Signalfire

04 2010

These days, trips to a shopping center or government building come with the understanding that you’re most likely going to be photographed at some point by a surveillance camera.

But how about while mowing the lawn? Or riding a bike down the street? That’s becoming the case as surveillance cameras move from retail areas to residential neighborhoods.

Bakersfield police recently released surveillance footage of a suspected prowler in the 11000 block of Valley Forge Way in northwest Bakersfield. The footage came from a camera outside a resident’s house.

Local law enforcement said they don’t endorse any particular type of home security over another, and that it’s a personal decision. They did say, however, that cameras outside homes can sometimes assist in investigations.

The slow but steady increase of home surveillance camera installations represents a shift toward new technology that provides evidence if the homeowner is a victim of a crime. Such evidence may lead to an arrest and conviction.

Bakersfield police Sgt. Mary DeGeare said officers are starting to see surveillance cameras more often on private residences, but they’re still fairly new.

“I think it’s a good idea in that it’s a deterrent for a burglar and it’s helpful to us,” she said.

Kern County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Ray Pruitt said it’s up to each individual to decide whether to buy a surveillance camera or other security features. He said they can assist law enforcement in investigations where a suspect is caught on camera and a member of the public can identify the person.

The ACLU of Southern California did not respond to a request for comment about privacy issues regarding the cameras.

Tammy Lodermeier, vice president of Advanced Security Inc. in Bakersfield, said the business installs cameras on about 15 residences each month. That’s up from only one residence a month a couple of years ago.

“People know there’s value in those cameras,” Lodermeier said. “It’s a worthy investment.”

The purchase and installation of four cameras costs $2,800, Lodermeier said. The people buying them are often victims of theft or vandalism, she said.

San Joaquin Security Technologies manager Noel Cardenos said most residences he works on just want an alarm system because the cameras cost quite a bit more. But he said the interest in cameras has steadily increased over the past few years. Prices range from $1,400 for a very basic set of four cameras to $3,500 for the more sophisticated models.

Morgan Clayton, president and owner of Tel-Tec Security Systems Inc., a Bakersfield-based business with customers in a couple of dozen cities in California and Nevada, said a good system costs $8,000 to $20,000. He said he gets calls every day from homeowners asking about surveillance cameras, and the firm works on about 300 residential systems a year.

People want to be able to check on their homes even when they’re not there, and they can connect to their surveillance system through personal computers, PDAs and other electronic devices, Clayton said. No matter where a person is, they can access their system and know their home is safe.

Clayton associates the upswing in residential surveillance cameras — which really took off in the past couple of years — to the economy and social unrest.

“People just don’t have a good feel for being comfortable right now,” he said. “They want to protect their assets.”

The interest in cameras extends beyond Bakersfield.

Ted Loveder, general manager of The Bluffs Homeowners Association in Newport Beach, said he’s noticed some surveillance cameras on residences in the area. Not a major surge, but a couple of homes have them, he said.

Locally, homeowners offer a mix of views.

Michael Strahan, member and former vice president of Seven Oaks South of Chamber Homeowners Association, is considering putting up surveillance cameras because he lives near a park and a lot of juveniles pass through the area. He said crime in Bakersfield is out of control and the cameras could come in handy if his house is targeted.

He said surveillance cameras aren’t mentioned in the association’s regulations. Personally, he’d like the city to hire more police officers, but with the budget the way it is he’s not expecting that anytime soon.

“(Cameras) are just one more deterrent to give a family peace of mind,” Strahan said.

Alex Garza is considering buying some for her house. Garza, 27, lives in the area of Valley Forge Way where a suspected prowler was caught on tape.

“If something happens, I’ll have evidence of it,” she said.

Sandra Minero, 39, said she’s fine with neighbors installing cameras around their property, and she’s glad officers have the footage of the suspected prowler to work with.

Ryan Tiede, 30, also a Valley Forge Way resident, wasn’t sold on the usefulness of surveillance cameras since the prowler hadn’t yet been caught.

“I don’t really think they’re necessary,” he said.

But his view of surveillance cameras may be in the minority, from what Lodermeier says. She said it’s no longer people living in upscale neighborhoods who are buying cameras, but people from all areas.

“It’s the way of the future,” she said.

August 28
PROTESTS against a new electronic entrance card at Italian football stadiums — intended to curb hooliganism — has exploded into violence.

Some 500 fans stormed a political meeting, hurling petrol-bombs and setting cars alight.

The open-air meeting near Bergamo was being addressed by Interior Minister Roberto Maroni. Mr Maroni said the behaviour of the protesters — Atalanta fans known as “ultras” — underlined the need for anti-hooliganism measures such as the identity card.

“I have nothing against football fans and am happy to talk to them,” Mr Maroni said. “But these were not real fans, they were violent thugs.”

The violence comes on the eve of the resumption of Serie A matches tonight.

The protesters threw firecrackers, smoke-bombs and bottles filled with nails at the rally in Alzano Lombardo, near Bergamo. The rally was being held by the Northern League, of which Mr Maroni is a leading member.

The League is a coalition ally of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is fighting to prevent a rebellion in parliament next month by followers of Gianfranco Fini, Speaker of the lower house, which could bring his coalition down mid-term.

Five fans were arrested and a number of police officers were hurt during the clashes, in which a police car was burnt.

Mr Maroni spearheaded the campaign to introduce the electronic card, which has led to resentment on the terraces. Last weekend fans held up a match between Inter Milan and AS Roma for five minutes by staging a protest.

Mr Maroni said that the protesters at Alzano Lombardo would be “identified and severely punished”. The violence, which lasted for 20 minutes, began just as Mr Maroni had started speaking.

Giancarlo Abete, the president of the Italian Football Federation, said he was standing by the ID program even if it meant fewer fans at the stadiums and a drop in ticket sales.

“The problem with football isn’t having more or less spectators, it’s battling violence, and if we need to pay these prices, so be it,” he told RAI, the Italian state radio.

The centre-right coalition has taken a tough stand on law and order. Last weekend Mr Maroni said he favoured expelling not only illegal immigrants from outside the EU but also EU citizens who had “violated basic requirements for living in Italy”.

He said French President Nicolas Sarkozy was “copying Italy’s model”.

The usual suspects turned up at a recent police technology exposition — night-vision goggles, high-powered guns and bulletproof vests.

Most of the devices displayed at the Police Trexpo East last week cost a pretty penny — thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions of dollars. But in the middle of the elaborate and the high-end, there were plastic orange sticks no longer than a straw.

The uncomplicated rods are meant to secure firearms during training while easing the nerves of all involved. A gun can’t fire with one inside its barrel, and the bright orange stick is clearly visible to those at the other end of the weapon. It alleviates worry and eliminates the possibility of someone getting shot.

John Carlin offered his invention for free at the expo. They would’ve cost just $5 if he had charged for them. “It’s as simple as it gets,” Carlin said.

In recent years, 30 police officers have been shot and killed during training exercises. This month, an officer in Montreal was shot in the leg during a drill. And Carlin, himself a firearms instructor, never cared for looking down the barrel of a gun during his own classes.

A retired police officer from Minnesota, Carlin’s admittedly low-tech product attracted quite a buzz even among the SWAT vehicles, lasers and weaponry.

Many technologies showcased at the expo could cross over from law enforcement to military to homeland defense efforts. Companies and organizations large and small came from all over the country to promote their products. In all, there were more than 130 exhibits at the expo, sponsored by POLICE Magazine.

Here’s a taste of some of the exhibits:

* From Michigan, EOTech’s holographic weapon sights maintain accuracy if covered in snow, mud or even cracked. No matter the obstruction, a target will continue to show up in the form of a star that looks like a red fireworks explosion.
* From Oklahoma, Simulator Systems International offers three kinds of robots named for snakes — the Copperhead, the Sidewinder and the Python. The latter can tow about 200 pounds, climb stairs and blast someone with a taser or pepper spray, sales representative Terrance Blacknell explained.
* From Kentucky, ARE Innovations co-owner Jim Bolen makes and sells goggles that can suddenly take away or restore one’s vision. Originally made for athletes looking to improve reaction times, they have been recast for military and law enforcement personnel. A recent experiment in Franklin, Ohio, found police officers recognizing and responding to threats three seconds quicker after using the goggles. “You see with your brain, not your eyes,” Bolen said.
* From Washington D.C., the Department of Homeland Security demonstrated a few of its inventions, including a forensic camera designed for mass transit. Last year, DHS rigged a retired transit bus with explosives and 16 of the prototype cameras. The bombs blew the bus to pieces and sent the cameras flying in all directions. All the cameras survived, and memory chips containing video leading up to the detonation also survived in 14 of the cameras. Testing will continue on cameras deployed on regular bus routes and trains. Several major U.S. cities, as well as the Transportation Security Administration, are interested in the technology, DHS officials said.
* The folks at DHS also showed off its Light Emitting Diode-Incapacitator, or LEDI. The flashlights send out a combination of wavelengths to flashblind and disorient a human target. The device’s range goes up to about 50 feet. It could be used for riot control, in prisons, by SWAT teams and against snipers or hijackers.
* From Pennsylvania, Crime Scene Clean-Up was there to promote its services to make horrific remnants disappear. The company specializes in cleaning up after murders, suicides and decompositions. In one year, the company disposed of 50 tons of hazardous and medical waste.
* Also from Pennsylvania, Mobile Concepts by Scotty had a “purpose-built” vehicle on site. The company can put everything from communication satellites and surveillance cameras to flat-screen TVs and gun racks on a truck. Mobile Concepts has provided vehicles for U.S. Customs and Border Protection for processing and detainment, the Army’s mobile command centers in Iraq and for Pennsylvania Emergency Management mobile commands.
* From New Hampshire, Insight Technology produces an array of night vision and illumination devices. Insight allowed visitors to try out its new thermal imaging binoculars, which revealed the infrared footsteps of expo attendees long after they disappeared from normal sight.

By Angelique Carson

Smart grids are the future of power, but what does that mean for the future of privacy?

The transmission networks spanning nations to provide light, heat and electricity will soon undergo a radical transformation. Most of the world’s developed countries have invested in or plan to invest huge sums to implement smart energy infrastructures within the next two decades. The “smart grid” will revolutionize the way utilities and consumers measure and monitor electricity usage. It is expected to save money and aid energy conservation. But the grid will also result in massive amounts of new data, data that can reveal intimate details about households and the people who live in them. The risk of exposure or misuse of such data creates a new set of concerns for consumers and privacy professionals.

The smart grid will rely on “smart” meters, which will record household energy consumption and communicate it back to power providers. These new smart meters will replace the electromechanical meters that are attached to most households across the world today.

Smart appliances, which are being developed and sold by some of the world’s largest manufacturers, will enhance the intelligent grid, feeding smart meters with real-time information about electrical use down to the appliance level-smoothie at seven, treadmill at eight, for example. (According to a recent Zpryme report, the global market for household smart appliances is projected to reach $15.12 billion in 2015.) This precision will allow utility companies to analyze peak power usage times and set electric rates accordingly. In turn, households will gain a tool for more efficient management of their energy consumption, which they could use to lower costs and conserve energy. For example, customers will have the ability to time their laundry chores for off-peak energy hours.

When the grid, the meter, and the appliances are implemented and integrated, consumers will be able to fine-tune their energy consumption to get the best rates and utilities will be able to more effectively manage power distribution and identify and resolve problems remotely.

The savings potential is expected to be massive. The grid is also expected to help power suppliers prevent blackouts and brownouts by allowing for power distribution to be delivered more evenly and on a need-based schedule.

Nations and utilities are investing in the development of the smart grid, and many companies have already deployed smart meters. But while those involved throw millions, even billions, toward the grid, cautioning voices are calling for privacy protections.

“We are talking about implementing a very new type of network…a network that people are always attached to,” says Rebecca Herold, CIPP, founder of Rebecca Herold and Associates, LLC. Herold has led the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Smart Grid privacy subgroup since June 2009 and co-authored the NIST report on smart grid privacy, which is under review by NIST and expected to be published soon.

The information collected on a smart grid will form a library of personal information, the mishandling of which could be highly invasive of consumer privacy,” said Christopher Wolf, co-author with Jules Polonetsky of a whitepaper published by the Future of Privacy Forum and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. “There will be major concerns if consumer-focused principles of transparency and control are not treated as essential design principles, from beginning to end.”

Utilities are aware of the privacy concerns, according to Rick Thompson, the president of Greentech Media (GTM), which publishes market research on smart grids. “It’s absolutely on their radar,” he says, adding, “That doesn’t mean they have a full understanding or solution to solve that problem, but I think it’s an area that they are investigating heavily.”

It’s an area worthy of investigation, according to many. Some say the smart grid will be “bigger than the Internet,” which will result in an exponential increase of coveted, valuable and potentially identifiable data.

“You come into new types of privacy issues because you are now revealing personal activities in ways that are not historically, or have not been considered to date as being personally identifiable information,” Herold says.

Beyond knowing how often the refrigerator opens or what time the garage door activates each morning, grid data may be a way of discerning when a household is empty or full, when family members go to bed at night or what time the kids come home from school.  Marketers might want to tap into the data to find out when a household might be due for a new refrigerator or washing machine. Law enforcement might be interested in corroborating a story. An insurance company might want to know if a homeowner’s alarm was turned on when a burglary occurred.  A divorce attorney might want to subpoena energy-use records to aid a case.

Who owns the data?

In a recent newspaper article, Simon McKenzie, the chief executive of a New Zealand electricity supplier, said in that country, where hundreds of thousands of smart meters are currently being installed, “…we’re starting to see the retailers and network companies say: ‘Hey, there’s a number of different ways that we haven’t even considered that we could utilize this data…to provide better service or solutions to customers.” The full potential of smart grids has yet to be realized, McKenzie told The New Zealand Herald.

But should retailers and other entities have access to the data? That is a question being examined on a global scale.

In response to the McKenzie’s comments, New Zealand Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff said that companies need to be transparent about what information is being tracked and collected. “People need to be able to make fully informed decisions before agreeing to the new technology,” Shroff said.

Others call for limited use of data gleaned from smart grids.

“The risk with a rich new data source is the temptation to use the information for more than originally intended,” Australian Privacy Commissioner Karen Curtis told those attending a smart infrastructure conference earlier this year.

That’s why it will be crucial to answer the question of who owns and has access to consumers’ energy usage data, which could reveal existing and emerging types of personally identifable information, Herold says.

It’s a familiar question for privacy pros, who have grappled with it in other areas of practice, but perhaps less familiar for utilities. In a recent study, GTM asked utility companies who owns the granular data collected by smart meters-the utility company, the consumer, or a third party. The results showed a decided lack of consensus.

“The interesting thing is that it was pretty well split evenly between those three options,” said GTM’s Thompson. Of the companies surveyed, 39 percent said the data belonged to the consumer, 29 percent said the utility, itself, owned it, and 32 percent were unsure.

[Chart from Greentech Media's 2010 North American Utility Smart Grid Deployment Survey]

The president of an advocacy group for the smart grid industry is more decided on the topic. “The consumer should always have access to that data,” says Kathleen Hamilton, president of the GridWise Alliance, which counts more than 100 companies and organizations as members. “I think the consumer is going to be the owner of that data,” Hamilton said. “But I think what consumers don’t understand is that when they give their data to others, if there aren’t privacy provisions in place, they can use the data in ways that either the consumer may not agree with or think is appropriate.”

That’s a worry many can relate to and a debate that must play itself out soon, as 70 percent of North American utility companies polled for the aforementioned GTM survey indicated that smart grid projects were either a “strong” or “highest” business priority between now and 2015. Governments keen to the potential have invested heavily in smart grid infrastructures. In the U.S., President Obama allocated $3.4 billion in national stimulus monies to utility companies last year to incent development of smart grid technologies. The European Parliament’s passage of the 3rd Energy Package last year will outfit 80 percent of EU electricity customers with smart meters by 2020. In Sweden, smart meters are now mandated by the government. The UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, parts of Asia, Denmark, and the Netherlands have all reported plans to build intelligent grids. And the Chinese government has allocated $7.3 billion to grid projects in 2010.

It is clear that the potential privacy pitfalls loom large. Less clear is the best solution to prevent them.

“I think there are still a lot of questions out there about what the correct solution might be,” says GTM’s Thompson, predicting that solutions will vary based on the regulations of various regions.

Like other areas of data privacy, regulation is a word that could divide the debate in the months and years to come.

Some predict smart grid privacy issues to be bigger in Europe than other places due to the strength of the bloc’s Data Protection Directive.

So far in the U.S., regulation has focused primarily on securing the grid infrastructure from cyber attack. For example, the Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense (GRID) Act, introduced in April, charges the FERC with safeguarding the transmission grid from cyber threats. The bill also tasks FERC with enforcing privacy measures, stating “the commission shall protect from disclosure only the minimum amount of information necessary to protect the reliability of the bulk power system and defense critical electric infrastructure.” The House passed the bill in June but the Senate has yet to vote.

Other bills focus on ensuring consumers have access to the data their homes’ meters produce.  In March, Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, introduced The Electric Consumer Right to Know Act (e-KNOW), legislation to ensure consumers have access to free, timely and secure data about their energy usage. It also calls for the FERC to develop national standards for consumer energy data accessibility, to help utilities and state regulatory agencies formulate their policies, according to Markey’s Web site.

State lawmakers have begun drafting their own legislation. In Colorado, a state where smart meter implementation is already widespread, Senate Bill 10-180 calls for the creation of a task force to recommend measures to “encourage the orderly implementation of smart grid technology” in that state. The bill says that one of the issues the task force must determine is the potential impacts on consumer protection and privacy.

A call for standards

Privacy experts say the lack of legal protection surrounding the smart grid is concerning. They are calling for standards.

“In the absence of clear rules, this potentially beneficial smart grid technology could mean yet another intrusion on private life,” Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) said in a March filing to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which held a three-day hearing that month to explore smart grid policies.

“The PUC should act now, before our privacy is eroded,” Dempsey wrote.

The CDT teamed with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on the filing, urging the CPUC to adopt “comprehensive privacy standards for the collection, retention, use and disclosure of the data” gleaned from the smart grid.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology smart grid privacy subgroup, which Herold leads, has released two drafts of the privacy chapter “Smart Grid Cyber Security Strategy and Requirements.” The document includes a privacy impact assessment and addresses possible risks the smart grid presents-including cyber attacks, data breaches and the vulnerability of interconnected networks’ increased exposure to potential hackers.

The draft says that while most states have laws in place regarding privacy protection, those laws do not necessarily relate to the types of data that will be within the smart grid, and many existing laws are specific to industries other than utilities. The group recommends that provisions be included within privacy laws to protect the consumer data held by utility companies. The final NISTIR 7628 Version 1 is expected soon, after which it will be submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Minimize, destroy, build privacy in

As with other privacy debates, those pushing for smart infrastructure privacy protections espouse mantras often heard in data protection circles-data minimization, data destruction and privacy by design.

Utilities should minimize the amount of household data collected and should keep it for the shortest amount of time possible, advocates say, in order to minimize the risk associated with storing such data.

Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian agrees. In her whitepaper, she also cautions that privacy concerns must be considered early in the planning stages in order to mitigate the risks surrounding the revealing data meters collect.

By designing privacy into the grid, “we can have both privacy and a fully functioning smart grid,” Cavoukian wrote in a Toronto Star Op-Ed.

The government of Ontario has committed to the installation of smart meters in every home and business by the end of 2010 and Cavoukian has partnered with major utilities to develop “gold standards” for building privacy into grid projects.

Some privacy advocates point to Ontario’s Hydro One as a utility company setting the standard for baking privacy provisions into its policy before deploying smart meters. Rick Stevens, director of distribution development at Hydro One says the protection of consumer’s information was built into smart meters’ designs based on Ontario’s privacy regulations.

“The regulations certainly set the context for the project,” Stevens said. “We’re just really ensuring that we bake those protections into the product that we put out there. Given that this is new technology, we’re going to be very careful to protect consumer interest as we roll these out. I know we, as an industry, take it very seriously.”

Hydro One has 1.1 million meters already deployed, and at least 700,000 of them are currently reporting data back to the utility on an hourly basis. Stevens says that, as a rule, the utility does not sell customers’ data to third parties and would only share data after obtaining written authorization customers.

The president of LinkGard Systems, an Armenian software maker, says his company’s Energy Management System, which is currently being tested in the U.S., was built with privacy in mind. “It is our strong belief that the utility company has no need to control individual appliances in a residence or a commercial location,” said Hovanes Manucharyan. “The same effect can be achieved by using solutions that don’t require the customer to expose their private energy usage information…We feel that this model is friendlier towards privacy since the utility doesn’t need to acquire, store and manage potentially private data from a customer.”

Hovanes said the stronger regulatory framework of the EU could result in slightly different implementations of smart grid technologies in that market.

Beyond PII

We haven’t yet heard a debate on whether our garage door-opening habits qualify as personal data, but it’s a question that privacy experts say should be answered.

“People have to realize it’s a new type of network,” says Herold. “It’s ‘always on,’ passively collecting information about people in their homes. It’s more than just PII, it’s personal activities,” she adds.

This is what concerns a California man who staged a dramatic protest recently when Pacific Gas & Electric attempted to install a smart meter at his home. Calling it an “unconstitutional invasion of his privacy” he locked his existing meter, saying, “PG&E needs to be stopped in their tracks here.”

Education needed

But smart meters are being rolled out in many places and typically without protest. Indeed, though smart grids are certainly on the radar of utilities and governments, most consumers are in the dark. According to a recent Harris Interactive poll, 68 percent have never heard of the smart grid and 63 percent “draw a blank” about smart meters. Experts say that will change.

“You are going to see a lot more awareness over the next 24 months,” says Greentech Media’s Rick Thompson, “but in terms of becoming a true household name, I’d say that’s still three to five years out.” Thompson says utility companies are just starting to understand the importance of launching educational campaigns aimed at consumer awareness.

A newly formed coalition of companies and organizations-the nonprofit Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative-hopes to increase consumer awareness in the area. “The grid is not really smart unless the consumers are able to be active participants,” said Katherine Hamilton of the GridWise Alliance, one of the founding members of SGCC.

Hydro One’s Stevens says building consumer awareness by communicating the cost-savings potential and environmental benefits is what helped make his company’s transition to smart meters successful in Ontario.

“For the most part it’s been positive,” Stevens said. “I think the reason for that is the type of information we’ve been able to provide to customers.”

Stevens said, however, given his company’s success with smart meters, that the only reason to have increasing regulations in the future would be if issues arise that require them.

When asked whether utility companies’ self-regulatory efforts will be sufficient to stave off regulations, Herold said it’s important to consider just how many different players will be involved in the smart grid, including non-energy sector companies creating applications and appliances.

“Self-regulation is a good goal, but when you start looking realistically, how do you ensure entities consistently provide protections throughout the entire smart grid if you don’t establish requirements they must all follow?” Herold asks.

She points to the healthcare and financial industries as evidence that regulations are often necessary.

“It’s always important, in dealing with privacy, to not only take what we know from past experiences, but also have our minds open to possible impacts going forward.”

Some say that having the right people on board will help companies avoid issues. “One of the key things utilities should be doing today is training and hiring privacy professionals,” says Future of Privacy Forum Director Jules Polonetsky, CIPP. “Data enables the grid, but could also be its Achilles heel, if companies don’t have the experts in place to help shape decisions as the grid is being built.”

Stevens agrees, saying that it’s in the utility industry’s best interest to maintain consumer privacy protections moving forward.

“It’s a necessity,” he says. “Otherwise, it’ll backfire on us.”

This article was originally published in the July 2010 edition of the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ member newsletter, The Privacy Advisor, and is reprinted here with permission.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/smart-grids-and-the-future-of-privacy

Aug 24,– SPRING VALLEY LAKE — Community leaders want to send a message: If you plan to commit a crime in Spring Valley Lake, don’t forget to smile for the camera.
S p r i n g Va l l ey L a ke A s s o c i at i o n’s b o a rd o f directors recently approved a $175,000 contract to install a high-tech wireless video surveillance system across the community, including in its equestrian estates.

The cameras will capture “evidence — quality” footage both day and night, SVLA General Manager Jon Sabo said. Both the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department and the California Highway Patrol can access the feeds and use the tapes to help prosecute criminals.

And while the cameras won’t be capable of capturing sound, Sabo said license plate and vehicle recognition abilities will be built into the system.

Sabo said they expect to have cameras at six locations by Christmas, with the potential for 22 sites at build-out.
“Some of the cameras will be visible and some will not,” he said, with footage streaming into SVLA’s public safety dispatch center.

The board last year approved $175,000 for a first phase of the project, Sabo said, to do engineering work and a technical analysis. The community now has “several” limited systems in operation at public spaces across the community.

Earlier this month, during a special meeting, the board approved another $175,000 for the project this fiscal year. Sabo said much of that second-phase funding will go toward building out the wireless network and to install receiving equipment.

It’s possible that they could go to a third phase next year, according to Sabo, but that hasn’t yet been determined.

“We just want to make sure that we keep people as safe as possible,” said Ernie Martell, vice president of SVLA’s board of directors. With the economy being what it is, Martell said the board fears incidents of theft and vandalism could otherwise get worse.

8/8/2010

Italy vigilantes damaged a speed camera on Tuesday night. The automated ticketing machine located on Via Del Partigiano turned black from the flames, but provincial officials insisted the device’s inner workings survived. Police have no idea who might be responsible.

“We condemn with all possible firmness the act of vandalism that targeted a newly installed fixed speed cameras,” provincial administrator Maurizio Brunelli said in a statement.

A speed camera in Nointel, France was likewise set on fire last Sunday at around 8:30am, Le Parisien reported. The device located on the N31 near Compiegne-Beauvais has been a frequent target of vigilantes. In March and April the same camera had been painted white and then pink. This time, the camera housing was opened before being set on fire.

August 2, 2010

At the intersection with Shanxi Lane, a busy crossing in this northwest China metropolis, 11 surveillance cameras eye the bustle from a metal boom projecting over one corner. Still more cameras stare down from the other three corners — 39 in all, still-photo and high-resolution video.

“The whole city is under surveillance,” said one nearby shopkeeper who, like many here, refused to give his name. Asked why, he replied sourly, “It’s not my business.”

But it is no secret. Roughly a year ago, Urumqi’s ethnic Han and Uighur populations took part in the worst ethnic rioting in modern Chinese history, killing at least 197 people. The riots caught the Communist Party and the local government unaware.

Now at least 47,000 cameras scan Urumqi to ensure there are no more surprises. By year’s end, the state news media says, there will be 60,000.

Video surveillance is hardly uncommon in the West. But nowhere else is it growing as explosively as in China, where seven million cameras already watch streets, hotel lobbies, businesses and even mosques and monasteries — and where experts predict an additional 15 million cameras will sprout by 2014.

Much of the proliferation is driven by the same rationales as in Western nations: police forces stretched thin, rising crime, mushrooming traffic jams and the bureaucratic overkill that attends any mention of terrorism.

But China also has another overriding concern — controlling social order and monitoring dissent. And some human rights advocates say they fear that the melding of ever improving digital technologies and the absence of legal restraints on surveillance raise the specter of genuinely Orwellian control over society.

Video software can already spot a chosen automobile in a stream of traffic by reading license plates, and cameras have improved so greatly that some can even take clear pictures of people inside autos. Facial-recognition software is in its infancy, but already, China requires Internet cafe users to be photographed, so that computers can identify them no matter which cafe they patronize, and what identification they present.

“This is not a self-contained system of video surveillance, but one part in a much larger architecture of surveillance that includes Internet monitoring and censorship, telecommunications and law enforcement databases,” Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, wrote in an e-mail exchange. “Privacy safeguards are simply nonexistent in China, making the state entirely free to mobilize this architecture of surveillance for political ends.”

It is unclear what share of China’s growing camera population is government-controlled. The Ministry of State Security reported one year ago that police had installed 2.75 million cameras nationwide, most in urban public spaces, and had asked local police forces to place more in rural areas.

IMS Research, a company based in Britain that tracks China’s surveillance industry, estimates that 30 percent of new camera installations have purely governmental uses, from police surveillance to cameras in libraries or prisons. Cameras on roads and in airports, subways and other modes of transport are the second most common use.

But that underestimates the extent of state surveillance. The video cameras in China’s Internet cafes are required to be linked to government security offices. Guangdong Province, in southeast China, last year ordered hotels, guesthouses, hospitals and places of entertainment to install cameras in all main rooms and reception areas, joining museums and galleries, schools, newspapers and television stations on a growing list.

In Guangdong, adjoining Hong Kong, security officials are just wrapping up a reported $1.8 billion installation of one million video cameras covering major cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Beijing was expected to have 470,000 cameras by the end of 2009, says the Beijing Security and Protection Industry Association. Chongqing, a sprawling South China city, will add 200,000 cameras by 2012 to the 300,000 it now has.

China’s string of “coming-out parties,” from the 2008 Olympics to this year’s Shanghai Expo and the Guangzhou Asian Games, have all been preceded by security clampdowns that included extensive installations of surveillance cameras.
Officials say the cameras leverage the latest technology to battle crime and terrorism. Guangdong provincial officials told Chinese news services last year that their new cameras had deterred more than 18,000 street crimes even before the one million cameras had been fully deployed. In Kunming, in south-central China, crime dropped 10 percent after the police installed new cameras, the city’s deputy police chief told a security forum last spring.

That said — and some Western skeptics dispute claims of the cameras’ crime-fighting success — China’s video surveillance clearly has a darker side.

After ethnic rioting in Tibet in 2008 and Urumqi in 2009, security authorities installed live cameras both inside and on the grounds of monasteries and mosques, and hoteliers were ordered to place high-quality cameras and scanners in their buildings. Deploying video cameras for 24-hour monitoring of dissidents and troublemakers, such as citizens seeking to bring grievances to authorities, is now standard procedure.

Most recently, Mr. Bequelin said, the Beijing writer Yu Jie and environmental activist Wu Lihong have come under constant video watch after coming under official scrutiny.

The longer-term concern, he said, is that video surveillance will become a pervasive tool for controlling not only China’s comparative handful of dissidents, but the masses of people who ordinarily would not run afoul of the state.

In Urumqi, Communist Party and security officials initially agreed to a reporter’s request for an interview about cameras there, then demurred, explaining that cameras were a well-known anticrime tool and that there was nothing new to say. Still, recent reports in the Chinese news media, which was given broad access to security officials to report on the surveillance system, hint at the cameras’ potential.

Urumqi’s taxi fleet has had live video cameras for two years. Officials said they had since posted cameras on the city’s 3,400 buses and in 200 bus stations, 200 major stores and markets, 270 schools and along 4,400 roads — and would continue to mount new cameras until the entire city is blanketed.

In the city’s Tianshan district, a Uighur neighborhood racked by riots a year ago, a report on the Chinese Internet portal NetEase described 20 staff members at the local Public Security Bureau scanning the monitors. “One showed the picture inside of a Line 50 bus; the other showed the picture in front of a major supermarket on Qinnian Road,” the report said. “As the monitoring camera rotated 360 degrees, every corner in front of the supermarket was in clear panoramic view.”

Which was a comforting sight, the report assured its readers. The purpose of the surveillance, it stated, “is to ensure the safety of the public places, and to provide good public service for all people of different ethnicities.”

When asked, Han Chinese in the city generally saw the cameras as a good thing. “I think the whole thing was probably triggered by the incident last July,“ said 42-year-old Xie Gang, a wholesaler, referring to last year’s ethnic riots. “But the significance of the cameras is not to crack down on rioters, but to prevent crimes. If something happens, the message will get to the authorities right away.“

Ethnic Uighurs had a markedly different take. “Oh, the security is very, very good here,“ one man who refused to give even his first name said, with evident sarcasm, when asked whether the cameras deterred crime. “You can see the police patrolling everywhere.“

They are everywhere.

In schools, hospitals, grocery stores, churches, car washes and highways. Surveillance cameras have become as much a part of the American landscape as apple pie and lawsuits.

“If you are in a public place you can just about assume you’re on camera,” said John Knox, owner of Knox Integrated Systems, a company that installs security systems.

Consider the numbers:
The Tennessee Department of Transportation has 357 SmartWay cameras along highways, mainly through the state’s major cities, including 50 in Knox County,

More than 595 cameras are deployed in just dormitories at the University of Tennessee. How many are on the entire campus not even UT knows, but the number is certainly well over a thousand.

More than 200 Public Building Authority cameras operate in and on various city and county properties.

More than 1,500 are in and around Knox County Schools – 90 in Hardin Valley Academy alone.

The Knoxville Police Department has 354 vehicles, each with a camera on board. The Knox County Sheriff’s Office has roughly 125 cruisers equipped with cameras.

Red-light camera systems click away at 15 intersections around Knoxville.

Steven Wyatt, federal spokesman at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, says security cameras there “number in the hundreds.” Exactly how many cameras are there and how far they reach is not disclosed.

Businesses in general tend to keep quiet about the number of cameras they deploy. West Town Mall, Pilot Travel Centers and Weigel’s, for example, turned down requests to talk about security issues. But, the smoky domes and little, white boxes are so prevalent in and around such businesses that nobody gives them much thought.

Two reasons are behind the camera boom.

The first is money.

“Cost-effectiveness is a huge part of it,” said Dale Smith, executive director of the Knoxville Public Building Authority. He points out that securing World’s Fair Park would take seven or eight guards working around the clock, but with the nine cameras there, he needs only one or two guards – who aren’t working all of the time.

“To have a security presence is cost-prohibitive, and technology has made it a lot less costly,” he says. “The cameras don’t sleep, and they don’t eat doughnuts.”

Knox, who got into security systems in the early 1980s when surveillance cameras amounted to less than 5 percent of the business, is vice president of the national Electronic Security Association and often represents the industry in Washington.

“The boom is still going on,” he said. “The last five years, when it (cameras) went from analog to digital, the price went way down because so many people started buying them. The cameras now are so much cheaper and so much better. And, they are available at many price levels.

“It used to cost $5,000 for one camera and now those are down to $1,000. You can get them as cheap as $100.”

Reason No. 2? The cameras work.

“We used to have bomb threats called in about once a day,” says Lt. Mac Doss, supervisor of safety and services with the Public Building Authority, which began installing its cameras seven years ago. “We have had two in the past six years.”

“When we took over management of the security at the health department we heard that a prostitution ring was being run in their parking lot and the department’s employees were complaining of feeling threatened,” PBA’s Smith says. “We put up a fence, then we put up cameras and signage that said there were surveillance cameras on site, and that basically stopped it cold.”

“When we took over management of city garages, one had a real history of automobile theft and vandalism. We put cameras in there and it became a nonissue.”

Now, city garages average about 10 cameras each.

Lt. Robert Hubbs of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office Crime Analysis Unit tells of a rape case at a Laundromat in South Knoxville.

“The investigating officer asked to check out the (nearby) red-light camera video thinking he might see the car go through,” Hubbs said. “We did better than that. The guy ran a red light at Moody (Avenue) and Chapman (Highway). We had him.”

“They (cameras) do serve as a deterrent,” says Lt. Keith Lambert, who oversees the University of Tennessee Police Department’s surveillance program, “Criminals love the dark, but they are less likely to do things when they know there is at least the potential that somebody is seeing what they are doing.”

A section of 16th Street from the Panhellenic Building toward the UT campus is considered a potential problem area. To combat that situation, 13 cameras are installed there, and they are monitored continuously.

“We have had some success with seeing people who are committing a crime,” Lambert says. “There isn’t really an accurate way to measure (how many crimes it has prevented). It does give people who frequent these areas a sense of security.”

At schools

Amid the ruins of what was once Rule High School on Maryland Avenue is an unassuming metal building. Inside has the feel of a tidy workshop with a row of cell phones recharging, a couple of desks and a handful of people with badges coming and going. On one wall are three large television screens. The screens run 24-7, almost always with at least one person on hand to observe. They look deceptively underwhelming considering the job they do. On each can be viewed the goings-on before 1,500-plus surveillance cameras at schools, maintenance and other structures in the Knox County system.

A click of the laptop computer can call up a camera to monitor a hallway at Halls Elementary or help determine who vandalized the Bearden football field, as happened in October.

The cameras all record around the clock. They all have motion detectors and can all be called up on Maryland Avenue with the push of a couple buttons.

“Camera location is based upon the footprint of the school, the size and dimensions,” explains Mike Walker of Professional Security Consultants and Design, the company that has been installing the cameras in schools for nine years. “We involve the maintenance and security staffs at the schools (when installing a system), and we meet with the principal and talk about areas of concern and the threat-level issues.”

They decide on the number of cameras needed. West High School, which in terms of square footage is the largest school in Knox County, has around 64 cameras.

Walker said the cameras have helped with everything from noncustodial parents snatching their children from school to wayward graffiti artists to school shootings such as the August 2008 one at Central High School. For big problems, Walker says he gets a call.

“Usually if they involve me it’s major,” he said. “It likely means it’s something that could go to court.”

Court is where Walker is called upon to explain the surveillance system to defense attorneys looking to poke legal holes in their operation.

“We have been very successful,” Walker says.

At UT

Walker is also heavily involved in much of the security around the University of Tennessee – one large structure in particular.

The Knoxville surveillance community speaks in awe of the system in and around Neyland Stadium. Walker, who dealt with the installation, says only that he worked with the federal Department of Homeland Security on the project and he is not allowed to talk about it.

With 100,000-plus gathered at Neyland on a football Saturday, Homeland Security considered the stadium a potential target for terrorists.

“We don’t discuss anything about the cameras at the stadium or (Thompson-Boling) arena,” said UT’s Lambert. “We stay away from (disclosing) what we see and how many cameras there are. I can say there are a significant number of cameras. Not only can we monitor the stadium, but we are more concerned with the area around the stadium than inside. Our focus is on the outside.”

Lambert says the surveillance stretches a good distance from Neyland’s gates. In fact, a fringe benefit has been funding for monitoring the parking garages around the stadium. The cameras there can be used year-round, not just on football weekends.

The vast number of cameras at the UT campus in general – certainly well over 1,000 – has become a concern. There are so many different systems operating, conducted by so many agencies and programs, that in truth no one – not even the UT police department – knows how many there are.

“We started working earlier this year trying to work with the departments on campus to identify who has cameras,” Lambert said. “All of these schools and colleges are set up into individual departments. If you are a department and you want a camera and you have the bandwidth and everything in place to put one up, you put one up. A lot of places on campus have put these things in on their own. There is no point or centralized control. There are different systems. We have been trying to coordinate where they are and who is in control.”

In public

Lt. Doss of the Public Building Authority stands in a room just inside the entrance to the Knox County Sheriff’s Office in the basement of the City County Building. It’s call the COMM room. Before him are at least 25 television screens. The screens can call up more than 200 cameras in almost all county and city offices as well as parking garages and other areas.

The push of a button gets him a view of Volunteer Landing; another shows him an escalator in the Knoxville Convention Center. One more button and the first floor of the Market Square Garage is on the screen.

“We have cameras in any building we manage and any property we have,” Doss says. “When we started in ’03 we had six monitors. Now they run all the way across (the room) and we even had to extend the office at one time to put in extra monitors.”

The World’s Fair Park cameras can each swivel and zoom in on just about any part of the park. The ninth was recently added on an elevator where mischievous riders jumping up and down had brought on a series of $1,000 visits from the repair company. The new Knoxville Station Transit Center has at least eight cameras and a linked-in public address system that could call out an offender in the act – perhaps someone shaking a vending machine to get his dollar back.

Jayne Burritt of the PBA says the security system has become so popular that various public entities are coming to the authority now requesting that cameras be added. She mentioned that Knoxville greenways and KAT stops have been among the places suggested for additions. Powering the cameras from spots with no electricity is a challenge.

At hospitals

Hospitals are usually extremely competitive in the area of patient care, battling intensely for bragging rights over who has the latest equipment, best health care ratings, etc. In at least one area, they work together.

“One of the things we try to do from time to time is meet with other area hospitals (about security),” says Harry Watson, vice president of facility operations at University of Tennessee Medical Center. “We compare notes – ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this?’ We went to the Vanderbilt Medical Center to see how they do things.”

Watson says UT Medical Center has dozens of cameras; some record, some only look out on areas. A security center monitors the cameras inside the hospital and on the parking lots.

“I have worked here since the mid-1980s and we had them when I came to work here,” he says. “The big growth has been in infant and pediatrics. There are a lot of concerns in how we manage and protect those infants. In that area, it goes beyond cameras.”

Communication is vital.

“We do a security review,” Watson says. “We bring in our nursing staff and we talk about what their concerns are. We bring them in based on the type of security calls we get from a specific area. Based on their concerns and what we see, then a decision is made on what cameras are needed.”

On patrol

Detective Aaron Yarnell of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office sees himself as a puzzle master.

“Every case is a puzzle,” he says. “I take each piece and try to formulate the totality of it. Cell phones, videos, witness statements … I put them all together.”

Hubbs says Yarnell, who has been with the Sheriff’s Office for 13 years, “thinks outside the box.”

For example, a huge problem with the quick and continued evolution of surveillance cameras is the variation in sophistication that has emerged in the cameras used by businesses and other entities. Some aren’t compatible with any system the Sheriff’s Office has. Hubbs says the investigation of a robbery at one fastfood restaurant was slowed because the restaurant had no way to get the image off its camera.

“People don’t have the same formats (on the surveillance systems), and they don’t know how to use them,” Hubbs said.

Yarnell found a simple but huge workaround for most cases. He uses his BlackBerry to take a snapshot of images off the video screen onsite and e-mails the image directly to a network of law enforcement agencies throughout the area.

“He took a picture off the video after a robbery at the CVS (pharmacy) on Maynardville Highway and within 10 minutes the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office called to say they recognized the guy,” Hubbs said. “We had him in the next day.”

Hubbs said in the not-so-old days the information likely would not even have been distributed until the next day.

“When I came on as a cop in 1979 we didn’t have any of this stuff, but now it’s just like that,” says Hubbs, snapping his fingers.

“There are so many significant benefits in knowing how to better manage inventory and better serve customers”

NEW YORK — Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) is putting electronic identification tags on men’s clothing like jeans starting Aug. 1 as the world’s largest retailer tries to gain more control of its inventory. But the move is raising eyebrows among privacy experts.

The individual garments, which also includes underwear and socks, will have removable smart tags that can be read from a distance by Wal-Mart workers with scanners. In seconds, the worker will be able to know what sizes are missing and will also be able tell what it has on hand in the stock room. Such instant knowledge will allow store clerks to have the right sizes on hand when shoppers need them.

The tags work by reflecting a weak radio signal to identify the product. They have long spurred privacy fears as well as visions of stores being able to scan an entire shopping cart of items at one time.

Wal-Mart’s goal is to eventually expand the tags to other types of merchandise but company officials say it’s too early to give estimates on how long that will take.

“There are so many significant benefits in knowing how to better manage inventory and better serve customers,” said Lorenzo Lopez, a Wal-Mart spokesman. “This will enhance the shopping experience and help us grow our business.”

Before the rollout, Wal-Mart and other stores were using the tags, called radio frequency identification tags, only to track pallets or cases of merchandise in their warehouses. But now the tags are jumping onto individual items, a move that some privacy experts describe as frightening.

Wal-Mart, which generated annual revenue of a little more than $400 billion in its latest fiscal year and operates almost 4,000 stores, has huge influence with suppliers. That makes other merchants tend to follow its lead.

“This is a first piece of a very large and very frightening tracking system,” said Katherine Albrecht, director of a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering.

Albrecht worries that Wal-Mart and others would be able to track movements of customers who in some border states like Michigan and Washington are carrying new driver’s licenses that contain RFID tags to make it easier for them to cross borders.

Albrecht fears that retailers could scan data from such licenses and their purchases and combine that data with other personal information. She also says that even though the smart tags can be removed from clothing, they can’t be turned off and can be tracked even after you throw them in the garbage, for example.

Wal-Mart officials said they are aware of privacy concerns but insist they are taking a “thoughtful and methodical approach.”

Dan Fogelman, a Wal-Mart spokesman said that the smart label doesn’t collect customer information.

“Wal-Mart is using it strictly to manage inventory. The customer is in complete control,” he said. Fogelman added that Wal-Mart’s readers identify only inventory it has in the store.

To placate privacy concerns, Wal-Mart, which is financing some of the suppliers’ costs, is asking vendors to embed the smart tags in removable labels and not embed them in clothing.

Wal-Mart plans to educate customers with the new program through in-store videos and through signs posted in the stores that educate customers about the program.

July 21

State transportation officials believe vandalism is to blame for a cut to a fiber optic
cable in downtown Birmingham that disabled its area traffic cameras and the department’s ability to remotely control local highway message boards this week.

The Alabama Department of Transportation has 77 traffic cameras and 14 overhead message boards along highways in the Birmingham area, said Tony Harris, spokesman for the department. Views from 39 of the cameras are accessible to the public through ALDOT’s website and the remainder can only be viewed by ALDOT’s traffic management center.

Message boards are used to relay to motorists messages, including traffic delays, detours, and travel times.

Links to the cameras and message boards were cut sometime Monday morning, Harris said.

The cut was located Tuesday, just before lunch, Harris said. The exact location of the cut is not being disclosed for security reasons, he said.

Transportation officials from Birmingham and Montgomery studied the cut, Harris said. “They have concluded it appears to be the work of vandals rather than some accidental cut,” he said.

The repairs, which begin today, will cost at least $10,000, Harris said. “We hope to have all the services that are linked to that fiber optic cable restored by early next week,” he said.

ALDOT officials will file a report with local law enforcement authorities about the fiber optic cut, Harris said.

In the meantime, whatever messages already on the boards will continue, Harris said. If a message needs to be changed to relay important information to motorists, ALDOT will send someone to the board and change it manually, he said.

But there is no ability to calculate and relay travel times while the cameras and message boards are off-line, Harris said.

http://www.thirdfactor.com/

OAKLAND Calif. — A chirping sound on his laptop alerted George Chamales, a self anointed freelance hacker, that the Foot Locker, a sports shoe shop in downtown Oakland had been vandalized, 15 minutes before the news appeared either on a police radio wave streamed online or on any mainstream media outlet.

Chameles and his girltfriend were mapping notable incidents of violence in Downtown Oakland on Thursday night, using Ushahidi – a disaster mapping platform first built in Kenya.

Their aim was to prevent any loss of innocent lives, in the chaos that ensued after the peaceful protests demanding justice for Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old unarmed black youth shot by a BART cop, turned sour.

“I discovered Ushahidi in April, when I saw it successfully deployed in Haiti, to map the devastation from the earthquake . It is an open source platform that aims to provide reliable, real-time information about a crisis as it unfolds, to help people on the ground stay informed as be safe,” said Chameles, an independent Computer Security Consultant.

The Oakland Police had braced themselves for a riot as the accused ex-BART officer Johannes Mehserle received a verdict of involuntary manslaughter on Thursday, June 8.

“I realized that I could use this tool in my own backyard, to help the community and to relay truthful facts about what happens. I started working on it just 2 days before the verdict was due, and was able to have the oscargrantprotests.com site up about an hour before the verdict was announced at 4.00 p.m.,” said Chameles a resident of Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood.

Although this was the first time that a white cop was convicted of a significant felony in California for shooting an unarmed Black man, many felt the verdict was inadequate. Crowds poured to 14th Street and Broadway, demanding justice.

Chameles scanned Tweetdeck, a tool used to follow several twitter streams at once, for the latest updates from people on the ground, while listening to a police radio signal that was streamed online. He also browsed mainstream media websites to verify the updates he was getting through twitter about the ground situation.

“We called the Oakland police riot tip-off line and informed them about the site. We also informed the Oakland Red Cross that had a team of volunteers on the ground,” Chamalese said. As the evening progressed his site became a central reference point for people to check whether BART stations were closed, or find out where the looting was happening

Both BART(@SFBART) and the Oakland Police (@OaklandpoliceCA) had their own twitter streams to provide situation updates. But, as Oakland Police Public Information Officer Holly Joshi noted, this was the first time they were experimenting with this tool in a crisis situation, and there was a significant time-lapse between when the information came in and was relayed to the public.

“At one point we received information that the 19th Street BART Station in Oakland was closed. Just as we were about to tweet it, we saw that BART’s official twitter account had sent a newer update saying that it was reopened. When we called to double check we realized that the confusion was due to delays in getting the right information to the people handling the official social media tools at BART,” Joshi said.

It was in instances like this, where Chameles’s website oscargrantprotests.com had an edge over the official channels of communication and the mainstream media.

“We were experiencing all the action from a meta-pervasive level. We were tracking the voices of many people, who were tweeting real-time from the ground. So we had the advantage of having hundreds of eye-witness accounts, compared to that of the official channels that were limited,” Chameles said.

In several instances. Chameles knew about a violent incident on the ground 10 to 20 minutes before it was broadcast in the traditional media.

“We were looking at mainstream media to verify the facts we were getting mainly through twitter feeds. But after some time we realized that there was a way to validate the authenticity of the tweets we were getting, by looking at the past content. As we followed the information related by different individuals, we quickly spotted who had been consistently accurate about incidences. We picked them up as trustworthy sources,” Chameles explained.

Interestingly, tweets from professional journalists on the ground, emerged as some of the most trustworthy sources of information.

Chameles and his girlfriend tracked the incidents till around 1.00 a.m, when the action died down and the police retreated.

“I felt that the overall protest was relatively calm, despite the incidents of vandalism as I tracked the wave of real-time information. A lot fo the sentiments expressed in the twittersphere reinforced the call for non-violence,” Chameles said.

Many micro-bloggers who were tweeting from the ground were disappointed with the screaming headlines in the mainstream media the next day.

“The newspapers and websites were filled with pictures of broken glasses, the graffiti and the few dumpsters that were burnt. But there were more people who came out and tried to say that violence was not justice. How did the media miss that point?” questioned a citizen blogger who microblogs with the twitter-handle @OakFoSho.

The crowds also started retweeting the message “Peopl starting to break windows at the Rite Aid. Come on #Oakland, stay #NonViolent! #OscarGrant #protest at 16th & Broadway” as the vandalism began, as a way of denouncing the violence.

Another popular sentiment that was echoing in the twittersphere was that “Post-racism will be the shortest era in American history ever. Welcome to post-post-racism. Or in other words, back to racism,” tweeted by @dahlak.

Fan pages had also sprung up on facebook, both supporting and opposing the verdict and provided a discussion forum on whether justice was delivered in the case. They were also rallying points for organizing future protests, to keep the memory of Oscar Grant alive.

Robert Gerstle — an Oakland Resident who was part of the “Violence is not Justice” protest that was organized by the community groups, Youth Uprising and the Urban Peace Movement — witnessed how civilians were trying in some instances to stop the recklessness on their own as “…the OPD stood around and watched while they maintained scrimmage”.

“Those individuals didn’t get much media attention as to their efforts to convey the Grant family’s wishes for peace. Honestly, the next day I told my friends not to even bother looking at the newspapers. There shots and stories only reinforce their own macabre beliefs about the people of Oakland,” Gerstle said.

County Hall chiefs are going hi-tech to curb the number of bus shelters being vandalised across Lancashire.

People can now report damage to bus shelters by sending a text message to a dedicated hotline number.

Meanwhile, iPhone owners can download a free app allowing them to send a photo of any damage.

The new initiative means residents can report bus shelter problems such as smashed windows or graffiti to a single contact point.

Rick Wilson, Safer Travel Unit manager at Lancashire County Council, said: “Mindless damage to bus shelters is a real problem across the whole county, but up until now people have been unsure whether to report damage to the police, bus companies or the local authority.”

Lancashire has a total of 2,180 bus shelters spread across the county

Skaters who want to tackle the Poway Skate Park’s bowls, rails and steps will have to make it through a fingerprint scan at the entrance starting Friday night.

City officials plan to activate a biometric scanner at 6 p.m. to control access to the park.

Skaters who have registered their fingerprints, photos and other information with the city in advance will be the only people allowed into the facility at Tarascan and Civic Center drives once the scanner is turned on.

Similar to biometric devices used at SeaWorld, Disney World and many gyms, the skatepark scanner is the final component of a $91,000 security upgrade at the park.

June Dudas, assistant community services director for the city, said city officials hope the improvements will end bullying, vandalism and other problems at the skatepark.

“We spent over $1 million building the park,” she said. “And we wanted to make sure that this asset continued to be there for the community and that people feel very comfortable coming to it.”

As of Thursday afternoon, more than 100 people had registered their fingerprints with the city for the scanner, Dudas said.

The skatepark has been unsupervised since it opened in 2003 because state law limits a city’s liability for injuries sustained at such facilities if they are unstaffed.

The number of break-ins, vandalism and other problems occurring at the facility has steadily increased in the past five years, however. City officials said alcohol and illegal drug use also have been an issue, and that some parents have complained that young skaters have been bullied by older skaters at the park.

City officials unsuccessfully tried several other measures in hopes of curbing the problem before the City Council approved the security upgrade last year. The improvements included expanded fencing, security cameras and motion-activated lights.

Reaction to the use of the scanner has been mixed, with some skaters bemoaning the added security. Other people have expressed privacy concerns.

Dudas said Thursday the information collected by the city will be used only to maintain security at the park. Many parents have praised the decision to install the scanner, she said.

“Really, the expectation is it’ll create a safer environment,” said Dudas.

City Councilman Jim Cunningham and participants in the park’s weekly “14 and Under Skate Session” will be the first to use the scanner after it is unveiled. The skatepark will be open to other preregistered skaters starting Saturday.

TOKYO (Reuters) — Confronted with rising wages and a shortage of labor, a supplier of car body frames to Honda Motor Co. last month earmarked the equivalent of a half year’s profit to triple the number of robots at its three Chinese plants.

The $22 million investment by Japan-based H-One is part of a push to automate factories across China that is expected to gather pace in the wake of the recent burst of strikes and expected appreciation of the yuan.

“The automation equipment industry is growing very, very fast. Sensors, frequency converters, conveyor belts, pneumatic systems, power tools — you name it,” said Raymond Tsang, head of consultancy Bain & Co.’s Greater China industrial practice.

“We’re seeing anywhere between 20 to 30 percent growth in those sectors year over year.”

The series of high-profile strikes in recent months has affected mostly Japanese-owned auto and parts factories including Honda and Toyota Motor Co. in southern China. It has put a spotlight on growing unrest among China’s massive migrant worker population wanting a greater share of the country’s growing wealth.

Although labor remains a small portion of overall Chinese manufacturing costs, some see the worker unrest as further spurring a move to mechanization.

With China now accounting for 15.6 percent of the world’s manufactured goods — having last year surpassed Japan to become the second largest after the United States — the automation trend holds the promise of big profits for equipment suppliers such as Japan’s Fanuc Ltd., Germany’s Siemens AG, and U.S.-based Rockwell Automation.

Investors have taken notice. Shares of Fanuc, the world’s top maker of equipment that numerically controls machine tools, have jumped 16 percent over the past month as the strikes began getting wide media coverage. Sensor maker Omron Corp. has shot up 13 percent.

But analysts argue the growth potential of this trend is far from factored into share prices. The prospect for rapid automation is likely as wages rise and manufacturers look to move up the value chain and produce higher quality goods.

According to Nomura Securities, the ratio of machine tools in China that use numerical controls, a good measure of the level of automation, climbed to 27 percent in the quarter to May, up from 22 percent in 2009 and 19 percent in 2008.

This brings China to the level of Japan in the 1980s when it was in still in a phase of strong economic growth. Japan’s numerical control ratio has since risen to a world-leading 82 percent, offering a glimpse of where China may be headed as its economy develops.

Yaskawa Electric says China demand helped it log record orders overseas for its industrial robots in May, and it reckons the prospect for further growth is strong with the ratio of China plants using robots at just one-fourth the level of Japan.

“The pace of automation in Chinese factories is faster than Japan in the 1980s,” said Wenjie Ge, an analyst at Nomura Securities, which forecasts wages to double in China in five years.

“Rising labor costs would not only lead to an automation of Chinese factories but also increase personal incomes, which is spurring the spread of cars and electronics, and this is again favourable for machinery demand.”

Huge wave

The surge in wages and impending revaluation of the yuan will undoubtedly prompt some companies to move factories to countries with lower labor costs such as Vietnam.

One example is the retail industry. Nitori, which owns a chain of interior goods stores in Japan and imports about 60 percent of its products from Chinese factories, said last week it would consider shifting some production outside China.

Bain’s Tsang says not all production will go the way of automation given that wages, while rising, are still in most cases a fraction of what they are in the West. It also makes little sense to automate when a manufacturer’s business model is based on being flexible to deliver volumes based on demand.

“Further automating their factories is something that most of them are thinking about doing. But they may not do it in same way as we see in Germany or in the U.S. where production lines are 100 percent automated with robotics,” Tsang said.

But the overall momentum behind automation is strong and there is little chance that manufacturures will ditch China as a production base. Among other things, producing in China keeps a maker close to the massive and fast-growing market there.

Shin-Etsu Chemical, which had been reluctant to place a factory in China due to the difficulty of procuring a stable supply of raw materials, said today it would build a silicon plant in Jiangsu Province in response to rising demand.

The Japanese chemical firm plans to invest about $95 million, its first major investment in China, to boost its annual silicon output by about 30 percent.

Electronics parts maker TDK Corp. is also planning to add new machinery at its Chinese factories.

THK Co., which makes linear motion guides for machine tools, received orders of 274 million yuan ($40.35 million) in the quarter to March in China, a record high for a second straight quarter.

Records for robots

Fanuc, which is also a top maker of industrial robots, plans to lift its monthly output of robots to a record high by this fall to meet surging demand in China and India.

“Japanese automation-related makers such as Fanuc have been in a better position than European rivals to benefit from the trend as their products are generally cheaper,” said Mitsushige Akino of Ichiyoshi Investment Management.

“But the recent weak euro is supporting European makers such as Siemens to gain momentum. Japanese and European makers are even in their product quality, and thus the real game is going to start now.”

You’ve heard of BIG Brother – now meet Little Brother.

Residents in Deepdale have secured funding for a mini portable CCTV camera to capture evidence of vandals, thieves and yobs.

It is hoped the petite £3,000 camera, dubbed ‘Little Brother’ by residents, will deter crime as well as provide footage of crimes in progress in hotspot areas.

It comes 18 months after the community in the Meadow Street area set up a community group and scooped funding for six fixed cameras, following complaints about the effects of drugs dealing and prostitution in the area.

Members of the group feel having an additional moveable camera means residents affected by crime in other nearby areas, which the cameras don’t cover, would benefit too.

Robin Maudsley, chairman of CRAB (Communities Residents and Businesses) community group that scooped the funding, said: “The fixed cameras have already been a great success and crime is nothing like it was in the area.

“But there are people in other areas asking why they can’t have cameras so we decided to seek funding to buy a camera that could be moved around according to demand.

“It means if a particular area is suffering vandalism, we can put the camera there.

“We have had to iron out a few technicalities over who can host the cameras, but we are hoping it will be a further boost to the other CCTV scheme.

The retired engineer, who is a resident of Meadow Street, added: “We have called it a portable peace of mind.”

Before the installation of the £30,000 fixed cameras Meadow Street and nearby roads in Deepdale had suffered anti-social behaviour from drinkers, drug dealers and street-based sex workers for years.

The cameras focus on known trouble spots – such as two phone boxes on East View – with the added bonus of loudspeakers enabling security operators to shout at troublemakers while filming them.

Coupled with the addition of Christian street pastors, who interact with those at risk of offending, and a push by police to tackle prostitution, residents say they feel much safer.

The new camera will be monitored by Preston firm Shepherd Security which already looks after the existing fixed cameras.

LOS ANGELES—Police investigators are using Twitter and Facebook postings in hopes of identifying more of the suspects responsible for violence and destruction that occurred downtown after the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship at Staples Center.

Investigators also plan to use images taken from police videos, area surveillance cameras and television reports. It could take months to identify more suspects.

After Thursday’s victory over the Boston Celtics, people started fires, rocked cars, smashed windows and threw objects at fans and officers. One taxi cab was torched.

Lt. Paul Vernon said there were 45 arrests so far—22 for felonies. Nine were arrested for assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer, three for inciting a riot, six for vandalism, two for arson and two for throwing objects at vehicles.

Five of those arrested were juveniles.

Vernon told the Los Angeles Times that cell phones and video have “in essence deputized the public” in fighting crime.

Using a YouTube video showing people setting fire to the taxi cab, the Fire Department arson squad asked for public help in finding the culprits. Investigators say they’ve gotten several solid tips.

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office said Monday that 10 people will be prosecuted on misdemeanor charges, including inciting a riot, unlawful assembly after being told to disperse, throwing flammable objects and assault.

Attorney Chuck Goldenberg said one of the cases involved a man accused of setting fire to a Boston Celtics jersey.

Another man was arrested for allegedly throwing a bicycle at a police officer.

18 June
Board Considers Adding Security Cameras

Security cameras could be coming to a street near you in the Village of Garden City. After several incidents of vandalism in the business district, Trustee Dennis Donnelly advocated his support for installing additional security cameras around the village.

At a recent board meeting, Donnelly reported that Franklin Avenue merchants Garden City Pizza had one window broken and Bagelman had planters that were damaged during a vandalism spree over Memorial Day weekend. Seventh Street village storefront Things and Stuff also lost a planter and the Pear Tree Shoppe had a window broken.

While many residents suspect local youth may be responsible, Donnelly implored that the board consider footing the bill for surveillance cameras. “We have to stop this nonsense,” Donnelly stated. “As most of you know, I am a big proponent of security cameras, but I think we owe it to the business district to have some monitors on the street because in the case of Garden City Pizza, this is his second window in a very short period of time,” he stated.

Donnelly went on to say that the board must take the necessary action to keep Garden City merchants safe. “We don’t want to have roll-down gates in Garden City in our stores and whatever we have to do we will do to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Donnelly said, adding “We ought to get moving on this item…I know it’s not going to be real cheap but I think we owe it to the people who live here.”

John Wilton, chairman of Garden City Merchants, Professionals & Retailers Group, also agreed with Donnelly. “I am delighted that the commissioner and Trustee Donnelly are addressing the frustration of the unfortunate incidents of vandalism on Seventh Street. It did spread to the other tenants who were not vandalized but were querying about what are we going to do. So I will go back to them that it has been sensitively addressed and there is pro-active activity,” Wilton stated.

Greg Bavaro, owner of Garden City Pizza, told Garden City Life this is the third time a brick has been thrown through the window and that security cameras and increased police presence could be a possible solution to the problem. “A weekend doesn’t go by where you come in and the planters outside are dumped over and there’s beer cans all over the place,” Bavaro explained. “There’s a pretty strong need for surveillance to be put in. I think that’s probably a very good deterrent,” he said. “This is stuff that shouldn’t go on in a nice quaint neighborhood like this,” he said. “There’s definitely a problem and it definitely needs to be addressed,” Bavaro said.

Dean Adams, a co-owner of Things and Stuff, said one of his planters worth about $250 was taken over the holiday weekend. “I am guessing it’s kids; they are just hanging around,” he said. Adams said that if the vandals knew they were being identified on camera, they may stop and think before they do something like this again. “I have a feeling that would definitely make a difference,” he said.

Barvaro said that the merchants being affected are not just some whining business owners complaining about a cost of doing business. “We are the people that constantly, generously, give to all of the local charities, civic associations, sports teams, etc. as well as pay our high rents and taxes to be in one of Long Island’s premier villages,” he said.

According to Village Auditor Jim Olivo, the village currently has approximately 20 cameras that are currently in use to guard village assets, but would not reveal their locations. Police Commissioner Cipullo announced that Garden City Police Lieutenant Doyle is in the process of estimating the costs for installing additional security cameras. “It’s not as simple as it sounds and we have to determine what locations you want to cover. We are working on it,” Cipullo stated.

Inspector Jackson of the Garden City Police Department told Garden City Life that, as of press time, no arrests have been made regarding the incidents. “We have increased patrols and we are actively investigating these matters,” he said.

If you think standard security cameras are an invasion of your privacy, the Department of Homeland Security is testing a surveillance cam that puts others to shame.

It gives law enforcement high-def, 360-degree footage of a scene. The feeds are integrated with image-stitching technology.

The Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance (ISIS) under development at the department’s Science and Technology Directorate is a hemispherical group of cameras that deliver a “high-res video quilt,” according to the DHS.

The ultrawide camera system streams distortion-free, real-time stitched video and has a resolution capacity of 100 megapixels, which is “as detailed as 50 full-HDTV movies playing at once, with optical detail to spare,” the DHS said in a release. It has been built with off-the-shelf cameras, image processors, and software.

The ISIS interface can zoom in on certain areas without loss of clarity while continuing to capture the whole scene. A range of commercially available applications allows the system to perform functions such as automatically tracking objects, vehicles, or people picked out by a user–even against cluttered backgrounds. Another app can establish a visual “exclusion zone” and will alert users if it is breached.

The DHS has been testing ISIS at Boston’s Logan airport since December 2009. Meanwhile, it’s working on a second generation that will be no larger than a basketball but will shoot at higher resolution and with greater range. An infrared ISIS is also in the works for nighttime surveillance.

Like the headline on the release warns, there will be “no place to hide” from ISIS.

Anyone convicted of a crime in New York would have their DNA added to a state database, if a new measure, backed by Gov. David Paterson, wins passage. Right now, about 46 percent of all convicts are added to the collection. The proposed legislation would cover misdemeanors, including curfew violation and vandalism. This would make New York pretty much the most aggressive state when it comes to DNA collection, and prosecutors and police say it would greatly help stop future crime.

May 27

The suspects in the firebombing of a Glebe bank used a rented 2010 SUV as their getaway car, and clocked more than 1,500 kilometres before returning the vehicle the next day, the Citizen has learned.

One of the suspects used his credit card and driver’s licence to rent the GMC Acadia from a ByWard Market agency on May 17, the day before the early-morning firebombing of a Royal Bank of Canada branch on Bank Street.

The suspect reportedly declined insurance and re-fill service charges. He registered only himself as a driver and returned the rented SUV on time.

Ottawa police detectives have seized the SUV and dusted it inside and out for fingerprints.

The Citizen has also learned that police seized the floor mats from the SUV and are now testing them for evidence in what they call a top-priority investigation.

According to the suspect’s MasterCard information, he was charged a $500 deposit, which was refunded when the vehicle was returned.

His driver’s licence lists his address. No one answered the door when the Citizen went to the residence.

The SUV is equipped with an OnStar Communications system, which affords police with search warrants or production orders the vehicle’s exact locations, speed and direction at any given time. It is understood that detectives are exploring the rented getaway car’s route from May 17 to May 19.

The firebombing by anarchist group FFFC-Ottawa, which was filmed and posted online, was an unsophisticated attack and, as a result, detectives have collected trace evidence from the burned-out branch at Bank Street and First Avenue.

The police department has also secured security video from storefronts along Bank and First, including high-definition images.

The “homegrown terrorists,” who attacked the bank because it sponsored the Vancouver Olympics, made their getaway in the rented SUV, according to police.

The group is believed to include at least four people. They are linked to an online independent media site and an anti-establishment network that organizes protests against G8 and G20 summits, unfair trade and government cuts to welfare.

Ottawa police Chief Vern White has said he is confident his detectives will make arrests soon.

Detectives are in overdrive, prompted in part by the “catch-me-if-you-can” video of the attack posted by the firebombers.

26 May
Five companies are competing for the approximately US$300 million project

Nearly a year after bidding opened for a multi-million dollar project that would improve Chile’s identity cards with the use of better technology and the creation of Bicentennial passports, the government said it expects the project to begin in the coming weeks.

Civil Registry Director Christian Behm said the bidding process has taken longer than anticipated but should be ready to begin by mid-June. Once the project is awarded, new identity cards and passports will be tested in 2011, Behm said.

Of the seven companies originally competing for the job, five are still in the process, including SICE Agencia Chile, Sonda (which has the current contract for identity cards and passports), Bundesdruckerei GMBH, Sagem Securite and Indra Sistemas Chile.

Siemens and Coasin Chile initially submitted bids for the project, but did not meet the requirements of the tender.

One of the main innovations of the new ID card is a chip that will store personal information such as fingerprints and basic information to more easily detect fraud or identity theft.

The security of the new cards is one of the main objectives of the change, Behm said, adding that this technology would also be beneficial in disaster situations, such as the February 27 earthquake.

“If this technology had been in place five years or more before the earthquake it would have been much quicker to identify people,” he said.

A group of researchers, including three Indian-Americans, led by genome pioneer J Craig Venter have developed the first bacteria cell controlled by a synthetic genome.

“This is the first synthetic cell that’s been made,” Venter said, as the discovery was unveiled.

“We call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesiser, starting with information in a computer,” he said.

The thee Indian-American scientists are Sanjay Vashee, Radha Krishnakumar, and Prashanth P Parmar, who contributed in the pioneering research that created synthetic cell which will open the way to creating useful microbes from scratch to make products like vaccines and biofuels.

The breakthrough – USD 40 million and more than a decade in the making – is a critical milestone in the burgeoning field of synthetic genomics.

Annapolis police will soon have extra eyes on downtown streets, thanks to a federal grant to supply 20 additional surveillance cameras, The Baltimore Sun reports.

The new cameras will make a total of 30 surveillance cameras downtown, and they will be installed early this summer, said Beth Hart, special projects director for the Police Department.

She said the surveillance cameras provide an alternative to “sending an officer out.” The department has about 130 officers to cover the city of about 39,000 residents.

The money comes from a Department of Homeland Security grant to provide extra security to the state’s capital. Six cameras were installed more than two years ago and have helped solve crimes, Hart said. She said the cameras have been particularly helpful by monitoring bar crowds.

VANDALS have sought out and destroyed CCTV cameras used to catch illegal dumpers.
Laois County Council confirmed that cameras were destroyed last year at a site of illegal dumping in Derrybeg Bog, near Mountrath.

At a meeting earlier this year it was also confirmed that the Council is continuing the use of CCTV, but only certain locations are suitable, such as Bring Banks. The council have had to stop using the cameras in some areas prone to dumping

“A Sign has to be erected advising the public where CCTV is in operation. This exposes the Cameras to vandalism in isolated areas,” said the minutes of a strategic council committee meeting.

Director of Services John Daly said no evidence was available to go after those responsible for the Mountrath vandalism.

The official also told councillors last week, the CCTV surveillance on roadside littering which was carried out on a slip road onto the motorway was not successful as the cameras could not pick up the number plates on the moving vehicles.

BANGKOK – George Orwell’s “1984″ had its Big Brother, and Thailand has Ranongrak Suwanchawee. The country’s information minister stares down from billboards along Bangkok’s expressways, warning that “Bad websites are detrimental to society” and should be reported to a special hot line.

The government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is fighting a battle on at least two major fronts against protesters seeking its ouster. On the streets, a massive force of soldiers and police has only managed to battle them to a standstill. In cyberspace, the authorities have fared little better, despite efforts to block dissenting voices with the threat of lengthy prison terms.

Still, it is a struggle for uncensored information to get through, forcing both information providers and consumers to resort to various dodges to penetrate the government’s firewall, sometimes using tactics perfected by dissidents in such authoritarian states as China and Iran.

The often broad-brush approach to blocking websites even affects surfers just out for some video fun: Live streaming services justin.tv, usteam.tv and livestream.tv have also been blocked, apparently because they host transmissions by the so-called Red Shirt protesters.

“Thailand is getting increasingly like China when it comes to Internet censorship,” said Poomjit Sirawongprasert, president of the Thai Hosting Service Providers Club.

All the while, Thailand’s freedom of speech reputation takes a battering. Thailand’s standing in the Press Freedom Index of the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders slipped to 130 last year from 65 in 2002, when the ratings were initiated.

The latest crisis in Thailand’s past five years of political turmoil has pushed the government into tightening already tough controls over the Internet. The Red Shirts want Abhisit to dissolve Parliament and call early elections, claiming he came to power illegitimately in December 2007 with the help of back-room deals and military pressure.

The demonstrators have been camped out on Bangkok’s streets for almost two months, during which time protest-related violence has left 29 people dead and almost 1,000 hurt.

On April 7, when the government realized that the demonstrators were here to stay, it declared a state of emergency, barring the media, under threat of a ban or censorship, from disseminating any news that “causes panic, instigates violence or affects stability.”

Immediately it ordered 36 politically oriented websites blocked. It also went after small radio stations that are a key organizing tools for the Red Shirts, as well as their satellite TV connection. Their print media so far has been left alone. And although the order is meant to crack down on inflammatory sites, none belonging to the Red Shirts’ ideological opponents — the royalist Yellow Shirts, whose sites also sometimes contain extremist content — are known to have been targeted.

“Nobody has come out to explain why the websites are blocked, starting with 36, then 190 and later 420,” said Supinya Klangnarong, coordinator of the Thai Netizen Network, which promotes freedom of speech on the Internet. She says the actual figure is probably much higher, since there are unofficial ways, such as pressure on internet service providers, to block sites.

Web censorship has been going on for years in Thailand. Reporters Without Borders says that cumulatively, over the past few years, more than 50,000 websites or individual pages have been blocked.

In fact, the government openly touts its crackdowns on sites that contain content seen in Thailand as immoral — including those related to pornography and gambling — and there has been little public outcry. But increasingly the censorship is spreading into news and politics.

The big chill began after a military coup deposed former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September 2006, following demonstrations calling on him to step down for alleged corruption and abuse of power. He was also accused of Thailand’s biggest political sin: disrespect for the country’s esteemed constitutional monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, now 82.

Thaksin, a billionaire who made his fortune in telecommunications, was no friend of free speech either, putting political and financial pressure to limit negative reporting from outlets he did not control. But after his ouster, there was a concerted push by those in power to “protect the monarchy” — going so far as to block all of YouTube for several months because of a few videos it hosted that were deemed insulting to the king.

The interim military-installed regime enacted the 2007 Computer Crime Act, which bars the circulation of material deemed detrimental to national security or that causes public panic, and authorities have used it to block thousands of sites.

This is often done quietly and many Internet users will see only an error message when they try to visit a blocked page.

Websites that serve as mouthpieces for the Red Shirts have been the main targets of government censorship lately. But another one of those first 36 ordered shut after the declaration of the state of emergency was Prachatai.com, which was established by several respected journalists, senators and press freedom activists. It describes itself as an independent, nonprofit, daily Web newspaper that provides information “during an era of serious curbs on the freedom and independence of Thai news media.”

“The attempt to control the Internet has become very great, even greater than after the coup took place in 2006. But then again, Internet communication has played a bigger role since then,” said Prachatai’s webmaster, Chiranuch Premchaiporn.

Chiranuch was already facing charges of violating the Computer Crime Act by allowing comments “threatening to national security” to be posted on her site, an offense for which she could receive up to 50 years in prison.

Prachatai, like others, is playing a cat and mouse game with censors, moving servers out of the country and finding other ways to get its news out.

“If they keep blocking, eventually we might have to distribute content via e-mail,” Chiranuch said.

Users also can circumvent blocking, most typically by using proxy servers, which allow them to connect through a third party computer to disguise their intended destination, and sometimes even software developed to get past firewalls set up by more notorious censors like China and Iran.

Chiranuch said censorship is not the answer to Thailand’s divisions.

“From personal observation, the political crisis intensified after media were suppressed,” she said. “The government is looking down on the people. If it believes people in the country are intelligent and smart enough, showing respect by allowing them to consume news and information from all sides is better than blocking them.”

The City of Johannesburg and law enforcement officials were on Friday studying CCTV footage to identify the striking municipal employees who vandalised the city centre during a march.

“Such vandals will be disciplined and, if need be, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” municipal spokesman Nthatisi Modigoane said.

SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) members emptied rubbish bins on the streets of the city on Thursday during a march to hand over a memorandum of grievances to Gauteng premier Nomvula Mokonyane.

Samwu expressed concern at the behaviour but said it understood employees’ frustration.

The municipality said: “This has gone beyond the accepted norms of civilised protest and is not helping efforts to find an early resolution to the strike.”

Trashing the city encroached on residents’ rights to a safe and healthy environment.

“It also shows some disregard for the loyal and paying citizens of Johannesburg, who really do not deserve such treatment from the members of Samwu.”

Modingoane said the city respected the right to strike but was considering ways to regulate unionists’ behaviour during a march.

“Samwu leadership’s failure to control their members might lead to future marches being denied without a deposit as security.

“Should there be damage and vandalism the city would withhold such deposits and use the money to for repairs.”

The city had asked residents and business owners to move their refuse back to their properties.

“A complete schedule of refuse collection will be published in the media once the strike has ended and the situation has returned to normal.”

Modingoane said the city was concerned about a notice signed by a Samwu leader threatening those who did not participate in the strike.

The notice warned that those who did not take part in the strike would not reap the benefits of developments achieved as a result of the protest. – Sapa

As Silicon Valley slept a year ago tonight, the wireless wonderland in which it existed — a dream world where mobile devices made instant communication not only possible, but almost unavoidable — disappeared suddenly, like Alice, down a hole.

In this case, it was a manhole in South San Jose, which someone breached in the middle of the night and cut fiber-optic cables critical to a vast communications network. When residents of Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties awoke the morning of April 9, it was to a world completely remade with the stroke of a chain saw.

Despite a reward of a quarter-million dollars and investigations by San Jose police, the Santa Clara County sheriff and the FBI, no one was arrested for cutting the lines, which belonged to AT&T. It now seems unlikely anyone ever will be prosecuted, an outcome Jennifer Ponce, coordinator of emergency services for Morgan Hill, called “depressing.”

Equally troubling is the likelihood that it will happen again, unless Silicon Valley tech giants, which rely on the underground network of cables and wires to go on reinventing the future, make a large capital investment in upgrading the grid.

“I don’t think you can ever prevent something like that from happening without a major infrastructure investment from the private sector,” said Dave Snow, Santa Clara County logistics section chief.

Someone undoubtedly will have to make a large capital investment
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to assure that all the grids — electric, transportation and communications — aren’t knocked out for days during such natural disasters as earthquakes. Cash-strapped city and county governments would like to shift the burden to companies that profit from those systems.

“The one thing you can’t do in government nowadays,” Snow said, “is buy things just in case. A large part of our effort is going toward pre-disaster contracting. The first day or two you’re on your own, but you know that support is on its way.”

One company that has made a significant investment in keeping the communications network running smoothly is Cisco, which dispatched its Darth Vader-like NERV (Network Emergency Response Vehicle) to Morgan Hill last year, allowing that city to quickly restore its 911 service. “It’s got cameras, satellite reconnections, and devices that allow you to cross-connect radio frequencies,” said Bert Hildebrand, Santa Clara County director of communications. “They can restore telephone and Internet, which is a capability we don’t have. It’s very cool.”

Cows & colts

Having learned its lesson the hard way, AT&T has already begun making one improvement to the system. The company actually had backup fiber-optic lines, right next to the bundle that got cut. “We had the protection, but it was in the same manhole,” said AT&T spokesman John Britton. Since then, the company has devised a “different geography” for its backup lines expected to be ready by midsummer.

Though the sabotaged wires belonged to AT&T, the incident also knocked out a bundle of lines the company leased to Verizon, sole provider of landline service in South County. Additional cuts were later discovered to wires at two locations in San Carlos, and at Hayes Avenue and Cottle Road in San Jose. Verizon lost service to more than 52,000 households, including disruptions to cellular and Internet service.

Verizon has
beefed up its fleet COWs (cell on wheels) and COLTs (cell on light truck) to handle such emergencies in the future. And other companies have made similar investments.

Wireless communication had become like the air we breathe — all around us and always available — and then it was gone. Landlines went dead, cell phones didn’t work and the Internet flickered off in Morgan Hill, Gilroy and San Jose. It took more than 24 hours to fully restore service, a disconcertingly dark day during which the entire communications grid’s vulnerability to a single point of failure was exposed.

“Wireless calls or data connections are only wireless between the device and the nearest antenna,” explained Heidi Flato, spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless. “From there, they travel over fiber optic systems, through switches and other facilities. Basically, your cell phone is only as good as the network it’s riding on.”

Sabotage was immediately suspected because AT&T’s contract with the Communications ers of America had expired only four days before the lines were cut. After the incident, AT&T spokesman John Britton noted that opening the manhole cover where the fiber optic lines were buried required a special tool.

To pull off such a caper, said Dave Snow, the county’s logistics section chief, “You kind of have to know what you’re doing. Nobody would stand in water and operate a chain saw on electrical lines unless they knew exactly what they were doing.”

Investigation ends

AT&T offered a reward of $100,000 for information leading to arrest and conviction, and the next day raised it to $250,000, one of the largest bounties for an act of vandalism in the company’s history. “That is a huge, huge sum of money,” Britton said, “so we obviously were hoping that would be sufficient motivation to generate a lot of positive leads for the police.”

When the FBI joined the investigation, authorities even considered a legal provision — enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — which made vandalism against a telecommunications network “an act of terrorism,” according to Britton.

He said AT&T’s asset protection division worked closely with police. “We definitely wanted to see whoever committed these terrible acts prosecuted and convicted,” Britton said. “It went far beyond an attack on the network. It was an attack on the people who live in the communities served by the network.”

And then, on Sept. 1, the criminal investigation by San Jose police ended almost as suddenly as it began.

That was the same day the Communications Workers of America approved a new contract with AT&T. “I’m not going to speculate about the incident,” CWA communications director Candice Johnson said in an e-mail. She denied any culpability by union members.

The communications giant’s spokesman refused to speculate on a connection between the simultaneous ending of union strife and the criminal investigation. “All those labor things are in the rearview mirror,” Britton said simply. “From what I know, we cooperated 100 percent with the police department.”

AT&T has bolstered its security, attempting to limit the damage that any future attack could cause, but not even a company of its scope can post a guard over every manhole. “Customers today are demanding connectivity everywhere,” Britton said. “Not just in homes and businesses, not just to make a phone call, or get an e-mail, or send a text message. It’s a tweet, or they want to check in on Facebook, and you now have millions of people who are conditioned to do that. When it’s taken away, it affects them in a big way. And we don’t like it when that happens.”

India has begun counting and gathering information from over a billion people living in the country, in what is one of the largest and most comprehensive censuses in the world.

The process, that will see every resident fingerprinted and photographed, is expected to cost about $1.25bn and employ 2.5 million staff over an 11-month period.

“It is the first time in human history that we will identify, enumerate, record and eventually issue an identity card to 1.2 billion people,” said Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s home minister.

Undertaken every decade since 1872, the census this year will collect biometric data on every person aged over 15 for a new national population register.

Increased detail

Personal details such as declared nationality and marital status will also be recorded, as well as statistics on the proportion of bank account holders, mobile phone owners and internet users.

“The census is a means of evaluating whether government programmes are reaching their intended target, and to plan for the future,” said C Chandramouli, the census commissioner.

“The trick is to get things right the first time. There is no question of a re-census.”

The first person counted on Thursday was Pratibha Patil, the Indian president, at the official residence, in the first leg of a process called “houselisting”.

Houselisting entails recording information on homes, such as the construction material used to build it and the availability of electricity and water.

The physical count of residents will then be made in February next year and the completed census will be released by mid-2011.

Officials will be armed with satellite maps in order to reduce the 2.3 per cent margin of error recorded in the last census, which was conducted in 2001.

A total of 1,028,737,436 people were counted in that census and official 2009 figures calculated an increase of about 130 million.

Valuable database

S Parasuraman, a demography professor in Mumbai, said the new population registry would provide a valuable database.

“In a disaster for instance, one will be able to pinpoint how many people were living at a place before and after the catastrophe struck,” he said.

“It will be a compilation of useful information enabling proper governance.”

The exercise has many challenges, including coverage of a vast geographical area, widespread illiteracy and diverse cultures and languages.

“I have instructed enumerators to ensure they reach out to the women, the elderly, the disabled, nomadic communities and migrants,” said Chandramouli.

“Everyone must participate and make it successful. This is for the good of the nation and its population.”

Oh Google Street View – will you ever cease becoming a topic of water cooler and Internet conversations? Well I certainly hope not. And today is yet another example of how Google Street View, and more specifically, the worldwide fleet of Street View vehicles can be a source of amusement, debate, or in this case, sabotage.

Seems a yet unidentified person in Germany recently performed some vehicular shenanigans on a Google Street View car that was parked overnight in the city of Oldenburg. The suspect or suspects had reportedly let all the air out of the tires and clipped the video cable that ran the outside camera equipment to the interior of the car.

Other than this, there was no apparent damage to the vehicle and no other pieces of camera equipment in or outside the vehicle were disturbed. In fact, the person was even nice enough to warn the driver about the tires being deflated. Oldenburg Police are still investigating the incident.