Surveillance cameras
Main article: Closed-circuit television
Surveillance cameras such as these are installed by the millions in many countries, and are nowadays monitored by automated computer programs instead of humans.
Surveillance cameras are video cameras used for the purpose of observing an area. They are often connected to a recording device, IP network, and/or watched by a security guard/law enforcement officer. Cameras and recording equipment used to be relatively expensive and required human personnel to monitor camera footage. Now with cheaper production techniques, it is simple and inexpensive enough to be used in home security systems, and for everyday surveillance. Analysis of footage is made easier by automated software that organizes digital video footage into a searchable database, and by automated video analysis software (such as VIRAT and HumanID) . The amount of footage is also drastically reduced by motion sensors which only record when motion is detected.
The use of surveillance cameras by governments and businesses has dramatically increased over the last 10 years. In the U.K., for example, there are about 4.2 million surveillance cameras—1 camera for every 14 people.[29]
In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security gives billions of dollars per year in Homeland Security grants for local, state, and federal agencies to install modern video surveillance equipment. For example, the city of Chicago, IL recently used a $5.1 million Homeland Security grant to install an additional 250 surveillance cameras, and connect them to a centralized monitoring center, along with its preexisting network of over 2000 cameras in a program known as Operation Virtual Shield. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has announced that Chicago will have a surveillance camera on every street corner by the year 2016.[30][31]
As part of China's Golden Shield Project, several U.S. corporations such as IBM, General Electric, and Honeywell have been working closely with the Chinese government to install millions of surveillance cameras throughout China, along with advanced video analytics and facial recognition software, which will identify and track individuals everywhere they go. They will be connected to a centralized database and monitoring station, which will, upon completion of the project, contain a picture of the face of every person in China: over 1.3 billion people.[32] Lin Jiang Huai, the head of China's "Information Security Technology" office (which is in charge of the project), credits the surveillance systems in the United States and the U.K. as the inspiration for what he is doing with the Golden Shield project.[32]
Payload surveillance camera manufactured by Controp and distributed to the U.S. Government by ADI Technologies.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding a research project called Combat Zones That See that will link up cameras across a city to a centralized monitoring station, identify and track individuals and vehicles as they move through the city, and report "suspicious" activity (such as waving arms, looking side-to-side, standing in a group, etc.).[33]
At Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, police in Tampa Bay, Florida, used Identix’s facial recognition software, FaceIt, to scan the crowd for potential criminals and terrorists in attendance at the event.[34] (it found 19 people with pending arrest warrants)[35]
Governments often initially claim that cameras are meant to be used for traffic control, but many of them end up using them for general surveillance. For example, Washington, D.C. had 5000 "traffic" cameras installed under this premise, and then after they were all in place, networked them all together and then granted access to the Metropolitan Police Department, so that they could perform "day-to-day monitoring".[36]
The development of centralized networks of CCTV cameras watching public areas—linked to computer databases of people's pictures and identity (biometric data), able to track peoples' movements throughout the city, and identify who they have been with—has been argued by some to present a risk to civil liberti
