[Reader-list] Online, All the Time, an All-Seeing Surveillance System

[Harsh Kapoor]

The New York Times
April 24, 2003

HOW IT WORKS

Online, All the Time, an All-Seeing Surveillance System
By JEFFREY SELINGO

IN the 2001 remake of the film "Ocean's Eleven," a band of thieves 
switches surveillance cameras pointed at a Las Vegas casino's safe to 
a recorded image of a replica safe that they have built in a nearby 
warehouse. By the time casino officials discover that the safe they 
are monitoring is not the real one, the thieves are well on their way 
to making off with $150 million.
Fooling security systems always seems to work in Hollywood. But in 
real life, it's not so easy these days. Not only are surveillance 
cameras more common in this era of increased concern about security, 
but they are also much more sophisticated.

Such systems no longer depend on a limited number of analog cameras 
with dedicated fiber optic wiring and banks of monitors connected to 
video recorders. Today, so-called network cameras use digital images, 
which can be easily stored and manipulated on a computer server and 
monitored from remote locations by using the Internet. Tiny cameras 
can be added to a security system, sometimes for temporary use, by 
simply hooking them up to a computer network. It is even possible to 
route video from analog cameras through servers that turn their 
images into digital pictures.

"Two PC servers can now do all the recording that used to take 100 
VCR's," said Fredrik Nilsson, director of business development for 
Axis Communications, a Swedish company that sells network video 
cameras.

The systems have become popular with school officials and managers of 
shopping malls and convention centers and with local and state 
transportation departments, which provide live pictures that 
motorists can view over the Internet before heading out. "The biggest 
advantage is that it uses the existing infrastructure," Mr. Nilsson 
said. "It's as easy as plugging the camera into a computer network."

But the ease with which the high-tech surveillance cameras can be set 
up and used worries people who are concerned about the invasion of 
privacy. The Washington Police Department came under fire for a 
system it purchased from Axis that enables it to monitor activities 
through a network of cameras mounted at busy intersections, in the 
subway system and at tourist sites like the National Mall.

The system, which is activated during heightened terror alerts, 
allows the authorities to manipulate the cameras so they can, for 
instance, pan and zoom in on activity they consider suspicious. The 
remote access also means that officers can view images on computer 
monitors installed in squad cars.

Axis also supplied cameras to the Salt Palace Convention Center in 
Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Bart Allen, director of 
operations at the convention center, which continues to use the 
system, said the cameras were economical and improved security. With 
the center's old analog system, he said, security guards could record 
the images from only 5 of the 80 cameras located around the center at 
any one time. "So if something happened in an area we weren't 
recording, we didn't have a record of it," Mr. Allen said. Now, 
images at all 80 locations can be recorded.

What's more, because cameras can easily be added or moved anywhere a 
network connection is available, the system can cover much more 
ground than an analog system. If a vendor brings valuable equipment 
to a trade show at the convention center, for example, Mr. Allen 
said, he can set up a camera to watch it. Network cameras can be 
programmed to record only when there is movement in the field of 
vision so that no computer memory is wasted on monitoring empty 
rooms. And it is easier to find a specific moment on a digitized 
video, as anyone who has tried to locate a specific scene in a movie 
on a DVD or a videotape knows.

The new system has already foiled burglaries at the convention 
center, Mr. Allen said. "We put a camera on a bunch of laptops in a 
room and we ended up catching one of our own security guards helping 
himself to a few of them," he said. "Big Brother is everywhere."

Sean Grogan, vice president for operations for Springfield Food 
Court, a company that operates food courts in shopping malls and 
airports, said he was attracted to the network cameras because they 
can store a digital archive at little cost. With his old analog 
system, he had a videotape for each day of the week. Each Tuesday, 
for instance, he taped over the previous Tuesday's tape.

When the company was sued recently by an employee who claimed to have 
fallen at work four months earlier, Mr. Grogan was able to find the 
digital images from that day on his computer server. It showed that 
no one had fallen, he said. "If we had the old system," he said, "it 
would have been my word against theirs."