CCTV

History

The first CCTV system was installed by Siemens AG at Test Stand VII in Peenemünde, Germany in 1942, for observing the launch of V-2 rockets.⁴ The noted German engineer Walter Bruch was responsible for the point and installation of the system.

CCTV recording systems are still often used at present launch sites to record the flight of the rockets, in order to find the possible causes of malfunctions,⁵⁶ while larger rockets are often en suite with CCTV allowing cinema of stage separation to be transmitted back to earth by radio link.⁷

In September 1968, Olean, New York was the first city in the United States to install video cameras along its main business road in an effort to fight crime. The use of closed-circuit TV cameras piping images into the Olean Police Specialty propelled Olean to the front position of crime-fighting technology.

The use of CCTV later on became very common in banks and stores to discourage theft, by recording prove of criminal activity. Their use further popularised the thought. The first place to use CCTV in the United Kingdom was King’s Lynn, Norfolk.⁸

In contemporary decades, especially with all-purpose crime fears growing in the 1990s and 2000s, public space use of surveillance cameras has taken off, especially in some countries such as the United Kingdom.

Uses

Crime prevention and prevalence in the UK

Experiments in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s (including outdoor CCTV in Bournemouth in 1985), led to several larger trial programs later that decade.⁸

These were deemed successful in the government report “CCTV: Looking Out For You”, issued by the Home Personnel in 1994, and paved the way for a massive increase in the number of CCTV systems installed. Today, systems cover most town and city centres, and many stations, car-parks and estates.

The exact number of CCTV cameras in the UK is not known but a 2002 working paper by Michael McCahill and Clive Norris of UrbanEye,⁹ based on a small sample in Putney High Road, estimated the number of surveillance cameras in private premises in London is around 500,000 and the total number of cameras in the UK is around 4,200,000. Research conducted by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research and based on a survey of all Scottish local authorities, identified that there are over 2,200 public space CCTV cameras in Scotland.¹⁰

According to their assess the UK has one camera for every 14 people, even if it has been acknowledged that the methodology behind this map is somewhat uninterested.¹¹ The CCTV User Group assess that there are around 1.5 million CCTV cameras in city centres, stations, airports, major retail areas and so forth. This map does not include the smaller surveillance systems such as those that may be found in local corner shops.¹²

There is small prove that CCTV deters crime; in fact, there is considerable prove that it does not.¹³ According to a Liberal Democrat analysis, in London “Police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with only just any.”¹⁴ A 2008 Report by UK Police Chiefs concluded that only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV.¹⁵ In London, a Metropolitan Police report showed that in 2008 only one crime was solved per 1000 cameras.¹⁶

Cameras have also been installed on public transport in the hope of deterring crime,¹⁷¹⁸ and in mobile police surveillance vans, often with automatic number plate recognition.¹⁹ In some cases CCTV cameras have be converted into a butt of attacks themselves.²⁰

On 22 July 2005, Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station. According to brother Giovani Menezes, “The film showed that Jean did not have suspicious behaviour” .²¹

Because of the bombing attempts the before day, some of the tapes had been supposedly removed from CCTV cameras for study, and they were not functional.²² An ongoing change to DVR based technology may in future stop similar tribulations occurring.²³

The UK cameras were deployed and are maintained by NEP – Roll to Record, a rift of NEP Broadcasting.²⁴

In October 2009, an “Internet Eyes” website was announced which would pay members of the public to view CCTV camera images from their homes and report any crimes they witnessed. The site aimed to add “more eyes” to cameras which might be not sufficiently monitored, but civil liberties campaigners criticised the thought as “a distasteful and a worrying development”.²⁵

Hacking and video art

Hackers and guerilla artists have exposed the vulnerabilities of the video systems in an act dubbed “video sniffing”²⁶²⁷ They have crossed feeds, uploaded their own video feeds and used the video record for artistic purposes.

Manufacturing processes

Manufacturing processes that take place under conditions perilous for humans are today often supervised by CCTV. These are primarily processes in the chemical industry, the interior of reactors or conveniences for manufacture of nuclear fuel. Use of thermographic cameras allow operators to measure the temperature of the processes. The usage of CCTV in such processes is sometimes required by law.^specify

Traffic monitoring

Many cities and motorway networks have extensive traffic-monitoring systems, using closed-circuit television to detect congestion and see accidents. Many of these cameras but, are owned by private companies and transmit data to drivers’ GPS systems.

The UK Highways Outfit has a publicly owned CCTV network of over 1200 cameras covering the English motorway and trunk road network. These cameras are primarily used to monitor traffic conditions and are not used as speed cameras. With the addition of fixed camera for the Active Traffic Management system the number of cameras on the Highways Outfit CCTV network is likely to increase significantly over the next few years.

The London congestion charge is enforced by cameras positioned at the boundaries of and surrounded by the congestion charge zone, which automatically read the registration plates of cars. If the driver does not pay the charge then a fine will be forced. Similar systems are being urban as a means of locating cars reported stolen.

Transport safety

A CCTV system may be installed where an operator of a machine cannot directly observe people who may be injured by some unexpected machine surgical course of action. For example, on a subway train, CCTV cameras may allow the operator to authenticate that people are clear of doors before closing them and starting the train.

Operators of an amusement park ride may use a CCTV system to observe that people are not endangered by starting the ride. A CCTV camera and instrument panel monitor can make reversing a vehicle safer, if it allows the driver to observe objects or people not otherwise visible.

Outside the UK

The use of CCTV in the United States is less common, though rising, and generally meets stronger opposition. In 1998 3,000 CCTV systems were in use in New York City.²⁸ There are more than 10,000 CCTV systems in Chicago.²⁹

In the last few years above all, the percentage of people in the U.S having installed a security camera system has augmented dramatically. Global Security Solutions with the help of Zone Tech Systems first announced the launch of IP surveillance in the US security industry by partnering up with Axis Communications (an IP pioneer). Today’s CCTV market has transformed the shift towards IP-based security products and systems, and is often touted as an example of a disrupting technology that has had – and will continue to have – profound penalty for the electronic security industry as a whole.³⁰

In Latin America, the CCTV market is growing rapidly with the increase of property crime.³¹

Criminal use

Criminals may use surveillance cameras, for example a hidden camera at an ATM to capture people’s PINs without their knowledge. The devices are small enough not to be noticed, and are positioned where they can monitor the keypad of the machine as people enter their PINs. Images may be transmitted wirelessly to the criminal.³²

Privacy

Opponents of CCTV point out the loss of privacy of the people under surveillance, and the unenthusiastic impact of surveillance on civil liberties. Furthermore, they argue that CCTV displaces crime, rather than reducing it. Critics often dub CCTV as “Huge Brother surveillance”, a reference to George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which featured a two-way telescreen in every home through which The Party would monitor the populace. Civil liberties campaign group Huge Brother Watch have published several research ID into CCTV systems. In December 2009 they released a report documenting council controlled CCTV cameras.³³

More positive views of CCTV cameras have argued that the cameras are not intruding into people’s privacy, as they are not surveilling private, but public space, where an individual’s right to privacy can reasonably be weighed hostile to the public’s need for safeguard from presumptively innocent people .³⁴

The contemporary growth of CCTV in housing areas also raises honest issues about the boundary to which CCTV is being used as a social control measure rather than simply a deterrent to crime. But, since the September 11 attacks of 2001, many studies have not compulsory that public opinion of CCTV has grown more favorable. Many proponents of CCTV cite the attacks of the London Underground bombings as one example of how effective surveillance led to swift progress in post-event investigations.

Quite apart from government-permitted use (or abuse), questions are also raised about illegal access to CCTV recordings. The Data Safeguard Act 1998 in the United Kingdom led to legal restrictions on the uses of CCTV recordings, and also mandated their registration with the Data Safeguard Outfit. In 2004, the successor to the Data Safeguard Outfit, the Information Commissioner’s Personnel clarified that this required registration of all CCTV systems with the Commissioner, and prompt deletion of archived recordings.

But subsequent case law (Durant vs. FSA) has limited the scope of the safeguard provided by this law, and not all CCTV systems are currently corresponding.³⁵ Private sector personnel in the UK who run or monitor CCTV devices or systems are now considered security guards and have been made subject to state licensing.

A 2007 report by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Personnel, highlighted the need for the public to be made more aware of the “creeping encroachment” into their civil liberties made by the growing use of surveillance apparatus. A year prior to the report Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, warned that Britain was “sleepwalking into a surveillance society”.

In 2007, the UK watchdog CameraWatch claimed that the margin of CCTV cameras in the UK are operated illegally or are in infringement of privacy guidelines. In response, the Information Commissioner’s Personnel denied the claim adding that any reported abuses of the Data Safeguard Act are swiftly investigated.³⁶

In the United States, there are no such data safeguard mechanisms. It has been questioned whether CCTV prove is allowable under the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures”. The courts have generally not taken this view.

In Canada, the use of video surveillance has grown very rapidly. In Ontario, both the municipal and provincial versions of the Freedom of Information and Safeguard of Privacy Act ³⁷ outline very specific guidelines that control how images and information can be gathered by this mode and/or released.

Technological developments

The first closed-circuit television cameras used in public spaces were crude, conspicuous, low classification black and white systems without the ability to zoom or pan. Present CCTV cameras use small high classification color cameras that can not only focus to resolve minute detail, but by linking the control of the cameras to a notebook, objects can be tracked semi-automatically. The technology that make possible this is often referred to as Video Content Analysis (VCA), and is currently being urban by a large number of technological companies around the world. The contemporary technology make possible the systems to recognize if a moving object is a walking self, a crawling self or a vehicle. It can also determine the color of the object. NEC claim to have a system that can identify a self’s age by evaluating a depiction of him/her. Other technologies claim to be able to identify people by their biometrics.

The system identifies where a self is, how he is moving and whether he is a self or for instance a car. Based on this information the system developers apply features such as blurring faces or “virtual walls” that block the sight of a camera where it is not allowed to film. It is also possible to provide the system with rules, such as for example “sound the alarm when a self is walking close to that fence” or in a museum “set off an alarm if a painting is taken down from the wall”.

VCA can also be used for forensics after the film has been made. It is then possible to search for certain actions within the recorded video. For example if you know a criminal is driving a yellow car, you can set the system to search for yellow cars and the system will provide you with a list of all the times where there is a yellow car visible in the depiction. These conditions can be made more strict by incisive for “a self moving around in a certain area for a suspicious quantity of time”, for example if someone is standing around an ATM machine without using it.

Maintenance of CCTV systems is vital in case forensic examination is de rigueur after a crime has been committed.

In crowds the system is limited to upshot anomalies, for instance a self moving in the opposite direction to the crowd, which might be a case in airports where passengers are only held to walk in one direction out of a plane, or in a subway where people are not held to exit through the entrances.

VCA also has the ability to track people on a map by calculating their position from the images. It is then possible to link many cameras and track a self through an entire building or area. This can allow a self to be followed without having to analyze many hours of film. Currently the cameras have difficulty identifying individuals from video alone, but if together to a key-card system, identities can be established and showed as a tag over their heads on the video.

There is also a significant variation in where the VCA technology is positioned, either the data is being processed within the cameras (on the edge) or by a centralized server. Both technologies have their pros and cons.

The implementation of automatic number plate recognition produces a potential source of information on the place of persons or groups.

There is no technological limitation preventing a network of such cameras from tracking the movement of individuals. Reports have also been made of plate recognition misreading numbers leading to the billing of the entirely incorrect self.³⁸ In the UK, car cloning is a crime where, by altering, defacing or replacing their number plates with stolen ones, perpetrators have a crack to avoid speeding and congestion charge fines and even to steal petrol from garage forecourts.

CCTV critics see the most disturbing extension to this technology as the recognition of faces from high-classification CCTV images. This could determine a self’s identity without alerting him that his identity is being tartan and logged. The systems can check many thousands of faces in a list in under a second. 

The combination of CCTV and facial recognition has been tried as a form of mass surveillance, but has been ineffective because of the low discriminating power of facial recognition technology and the very high number of fake positives generated. This type of system has been projected to compare faces at airports and seaports with those of supposed terrorists or other undesirable entrants.

Automated monitoring of CCTV images is under development, so that a human CCTV operator does not have to endlessly look at all the screens, allowing an operator to observe many more CCTV cameras. These systems do not observe people directly. Instead they track their behaviour by looking for particular types of body movement behavior, or particular types of clothing or baggage.

The theory behind this is that in public spaces people behave in predictable ways. People who are not part of the ‘crowd’, for example car thieves, do not behave in the same way. The notebook can identify their movements, and alert the operator that they are acting out of the ordinary. Just in the latter part of 2006, news reports on UK television brought to light newly urban technology that uses microphones^{clarification looked-for} in conjunction with CCTV.

If a self is observed to be shouting in an aggressive manner (e.g., provoking a fight), the camera can automatically zoom in and pinpoint the individual and alert a camera operator. Of course this then lead to the discussion that the technology can also be used to eavesdrop and record private conversations from a reasonable space (e.g., 100 metres or about 330 feet).

The same type of system can track identified individuals as they go through the area enclosed by CCTV. Such applications have been introduced in the early 2000s, primarily in the USA, France, Israel and Australia. With software tools, the system is able to develop three-dimensional models of an area, and to track and monitor the movement of objects within it.

To many, the development of CCTV in public areas, linked to notebook databases of people’s cinema and identity, presents a honest infringement of civil liberties. Critics dread the possibility that one would not be able to meet anonymously in a public place or drive and walk anonymously around a city. Demonstrations or assemblies in public places could be affected as the state would be able to collate lists of those leading them, taking part, or even just talking with protesters in the road.

Retention, Storage space space and maintenance

The long-term Storage space space and archiving of CCTV recordings is an issue of concern in the implementation of a CCTV system. Re-usable media such as tape may be cycled through the recording administer at regular intervals. There are statutory limits on retention of data.

Recordings are kept for several purposes. Firstly, the primary purpose for which they were made (e.g. to monitor a gift). Secondly, they need to be preserved for a reasonable quantity of time to recover any prove of other vital activity they might document (e.g. a group of people quick a gift the night a crime was committed). Finally, the recordings may be evaluated for historical, research or other long-term information of value they may control (e.g. samples kept to help be with you trends for a business or community).

Recordings are more commonly stored using hard disk drives in lieu of video cassette recorders. The quality of digital recordings are subject to compression ratios, images stored per second, image size and duration of image retention before being overwritten. Different vendors of digital video recorders use different compression standards and varying compression ratios.

Closed-circuit digital photography (CCDP)

development in the world of CCTV (October 2005) is in the use of megapixel digital still cameras that can take 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution images of the camera scene either on a time lapse or motion detection basis. Images taken with a digital still camera have higher resolution than those taken with a predictable video camera. Moderately low-cost digital still cameras can be used for CCTV purposes, using CCDP software that controls the camera from the PC.

Images of the camera scene are transferred automatically to a notebook every few seconds. Images may be monitored remotely if the notebook is together to a network.

Combinations of PIR activated floodlights with 1.3Mpix and surpass digital cameras are now appearing. They save the images to a flash memory card which is inserted into a slot on the device. The flash card can be removed for viewing on a notebook if ever an incident happens. They are not intended for live viewing, but are a very simple and cheap “install and forget” approach to this issue.

Closed-circuit digital photography (CCDP) is more apposite for capturing and saving recorded photographs, whereas closed-circuit television (CCTV) is more suitable for live monitoring purposes.

IP cameras

A growing branch in CCTV is internet protocol cameras (IP cameras). IP Cameras use the IP protocol, used by most LANs to transmit video across data networks in digital form. As it’s IP, video can also, but not automatically, be transmitted across the public Internet, which allow homeowners and businesses to view their camera(s) through any internet connection available through a notebook or a 3G phone. For professional or public infrastructure applications, IP video would always be top secret to within a private network or VPN.³⁹

Internet protocol is a protocol used for communicating data across a packet-switched network using the internet protocol suite, also referred to as TCP/IP.

Potential advantages

The subsequent are potential advantages of IP cameras over traditional cameras:

• Two-way audio via a single network cable, allowing users to communicate with what they are seeing (e.g. gas station clerk assisting a customer on how to use the prepay pumps)
• Higher image resolution: IP cameras have a resolution of at least 640×480 and can provide multi-megapixel resolution and HDTV image quality at 30 frames per second.
• Flexibility: IP cameras can be went around anywhere on an IP network (including wireless).
• Spread acumen: with IP cameras, video analytics can be positioned in the camera itself allowing scalability in analytics solutions.
• Transmission of orders for PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) cameras via a single network cable.
• Encryption & authentication: IP cameras offer reliable data transmission through encryption and authentication methods such as WEP, WPA, WPA2, TKIP, AES.
• Remote ease of appreciative: live video can be viewed from any notebook, anywhere, and also from many mobile devices including iPhone, iPod touch, and Windows Live Messenger on selected cameras.⁴⁰
• Cost-advantage for larger systems. Studies show that for systems with less than 16 cameras, analog technology is cheaper, linking 16 and 32 they are equal, and beyond 32 cameras, IP-based systems are more cost-effective.⁴¹
• IP cameras are also able to function on a wireless network. Initial configuration has to be done through a router; after the IP camera is installed it can then be used on the wireless network⁴² These cameras are used in steering purpose in defence forces.
• PoE – Power over ethernet. Present IP cameras have the ability to run without an bonus power give. They can work with the PoE-protocol which gives power via the ethernet-cable

Potential disadvantages

Potential weaknesses of IP cameras in comparison to other CCTV cameras include:

• Higher initial cost per camera, except where cheap webcams are used.
• Lack of standards. Different IP cameras may encode video another way or use a different brainwashing interface, thus requiring matching the camera with the recorder.
• High network bandwidth supplies: a predictable CCTV camera with resolution of 640×480 pixels and 10 frames per second (10 frame/s) in MJPEG mode requires about 3 Mbit/s.⁴³
• Technological barrier. Installation for IP cameras requires network settings including IP address, DDNS, router setting and port forwarding, calling for the skills of a LAN technician or a CCTV tech who has considered these things.
• If video is transmitted over the Internet, it results in a circuit being less closed than in classic CCTV. The system becomes open to hacking and hoaxing via internet (fake bomb threats being called in while hoaxers watch on web, etc.). Criminals can hack into a gift’s CCTV system to observe security measures and personnel, thereby facilitating criminal acts and rendering the IP technology counterproductive.

Networking CCTV cameras

The city of Chicago operates a networked video surveillance system which combines CCTV video feeds of government agencies with these of the private sector, installed in city buses, businesses, public schools, subway stations, housing projects etc. Even home owners are able to contribute record. It is estimated to incorporate the video feeds of a total of 15,000 cameras.

The system is used by Chicago’s Personnel of Emergency Management in case of an emergency call: it detects the caller’s place and straight away displays the real-time video feed of the nearest security camera to the operator, not requiring any user intervention. While the system is far too vast to allow complete real-time monitoring, it stores the video data for later usage in order to provide possible prove in criminal cases.⁴⁴

London also has a network of CCTV systems that allows multiple authorities to view and control CCTV cameras in real time. The system allows authorities including the Metropolitan Police Service, Transport for London and a number of London boroughs to share CCTV images linking them. It uses a network protocol called Television Network Protocol to allow access to many more cameras than each individual system owner could meet the expense of to run and keep up.

The Glynn County Police Specialty uses a wireless mesh networked system of portable array-powered tripods for live megapixel video surveillance and central monitoring of tactical police situations. The systems can be used either on a stand-alone basis with reliable communications to close police laptops, or within a larger mesh system with multiple tripods feeding video back to the command vehicle via wireless, and to police headquarters via 3G.

Integrated Systems

Integrated Systems allow users to join remotely from the internet and view what their cameras are viewing remotely, similar to that of IP cameras. In one incident, a lady from Boynton Beach, Florida was able to watch her house get robbed and contacted police directly from her personnel at work.⁴⁵

CCTV countermeasures

Unless physically protected, CCTV cameras have been found to be vulnerable hostile to a diversity of (mostly illegal) tactics:

• Some people will deliberately ruin cameras. Some outdoor cameras, such as those employed by the Chicago Police Specialty, have bullet-resistant housing.
• Spraying substances over the lens can make the image too hazy to be read.
• Lasers can blind or destruction them. But, since most lasers are monochromatic, colour filters can lower the effect of laser pointers. But filters will also impair image quality and overall light sensitivity of cameras (see laser safety article for fine points on issues with filters). Also, complete safeguard from infrared, red, green, blue and UV lasers would require use of completely black filters, rendering the camera useless.
• For wireless networks, broadcasting a signal at the same frequency of the CCTV network is reportedly able to jam it.