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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Photos from the Baltimore Surveillance Camera photo tour
Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 17:06:54 -0400
From: Rob Carlson <rob@vees.net>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
References: <20050808170519.71452.qmail@web50807.mail.yahoo.com>

Declan,

Here are the results from the Baltimore Surveillance Camera photo tour
on 8/7/05.  The author asked to remain anonymous, but gave me permission
to pass this along for Politech:


 From what we could tell, there are at least 3 separate networks of
police surveillance cameras in the city.

this kind(long and boxy) are cctv run by the baltimore downtown partnership:

http://flickr.com/photos/45891628@N00/32294221/

the dome-like cameras:

http://flickr.com/photos/45891628@N00/32294164/in/set-718967/

are newer, and were installed this year with homeland security money.
this network largely overlaps with the previously mentioned
one, but the cameras are much fancier(if you look into the dome you can
see the cameras moving about)

these are the ones discussed here:

http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/10787/index.php

as being purchased from an israeli security company.  these also may
have limited visual AI, according to the article.

check this out for an example of gratuitous overlap:

http://flickr.com/photos/45891628@N00/32293827/in/set-718967/

then there are the new Citiwatch cameras, which are more about police
control of low-income neighborhoods.  These are the scary flashing ones:

http://flickr.com/photos/45891628@N00/32293410/in/set-718967/
http://flickr.com/photos/45891628@N00/32293528/in/set-718967/

in the above picture, check out what appears to be an antenna...the dome
cameras are apparently on a fiber optic network.  these appear to be
wirelessly networked.(shame this isn't city-sponsored wireless broadband
instead of surveillance)

the ones we don't know about look like this:

http://flickr.com/photos/45891628@N00/32293550/in/set-718967/
http://flickr.com/photos/45891628@N00/32293499/in/set-718967/
http://flickr.com/photos/45891628@N00/32293369/in/set-718967/

which we saw both in and out of downtown, with and without sirens. these
are at this point a mystery to us.

--
Rob Carlson  rob@vees.net  http://vees.net/

Posted by Declan McCullagh on Aug 09, 2005

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