Police Cars To Transmit Real-Time Video 149
Hugh Pickens writes "In the first such system deployed in the country, police vehicles in Ponca City, Oklahoma will have wireless video cameras installed so precinct dispatchers and supervisors can monitor activities during traffic stops in real time, and quickly deploy additional officers and resources if necessary. The system to provide an added level of monitoring and protection for its force is part of a broadband mesh network comprised of more than 490 wireless nodes and gateways connected to 120 miles of fiber backbone that will provide coverage for approximately 30 square miles of the city. The network will provide field communications for city services including police, fire and emergency, parks and recreation, public works and energy, but will also be used to provide free wireless internet access for all residents of the city. 'The testing of this network showed that it was robust enough to handle not only municipal traffic, but also citizens' traffic.' said Mayor Homer Nicholson. 'So the Ponca City Board of Commissioners voted to allow the extra internet access to be given to the citizens of Ponca City for free.' The second phase of the project will expand the network and wireless coverage to more than 430 square miles surrounding the city with an estimated annual cost savings of over $1 million for city residents, who can discontinue their existing internet service. 'Our goal is to be one of the most mobile communities in America, and this is a significant step in that direction,' said Nicholson."
Let the lawsuits begin ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fine, Just Fine... (Score:3, Insightful)
And by "free" (Score:4, Insightful)
They mean paid for by their own tax dollars.
Re:Let the lawsuits begin ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Security thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, you can have a real-time police radar like in GTA4.
Each car is constantly transmitting ... a proximity detector should be rather easy to implement just based on signal strength alone.
Depending what frequency they're using, you can possibly use two antennas to triangulate a guess as to where the police car is relative to you.
The pain in the ass comes in when you start dealing with reflected signals in urban areas.
Re:Fine, Just Fine... (Score:4, Insightful)
I can see one good thing coming out of this (and a lot of not so good things), which is that there will be no more 'lost tapes'.
Re:Fine, Just Fine... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fine, Just Fine... (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly.
Wonder what the job market is like in Ponca City because this is enough for me to move there. This is the best news I've ever heard to prevent police corruption and increase productivity. City leaders in Ponca City really know how to support their constituents.
Re:More Muni Wifi Hype (Score:2, Insightful)
TFA describes video for traffic *stops*. Real-time video for traffic stops hardly seems to be a benefit beyond the recoded video we have seen for 20 years.
It allows the dispatcher to see trouble in real-time and to send backup. An officer involved in a sudden struggle may not have a chance to radio in for backup, so this could be a lifesaver.
Re:Fine, Just Fine... (Score:4, Insightful)
good, though I'm skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fine, Just Fine... (Score:2, Insightful)
While I think this is a good thing it would have been better to deploy this in Tulsa or Oklahoma City.
While we're at it stick cameras in the Oklahoma County Jail. So when people are being abused there it's all recorded. It's sad when the feds have to come in and audit the jail, because of all the officer abuse.
Re:Fine, Just Fine... (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other side, there is a compelling and important reason to not record the activities of the general public. It would provide the government with a substantial database with a large potential for abuse. Were we to suffer another act similar to 9/11, calls would be rampant to develop technology to mine this video archive for patterns of activity. We could potentially have the government indexing and analyzing everything you do outside of your own home and forming opinions about what type of citizen you are. Were we ever to need to rise up against the government, we'd be at a terrible disadvantage. The fact that we have not needed to do so in over 200 years should not affect our diligence in maintaining restrictions on our government.
I'm sorry, but it is a very substantial and important difference between recording the activity of police and recording activity of the citizenry.
Re:Fine, Just Fine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? Is my sarcasm meter blinking out? You are joking, right? Is someone going to review all this video? If it's not open to the public (who would watch it- distributed computing through voyeurism) who watches the video to make sure the cops really are doing their job,"increasing productivity", etc? I won't use a car analogy here since we're actually talking about something car related. But $1M isn't cost savings when you pay in taxes rather than in ISP fees, and hiring more and more levels of security to watch people is not real security, nor efficient. If society has really reached the point where everyone has to be watched and no one can be trusted, then is that society worth saving, or is it just another failed experiment to be tossed into history's dust bin?
Re:Security thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
hrmmm what's easier, cracking their encrypted signal to get some gps coordinates, or just detecting signal strength?
Cracking the encrypted signal would obviously be ideal, and more l33t, but seems like a pain in the ass when compared to triangulation.
Obviously neither is as easy as it sounds, unless the police all use the same encryption key, and some protocol that's easily cracked - like WEP.