Via CNN

On January 19, a team of at least 15 people assassinated Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Dubai police released video footage of 11 of them. Although it was obviously a very professional operation, the 27 minutes of video is fascinating in its banality.

Team members walk through the airport, check into and out of hotels, get into and out of taxis. They make no effort to hide themselves from the cameras, sometimes seeming to stare directly into them. They obviously don't care that they're being recorded, and — in fact — the cameras didn't prevent the assassination, nor as far as we know have they helped as yet in identifying the killers.

Pervasive security cameras don't substantially reduce crime. This fact has been demonstrated repeatedly: in San Francisco, California, public housing; in a New York apartment complex; in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; in Washington; in study after study in both the U.S. and the U.K. Nor are they instrumental in solving many crimes after the fact.

There are exceptions, of course, and proponents of cameras can always cherry-pick examples to bolster their argument. These success stories are what convince us; our brains are wired to respond more strongly to anecdotes than to data. But the data are clear: CCTV cameras have minimal value in the fight against crime.

Although it's comforting to imagine vigilant police monitoring every camera, the truth is very different, for a variety of reasons: technological limitations of cameras, organizational limitations of police and the adaptive abilities of criminals. No one looks at most CCTV footage until well after a crime is committed. And when the police do look at the recordings, it's very common for them to be unable to identify suspects. Criminals don't often stare helpfully at the lens and — unlike the Dubai assassins — tend to wear sunglasses and hats. Cameras break far too often.

Even when they afford quick identification — think of the footage of the September 11 terrorists going through airport security or the July 7 London transport bombers just before the bombs exploded — police are often able to identify those suspects even without the cameras. Cameras afford a false sense of security, encouraging laziness when we need police to be vigilant.

The solution isn't for police to watch the cameras more diligently. Unlike an officer walking the street, cameras look only in particular directions at particular locations.

Criminals know this and can easily adapt by moving their crimes to places not watched by a camera — and there will always be such places.
And although a police officer on the street can respond to a crime in progress, someone watching a CCTV screen can only dispatch an officer to arrive much later. By their very nature, cameras result in underused and misallocated police resources.

Cameras aren't completely ineffective, of course. Used properly, they're effective in reducing crime in enclosed areas with minimal foot traffic. Combined with adequate lighting, they substantially reduce both personal attacks and auto-related crime in multistory parking garages. And sometimes it is cost-effective for a store to install cameras to catch shoplifters or a casino to install cameras to detect cheaters.
But these are instances where there is a specific risk at a specific location.

The important question isn't whether cameras solve past crime or deter future crime; it's whether they're a good use of resources. They're expensive, both in money and in their Orwellian effects on privacy and civil liberties. Their inevitable misuse is another cost; police have spied on naked women in their own homes, shared nude images, sold best-of videos and even spied on national politicians. Though we might be willing to accept these downsides for a real increase in security, cameras don't provide that.

Despite our predilection for technological solutions over human ones, the funds now spent on CCTV cameras would be far better spent on hiring and training police officers.

We live in a unique time in our society: Cameras are everywhere, but we can still see them. Ten years ago, cameras were much rarer than they are today. Ten years from now, they'll be so small, you won't even notice them.

Already, people can buy surveillance cameras in household objects to spy on their spouses and baby sitters — I particularly like the one hidden in a shower mirror — or cameras in pens to spy on their colleagues, and they can remotely turn on laptop cameras to spy on anyone. Companies are developing police state-type CCTV surveillance technologies for China, technology that will find its way into countries like the U.S.

If universal surveillance were the answer, lots of us would have moved to the former East Germany. If surveillance cameras were the answer, camera-happy London, with something like 500,000 of them at a cost of $700 million, would be the safest city on the planet.

We didn't, and it isn't, because surveillance and surveillance cameras don't make us safer. The money spent on cameras in London, and in cities across America, could be much better spent on actual policing.

Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and author of "Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World." Read more of his writing at  www.schneier.com.

According to CNN, 113 surveillance cameras covering 5% of Baghdad were installed to assist in "predicting terrorism". The above video shows the surveillance camera operators watching traffic and failing to identify the motives of the terrorists.  When the operators fail to predict the future, they "cringe with guilt".

The center was set up a year and a half ago, with employees on the lookout for trouble, as police officers in a back room listen to the traffic on their radios. But there are not enough cameras to cover all of Baghdad — only 5 percent of the city is surveilled under the current system.

The cameras picked up suspicious activity last Wednesday, but within 20 seconds — before any action could be taken — a truck blew up in front of the Foreign Ministry building. By day's end, bombings had killed nearly 100 people in the city.

The fledgling security surveillance operation has a long way to go, its director acknowledges. The center is understaffed and not yet open around the clock.

Though overall attacks have decreased in Iraq, the images on screen serve as undeniable evidence of the ongoing violence the Iraqi government is struggling to prevent.

That effort includes 113 security cameras placed mainly around government buildings throughout the city, though not all are functioning at any given time. Each work station at the surveillance center monitors the feeds from 10 cameras.

After last week's bombings — which made Wednesday the bloodiest day in Iraq since U.S. combat troops withdrew from Iraqi cities at the end of June — the center's managers met with Iraqi security forces in an effort to increase the number of cameras.

"We should all admit responsibility for this major breach of security," the director said. "And we have to fix the system."

For now, as the carnage fills the screen like a violent movie, employees cringe with guilt. They know that every time there is a blast on screen, it's because they were not able to prevent it.

Installing surveillance cameras and a command center in Baghdad is a logical thing to do, there is no refuting that.  However, the Baghdad security director should not be making statements correlating the ability to find terrorists on the streets and the need for more cameras.

It is illogical to assume that by installing more surveillance cameras the operators will be in a better position to identify and intervene a potential terrorist act.  It is a proven fact surveillance cameras do not deter violent crime, and conversely, public cameras are extremely poor at convicting criminals.  In this situation, the Baghdad cameras should only be used to determine if any incidents have happened, identify the magnitude of the problem, and dispatch appropriate resources.  The end result can ultimately be efficient dispatching of ambulances, and lives saved.

Back in April, the West Australia police launched a voluntary CCTV camera registration program called Blue Iris. I thought this was a good idea, so I wrote an entry about it. It turns out the program was either not well received, or lacking communication with local businesses. According to Australian news WA Today:

WA Police have defended a CCTV project aimed at cracking down on anti-social behaviour in licensed venues despite hardly any interest in the program from clubs or pubs throughout Perth and Fremantle.

The Blue Iris CCTV Register was launched in April by Police Minister Rob Johnson, who said the program would give police access to live vision from CCTV cameras which could allow them to act faster when an incident arose and speed up the investigation process.

However, out of the dozen nightclubs and bars around Perth and Fremantle that WAtoday contacted, only one could confirm they were aware of the system after police had approached them about registering.

The Australian Hotels Association WA branch also revealed it had not been advised of the joint police and Government program.

Mr Johnson forecast in a statement on April 3 that Blue Iris – which was a voluntary register for businesses – would provide WA Police with access to "4000-6000 cameras this year alone, significantly boosting their ability to fight crime on our streets".

But with violence and other forms of anti-social behaviour escalating in entertainment hotspots around Perth – especially in Northbridge and Fremantle – the message about Blue Iris seems to have not filtered through to club and pub operators.

Patrick Murphy, of the Mustang Bar, said his business had not been approached to be on the registry.

"Under requirements of liquor licensing legislation, we are required to have a CCTV system in place, the footage of which we make available to Police and Racing, Gaming and Liquor inspectors on request," he said.

A spokesman for the Geisha Bar said "this is the first (time) Geisha Bar has ever heard of this system".

Managers and spokespeople from The Red Sea, The Deen, The Shed, The Rivervale Hotel, The Botanica, Metropolis Fremantle, The Newport and Benny's Bar said they had not heard of the Blue Iris Register, but needed to speak to colleagues to try and glean further information about it.

AHA WA spokesman Doug White said the Association has not been contacted by police about the program, and was not aware of any of its members signing up to the registry.

Mr White said he was "unsure" as to whether the Association felt this program could have an impact on clamping down on anti-social behaviour in and around clubs.

"We haven't been fully briefed on the initiative, which is kind of interesting," he said.

However, a manager from the Sapphire Bar in Subiaco acknowledged police had discussed the Blue Iris registry with him, but he confirmed his bar was not on the registry.

Since its launch in April, Michael Coe of the Office of Crime Prevention said about 100 businesses have registered with the system but he was not able to give an exact figure.

He added many local and state government agencies have yet to register, but he expected most to get on to the system in the near future.

Mr Coe said he could not say was or was not on the registry, citing confidentiality issues, but he did say registration numbers had failed to meet the expectations of police.

"We would always like more and we are working on a marketing strategy to increase the numbers," he said.

"However we are encouraged with those who are large companies and corporations who have registered as some are significant sites."

Mr Coe could not say how many crimes Blue Iris had helped solve since its inception, claiming the technology "is still relatively new and in its infancy as an operation tool for police".

"Blue Iris is an open invitation to all CCTV assets owners to register their system with police so we can map out where these systems are should police ever need to know or use," he said.

A spokesman for the Police Minister said Mr Johnson was satisfied with the overall response from local businesses to Blue Iris and he maintained pubs and clubs were not the main priority for the Register.

"While 'hot-spots' were never targeted as the prime focus for Blue Iris, there is a growing representation of all aspects of the community registered with Blue Iris," the spokesman said.

"The Office of Crime Prevention is continuously marketing Blue Iris to a broad range of organisations and agencies, and the number of registrations is increasing each week.

"(Blue Iris) enables valuable investigative time to be focused on the issue under investigation, rather than finding out who owns what CCTV equipment."

I believe West Australia is the first to implement a CCTV camera registration program (found here).  The voluntary nature of this program does not appear to be effective for various reasons.  Perhaps there was not enough budget to "raise awareness" to business owners or there was a breakdown in communication between police departments or local businesses.

Other cities considering such a program should think about making this registration process mandatory and charge a fee.  By charging a "camera registration fee", those monies can support awareness campaigns and also salaried full time employees to maintain the camera registration list.

Detective Mick Neville from the Metropolitan Police is quickly becoming the face of change for public surveillance cameras.  After a report stating CCTV cameras were only effective in parking lots, Mick Neville came out and stated that the UK police are not using the technology properly. Now Mick is saying it takes 1,000 public cameras to solve just one crime.

Fewer than one crime is solved by every 1,000 closed circuit television cameras, the Metropolitan Police, Britain's biggest police force, has admitted.

Critics of Britain’s so-called 'surveillance society' said it raised serious concerns over how police forces used CCTV cameras to fight crime.

Britain is one of the most monitored countries in the world, with an estimated four million cameras nationwide.

It said: “For every 1,000 cameras in London, less than one crime is solved per year.”

The report, written by Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, who runs the Metropolitan Police’s Visual Images Identifications and Detections Office, found that the public “have a high expectation of CCTV and are frequently told they are captured on camera 300 times per day”.

Public confidence was dented when the police often stated there was no CCTV working when a crime has been committed, it said.

It also said that increasingly members of the public were complaining that officers had not bothered to view available CCTV images when trying to track down criminals.

It disclosed a “significant rise in the level of complaints from the public, where it is perceived that police have not viewed CCTV. This is now approaching 100 per year.”

The report found that untrained officers were often downloading and viewing CCTV images in their hunt for evidence. The cameras were effective in crime-fighting if the images and information from them was used properly.

Detective Superintendent Michael McNally, who commissioned the report, admitted there were “some concerns” about how CCTV was being used.

The report also revealed concerns at Scotland Yard that the Conservatives could cut back on numbers of cameras or the way that they are used if the party wins the next general election, likely to be next May.

Under a section headlined “Strategic Issues”, the report said: “Potential change of Government – the Conservatives are not CCTV friendly – we need to start showing that we are targeting serious crime.”

Earlier this year separate research commissioned by the Home Office suggested that the cameras had done virtually nothing to cut crime, but were most effective in preventing vehicle crimes in car parks.

A report by a House of Lords committee also said that £500million was spent on new cameras in the 10 years to 2006, money which could have been spent on street lighting or neighbourhood crime prevention initiatives.

A large proportion of the cash has been In London, where an estimated £200 million so far has been spent on the cameras. This suggests that each crime has cost £20,000 to detect.

Britain has 1 per cent of the world’s population but around 20 per cent of its CCTV cameras – which works out as the equivalent of one for every 14 people

David Davis MP, the former shadow Home Secretary, said the latest report “should provoke a major and long overdue rethink on where the Home Office crime prevention budget is being spent”.

He added: “CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.

“The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV, something true both in London and across the country.

“A combination of overdependence on CCTV and ineffective use of the cameras means that this money could have been much better spent on more police officers."

Chris Grayling, the shadow Home Secretary, said: "It's just not possible to fight crime with technology alone, CCTV can help in some situations but there is nothing to beat getting more police back from behind their desks and on to the streets."

“There is no evidence that it saves us from gun or knife crime, or for that matter that it stops terrorists – many terrorists are only too glad to advertise their evil deeds.

“Nor are cameras much good in getting convictions. Evidence from them is only allowed in court if the images are securely stored and handled, so that there is no possibility that they have been tampered with.”

The National Police Improvement Agency is currently undertaking a review into the effectiveness of CCTV.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said the CCTV detection rate was based on "an estimate only and based on a small sample".

She added: "They do not reflect the complete picture of cases resolved in London in which CCTV evidence is an important factor."

Mick Neville sure said a mouthful.  I agree with a lot of Mike's statements but think that there is only room for improvement when the prognosis is "poor".  The UK embraced CCTV technologies a decade ago, there is no doubt that the camera technologies could be brought up to date, practices improved, and installation contexts revisited.

It's interesting to hear Mike admit the anti-deterring-terrorism sentiments when American politicians have taken the opposite stance. NYPD politicians are selling the lower and midtown Manhattan security initiatives as a way to deter terrorism. I think it's obvious who is correct.

Related: CCTV cameras: If they do not stop crime or catch criminals, what are they for?
Related: Surveillance crews watch helplessly as bombs explode

Corrections Officer Joshua Woodard admitted to using jail security cameras to zoom in on two female inmates who were taking showers last Monday, said police.

It turned out Woodard was being watched, too; there was another set of security cameras in dispatch. When he inappropriately zoomed in on the women, he was arrested and later fired by Sumner County Sheriff Bob Barker.

"We're not going to tolerate it. We will terminate and prosecute anybody who commits this type of activity," Barker said.

Woodard, who has worked at the jail for two years, was charged with unlawful photography, which is a misdemeanor. He has not had any other major disciplinary problems.

This is an interesting case because in this situation, a male guard had to watch females shower.  In the world of police body searches, usually a female officer is called in to search a female suspect.  Why this male guard was put in a situation like this is troubling.  While I think surveillance cameras "watching the watcher" is good in some circumstances, in this case, female officers should have been watching the females shower and that practice may be enough to remove the extra level of oversight.

I'm sure there will be a big lawsuit and settlement that comes of this.  Here's the rundown:

1. The taxpayers pay for the cameras and the salaries of the people watching them
2. A male officer was put in a situation that should have been avoided
3. The male officer gets arrested, fired, and publicly humiliated
4. The taxpayer will pick up the bill of the lawsuit / settlement

It's no wonder why a detective on the UK's police force has called public CCTV initiatives an utter fiasco. When will government in the US understand this to be true? Technology, practices, and context play a huge role in the success or failure of these installations. Putting men in charge of watching women shower was just a dumb idea.

An odd trend was emerging from this weeks news articles:  public and private surveillance cameras are getting stolen.  In two of these situations, arrests were made, and it was discovered that the men involved had substance abuse conditions.  The third perp remains at large, although a grainy picture of him can be found on the third link below

SPY-CAMERA SNATCH SHOT RED-LIGHT 'THIEVES' GET BUSTED
Man in court for stealing CCTV camera with fishing line
Cops: Man stole security camera from a Wendy's

One of the men who allegedly stole the red light cameras may have been a subcontractor to the company who installed the devices.  According to the NY POST:

Two oddballs have been busted for swiping nearly 20 percent of the city's red-light cameras right under Big Brother's nose, The Post has learned.

They allegedly drove around town in a pickup truck with a cherry-picker to dismantle 22 of the high-end Nikons from their street poles. The devices are used to identify red-light-running drivers, who then are issued tickets by mail.

The suspects peddled an estimated $88,000 worth of goods to a camera resale shop for $300 each to feed their heroin habits, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.

Cintorrino previously did subcontracting work as a camera installer for Mulvihill ICS, the company said.

Court records indicate he has a long history of illicit drug use and psychiatric problems. In 2004, he sued the manufacturer of the antidepressant drug Wellbutrin, saying he attempted suicide after taking the drug, but dropped the suit.

What is deeply troubling here is that the state did not force background checks at the contractor or subcontractor level.  If they did, they allowed this man to continue working on the red light camera project despite his history with drug use.   After installing these red light camera devices, this man had intimate knowledge to dismantle and remove these cameras, and in this case, to resell.

If cities do not enforce background checks on camera installers, they have opened a pandoras box and who knows what will happen.  The installers could conspire to scheme a much more devious crime in the future. Without the proper practices backing up the installation of these systems, these project can run afoul after they are up and running.

Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville of the Met Police's CCTV Unit has admitted that the UK is not using CCTV camera surveillance systems properly.  Mick tells Newsnight that, "CCTV is not being used to tackle crime as well as it should because some forces do not know how to use it effectively".

BBC News reports:

Most forces do not have systems to retrieve, process and distribute CCTV crime scene images.  Officers in some London boroughs are failing to solve any tier one and two crimes such as serious assaults and robberies using CCTV, he added.

A new study says there may be a million fewer UK CCTV cameras than thought.

He added: "Because we had CCTV first, we made all the mistakes.  And the mistake was spend it on kit, don't spend it on people or processes and that's what's gone wrong.  Unless there is a systematic way of gathering CCTV then it will continue not to be as effective as it could be."

"What I would say," he continued, "is we've got enough cameras, let's stop now, we don't want any more cameras.

"Let's invest that money that's available and use it for the training of people, and the processes to make sure whatever we've captured is effectively used."

His comments come as the government is considering whether every CCTV camera in the country should be registered and whether the entire industry should be regulated.

It's great to hear this public official not make false claims of success and also that the system needs to be improved.  I agree with Mick that a camera registration program should be put in place for private cameras.  I also agree that regulation is a good thing, because it will provide guidelines for practices and technologies for the private and public sector.  If we approach CCTV surveillance systems systematically using a research based approach, we will be building powerful tools for investigation analysis. We may even be able to leverage some aspects of deterrence, as found in parking lots.

While the UK did embrace CCTV technologies first, it does not appear that the U.S. is learning from the U.K.'s mis-steps.  Now is the time to start collecting effectiveness data so we can make more informed decisions going forward.

Hayley Peterson from the Washington Examinor reports:

Area drivers looking to outwit police speed traps and traffic cameras are using an iPhone application and other global positioning system devices that pinpoint the location of the cameras.

That has irked D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier, who promised her officers would pick up their game to counteract the devices, which can also help drivers dodge sobriety checkpoints.

"I think that's the whole point of this program," she told The Examiner. "It's designed to circumvent law enforcement — law enforcement that is designed specifically to save lives."

The new technology streams to iPhones and global positioning system devices, sounding off an alarm as drivers approach speed or red-light cameras.

Lanier said the technology is a "cowardly tactic" and "people who overly rely on those and break the law anyway are going to get caught" in one way or another.

Photo radar tickets generated nearly $1 billion in revenues for D.C. during fiscal years 2005 to 2008.

In the current fiscal year, Montgomery County expects to make $29 million from its red light and speed cameras. Lanier said efforts to outlaw the software would be too difficult.

Lanier said the cameras have decreased traffic deaths.

It's easy to make claims that the DC RLC system is effective when the city has lined their pockets with $1 billion in fine monies.  While I agree the potential may be there to reduce deaths, I have not seen any report stating this to be true. I'm going to chalk this up to just another politician claiming success.

I'm also wondering if police chief Lanier is aware that DC already publishes the location of their red light cameras on-line? If she wasn't aware, someone could go so far as to call her "ignorant", but that would be name calling.

I guess the big RLC experiment has worked exactly as planned.  When your city's accident reduction strategy is fundamentally flawed, things just aren't going to work out in the long run.

A man suspected of stealing aluminum auto wheels from a rural business wasn't guilty of a criminal break-in because the property wasn't fenced on all sides, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The unanimous ruling overturned the burglary conviction of Roger Dean Engel, who was captured on surveillance video in the outdoor yard of Western Asphalt near Maple Valley.

The company's yard was about one-third surrounded by a fence topped with barbed wire, with steep embankments, a sizable rock pile, and other natural obstacles encircling the rest of the property.

Authorities said the surveillance video, taken in early 2005, showed Engel and another man carrying away some aluminum wheels that were placed as bait for scrap-metal thieves.

Engel was convicted of felony second-degree burglary. Under state law, burglary occurs when someone illegally enters a building or enclosed area intending to commit a crime.

The legal definition of a building in such cases can include a fenced area, and King County prosecutors argued that Western Asphalt's setup should have been considered the equivalent of a complete fence.

"Otherwise, businesses like Western Asphalt would be forced to spend thousands of dollars to erect useless fences in areas that are plainly inaccessible, or clearly off-limits to the public, just to ensure that thieves would be prosecuted as burglars," Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney James Whisman wrote in a legal brief.

Engel was sentenced to two months in jail for burglary and served his time for that conviction, said his lawyer, Vanessa Mi-jo Lee. "It is a shame that he has completed his sentence for a crime that he shouldn't have been convicted of."

If things couldn't look any worse for New Orleans and their publicly managed camera initiatives, MSNBC reports that funeral procession drivers will get tickets when they proceed through red lights.

Weeks later, a ticket from the red-light camera at that intersection made it to Rittenberg's home and she attempted to dispute it with the City's Public Work's Department.

"They said all I needed was a letter from the funeral director saying there was such a procession," said Rittenberg.

Mendoza said under a city law, once an officer stops monitoring traffic at a given intersection for any event, the traffic laws go back into effect.