Closed circuit television

Recently in the latter part of 2006, news reports on UK television brought to light newly developed technology that uses microphones If a person is observed to be shouting in an aggressive manner (e.g., provoking a fight), the camera can automatically zoom in and pinpoint the individual and alert a camera operator. A CCTV camera and dashboard monitor can make reversing a vehicle safer, if it allows the driver to observe objects or people not otherwise visible. The use of CCTV in the United States is less common, though increasing, and generally meets stronger opposition.

The courts have generally not taken this view. In Canada, the use of video surveillance has grown very rapidly. This feature is very similar to that of IP cameras.

Their use further popularised the concept. CCTV footage debunked claims made by the Metropolitan Police in defence of the shooting of an innocent man. Because of the bombing attempts the previous day, some of the tapes had been supposedly removed from CCTV cameras for study, and they were not functional. The UK cameras were deployed and are maintained by NEP - Roll to Record, a division of NEP Broadcasting. In the UK, CCTV is also used to target anti-social behaviour.

Images taken with a digital still camera have higher resolution than those taken with a typical video camera. Both technologies have their pros and cons. The implementation of automatic number plate recognition produces a potential source of information on the location of persons or groups. There is no technological limitation preventing a network of such cameras from tracking the movement of individuals.

The Data Protection Act 1998 in the United Kingdom led to legal restrictions on the uses of CCTV recordings, and also mandated their registration with the Data Protection Agency. The quality of digital recordings are subject to compression ratios, images stored per second, image size and duration of image retention before being overwritten.

The flash card can be removed for viewing on a computer if ever an incident happens. For example, on a subway train, CCTV cameras may allow the operator to confirm that people are clear of doors before closing them and starting the train. Operators of an amusement park ride may use a CCTV system to observe that people are not endangered by starting the ride.

Secondly, they need to be preserved for a reasonable amount of time to recover any evidence of other important activity they might document (e.g. A year prior to the report Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, warned that Britain was sleepwalking into a surveillance society . In 2007, the UK watchdog CameraWatch claimed that the majority of CCTV cameras in the UK are operated illegally or are in breach of privacy guidelines.

In 1998 3,000 CCTV systems were found in New York City. Criminals may use surveillance cameras, for example a hidden camera at an ATM to capture people s PINs without their knowledge. Many proponents of CCTV cite the attacks of the London Underground bombings as one example of how effective surveillance led to swift progress in post-event investigations. Quite apart from government-permitted use (or abuse), questions are also raised about illegal access to CCTV recordings.

Instead they track their behaviour by looking for particular types of body movement behavior, or particular types of clothing or baggage. The theory behind this is that in public spaces people behave in predictable ways. The use of closed-circuit TV cameras piping images into the Olean Police Department propelled Olean to the forefront of crime-fighting technology. The use of CCTV later on became very common in banks and stores to discourage theft, by recording evidence of criminal activity.

Images may be monitored remotely if the computer is connected to a network. Combinations of PIR activated floodlights with 1.3Mpix and better digital cameras are now appearing. Different vendors of digital video recorders use different compression standards and varying compression ratios. A development in the world of CCTV (October 2005) is in the use of megapixel digital still cameras that can take 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution images of the camera scene either on a time lapse or motion detection basis.

CCTV systems may operate continuously or only as required to monitor a particular event. If the driver does not pay the charge then a fine will be imposed.

These cameras are primarily used to monitor traffic conditions and are not used as speed cameras. A more advanced form of CCTV, utilizing Digital Video Recorders (DVRs), provides recording for possibly many years, with a variety of quality and performance options and extra features (such as motion-detection and email alerts). Surveillance of the public using CCTV is particularly common in the UK, where there are reportedly more cameras per person than in any other country in the world.

People who are not part of the crowd , for example car thieves, do not behave in the same way. It can also determine the color of the object.

It has been questioned whether CCTV evidence is allowable under the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures . Closed-circuit television (CCTV) is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly transmitted, though it may employ point to point wireless links.

Of course this then lead to the discussion that the technology can also be used to eavesdrop and record private conversations from a reasonable distance (e.g., 100 metres or about 330 feet). The same type of system can track identified individuals as they move through the area covered by CCTV. Private sector personnel in the UK who operate or monitor CCTV devices or systems are now considered security guards and have been made subject to state licensing. A 2007 report by the UK s Information Commissioner s Office, highlighted the need for the public to be made more aware of the creeping encroachment into their civil liberties created by the growing use of surveillance apparatus.

NEC claim to have a system that can identify a person s age by evaluating a picture of him/her. This type of system has been proposed to compare faces at airports and seaports with those of suspected terrorists or other undesirable entrants. Computerized monitoring of CCTV images is under development, so that a human CCTV operator does not have to endlessly look at all the screens, allowing an operator to observe many more CCTV cameras.

With software tools, the system is able to develop three-dimensional models of an area, and to track and monitor the movement of objects within it. To many, the development of CCTV in public areas, linked to computer databases of people s pictures and identity, presents a serious breach of civil liberties. In Ontario, both the municipal and provincial versions of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act outline very specific guidelines that control how images and information can be gathered by this method and/or released. The first CCTV cameras used in public spaces were crude, conspicuous, low definition black and white systems without the ability to zoom or pan.

Currently the cameras have a hard time identifying individuals, but if connected to a key-card system it can find out the identities of people and the input for instance their ssnr as a tag over their heads on the filmed material. There is also a significant difference in where the VCA technology is placed, either the data is being processed within the cameras (on the edge) or by a centralized server. In response, the Information Commissioner s Office denied the claim adding that any reported abuses of the Data Protection Act are swiftly investigated. In the United States, there are no such data protection mechanisms.

Re-usable media such as tape may be cycled through the recording process at regular intervals. The first place to use CCTV in the United Kingdom was King s Lynn, Norfolk. In recent decades, especially with general crime fears growing in the 1990s and 2000s, public space use of surveillance cameras has taken off, especially in some countries such as the United Kingdom. Outside government special facilities, Janet CCTV was developed initially as a means of increasing security in banks.

Police investigations after a crime require that a copy of the CCTV recording be available to investigators. Integrated Systems that come with a Built in Network Card allowing users to connect remotely from the internet and view exactly what their cameras are viewing. In many areas, local authority CCTV operators work with the police to combat, for example, drink-related anti-social behaviour in city centres or youth-related anti-social behaviour in housing estates. In October 2009, an Internet Eyes website was announced which would pay members of the public to view CCTV camera images from their homes and report any crimes they witnessed.

The usage of CCTV in such processes is sometimes required by law. Many cities and motorway networks have extensive traffic-monitoring systems, using closed-circuit television to detect congestion and notice accidents. Relatively low-cost digital still cameras can be used for CCTV purposes, using CCDP software that controls the camera from the PC. Images of the camera scene are transferred automatically to a computer every few seconds.

There and elsewhere, its increasing use has triggered a debate about security versus privacy. The first CCTV system was installed by Siemens AG at Test Stand VII in Peenemünde, Germany in 1942, for observing the launch of V-2 rockets. samples kept to help understand trends for a business or community). Recordings are more commonly stored using hard disk drives in lieu of video cassette recorders.

For example if you know a criminal is driving a yellow car, you can set the system to search for yellow cars and the system will provide you with a list of all the times where there is a yellow car visible in the picture. It is then possible to link many cameras and track people through a building, this can also be done for forensic purposes where a person can be tracked between cameras without anyone having to analyze many hours of film.

Reports have also been made of plate recognition misreading numbers leading to the billing of the entirely wrong person. CCTV critics see the most disturbing extension to this technology as the recognition of faces from high-definition CCTV images. The combination of CCTV and facial recognition has been tried as a form of mass surveillance, but has been ineffective because of the low discriminating power of facial recognition technology and the very high number of false positives generated. They are not intended for live viewing, but are a very simple and cheap install and forget approach to this issue. Closed-circuit digital photography (CCDP) is more suited for capturing and saving recorded photographs, whereas closed-circuit television (CCTV) is more suitable for live monitoring purposes. A growing branch in CCTV is Internet Protocol Cameras (IP Cameras).

a group of people passing a facility the night a crime was committed). The use of CCTV to track the movements of missing children is now routine. On 22 July 2005, Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station.

In 2004, the successor to the Data Protection Agency, the Information Commissioner s Office clarified that this required registration of all CCTV systems with the Commissioner, and prompt deletion of archived recordings. However subsequent case law (Durant vs. With the addition of fixed camera for the Active Traffic Management system the number of cameras on the Highways Agency CCTV network is likely to increase significantly over the next few years. The London congestion charge is enforced by cameras positioned at the boundaries of and inside the congestion charge zone, which automatically read the registration plates of cars.

Critics fear the possibility that one would not be able to meet anonymously in a public place or drive and walk anonymously around a city. It is then possible to search for certain actions within the recorded video.

Furthermore, they argue that CCTV displaces crime, rather than reducing it. These are mainly processes in the chemical industry, the interior of reactors or facilities for manufacture of nuclear fuel.

However, since the events of September 11, 2001, many studies have suggested that public opinion of CCTV has grown more favorable. Other technologies claim to be able to identify people by their biometrics. A problem for these types of systems is that they have been oversold , meaning that poorly working systems have been sold which has undermined the trust for the technology.

This allows monitoring from anywhere in the world by simply having a computer and an internet connection. Experiments in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s (including outdoor CCTV in Bournemouth in 1985), led to several larger trial programs later that decade. These were deemed successful in the government report CCTV: Looking Out For You , issued by the Home Office in 1994, and paved the way for a massive increase in the number of CCTV systems installed.

The site aimed to add more eyes to cameras which might be insufficiently monitored, but civil liberties campaigners criticised the idea as a distasteful and a worrying development . Hackers and guerilla artists have exposed the vulnerabilities of the video systems in an act dubbed video sniffing They have crossed feeds, uploaded their own video feeds and used the video footage for artistic purposes. Industrial processes that take place under conditions dangerous for humans are today often supervised by CCTV. Similar systems are being developed as a means of locating cars reported stolen. A CCTV system may be installed where an operator of a machine cannot directly observe people who may be injured by unexpected machine operation.

Today, systems cover most town and city centres, and many stations, car-parks and estates. The exact number of CCTV cameras in the UK is not known but a 2002 working paper by Michael McCahill and Clive Norris of UrbanEye, based on a small sample in Putney High Street, estimated the number of surveillance cameras in private premises in London is around 500,000 and the total number of cameras in the UK is around 4,200,000. According to their estimate the UK has one camera for every 14 people, although it has been acknowledged that the methodology behind this figure is somewhat dubious. However, there is little evidence that CCTV deters crime. Cameras have also been installed in taxis in the hope of deterring violence against drivers, The most measurable effect of CCTV is not on crime prevention, but on a small number of high media-profile case of detection. Use of thermographic cameras allow operators to measure the temperature of the processes.

A famous incident is that of Jeanne Thomas a lady from Boynton Beach, Florida was able to watch her house get robbed and contacted police directly from her office at work. Popularity of Integrated Systems Unless physically protected, CCTV cameras have been found to be vulnerable against a variety of (mostly illegal) tactics: . Finally, the recordings may be evaluated for historical, research or other long-term information of value they may contain (e.g.

Based on this information the system developers implement features such as blurring faces or virtual walls that block the sight of a camera where it is not allowed to film. Critics often dub CCTV as Big Brother surveillance , a reference to George Orwell s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which featured a two-way telescreen in every home through which The Party would monitor the populace. More positive views of CCTV cameras have argued that the cameras are not intruding into people s privacy, as they are not surveilling private, but public space, where an individual s right to privacy can reasonably be weighed against the public s need for protection from presumptively innocent people . The recent growth of CCTV in housing areas also raises serious issues about the extent to which CCTV is being used as a social control measure rather than simply a deterrent to crime.

Such applications have been introduced in the early 2000s, mainly in the USA, France, Israel and Australia. The investigation or prosecution of several notable murder cases have been aided by the use of CCTV evidence; such as the apprehension of David Copeland, the Soho nail bomber, and the 7 July 2005 London bombings.

The computer can identify their movements, and alert the operator that they are acting out of the ordinary. Demonstrations or assemblies in public places could be affected as the state would be able to collate lists of those leading them, taking part, or even just talking with protesters in the street. The long-term storage and archiving of CCTV recordings is an issue of concern in the implementation of a CCTV system.

Many of these cameras however, are owned by private companies and transmit data to drivers GPS systems. The UK Highways Agency has a publicly owned CCTV network of over 1200 cameras covering the English motorway and trunk road network. There are statutory limits on retention of data. Recordings are kept for several purposes.

They save the images to a flash memory card which is inserted into a slot on the device. Modern CCTV cameras use small high definition colour cameras that can not only focus to resolve minute detail, but by linking the control of the cameras to a computer, objects can be tracked semi-automatically.

Firstly, the primary purpose for which they were created (e.g. The current technology enable the systems to recognize if a moving object is a walking person, a crawling person or a vehicle.

IP cameras allow homeowners and businesses to view their camera(s) through any internet connection available through a computer or a 3G phone. Internet Protocol is a protocol used for communicating data across a packet-switched network using the Internet Protocol Suite, also referred to as TCP/IP. The following are potential advantages of IP cameras over traditional analog cameras: The following are some of the potential weaknesses of IP cameras in comparison to analog CCTV cameras. One of the recent developments in Design of CCTV systems is Integrated Systems. DVRs used in Integrated Systems have the capacity to record up to 14 days (with high resolution recording). Integrated Systems also have USB outlets so that Video Clips and Recordings can be moved out onto a USB key or External Hard drive and then later transferred on to a DVD if needed. The technology that enable this is often referred to as VCA (Video Content Analysis), and is currently being developed by a large number of technological companies around the world.

The devices are small enough not to be noticed, and are placed where they can monitor the keypad of the machine as people enter their PINs. CCTV is often used for surveillance in areas that may need monitoring such as banks, casinos, airports, military installations, and convenience stores. In industrial plants, CCTV equipment may be used to observe parts of a process from a central control room; when, for example, the environment is not suitable for humans.

These conditions can be made more precise by searching for a person moving around in a certain area for a suspicious amount of time , for example if someone is standing around an ATM machine without using it. Maintenance of CCTV systems is important in case forensic examination is necessary after a crime has been committed. In crowds the system is limited to finding anomalies, for instance a person moving in the opposite direction to the crowd, which might be a case in airports where passengers are only supposed to walk in one direction out of a plane, or in a subway where people are not supposed to exit through the entrances. VCA also has the ability to position people on a map by calculating their position from the images. These systems do not observe people directly.

FSA) has limited the scope of the protection provided by this law, and not all CCTV systems are currently regulated. to monitor a facility).

The technique will for instance not work well in large crowds, and the oversold feature of unattended luggage detection for airports have severe problems with determining whether or not a piece of luggage is really unattended. What the system can do is basically identifying where a person is, how he is moving and whether he is a person or for instance a car. Images may be transmitted wirelessly to the criminal. Opponents of CCTV point out the loss of privacy of the people under surveillance, and the negative impact of surveillance on civil liberties.

It is also possible to provide the system with rules, such as for example sound the alarm whenever a person is walking close to that fence or in a museum set off an alarm if a painting is taken down from the wall . VCA can also be used for forensics after the film has been made. The noted German engineer Walter Bruch was responsible for the design and installation of the system. CCTV recording systems are still often used at modern launch sites to record the flight of the rockets, in order to find the possible causes of malfunctions, In September 1968, Olean, New York was the first city in the United States to install video cameras along its main business street in an effort to fight crime.