Sumanta Sen
Business Development Executive
Videonetics Technology Pvt. Ltd.
sumanta.sen@videonetics.com

I think having only 5% coverage is useless for preventing terrorism. Every project we bid on (even cities smaller than Baghdad) includes at least 1800 high-end cameras, including LPRs. It blows my mind that Baghdad has such a small number of cameras considering the daily threats they face there. I hope it's only a temporary situation and they are installing more cameras as we speak.

City-wide video surveillance is rarely effective against a lone suicide bomber. Where it can make a strategic difference is in learning more about the terrorist cell after the fact, to assist in preventing further attacks. Where they operate from, who are they, who are their collaborators, etc…

For this to work, you need enough camera coverage to track where the terrorist was in the hours or days preceding the attack, and you need efficient tools to sift through the information.

No one single technology provides a perfect solution, but preventing further attacks is possible with more information, e.g. using a licence-plate recognition software, more efficient monitoring tools like Omnipresence, etc.

Christian Laforte
President, Feeling Software

I do agree that it's unreasonable to expect to *prevent* terrorism even with 100% coverage. The blog's conclusion about timely & adequate response is the right one, not the doom-and-gloom tone of the story. (Do reporters get special training in sounding so accusatory and woe-is-us?)

I agree that it's unreasonable to think they can predict terrorism but I don't think reasonable people would expect to be able to do so.