PI Newswire

To ensure the secure running of the 2011 Ladies Professional Golf Tournament’s Kia Classic held in City of Industry, Calif. from March 21 through 27, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department used a new surveillance system that provides deputies with realtime intelligence, said those involved with the security for the event.

Carlos Iribe, director of security for the Pacific Palms Hotel and Conference Center where the tournament was held, said the Kia Classic “is one of the biggest tournaments that we’ve had here in about 25 years.” Therefore, “extra eyes were important.”

To provide adequate surveillance for the star-studded event, the sheriff’s station in City of Industry used its new Public Safety Online (PSO) system which provides real-time intelligence through a combination of live cameras and a secure, web-based database at command centers and in law enforcement vehicles patrolling the area. The PSO enables first responders to view a location before they arrive on the scene and after, according to officials connected to the program.

PSO PERFORMANCE PRAISED

“Other companies had been here (the Pacific Palms) and tried to figure it out, but it didn’t appear that they knew what they were doing,” Iribe said. However, “the equipment that the sheriff’s department was able to provide, the assistance they gave us, and the link to their department was just superb, outstanding,” he said.

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When you think of traditional surveillance, monitoring the output of video cameras on a screen, you typically think of dedicated surveillance equipment or Windows software. Cameras have been available for a while that come with Windows software for monitoring, but typically these cameras do not advertise Mac or Linux compatibility.

This changes with Ben Bird’s SecuritySpy software. SecuritySpy is a software package for the Mac that works with a number of different video camera types, even many that are advertised as Windows-only by the manufacturer. For instance, some brands that SecuritySpy works with include Airlink101, Axis, Canon, Cisco/Linksys, D-Link, Hawking, Panasonic, Sanyo, Sony, and many more. It supports network cameras and network video servers, and also USB and FireWire cameras. This means you can use SecuritySpy with the iSight on your computer, or many other cameras that can connect to the network.

I have always wanted to set something up to view the backyard and also the front (so I know whether to answer the door when the doorbell rings, for instance if it is UPS or someone soliciting). I found SecuritySpy quite by accident and the next day when I was at my local hardware shop, I found two supported AirLink101 WiFi-enabled network cameras. They were $100 each, nothing overly fancy, but they were cheap enough to allow me to tinker.

SecuritySpy worked flawlessly with the cameras. I have one at the front, and one at the back, and can view both cameras at the same time in real-time. The setup was simple: configure each camera independently and tell SecuritySpy about them via the Settings | Video Device Setup option from the menu bar. From there, I added a new device, set the IP address of the camera, and provided the login credentials. Within moments, I was viewing the camera.

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This is an era in which many devices are watching us. We carry about wireless phones that tell our service providers exactly where we are. Surveillance cameras blink down from corners and storefronts. Advertisers follow us effortlessly around the Internet. Still, plans in Contra Costa County, Calif., to tag preschoolers with radio frequency identification chips to keep track of their whereabouts at school seem to go too far.

The concern that school officials would use the ID chips to keep tabs on children’s behavior — and tag them perhaps as hyperactive or excessively passive — seems overwrought. County officials point out that the tags will save money and allow teachers to devote less time to attendance paperwork and more time to their students. And the chips, which will be randomly assigned to different children every day, according to a county representative, will not carry personal information that could be intercepted by others.

We just worry that we are all becoming a little too blasé about our scrutinized lives. Americans’ enthusiasm for technological solutions typically has been balanced by a mistrust of technology taking over our lives. The demons of “I, Robot” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” always lurked somewhere beneath the surface of our dreams of high-tech futures.

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In 2008, Atlanta police were on the lookout for a known sexual predator who had 10 outstanding warrants from other jurisdictions.

An officer monitoring surveillance cameras in Midtown spotted a man fitting the suspect’s description walking down the street. Within minutes, he was under arrest.

Police departments throughout metro Atlanta are increasingly turning to new video camera technology – in parks, parking lots, walking trails and roadways – to keep people from running afoul of the law.

New high-tech surveillance systems are popping up in Lilburn and Suwanee. Police in Alpharetta and Clarkston are using wireless video technology to automatically upload footage from their patrol cars. And Midtown Atlanta boasts 45 cameras mounted on traffic signal poles, buildings and in the middle of intersections.

Law enforcement agencies say the cameras add an extra set of eyes and help officers nab suspects. But critics say the cameras raise privacy concerns.

“For areas like parks it adds safety, but if in general areas, it’s like spying,” said Ilene Garry, a Lilburn resident. “I think it might give people a false sense of safety that if the cameras are there, they don’t need to be on guard.”

James Darren Day, a Libertarian from Lawrenceville, would rather limit Big Brother.

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These days, trips to a shopping center or government building come with the understanding that you’re most likely going to be photographed at some point by a surveillance camera.

But how about while mowing the lawn? Or riding a bike down the street? That’s becoming the case as surveillance cameras move from retail areas to residential neighborhoods.

Bakersfield police recently released surveillance footage of a suspected prowler in the 11000 block of Valley Forge Way in northwest Bakersfield. The footage came from a camera outside a resident’s house.

Local law enforcement said they don’t endorse any particular type of home security over another, and that it’s a personal decision. They did say, however, that cameras outside homes can sometimes assist in investigations.

The slow but steady increase of home surveillance camera installations represents a shift toward new technology that provides evidence if the homeowner is a victim of a crime. Such evidence may lead to an arrest and conviction.

Bakersfield police Sgt. Mary DeGeare said officers are starting to see surveillance cameras more often on private residences, but they’re still fairly new.

“I think it’s a good idea in that it’s a deterrent for a burglar and it’s helpful to us,” she said.

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The Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC) has called for the State Government to modernise surveillance laws in response to advances in technology.

In its Surveillance in Public Places report (pdf), tabled in Parliament today, the Commission made 33 recommendations expected to balance the benefits of surveillance with privacy.

A combination of best practice guidelines and legislation was recommended to regulate surveillance and curb “improper use” of devices.

“Upskirting” and “happy slapping” were highlighted as two such uses. The former was a criminal offence involving the use of hidden cameras to record images up the skirts of women.

The Commission believed that the latter, in which individuals recorded violent attacks and then distributed the footage, could be exacerbating criminal behaviour.

Surveillance technology was used extensively by the Victoria Police, Corrections Victoria, local councils, and transport organisations, as well as at public events, in public housing estates, universities and TAFEs, shopping centres and the hospitality industry.

The combination of various technologies – CCTV, GPS, automatic number plate and facial recognition – led to a loss of privacy and anonymity, VLRC reported.

“This may cause Victorians to alter the way we express ourselves and behave when in public,” the Commission wrote.

“Those people with the means to do so may retreat to private places whenever possible in order to avoid unwanted observation.”

The Commission recommended that the Government appoint a regulator to oversee public place surveillance, and give people the right to sue for the misuse of surveillance in a public place.

It also proposed amendments to the Victorian Surveillance Devices Act 1999 to prohibit the use of surveillance devices in toilets and change rooms, and include technological advances such as in mobile phones that could be used as cameras and tracking devices.

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It is a specialized form of software that can decide whether or not something is amiss with what the surveillance camera is seeing—Is that a person trying to climb the fence?—and decide whether or not to alert the system’s human monitors. In doing so, video analytics technology eliminates the mind-numbing aspect of human surveillance; namely having to watch numerous camera feeds in real-time, when nothing is occurring with most of them.

“Today’s intrusion detection systems often have hundreds of cameras; some have thousands,” says Steve Vinsik, vice president for critical infrastructure protection with Unisys Federal Systems. “A human can only watch so many video feeds at one time, and it is extremely fatiguing to the viewer when nothing is happening in most of them. Video analytics takes this job away, allowing the human to only turn their attention to cameras where something is detected to be happening. This improves security, and makes the CCTV monitoring job more effective and much easier to bear.”

This said, video analytics has its limits. It can substantially shoulder the most mundane aspects of CCTV surveillance, but the final decisions still must be made by human operators. And no system is perfect: Even with the best of software and hardware, video analytics systems do come up with “false positives” and “missed detections.”

“It is always a trade-off between missed detections and false positives,” says Moti Shabtai, executive vice president of Sales for NICE Systems in the Americas. “If you lower the threshold at which the system decides to send an alert, when an anomaly is detected in the camera’s field of vision, you lower the rate of missed detections but raise the potential for false positives. This is because the images are being analyzed using mathematical algorithms, with the human operator setting the line between ignoring or alerting. Move the line, and you change the conditions. How you set the line depends on whether missed detections are more important than false positives in your particular deployment.”

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SOUTH FLORIDA — Identifying a criminal is now a mouse click away, according to Ryan Borcherds and Brett Goldstein.

The two friends started a website in South Florida called CrooksTube.com. It is designed specifically for surveillance video from around the country.

Goldstein explained how someone living in Boca Raton, for example, would use the site.

“Instead of seeing crimes from Tampa, which you probably wouldn’t recognize the person, you can go to Boca Raton, press ‘to,’ and these are going to be all the crimes in Boca Raton,” said Goldstein.

“Making the site geographically targeted was something that we thought was important,” said Borcherds.

The two said they work around the clock to post the more than 600 videos. The site also offers local alerts. For example, if you sign up for a Florida alert, you will get an e-mail with a link to any of the new video posted from the area.

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Raleigh, N.C. — Police on Thursday arrested two men on charges that they were performing locksmith services without a license, including one man who was the subject of a WRAL News hidden-camera investigation.

Reem Shai and a partner were caught on camera last year drilling the locks on a homeowner’s front door. The men initially quoted the customer a $35 fee to get her into her house, but the price quickly ballooned to more than $400.

The investigation prompted a flood of complaints to state Attorney General Roy Cooper’s office. Cooper then filed suit against three companies, which each operate under numerous names, in an effort to shut them down.

The North Carolina Locksmith Licensing Board also hired a private investigator to document cases where unlicensed locksmiths gouged customers.

During the course of the board’s investigation and before officials realized who he was, Shai applied for a state locksmith license, but he failed the test.

The private investigator on Thursday tipped off Raleigh police that Shai was operating a kiosk at Triangle Town Center mall advertising his services, and officers arrested him.

Police also picked up a second man, Kfir Mazor, on Thursday morning and charged him with locksmith license violations.

One woman, who asked not to be identified, said Thursday that she paid Mazor $334 after being quoted a $29 fee. She said she became suspicious when he showed up outside her house in an unmarked car.

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LOS ANGELES—The American Civil Liberties Union has criticized abuses at Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail and the so-called “scannergate” scandal involving jailers who cheated a bar code system to avoid checking cells regularly.

Two sheriff’s deputies have been fired and another eight sworn officers have been disciplined after a jail suicide exposed the bar code cheating. Deputies were using fake scanner codes to thwart electronic checkpoints installed around the downtown jail.

The ACLU on Thursday blasted the deputies for the deliberate faking of surveillance logs.

In a statement, the civil rights organization says the scandal underscores its efforts to address horrific conditions and abuses at the jail. The ACLU says up to 50 percent of the inmates are mentally ill.

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore says changes have been made to prevent similar incidents.

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In our continuing series in which ‘Irish Times’ writers consider their alternative careers, ARMINTA WALLACE wonders how she would have got on as a private investigator

ONCE UPON A TIME I attended a career-change course, purely in the interests of research. I had been assigned to write a feature about it. Personally, I had no desire for a career change. Apart from journalism the only other jobs I’ve done are private piano teaching, which was hugely demanding and often exasperating, and which had a kind of built-in glass ceiling, because you could only fit in so many children in a week; and substitute teaching in secondary schools. Which gave me migraines.

But the final session of that career-change course gave me pause for thought. We got into groups, evaluated each other’s strengths and weaknesses and suggested alternative careers for everyone. When it came to my turn I was told I’d make a good private detective. I thought they were taking the mickey. They weren’t. In all seriousness they told me that as I enjoyed finding things out and presenting the information in an accessible way, private investigation would suit me down to the ground.

I had never even met a private detective. I knew a lot about them, or so I thought, from crime fiction, a genre populated by large numbers of feisty PIs of the female persuasion. On closer inspection, however, none of the latter seemed to be quite me.

The mother of all the female sleuths is Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, but though I’m pretty grumpy and can, if pressed, knit, there’s no way I could identify with a woman who, at least as played by the wonderful Joan Hickson on television, reminds me so forcefully of my paternal granny.

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TAMPA – In the spare bedroom of Garret King’s house in Tampa, you’ll find a wooden board covering a shattered window.

The broken glass was the handy work of a burglar’s brick. The burglar then came into the house and stole King’s laptop and television.

“It rattles you,” King admits. “It was fairly scary. You don’t expect someone to try and get in your house when you’re here.”

If you continue to look around King’s house, you’ll also find a new addition: four newly-installed surveillance cameras, aimed at preventing another burglary.

King is not the only homeowner who has added cameras. According to Byron Reid, director of Total Surveillance Inc., the popularity of surveillance cameras has exploded in the last five years.

“The ability, size and complexity (of the cameras) have really advanced in those five years,” Reid said.

The price has also dropped. According to Reid, it is now possible to get a good surveillance camera system installed for $1,200-$2,000.

But the surveillance cameras are not just popular among homeowners. Business owners have also begun using the cameras more frequently.

One of those business owners is Micky Sula, who owns Sula’s Deli in Ybor City, where surveillance cameras line the famous 7th Avenue.

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