New South Wales is starting a great trend: they are asking business owners to register their surveillance systems with the police.
By registering on the NSW police website, local business owners will not only provide potentially crime-solving footage to police, but they will also cut the time it takes for officers to retrieve footage from locations where a crime has been committed.
CCTV (closed-circuit television) details will be stored on a secure central database that will allow police to map their locations throughout the state.
Officers will then be able to easily access footage after a crime is committed by contacting any registered business owners in the relevant area.
“Obviously CCTV can be crucial in identifying offenders and can assist police in solving crimes,” Snr Const Eppelstun said. “A lot of businesses have their own CCTV footage, and these are the ones we want to capture, which would be of huge assistance to local police.“It is an investigative tool that allows police to quickly identify CCTV installations in the area of a crime and give them the ability to contact owners and have the potentially crime-solving footage saved without having to engage in time-consuming doorknocking and chasing up the footage.”
This idea has been on my mind for a while and I'm happy to see that New South Wales not only thought about it, but are actually implementing this program. Many cities force landlords to register their tenant information which is usually called "rental registration". Cities even charge the landlord to fill out these yearly forms and have turned this function into a profit center.
America is not learning from our international neighbors. We have no public policies regarding how cities can spend and implement CCTV surveillance systems and in many (if not all) cases, these "social experiments" are a bad use of taxpayer dollars. We are spending collectively hundreds of millions if not billions on ineffective surveillance systems. The DHS has also jumped on the bandwagon giving out funds which will foster many more of these systems. While the ACLU points out these systems intrude on privacy, the point of this blog is to help the private and public sector create more effective systems.
America's impending "surveillance state" is inevitable, it doesn't mean the taxpayers need to fund these systems. Here are a few ideas for communities to follow to have an extremely effective surveillance system without passing the cost onto the taxpayer or create a massive embarrasment like the city of New Orleans
- Pass ordinances that require businesses to install digital surveillance systems that are accessible through the internet so the police can access them remotely
- Pass ordinances that require businesses and residents to register their cameras with location information (Possibly even at a federal level)
- Modify your city's crime reporting standards
Continue reading surveillance education
Any idea what registering consists of? I assume this helps police to know where systems. Does it make it any easier for them to retrieve or to ensure that systems meet minimum quality levels?
If it's just letting police know where systems are, I don't think it's of much benefit. It's pretty easy for police to ask adjoining business and residences after a crime if they have systems.
The NSW camera registration link can be found here. As far as technical minimum levels go, the city of El Cerrito did some good work in their specifications.
The good thing about a mandatory registration for businesses is it would give a city a good count of the number of cameras in the community. It's impossible to keep track of those numbers unless a program like this is implemented. It's my belief that private cameras outweigh public cameras by a ratio of at least 10:1 and that ratio will only get higher .
Example: If a gunshot detector goes off, police can find the closest cameras based on a geomap, and proceed to log-in to the private camera systems to search for suspects immediately. This in combination with officer deployment tactics can increase the potential for an arrest.
"If a gunshot detector goes off, police can find the closest cameras based on a geomap, and proceed to log-in to the private camera systems to search for suspects immediately."
Public remote logging in to private camera systems is logistically infeasible for 90%+ of private cameras. There are hundreds of different video surveillance recorders, all of which require different client software/APIs. Plus, the municipality would require access into the LANs of private companies which is unlikely to happen.