Secret network of cameras solve crimes in LA

[cbdo2007]

SOULJA BOY SECRET NETWORK OF CAMERAS
Finger Rapper's Bentley In Crime

Big brother is ALWAYS watching you ... and taking pictures ... just ask Soulja Boy, whose red Bentley was impounded by the LAPD thanks to incriminating photos taken by a secret network of police cameras stationed around L.A., TMZ has learned.

Our story begins on January 9, when a motorcyclist T-boned a red Bentley in Hollywood ... leaving the biker seriously injured ... but the driver of the Bentley -- who caused the crash by making a reckless turn -- fled the scene.

...Turns out, the cops have access to a super-database of photographs taken by thousands of hidden cameras stationed on police cars, buildings and private vehicles all over L.A.. There are private companies that make money off the City by getting citizens and businesses to mount cameras for the database.

One law enforcement source tells us the cameras are constantly taking photos of cars all over the city -- and the average car is shot AT LEAST 1,000 TIMES PER DAY!!!

http://www.tmz.com/2013/05/23/soulja-boy-bentley-impounded-hit-and-run-police-cameras-lapd/

[longship]

1. 1,000 times a day?? Really?

Do they know how many cars are in LA area?

I am calling bullshit on this. But let's take this on their word. Let's do a simple Fermi calculation.

1,000,000 cars (conservative estimate)
1,000 pics per day.

That's a billion pictures every single day.

Picture size? How about 10,000 bytes? Let's assume compression and fuzzy pictures.

That's a billion pictures and 10 trillion bytes per day, every day. In a year, that's over a quadrillion bytes of pictures.

Strains credulity. Somebody has something wrong here. Well, it is TMZ.

[cbdo2007]

2. It probably is overexaggerated....

but it didn't say they took 1,000 individual pictures of every car every day, it said each car is probably captured 1,000 times per day. I would guess it's most likely video that they have rolling in all these places so they could follow someone practically anywhere on video if they wanted to, but they could probably catch 50 cars in each picture on the highway, and have a new camera every 100 feet or so, both snapping continuously....yeah, that's a lot of pictures but I wouldn't put it past them.

[longship]

3. Good point.

But you are right, no matter how you cut it, that's a lot of pictures, a huge amount of storage.

[MineralMan]

4. No matter how many photos and videos are taken

by these cameras, nobody looks at any of them, unless there is an incident like the one described in the article. They're not being monitored, but when there's an accident or a crime, they can be reviewed, looking at the specific place and time where the incident occurred.

How many crimes have been solved in recent years through the use of security camera videos? A lot - that's how many.

I have no problem with this.

[cbdo2007]

5. All they need is some kind of license plate recognition to trace anybody's

movements without a warrant. All they need is the plate recognition software and then look for patterns....or people changing their patterns in questionable ways to suspect wrongdoing. This can all be done electronically.

Imagine getting a letter in the mail, "Dear MineralMan, we noticed you have been deviating from your typical drive to work and you are now going 7 miles out of your way each day to ABC Day Spa, which was recently busted in a prostitution sting. Please show up at your court date on July 1st at 2:00pm."

Personally I don't have a problem with it because I'm not up to any nefarious activities but I can definitly see how this could go over the privacy line quickly.