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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."
... how soon before the ISPs currently serving the community sue?
Good idea! And since the wifi network will be open for public use, you may get exactly that.
They mean paid for by their own tax dollars.
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.
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'.
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I disagree WRT to everyone being recorded. Sorry, but there's a difference between some people I don't know seeing me pick my nose and it being recorded for future ridicule. However, I do believe that the police should be recorded at all times. They are given considerable power, and recording is a reasonable means of providing oversight.
"However, I do believe that the police should be recorded at all times. They are given considerable power, and recording is a reasonable means of providing oversight."
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.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
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.
There will still be lost tapes, only the excuses will change; "our servers were offline during that period", "the hard drive got corrupted", "viruses", "microwave radiation interference", et cetera. I'm sure most supervisors can be trusted (and most officers, as well), but some are going to be tempted to erase evidence of wrong-doing, just as some officers in the field will be tempted to turn off the camera. As long as we rely on the police to police themselves, there will always be possible ways to get around these kinds of things. What we would really need is for those real-time video feeds to be open to the public
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.
I've been there and if you like being a farm hand, ruff neck, or gas station attendant then you'd fit right in.
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.
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As a private citizen, I am not endowed with any extraordinary powers. As such, there is no compelling reason to record my public activities. With police officers, they are public employees who are given extraordinary powers. As such, there is a compelling reason to record their activities while in the act of their public duties involving these powers.
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.
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?
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.