime control, not political repression. “China’s increasingly urban population will face growing needs around personal safety and property protection,” the company said in a statement. “Video surveillance is part of the solution to that, as it is anywhere in the world.” The company also said that only one-third of Uniview’s sales were to public security bureaus.

William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council in Washington, said it was up to the American government, not individual companies, to set the guidelines for such business ventures. “A lot of the stuff we’re talking about is truly dual use,” said Mr. Reinsch, a former Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration. “You can sell it to a local police force that will use it to track down speeders, but you can also sell it to a ministry of state security that will use it to monitor dissidents.”

But Adam Segal, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on the intersection of technology and domestic security in China, said American companies could not shirk responsibility for the way their technology is used, especially in the wake of recent controversies over the sales of Western Internet filtering systems to autocratic rulers in the Arab world. “Technology companies have to begin to think about the ethics and political implications of selling these technologies,” he said.

Uniview is proud of its close association with China’s security establishment and boasts about the scores of surveillance systems it has created for local security agencies in the six years since the Safe Cities program was started.

“Social management and society building pose new demands for surveillance and control systems,” Uniview says in its promotional materials, which include an interview with Zhang Pengguo, the company’s chief executive. “A harmonious society is the essential nature of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” Mr. Zhang says.

Until now, Bain’s takeover of Uniview has drawn little attention outside China. The company was formerly the surveillance division of H3C, a joint venture between 3Com and Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant whose expansion plans in the United States have faced resistance from Congress over questions about its ties to the Chinese military.

In 2010, 3Com, along with H3C, became a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard in a $2.7 billion buyout deal.

H3C also sells technology unrelated to video surveillance, including Internet firewall products, but it was the video surveillance division alone that drew Bain Capital’s interest।

In December, H3C announced that Bain had bought out the surveillance division and formed Uniview, although under terms of the buyout, H3C provides Uniview with products, technical support and, for a period of time, the use of its brand name। Bain controls Uniview but says it has no role in its day-to-day operations.

Bain is, however, well positioned to profit. According to the British firm IMS Research, the Chinese market for security camera networks was $2.5 billion last year, a figure that is expected to double by 2015, with more than two-thirds of that demand coming from the government. Uniview currently has just 1 percent of the market, the firm said.

Chinese cities are rushing to construct their own surveillance systems. Chongqing, in Sichuan Province, is spending $4.2 billion on a network of 500,000 cameras, according to the state news media. Guangdong Province, the manufacturing powerhouse adjacent to Hong Kong, is mounting one million cameras. In Beijing, the municipal government is seeking to place cameras in all entertainment venues, adding to the skein of 300,000 cameras that were installed here for the 2008 Olympics.

By marrying Internet, cellphone and video surveillance, the government is seeking to create an omniscient monitoring system, said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong. “When it comes to surveillance, China is pretty upfront about its totalitarian ambitions,” he said.

For the legion of Chinese intellectuals, democracy advocates and religious figures who have tangled with the government, surveillance cameras have become inescapable.

Yang Weidong, a politically active filmmaker, said a phalanx of 13 cameras were installed in and around his apartment building last year after he submitted an interview request to President Hu Jintao, drawing the ire of domestic security agents. In January, Ai Weiwei, the artist and public critic, was questioned by the police after he threw stones at cameras trained on his front gate.

Li Tiantian, 45, a human rights lawyer in Shanghai, said the police used footage recorded outside a hotel in an effort to manipulate her during the three months she was illegally detained last year. The video, she said, showed her entering the hotel in the company of men other than her boyfriend.

During interrogations, Ms. Li said, the police taunted her about her sex life and threatened to show the video to her boyfriend. The boyfriend, however, refused to watch, she said.

“The scale of intrusion into people’s private lives is unprecedented,” she said in a phone interview। “Now when I walk on the street, I feel so vulnerable, like the police are watching me all the time.”

Congressman's Altercation on Tape

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 01:28:00 +0000

Rep. Bob Etheridge, a Democrat from North Carolina ought to be ashamed of himself. Listen closely to him talking, he sounds as if he's had a few drinks. Is this what we have elected in this country? Here's another one who needs to be canned.!!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Toll Booth Car Crash at DALLAS/FT. WORTH Airport

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:58:00 +0000

June 1st, 2010: Yasmine Aida Villasana arrested for DWI driving while intoxicated speeding towards toll booth and then crashing into barricade. The car flew through the air, over another car (but still underneath the roof of the toll) to the other side, and burst into flames. Villasana reportedly kept trying to get back into her car while it was on fire!!!

Surveillance Cam Catches Car Dealership Thief In Action.

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:48:00 +0000

He may be a low-level criminal with a taste for high end cars, but Winter Park police are trying to find the suspect caught on three digital surveillance cameras at a local car dealership. Rolling up in a luxury car, people at the Auto Sport Collection dealership in Winter Park might've thought the man on his cell phone could be a customer. But the dealership was closed and the surveillance video More.. revealed the man wandering from car to car, eventually getting into one, and then making off with free loot that he threw in his trunk. Managers said a $1,200 TV monitor was missing from a customized Nissan 240SX. Managers said a new $10,000 system of five digital cameras helped them get a good view of the suspect and his unusually nice getaway car. Winter Park police were examining the video to try to identify the suspect.

Car Thief Caught on Surveillance Cam

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:31:00 +0000

Police Brutality: Cop Kills Dogs, tries to buy owners silence

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sat, 22 May 2010 13:11:00 +0000

Copy Machines, a Security Risk?

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Wed, 12 May 2010 20:53:00 +0000

Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets

Your Office Copy Machine Might Digitally Store Thousands of Documents That Get Passed on at Resale

NEW YORK, April 15, 2010 (CBS) At a warehouse in New Jersey, 6,000 used copy machines sit ready to be sold. CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports almost every one of them holds a secret.

Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive - like the one on your personal computer - storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine.

In the process, it's turned an office staple into a digital time-bomb packed with highly-personal or sensitive data.

If you're in the identity theft business it seems this would be a pot of gold.

"The type of information we see on these machines with the social security numbers, birth certificates, bank records, income tax forms," John Juntunen said, "that information would be very valuable."

Buffalo Reacts to CBS News Investigation

Juntunen's Sacramento-based company Digital Copier Security developed software called "INFOSWEEP" that can scrub all the data on hard drives. He's been trying to warn people about the potential risk - with no luck.

"Nobody wants to step up and say, 'we see the problem, and we need to solve it,'" Juntunen said.

This past February, CBS News went with Juntunen to a warehouse in New Jersey, one of 25 across the country, to see how hard it would be to buy a used copier loaded with documents. It turns out ... it's pretty easy.

Juntunen picked four machines based on price and the number of pages printed. In less than two hours his selections were packed and loaded onto a truck. The cost? About $300 each.

Until we unpacked and plugged them in, we had no idea where the copiers came from or what we'd find.

We didn't even have to wait for the first one to warm up. One of the copiers had documents still on the copier glass, from the Buffalo, N.Y., Police Sex Crimes Division.

It took Juntunen just 30 minutes to pull the hard drives out of the copiers. Then, using a forensic software program available for free on the Internet, he ran a scan - downloading tens of thousands of documents in less than 12 hours.

The results were stunning: from the sex crimes unit there were detailed domestic violence complaints and a list of wanted sex offenders. On a second machine from the Buffalo Police Narcotics Unit we found a list of targets in a major drug raid.

The third machine, from a New York construction company, spit out design plans for a building near Ground Zero in Manhattan; 95 pages of pay stubs with names, addresses and social security numbers; and $40,000 in copied checks.

But it wasn't until hitting "print" on the fourth machine - from Affinity Health Plan, a New York insurance company, that we obtained the most disturbing documents: 300 pages of individual medical records. They included everything from drug prescriptions, to blood test results, to a cancer diagnosis. A potentially serious breach of federal privacy law.

"You're talking about potentially ruining someone's life," said Ira Winkler. "Where they could suffer serious social repercussions."

Winkler is a former analyst for the National Security Agency and a leading expert on digital security.

"You have to take some basic responsibility and know that these copiers are actually computers that need to be cleaned up," Winkler said.

The Buffalo Police Department and the New York construction company declined comment on our story. As for Affinity Health Plan, they issued a statement that said, in part, "we are taking the necessary steps to ensure that none of our customers' personal information remains on other previously leased copiers, and that no personal information will be released inadvertently in the future."

Ed McLaughlin is President of Sharp Imaging, the digital copier company.

"Has the industry failed, in your mind, to inform the general public of the potential risks involved with a copier?" Keteyian asked.

"Yes, in general, the industry has failed," McLaughlin said.

In 2008, Sharp commissioned a survey on copier security that found 60 percent of Americans "don't know" that copiers store images on a hard drive. Sharp tried to warn consumers about the simple act of copying.

"It's falling on deaf ears," McLaughlin said. "Or people don't feel it's important, or 'we'll take care of it later.'"

All the major manufacturers told us they offer security or encryption packages on their products. One product from Sharp automatically erases an image from the hard drive. It costs $500.

But evidence keeps piling up in warehouses that many businesses are unwilling to pay for such protection, and that the average American is completely unaware of the dangers posed by digital copiers.

The day we visited the New Jersey warehouse, two shipping containers packed with used copiers were headed overseas - loaded with secrets on their way to unknown buyers in Argentina and Singapore.

Compilation video of Red Light Runners

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sun, 09 May 2010 20:19:00 +0000

Watching this video compilation showing the results of people running "red" lights it may get you to think twice as you approach any intersection. Just because the light is "green" in your direction doesn't mean it's totally safe to go through the intersection expecting all traffic is stopped at the red light. Some of these show that people are totally asleep at the wheel. Probably texting.

Put More Cameras on the Streets

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:52:00 +0000

Steven Simon is an adjunct senior fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the co-author of “The Age of Sacred Terror” and “The Next Attack.”
Video surveillance would not have stopped the Times Square attack. Does this mean that it would be useless? Not necessarily.

The challenge: exploiting this visual information while protecting the privacy of citizens.

Swift and accurate analysis of video surveillance information might prevent the next attack, even if it is powerless to stop the last one. Imagery can be used to assist in the identification and location of individuals at the scene of the crime.

It can also be used to track the progress of the bomb-laden vehicle from the its point of origin, or the point at which the truck was weaponized, to the place the terrorists have targeted. In combination with physical evidence acquired from the vehicle — fingerprints, hair, cloth fibers, soil, trash, forgotten personal items or a host of other bits of evidence — video surveillance can lead to the arrest of the bombers and to the unraveling of cells or networks and, if the attackers are foreign, the ratlines they exploited to enter the country.

At this point, the U.S. does not have the kind of pervasive surveillance systems in place that, say, the British have deployed. In the U.K., there is about one surveillance camera for every thousand residents. It took British authorities years to reach this level of intensive surveillance.

The U.S., as anyone who follows the debate over privacy loss in this country knows, is studded with cameras, but most of these are in stores to track consumption habits to facilitate marketing or deter shoplifters. They’re not where they’re needed, which is on the street. The two smallest jurisdictions in the U.K., very rural areas indeed, together deploy more surveillance cameras than the San Francisco police department.

The U.S., of course, does not have to match Britain camera for camera. Surveillance can be enhanced in areas that are assessed to be likely targets, a category that can be inferred, at least in a general sense, from targeting patterns and what the terrorists actually have said about the desirability of attacking this or that; and they do discuss this in their literature and on their Web sites.

More problematic, is the need to organize our law enforcement capabilities in ways that enable this visual information to be exploited effectively, while protecting the rapidly fading privacy available to ordinary citizens. Therein lies the real challenge.

A Future of 24/7 Surveillance

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:40:00 +0000

Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of the New Republic, is the author of “The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age.”

After every thwarted terrorist attack, there are predictable calls for more surveillance cameras. Before the failed Times Square bombing attempt, the N.Y.P.D. got a $24 million Homeland Security grant to install a security network in Midtown with surveillance cameras, chemical sensors, and license plate readers. Despite evidence that such a system wouldn’t have prevented last Saturday’s attack, many will demand an even more elaborate surveillance network as a result. But all the best empirical research suggests that it will be a waste of money.

Consider how Google, Facebook and other Web services could be harnessed to surveillance cameras to monitor everyone’s movements.

Here’s what we know about surveillance cameras. They’re more or less useless in deterring terrorism before it occurs. The best peer reviewed studies in Britain and America find no connection between the proliferation of cameras and the deterrence of serious crime or terrorism. They’re also not useful in preventing attacks in progress: the Times Square bombing was detected by alert street vendors who saw the smoke and called the police.

Cameras sometimes play a supporting role in identifying the perpetrators after an attack has occurred. But in all the major terrorist attacks since 9/11, including the London bombings, the perpetrators would have been identified without the cameras. In the Times Square case, there was so much forensic evidence at the crime scene that the police were able to identify the former owner of the Pathfinder through the vehicle identification number, leading to the arrest of the suspect on Monday night without necessarily relying on
the footage from more than 80 surveillance cameras.

If there are already so many surveillance cameras in midtown and lower Manhattan -– more than 4,000 below 14th Street, according to one count why should anyone care about a few more? Even if they’re a placebo that makes us feel safer without actually making us safer, what’s the harm?

Although the harms were largely hypothetical when I began writing about surveillance cameras in the Britain and the U.S. right after 9/11 they are about to become much more tangible.

Google, Facebook and other Internet services could be asked to carry out Web-based facial recognition technologies that will make it possible for anyone to snap a cellphone picture of a stranger on the street, plug the picture into Google, and produce tagged and untagged pictures of the person across the Web, challenging our expectations of anonymity in public as camera footage proliferates.

That challenge will become even more acute over the next decades, as Google and Facebook confront pressure to post live feeds from all public and private surveillance cameras online. As the surveillance network in world capitals becomes ubiquitous, it will be possible to click on a picture of me in Midtown, back click on me to see where I came from, forward click to see where I’m going, making possible 24/7 surveillance of everyone in the system. When confronted with this not-so-hypothetical scenario, most people balk. And to accept 24/7 ubiquitous surveillance in exchange for virtually non-existent security benefits seems like a bad bargain, by any sane cost-benefit analysis.

So what’s the solution? More cops are always useful. Human intelligence is invaluable, and it’s important to keep citizens on the side of the police so they’re willing, like the Times square street vendors, both disabled Vietnam vets, to go out of their way to help. The arrest of the owner of the explosive-packed S.U.V. shortly before midnight on Monday demonstrated again that security depends on investigative work, which is not about installing more cameras.

Suspects tie clerk, rob Metro East hotel

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sun, 02 May 2010 20:55:00 +0000

(KMOV) --St. Louis Police are searching for two suspects accused of robbing a Collinsville hotel Saturday.
Authorities said two male suspects entered the Comfort Inn at 8 Commerce Drive armed with handguns and wearing ski masks. They bound the clerk's hands and feet and fled the scene with an undetermined amount of cash and checks. The clerk was not physically injured during the robbery and no shots were fired.
One suspect was wearing jeans with a distinct thread design on the back pockets. Police released the surveillance video Thursday.
The investigation is ongoing.

Security Camera Catches Vandal In Action

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:52:00 +0000

DAYTON, Ohio -- A Dayton business owner watched as a vandal, armed with paint, damaged his property.The incident happened Sunday night and was caught on the owner’s security camera.The owner said, “I couldn’t believe it! When I turned it on, I was about to go to bed. All of a sudden, I watched a guy come next to our truck, tagging it.”According to police, the vandalism was part of a one-block vandalism spree left by a man on Front Street in Dayton.The vandalism caused about $1,000 in damage.No one has been arrested in connection with the vandalism.

Speeding: Radar Gun vs. GPS

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:15:00 +0000

While an 11-year old, Louisville, Kentucky boy is using a toy radar gun to get drivers to slow down through his neighborhood, the police are finding that real radar guns might not be a match for GPS--at least not when contested in court.

According to a press release issued by Rocky Mountain Tracking, an 18-year old man, Shaun Malone, was able to successfully contest a speeding ticket in court using the data from a GPS device installed in his car. This wasn't just any old make-a-left-turn-100-feet-ahead-onto-Maple-Street GPS; this was a vehicle tracking GPS device--the kind used by trucking fleets--or in this case, overprotective parents. The device was installed in Malone's car by his parents, and the press release makes no mention if the teenager knew that the device was installed in his vehicle at the time.

Credit: Rocky Mountain Tracking

No matter, because Malone knew by the time he had to show up in court to contest the speeding ticket for going 17-mph over the posted 45-mph speed limit. While the police clocked him going 62-mph, the GPS's data in fact showed him driving at the 45-mph speed limit. In an initial trial-by-affidavit, Malone was found guilty of speeding. GPS expert, Dr. Stephen Heppe wrote a report that essentially said that the GPS data was not accurate enough to contest the accuracy of the radar gun. Malone appealed the decision and had his day in court. At trial, things played out differently:

"However, when he took the stand to begin his testimony, Dr. Heppe corrected that written report, saying that the Rocky Mountain Tracking device was "very" accurate, to within a couple of meters on location and to within 1 mph on speed. Dr. Heppe also pointed out that the GPS device released instantaneous data, and not data averaged over a distance."

Needless to say, with Dr. Heppe's revised testimony, Malone was found innocent of speeding.

Obviously, Rocky Mountain Tracking's motivation for publicizing this incident is to promote the accuracy of its RMT Rover GPS device. But it also brings up a larger issue: The sophistication of vehicle telematics is increasing all the time. Are we now at the point that the data generated from our personal location devices (such as GPS in cell phones and in-car navigation devices) is considered reliable enough to help exonerate us from false accusations? But isn't this also a slippery slope, where the same data can be used to incriminate us as well? It's one thing for parents to keep a close eye on their kids, but what happens when jealous spouses are tracked, or law enforcement uses the data to know where you've been. When does it become an invasion of privacy? Tell us what you think.

NYC - Routes of Least Surveillance...

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 03:22:00 +0000

A 12-block walk down Park Avenue becomes a 35-block trek when you avoid thesurveilance cameras. It's not the journey or the destination; it's the getting there unseen that counts. Or so goes the thinking behind a new mapping utility created by civil libertarians to guide New Yorkers through Manhattan along routes with the fewest surveillance cameras...

read more

Speed Enforcement Cameras are popping up across the country!!

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 02:50:00 +0000

New kind of speed trap

Cameras that catch speeding drivers are catching on — but some say they aren't always accurate. » Watch ....

Surveillance Systems and Their Intended Usage.

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:56:00 +0000

I just wanted to get some different comments and views from people around the globe and see what ideas and/or complaints come out.

So now I have security cams around my home, in the warehouse of one of my businesses and some other places I won't mention here. But, I will say that they do come in handy. The ones that I've set up in my warehouse are taped and saved daily. Then at the end of the month, we tape over them after we have done our inventory checks and compared them to out sales figures.