Friday, July 23, 2010

Citywide Security - Smile, You're on CCTV

New York Police Department is developing a closed circuit TV (CCTV) system that is more advanced than the one in London, England. It's well known that London's CCTV system has quite the presence in the British city, and UK authorities have called it a critical tool in solving crimes and detecting security threats. Of course, with CCTV cameras comes the obvious 1984 comparison, Big Brother and the argument for privacy and personal liberty; it's no wonder many are opposed. And chances are there will be many against New York City's new system once it's installed.

But like it or not, it's proven effective in deterring security threats or catching criminals, and the city of New York is looking forward to the change. It would be one of the first of its kind for an American city, especially one with such a dense population and powerful financial center. It's estimated that in any one day, a citizen roaming around London is captured on video by 200 to 300 CCTV cameras throughout their commute.

That's a lot of cameras. New York's system would have far fewer, according to officials, but they would make up for it with two key design features that would improve on London's video stronghold. All the New York cameras would be tethered to a single network, one high bandwidth capacity, and would transmit and process video from various and redundant storage facilities keeping archives for 30 days. London's system is decentralized, so it's more difficult and time consuming to retrieve footage quickly.

More noteworthy, New York's CCTV system is said to utilize a series of sophisticated algorithms that are programmed to spot potentially suspicious activity recorded on camera. If the camera would pick up certain shapes, movements, or colors, the automated system would call a team of live operators. But what sorts of suspicious activities and, logistically speaking, what constitutes a "suspicious activity" in the first place?

Officials say the CCTV cameras should be able to identify unattended packages, vehicles traveling against the flow of traffic, loitering, or trespassing. With the algorithms spotting a majority of unattended packages, trial testing has been successful Still, the system will require real people - not just computers - to analyze and make the final decisions on what is what and whether or not it's something suspicious. This could present a huge opportunity for facial recognition or even iris scanning technologies if the video quality is high enough to get clear facial shots of criminals. But being able to identify every person caught on camera could also invade privacy.

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