Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
August 9, 2011
The Department of Homeland Security will fund an effort by San Francisco to install real-time video cameras on 358 city buses, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The existing system, installed a decade ago, stores footage on tape located on each vehicle.
DHS’s Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance introduced this year. The new surveillance system will use a wireless network “that will enable SFMTA personnel to view, download and store the captured video images wirelessly and view them in real-time or through the Internet.”
According to city documents, “the new system will provide real-time viewing of images, inside and outside the bus, by law enforcement officers, emergency responders and other authorized personnel on a real-time basis from a distance of about 500 yards in case the bus is hijacked and used for terrorism activities.”
In March, it was reported the DHS planned to introduce new mobile surveillance technology at train stations, stadiums and streets.
The new technology allows the government to “track your eye movements, capture and record your facial dimensions for face-recognition processing, bathe you in X-rays to look under your clothes, and even image your naked body using whole-body infrared images that were banned from consumer video cameras because they allowed the camera owners to take ‘nude’ videos of people at the beach,” Mike Adams writes for Natural News.
Documents discussing the technology were obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
“EPIC calls these vans ‘mobile strip search devices’ because they give the federal government technology to look under your clothes without your permission or consent,” Adams notes. “It’s also being done without probable cause, so it’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment protections that are guaranteed to Americans under the Bill of Rights.”
California and San Francisco have received increased money from the federal government over the last few years. In 2010, the state received $268 million dollars from the DHS, approximately 16 percent of the $1.7 billion that DHS awarded nationally. San Francisco alone has received $200 million, according to the Homeland Security Newswire.
In 2007, it was reported that the DHS was spending hundred of millions of dollars on video surveillance systems around the country. Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said surveillance systems are a valuable tool and “we will encourage their use in the future,” Newsmax reported.
The government claims the cameras will prevent terrorism, but as the Boston Globe reported in 2007 that the “proliferation of cameras could mean that Americans will feel less free because legal public behavior – attending a political rally, entering a doctor’s office, or even joking with friends in a park – will leave a permanent record, retrievable by authorities at any time.”
Labels: big brother, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, San Francisco, video surveillance
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Big Brother is coming to Atlanta. Or is it a watchful eye that will make walking city streets safer?
On Monday, the Atlanta City Council approved a measure to network and monitor thousands of public and privately owned security cameras throughout Atlanta.
The cameras and images will be part of a new multi-million dollar video integration center, designed to compile and analyze footage from the network..
To start, images from as many as 500 cameras -- some city-owned and some private -- are expected to flow into the center, providing images from Piedmont Park to Underground Atlanta. The center will use software that can identify "suspicious" behavior and allow monitors to quickly deploy public safety personnel. The software is also capable of pinpointing where gunshots originate from.
The center is being built by a $2.6 million federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. The Atlanta Police Foundation – which funds the camera network operated by the Midtown Blue, a private security agency -- is also raising money to operate the center. The city has not determined yet how much it will cost to operate the center annually, but the Council is committed to establishing virtually blanket video monitoring of the city...[Full Article]
Labels: Atlanta, big brother, Georgia, surveillance, video surveillance
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
ExtremeTech
To be in public is to be on camera, but most video footage is discarded, as only so much can be sorted and analyzed -- until now. DARPA has created a technology that can index and analyze video in real-time, marking the end of anonymity in public places.
In 2008, DARPA, the US military's elite group of pocket protector warriors, began soliciting the tech industry to develop technologies that would allow computers to sort through and index surveillance footage from the military's fleet of drones, satellites, and miscellaneous other super secret spy cameras. This was all part of the Agency's proposed Video Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool (VIRAT) that would be able to describe specific human activities in real-time. This automated index would allow for searchable queries (i.e. "how often did an adult male taller than six-foot get in a car in the early morning between November 1st and December 22nd in this compound in Abbottabad?") or flag behavior such as when someone carries a large package towards a car on the side of a road in Basra, but walked away empty handed.
And it appears that DARPA has had some success to this end. Earlier this week, the military released a mandated contract announcement describing how the VIRAT system will be deployed into various military-intelligence video archives and systems. The contract will be fulfilled by Lockheed Martin for an unspecified amount. We haven't been given any detailed information on how this new technology works or how accurate it is, only that a belt-tightening defense industry is willing to invest in it...[Full Article]
Labels: big brother, DARPA, privacy, video surveillance
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Sun-Sentinel
BOCA RATON — Police are launching a citywide surveillance system with hundreds of cameras to monitor streets, parks and public buildings.
Setup for the first 63 closed-circuit cameras began in February. The network would include up to 200 cameras in the first phase, city officials said. Images eventually will be monitored at a hub at the Police Department, where officers can watch the screens for suspicious activity.
The cameras will go up inside some city buildings, at parking lots and public parks. Later on, police plan to partner with private businesses so they can link to their cameras, too.
The swift spread of surveillance to street corners has alarmed civil-liberties advocates, who say police can easily abuse the technology without consequences...[Full Article]
Labels: big brother, Florida, police, privacy, surveillance, video surveillance
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Financial Times
María Carrera Rodríguez has been going to Mexico City’s historic centre for as long as she can remember. But since the capital’s leftwing government installed security cameras there, she has never felt safer.
“This used to be a rough place,” she says, while taking her elderly mother for spiritual cleansing by one of the several semi-naked shamans standing around the main square. “Now I feel protected.”
During the past year, 6,200 security cameras have been positioned in Mexico City’s busiest and traditionally most dangerous areas. Another 1,800 will be installed by December.
Fausto Lugo, who runs the project for the local government, claims this will give the city more government-owned cameras than any other. And a plan to incorporate into the scheme an additional 100,000 privately owned surveillance cameras already in use will turn Mexico’s capital into the most monitored city in the world.
“For its complexity, solidity and the speed with which we are doing it, this project has no rival,” he says.
The initiative, called Safe City, borrows experience and technology from places as diverse as Seoul, London, Jerusalem and Chicago, and comes as Mexico experiences a crime spike arising from the government’s war on drugs cartels...[Full Article]
Labels: big brother, Mexico, Mexico City, privacy, Safe City, surveillance, video surveillance
Thursday, March 3, 2011
CBS / Minnesota
BURNSVILLE, Minn. (WCCO) — The Burnsville Police Department was the first law enforcement agency in the state to use body cameras when it started equipping officers with the technology last summer.
Officers credit the video tool for helping them capture a much better image of what is going on when they are out on the streets. They have also helped clear cases of allegations of police misconduct in a matter of minutes instead of several weeks.
Officer Shaun Anselment said he can’t imagine going out on patrol without his video tool.
“We are able to get the true emotions at the scene,” he said. “We are able to see what officers did, what suspects did.”
Anselment said he is happy to show video, which goes into a computer on his belt, to someone he has stopped for a traffic violation. In one case, a woman denied she ran a stop sign.
“I said, ‘Ma’am, here’s what happened.’ She apologized and went on her way,” he said.
The cameras, made by Taser, are usually worn on an officer’s hat or on a headband...[Full Article]
Labels: body cameras, Minnesota, police, video surveillance
Friday, December 10, 2010
Big Brother may start watching a lot more in the Emerald City. The Urban League has asked Seattle officials to install surveillance cameras throughout a high crime neighborhood.
Labels: big brother, cameras, Seattle, video surveillance, Washington
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Watch out, Ken – Barbie’s got a spy cam. The new “Video Girl” Barbie from Mattel ($49.99) is embedded with a working video camera capable of taking 30-minute videos, cleverly hidden in the doll’s necklace (Barbie always did know how to accessorize).
One Australian psychologist is calling for a boycott, warning the Barbie cam will make it too easy for adults to exploit children and for children to upload inappropriate videos to the Internet.
“Boycott this product and to refuse to shop in any store that justifies selling this potentially pornographic tool," clinical psychologist Sally-Anne McCormack urged readers of the Herald Sun newspaper of Melbourne, Australia. She said she has counselled patients in the past who have been filmed without their knowledge. “Must I now also deal with clients who have been traumatized by a misused Barbie?"...
[Full Article]Labels: big brother, cameras, privacy, spying, video, video surveillance
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Fox59.com
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio plans to create a network linking thousands of cameras monitoring public roads and schools and privately owned businesses such as shopping malls.
The Ohio Homeland Security agency says the goal is to provide eyes for police, firefighters and other first responders when they handle major emergencies. Agency executive director William Vedra says it's not a "Big Brother" effort to spy on Ohioans.
Vedra says the system, modeled after a similar one in Alabama, should be operating within two years. A bipartisan panel of lawmakers approved $235,000 for the project last month.
Republican state Rep. Jay Hottinger tells The Columbus Dispatch the state needs to give the highest assurances that personal privacy won't be invaded.
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Information from: The Columbus Dispatch, http://www.dispatch.com
[Full Article]
Labels: cameras, Ohio, surveillance, video surveillance
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Cops on Camera
Friday, September 10, 2010
The Summit County Board of Elections will install video-surveillance equipment at an early-voting location to address security concerns Republican board members have raised.
The board voted Tuesday to pay Video Systems & Security Inc. of Akron $3,700 to install five cameras at the Job Center on East Tallmadge Avenue in Akron, where early voting will be offered this fall. The company also will give the board the ability to view live feeds of the Job Center via the Internet from the board's main office on Grant Street in Akron...
[Full Article]
Labels: Akron, election, Ohio, security cameras, video surveillance
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