Surveillance Cameras
Traffic cameras, which were meant to help enforce traffic laws at intersections, have also sparked some controversy, due to their use by law enforcement agencies for purposes unrelated to traffic violations. These cameras also work as transit choke-points that allow individuals inside the vehicle to be positively identified and license plate data to be collected and time stamped for cross reference with airborne Wide Area Persistent Surveillance Systems such as ARGUS and HAWKEYE" used by police.
Wide Area Persistent Surveillance' using Wide Area Motion Imagery' is capable of live viewing and recording 68 square mile areas with enough detail to view pedestrian and vehicles. These Gigapixel cameras such as Gorgon Stare, Angelfire, Hawkeye and ARGUS http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Autonomous_Real-time_Ground_Ubiquitous_Surveillance-Imaging_System_(ARGUS-IS).aspxcan create airborne video so detailed that pedestrians can be followed across the city through forensic analysis. This allows investigators to rewind and playback the movements of anyone in a 68sq milearea.
PeSEAS and PerMIATE software automate and record the movement observed in the WAMI video. This technology uses software to track and record the movements of pedestrians and vehicles using automatic object recognition software across the entire frame, generating "tracklets" or chronographs of every car and pedestrian movements. 24/7 deployment of this technology has been suggested by the DHS on spy blimps such as the recently killed Blue Devil Airship .
The Department of Homeland Security is funding networks of surveillance cameras in cities and towns as part of its efforts to combat terrorism. In February 2009, Cambridge, MA rejected the cameras due to privacy concerns.
Read more about this topic: Mass Surveillance, State Enforced, United States
Famous quotes containing the word cameras:
“While the music is performed, the cameras linger savagely over the faces of the audience. What a bottomless chasm of vacuity they reveal! Those who flock round the Beatles, who scream themselves into hysteria, whose vacant faces flicker over the TV screen, are the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures . . .”
—Paul Johnson (b. 1928)