The New Security: Cameras That Never Forget Your Face

[GHOSTDANCER]

MANAGEMENT at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco had been suspicious for weeks. A houseman on the graveyard shift was not the most productive worker, and trying to reach him on his walkie-talkie was usually a lost cause. So when the employee could not be found one summer night, his bosses went to their new video surveillance system.

The camera network - using software from 3VR Security Inc., a San Francisco company that makes surveillance technology - already knew what the houseman looked like; facial recognition algorithms had built a profile of him over time. With a couple of mouse clicks, managers combed through hours of videotape taken that night by the hotel's 16 cameras, and found every place he had been - including the back entrance he slipped out of, three hours into his shift. He became 1 of 10 employees dismissed from the hotel since 3VR's surveillance package was installed last June.
<>
MOTION DETECTOR A computer monitor, pictured above, works in conjunction with a set of cameras in a security system that watches over a 384-acre port terminal in Long Beach, Calif.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/technology/techspecial2/25video.html?_r=1>

[Synnical]

1. Big Brother is definitely watching

This just sucks.

The man should not have skipped on work, but are they also monitoring the executives as they visit strip clubs entertaining clients or visiting their friends on the side or taking martini lunches?

Just sayin'.

[Angry Girl]

2. For months I've been seeing ads on Craig's list looking for "spies'

People who will perform camera surveillance over the Internet. I forget what the company was called but it's very big and they're not alone.

It's becoming a society where half the people watch the other half. The great triumph of the industrial prison complex....

Here's a interesting link...
http://www.naimark.net/projects/zap/howto.html

whoops, i meant
http://www.zapchecker.com/applications.html

no, wait, I meant this
http://www.giga.or.at/notbored/the-scp.html

[Synnical]

3. Wow, thanks. Great post

Thanks for the info.

-Cindy in Fort Lauderdale

[KoKo]

4. Well...we will have to learn to wear disguises until someone comes up

with equipment to "foil" the camera's eye. Someone will for the true criminals...not just the "slackers." The rest of us will just be monitored even in the bathrooms to make sure we are where we are supposed to be.

[Synnical]

5. There is some sarcasm there, right? n/t

[hopeisaplace]

6. And we can't find Osama Bin Missing for Years Laden