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Police Cars To Transmit Real-Time Video
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."
I say this is a good thing, but we shouldn't stop there. I'd say everyone's car should have [hidden] video cameras...
Anything that happens on public ground, especially involving public servants (i.e. police), should be considered to be recorded by the public. Privacy in public is an outdated concept, and has never truly existed anyways (so give it up). Someone will be watching -- the question is, is everyone watching, or is it a one-sided situation (like the CCTV system in the UK)?
Events taking place on public ground should never come down to "his word vs. mine." In cases where this involves police, then the police officers' word is always given more credit than the citizens'. Now while this is probably a reasonable bias to have, it neglects the fact that police officers are just humans too, and are themselves just as influenced by biases as anyone else. Video recordings have no bias...
This is essentially becoming a reality, especially considering that most everyone's phone has a camera. Let's see what happens the next time there is an instance of abuse of authority, say during a traffic stop or what-have-you...
As Marge Simpson said...
You know, the courts may not be working any more, but as long as everyone is videotaping everyone else, justice will be done.
... how soon before the ISPs currently serving the community sue?
Free wifi + real time video + VOIP = bandwidth issues and maybe even AP over load.
also mesh network may make things even slower and traffic may have to use a few links to get a hard wired network link.
What if you have 80% to 100% homes on a block useing this?
What if 4-5 cops cars are in the same area?
Ok, security-thinking time...
Hmmm. If this were done someplace that was worth the effort (no idea what that city is like) it could potentially be a great way to keep track of where the cops were and maybe even what they were up to.
--MarkusQ
Um... allowing citizens on the same network where the city does all its business and even police cars transmit video? The security implications are staggering.
They mean paid for by their own tax dollars.
I live south of Ponca City in Stillwater, OK. I can tell you that what ever mom and pop isp is in the area is probably gonna run the whole thing for them. There isn't a strong presence in the area by any large isps. It should also be noted that Ponca City is mostly Oil Refineries (Connaco / Philips ) and the area around there is sparsely populated. Were talking farmland and grazing grassland prairie. Most of the people around here do not have Internet access other than dial up. I pay a hefty fee to get 1 mb point to point 802.11 from a tower 3 miles away.
We substituted the coffee Slashdot normally drinks with "Sandoz Crystals", Lets see if they notice the difference
Qos addresses most of those issues, The problem IMO is that most wireless technologies are easy to jam. WPA for example is easy as hell to jam, a felon with a laptop with a laptop and aircrack can just kick all local users (including the cops) off the router. OTOH as long as this is in addition to their standard communication methods i don't see this as a problem.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
...and all I've seen for hours is a static shot of Dennys.
Have gnu, will travel.
My city can't even fix a fucking pothole in less than a month, and somehow this place expects a bureaucratically-heavy municipal government to be able to provide reliable Internet service?
I bet all the traffic runs through the police station for "analysis" anyway. Scary.
I'd be a little nervous using WiFi on a municipal network essentially built for the police. Is it encrypted? Anonymous? What are the privacy guarantees? If you surf to alqaedabarelylegalshootthepresidentfreecrackz.com ("I was just curious") will the po po (as the kids say) make a courtesy call?
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
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.
While driving, the Wifi client spends so much time and effort perform hand-off to the next of 500 access points, the packet loss is tremendous.
Most regions with Wifi mesh networks are turning them down or vastly scaling back expectations. Because Wifi was *never designed for active mobility*.
The sad part is when these Wifi abominations displace simple, effective dispatch radio for voice communications. The claimed savings will evaporate as legal costs mount when the first trooper dies because he could not call for backup while Cletus was streaming American Idol on the same AP.
Anybody want a peanut?
I would expect the public wifi to be restricted to public areas like parks and malls. Residential areas probably wont have coverage.
he would be glued to his monitor....
Goes back to poking sore tooth
Monstar L
I lived in Ponca City for a short time.
Worked at the Conoco Refinery in IT, during the Y2K upgrade when it was owned by DuPont.
All I can say is: Where the and what the FUCK are they doing to get the money for this? Ponca is a city of (literally) a couple bars, a refinery (that was built around 3 seperate refineries), and that's about it.
Kicker, of speaker fame, is located about 45 minutes away, and they have a college nearby.
Baby Does (strip club / whorehouse) was about the biggest industry outside of the refinery.
No major freeways going in and out of town, the freeway bypasses Ponca by about 20 minutes.
So, again.. WHY is this system being rolled out? Where is the $$$ coming from? IS there enough of a problem of police brutality or ??? going on that this is actually NEEDED?
I'm all for technology, but really now. This is a HUGE waste of money for a town that doesn't need it.
Ponca City, a washed up, has been town on the forefront of a technology... A town that had it's fastest link via microwave to Houston, Tx just a few years ago.
--Toll_Free
I would strongly suspect(though I've been guilty of optimism before) that the cop-cams, whatever the precise implementation details are, have at least a few minutes of local buffer. Even aside from the risk of deliberate jamming, getting wifi to work 100% of the time is nontrivial.
But how will the cops have wifi in Residential areas?
I would expect the public wifi to be restricted to public areas like parks and malls. Residential areas probably wont have coverage.
Did you even read the summary let alone the article?
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.
I'm sorry, but the idea of putting the government in charge of my communications channels is truly frightening. Once your government becomes your ISP, it becomes that much easier to sneak in all sorts of nasty acceptable use, content filtering, and traffic monitoring policies, both official and unofficial. The last thing I want is for government-run broadband to displace commercial alternatives.
I'm also concerned about wireless oversaturation: radio frequencies can only sustain so many users and providers, and I'm not sure I want the government to be the one that takes up most of the available space.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Now I can use my laptop to find the location of every police car via their own camera. Speed limits be damned! I can't imagine as an officer that I would welcome this, now the boss will know every time they make a pilgrimage to the local doughnut shop.
I would expect the coverage to be 'anywhere a traffic stop might be made' since that is the primary purpose of the network.
In other news the Police of Mobile Alabama are trying their new "wired video cameras", sadly local residents report an increase of crime outside the 100 foot police station tether radius, and a large spike in beheading within... details at 11:00.
ev
How many steps is this away from the Thought Police zooming around peering into your window or something?
Sorry, I just read 1984 for school again.
...many consumers are reporting extremely poor performance of the municipal WiFi near area donut shops.
Now cops can watch other cops have the case of 'fuckitz' when it comes to waiting for red lights.
I got this habit a while ago. It helps me with my delivery job ^_^
But now they might be able to watch me with my severe 'fuckitz'? They better bust each others balls as much as mine, or this won't be fair.
So our gilded cages with literal police microphones in the bushes now include free wi-fi? Can I get cappuccino with that? I mean who cares none of us were using our freedom, any ways? Right?
Dumbasses! A cage isn't better just because it's gilded...
"To be like âoea bird in a gilded cageâ is to live in luxury but without freedom.."
http://www.bartleby.com/59/4/gildedcage.html
Every time another cop camera goes up you make a founding father rotate at high velocity in their grave.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Net Neutrality may eliminate QoS implementations (wouldn't that be ironic).
But as to jaming, you're being overly optimistic. Any WiFi can be jammed, regardless of the encryption used. All one needs is to put out enough RF noise in the WiFi band and it's toast. Some basic electronics knowledge is all it would take to build an RF jammer.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
More details about the Ponca City's wireless mesh in the slideshow presentation here.
You assume they'll be using the same frequencies and/or channels. Many/most public service wifi setups use the 700MHz band, not the 2.4/5Ghz bands civilians use; Though some backhauls use this range as well. They may just be putting wifi as a bag on the side of these installations.
As far as jamming, etc.; Certainly possible with any wireless technology, but how many people have an incentive to do so? Police depend on wireless technologies and wireless technologies can be jammed, this is true. Rapid frequency hopping and spread-spectrum techniques used by the military can make jamming very difficult -- but I'm going to focus on civilian tech, since that is what is being used here. If an attacker has enough resources to setup and effectively utilize jammers, wouldn't it follow that the target would be worth the investment? It's a one-shot, short duration deal; If police resources are jammed for any length of time, that would attract instant military and FCC involvement. The risk profile doesn't make that a likely course of action for an attacker.
So in short, possible but not probable. There are not many mobile targets that are high value and also depend substantially on a rapid police response for protection. Any target of reasonable value will have alarms tied to hard lines, and there's always police coming and going from their offices that would be used to respond to any call. As an example, however, of a scenario in which this would be beneficial for an attacker -- a shipment of fuel rods for a nuclear reactor. It's a high value mobile target that would have it's protection significantly reduced if wireless resources were cut off. Obviously, this scenario is far beyond the reach of Joe Average Felon with a Laptop.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Just remember not to point it at anyone ...
"WPA for example is easy as hell to jam, a felon with a laptop with a laptop and aircrack can just kick all local users (including the cops) off the router."
And that would accomplish what, exactly? Cops can't check your record for a few minutes and a nice long jail sentence for "hacking" when they discover what 15 yr old script kiddie did it? Computer hackers don't fair so well in federal prison.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
As a touring musician I've seen a few cities with free wifi, Saskatoon for example. I've never encountered one that had any reasonable bandwidth except very late at night (early morning). Can't even load Gmail much less send something or even save a draft.
What it does do is persuade businesses to not provide wifi hotspots, which is really silly. A lot of people get wifi devices because of the free wifi coverage, then get frustrated by the poor bandwidth. The number of wifi devices in the streets should be greater incentive to provide hotspots.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
All of these videos should be stored for at least several years, and probably archived for the remaining career of each of the cops in the car. Cops should switch from filling out forms and testifying "on their word", to just voice annotating the video once the get back to their base. Then submit the video as evidence, rather than take the day off from patrolling to testify in court.
Fewer cop testimonies will be challenged. Fewer cops will do wrong on duty. The judicial process will be streamlined, whether just routine cop "paperwork", or time in court. Identifying barely glimpsed suspects will catch more people (and release bystanders picked up because cops guessed wrong) more efficiently, by circulating images among cops, rather than verbal descriptions, sketch artists, and inaccurate guesses that someone "suspicious" matches the merson first seen.
--
make install -not war
Motorola makes a product that streams video back from first responder vehicles over mesh networks that has been available for a couple years now. One of the customers is the LAPD.
http://www.motorola.com/business/US-EN/Mobile+Video+Sharing_US-EN.do?vgnextoid=c5dc23805ae46110VgnVCM1000008406b00aRCRD
---- Dave
Five words: Live Police Pursuit On Demand. Screw the helicopter shot. That's for plebes. Our exclusive streaming video will get you so close, you can see the suspect's wild, hunted eyes in his rear-view mirror!
The future ain't what it used to be.
I still think the cops will have the ability to turn off the camera. One of my first jobs out of high school ('89) was in a company that made, among other things, circuit boards for cop-car cameras. If the lights were on, the camera was rolling. I'd been there a week when we had to change the product, because all of the police departments requested a kill switch for the camera. The first thing that popped out of my mouth was "why would they want to turn off the camera?" That little question was the cornerstone from which my entire political worldview was built, and I've yet to see a reason to change it. Cops want the power and freedom to be able to deal with suspects without leaving any evidence. It's not that I don't trust cops, but that I don't trust people with power. When those people take active steps to keep their exercise of power, their methods, secret, that sends up a whole bucket of red flags.
In my town, the video will show the one cop who always parks at the comic store for 4 hours, another whose car sits in his driveway for most of the day, and the other one who goes from bar to bar pulling over anyone he sees leave the bar.
Maybe it's a good thing for us, as well as another method of catching lazy cops.
As soon as I leave they get all kinds of neat things. Real time streaming video in cop cars and ambulances that vibrate things.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
Newport Beach, California has had video recorders on its police units since at least 1997, and it's great. It helps cops prove their cases, and has a huge effect on keeping officers out of abuse complaints, both real and false accusations.
The reality is, most police are actually in favor of this once they realize how it helps them do their job and keeps them out of trouble.
I've actually seen a case made by one of these tapes. I've sat in a DA's conference room watching as a DUI investigation a defense attorney claimed that his client was not drunk - until she fell over, ha ha. Boy did he change his tune quick.
But this does have a positive effect on officer behavior. Obviously, if you know you are being taped, you are going to be more careful doing your job.
One downside of live streaming: Not all of the people police encounter are criminals. There are crying victims, accident scenes, etc. I know if I were laying bleeding on the street and a cop was the first responder to my accident, I wouldn't want it broadcast as I cried like a baby. And what about rape victims? Yes, not likely to be encountered in a traffic stop, but surely there will be cases where victims of crime are broadcast for the world to see.
BTW, even for those departments that don't have video, many cops these days carry mobile audio recorders and they push "record" when they talk to suspects.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Net Neutrality may eliminate QoS implementations (wouldn't that be ironic).
Well there's a huge difference between Net Neutrality and QoS :
- QoS make sure that during usage spikes the critical real-time protocols get enough bandwidth and not too much delay to be still usable in real time. HTTP will be deprioritized behind interactive SSH and VoIP. Outside spike you get everything for your Bittorrent and HTTP, during a spike the access point may from time to time put delays between your BT or HTTP packets so that your phone is still near enough to realtime to be usable instead of being buried deep in the queue.
Most of it has already been implemented and used for year on current and past Internet structure and equipement : relay points (routers, etc..) don't use a simple First-In First-Out rule in their queue, but have an additional clause "make sure that real-time protocols XX and YY have one packet sent at lest each SSS msec"
The "makes real-time service not wait too much in queue during an usage spike " is the key point.
- a non-Neutral net divides the whole network in different tiers, with privilege to be in first class being paid-for, the separation not being actually based on service types (HTTP connection to a paying netizens being prioritized over HTTP/BT connections to second class netizens even if none of the two are real-time critical) and the limits being permanent, independent of current usage. It is about putting priority to some destination even for some activities (like the famous "sending e-mails down the inter-tubes")
which aren't time critical at all.
The key point is that if you are a paying customer, access to your service are prioritized no matter how time sensitive they are, and if you are not paying, your service will have a bandwidth cap, no matter if currently there are no usage spikes.
Both approach try solve the same problem :
- Sometimes there's a fuckton of things flowing in the intertubes.
But each take a different approach :
- QoS is about dividing between time sensitive-service (miss a packet and your VoIP-call stutters) and globally bandwidth ("volume") sensitive service (downloading : you want your stuff to arrive as fast as possible but if from time to time a packet for VoIP is let first, it won't pose a problem that much).
QoS makes sure that the first have their necessary bare minimum of packets per seconds, even if usually the second generate more packets in the queue and would monopolize the link.
The system is *neutral* regardless of who the peers in a link are. Only the real-time characteristic of the protocol count.
- non-Neutral nets attempts to put arbitrary bandwidth caps everywhere and on everyone. And then have paid option to increase the cap to a higher level.
Suddenly, Net isn't free for everyone.
The whole model where everyone can freely communicate with everyone else is suddenly broken into a provider/consumer relationship with some provider given more importance depending on how much they pay.
Some basic electronics knowledge is all it would take to build an RF jammer.
Or a cheap not very-well shielded Micro-oven~
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Make the police feeds available to the public and sell ads to be overlayed, and interspersed. Allow the public to upload edited versions for people who don't want to slog through the boring bits, and sell ads with those as well. Based on the popularity of reality cop shows, the revenue could be enough to finance the whole project, the police department, and maybe the rest of the city's services as well.
Depending on where you live, I highly recommend going on a ride-along with your local Police Department. Some of the cities in Silicon Valley have Police Departments equipped with some amazing tech. From on the fly license plate scanning of all vehicles around you and bouncing those plates off the various alert lists, to their real-time map of all police, ambulance and fire trucks in the area that show them converging on accidents or violators. BTW, license plate scans are stored by time and gps location and can be used at a later time to locate people of interest... The car I was in also had video (pretty darn good quality) being recorded and accessable tby the PD "overseer" at any time. BTW, it gets even more interesting on their helicopters (didnt get to go but a friend works as a pilot for CHP). They got super high res, high end cams that automatically track people (touch screen - just touch the perps car and the camera and if necessary the spot light will stay on them), same deal as far as character recognizing the plates from way up high and storing time, gps, and pics of them for "other uses". Anectodally, the newest generation of plate recognition is completely nonplussed by the various covers or spray-on reflective crap - they get your info no matter what. Pretty cool stuff from tech point of view, and pretty creepy from the civil rights side.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
From what I understand, the equipment all runs on 4.9ghz, which has been allocated specifically for law enforcement. Even if it uses 802.11, one would still have to acquire equipment that uses that specific band.
This is a city service. It is as free as taxpayers want free to be. Do they realize how much it will cost to have this kind of network in place? I'm betting after 1 year or less in service, the people implementing this will finally realize what other IT people are telling them. "Oh, so it really was too expensive." This has already happened in cities where attempts were made to reduce red light passing by installing cameras, only to the dismay of city revenues when they did not generate enough revenue to support 24/7 surveillance, and were subsequently shut down.
UK police cars have had video recorders for many years too -- probably from the early/mid 90s. They aren't ever broadcast live. Edited collections of tapes are shown on TV in programs like "Police, camera, action!" where they show loads of speeding drivers getting caught etc, but they always blur the faces of non-policemen, and car number plates etc.
I think I read recently that some police here were being given clip-on cameras that attached to their clothing. This would save them a lot of time in noting down what someone who'd been arrested said, and IMO is more reliable evidence in court.
Just can't help but wonder if these so called "live video" feed can be used in defense of bogus arrests. Somehow I think they would claim "technical difficulties" when these feeds are "lost".
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
BTW, even for those departments that don't have video, many cops these days carry mobile audio recorders and they push "record" when they talk to suspects.
Yup. My brother does this.
If the guy in the back seat won't stop trash talking and generally being a loudmouth asshole, he simply puts the recorder on the dash, and presses record in a visible dramatic sort of way.
Instant silence, and politeness from the back seat.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Here's what's probably going to go through the mind of some of the citizens there:
Hey, why can you watch me all the time? That isn't right. It doesn't matter that I'm on public property. There is ethic to... Oooo, free internet!
Are they going to give citizens access to the same infrastructure that they are using to pass around video data from the cars and other cameras around the city? What could possibly go wrong there?
...in the camera's line of sight.
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.
I saw what the plan IS, but I'm saying I doubt it will work out that way.
I know of a few areas using WiFi in police cars and I give the same your a fucking retard response every time I hear of someone doing it.
WiFi Channel backoff algorithms are way too nice for these kinds of applications.
That's the problem you get when you treat a city as a for-profit operation.
If the point is to reduce red-light violations, then you can't honestly expect it to "pay for itself" while succeeding. That's the whole point of law enforcement, to DECREASE violations. If you are punishing an act through fines, you shouldn't rely on those fines as an essential part of your budget.
Sure, it's nice to have fines pad your budget, but the whole point of fines is that the behavior they punish shouldn't happen, and therefore the fines that follow ideally would never have been assessed in the first place.
Any municipality that uses fines of any sort as a crutch, let me make one thing perfectly clear.
Government is not a profit operation.
OK, so if some cop gets all power crazy and violent now the whole power structure is at fault. Think about it this way: if a cop supervisor can know about cop brutality going on and does not stop it then the whole department is at MORE fault, not less.
When this system exists in your locality be sure to FOIA every tape of every traffic stop and consider suing for EVERY SINGLE abuse of power. If they lose enough lawsuits then insurance companies will shut them down.