RFID, GPS Technology and Electronic Surveillance

Group in Illinois to Protest Red Light Cameras

September 22, 2009

GateHouse News (Lombard, IL) – A local group will be holding a protest this evening against the presence of red light cameras in DuPage County and statewide.

The group, “BanRedCams,” was recently founded by Lombard resident Peter Breen, who last month announced his candidacy in February’s Republican primary for the 41st district state representative seat that will be vacated by the retiring Bob Biggins. The group will protest at 7 p.m. tonight outside of red light camera provider RedSpeed’s offices at 400 Eisenhower Lane North in Lombard.

“This group will give a grassroots voice and army to all the folks fighting this corporation and the Big Brother nature of their operation,” Breen said in a news release. “The vast majority of people I have spoken to about red light cameras are very upset about them. Now the people will have an organization looking out for their interests.”

The group detailed its opposition of red light cameras in the release, saying:

“The entry of a British company into Lombard, accompanied by a rash of lobbying activity and the passing out of campaign cash, has resulted in numerous jurisdictions making criminals out of innocent citizens making legal right turns on red. Even worse, studies across the country are showing more frequent crashes, including rear-end crashes, occurring in intersections where the cameras are located.”

Buggies and Big Brother Fears? Lancaster, Pa., Blankets Its Streets with Security Cameras

September 14, 2009

Associated Press — Horses drawing buggies regularly clop down the roads approaching Lancaster, a peaceful city in the heart of Amish country that had only three murders last year and relatively low crime.

But if the community sounds reminiscent of the past, it also has some distinctly modern technology: 165 surveillance cameras that will keep watch over thousands of residents around the clock.

When it is complete, the surveillance system will be bigger than those in large cities such as Philadelphia, San Francisco and Boston. And the fact that it will be monitored by ordinary citizens has raised privacy concerns.

“They are using fear to sell the cameras as much as possible,” said Charlie Crystle, a member of a fledgling citizens group that opposes the cameras and is trying to raise public awareness about them. “There’s just a huge potential for personal and political abuse.”

Officials in the city of 54,000 say the cameras have deterred crimes and helped solve them.

The white, domed cameras sit atop utility poles in public spaces, business districts and some residential areas. They are monitored 18 to 24 hours a day by employees of the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition, a nonprofit board with workers who report suspected crimes to police.

Lancaster is the seat of Lancaster County, a popular and peaceful tourist destination known for having one of the nation’s largest Amish populations. Horses and buggies are common on surrounding roads.

The safety coalition, directed by City Councilman Joseph Morales, screens prospective monitors and provides training about racial profiling and how to spot trouble. The group has seven monitors, all paid. The coalition does not release their names.

Monitors sit in a room with two 42-inch (106-centimeter) plasma screens and six smaller ones, each divided into views of different cameras. A joystick allows them to zoom in or move the cameras if they see something unusual. If they do, they call police.

“What they are typically seeing is people in their everyday life going through their business,” Morales said. “They’re looking for anything out of the ordinary.”

A special commission recommended the $2.7 million camera system in 2001 in response to a spike in some crimes. Police Chief Keith Sadler strongly supports having citizens monitor the cameras because he does not have the manpower to do it with a force of 159 officers, about 20 fewer than two years ago.

“In this economy, nobody has the luxury to take cops off the street,” Sadler said. “You are probably watched more by non-police agencies than you are by us”...

Other small cities have also invested in surveillance cameras, though not as heavily as Lancaster.

In Wilmington, Delaware, the city of about 73,000 developed a network of 21 publicly owned cameras and networked them with more than 200 private cameras owned by businesses. That city also has 37 neighborhood cameras, and the combined system is monitored by a nonprofit group, which refers calls to the police. Wilkes-Barre, a northeastern Pennsylvania city even smaller than Lancaster, is planning to install 150 cameras this year, also monitored by a nonprofit.

London, one of the most closely watched cities on earth, is reportedly home to more than 1 million security cameras — many of them operated by the British capital’s local, police and transit authorities...

EU Funding ‘Orwellian’ Artificial Intelligence Plan to Monitor Public for ‘Abnormal Behaviour’

The European Union is spending millions of pounds developing “Orwellian” technologies designed to scour the internet and CCTV images for “abnormal behaviour.”

September 19, 2009

Telegraph - A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as “agents” to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers.

Its main objectives include the “automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence.”

Project Indect, which received nearly £10 million in funding from the European Union, involves the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and computer scientists at York University, in addition to colleagues in nine other European countries.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty, described the introduction of such mass surveillance techniques as a “sinister step” for any country, adding that it was “positively chilling” on a European scale.

The Indect research, which began this year, comes as the EU is pressing ahead with an expansion of its role in fighting crime, terrorism and managing migration, increasing its budget in these areas by 13.5% to nearly £900 million.