Moscow Police Watch Pre-Recorded Scenes On Surveillance Cams

[n2doc]

"During several months of 2009, Moscow police looked at fake pictures displayed on their monitors instead of what was supposed to be video from the city surveillance cams. The subcontractor providing the cams was paid on the basis of 'the number of working cams,' so he delivered pre-cooked pictures stored on his servers. The camera company CEO has been arrested."
Source:
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/01/13/152257/Moscow-Police-Watch-Pre-Recorded-Scenes-On-Surveillance-Cams

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Don't know why they arrested the guy.

The point of surveillance cams is not to watch everybody all the time - it is to make them THINK they are being watched all the time.

Kinda like parking a cop cruiser near an intersection with a mannequin inside to keep people from running red lights.

[n2doc]

2. Except there were no cams

Just images fed to the police to make them think there were cams....

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. From the way I read it there were cams, but they'd stopped working

and rather than go to the expense of repairing them the company just sent cached pics to the police monitors.

So in most cases there would still be a camera overlooking the scene, but it just wasn't recording anything - though conceivably some of the cameras may have been obviously damaged or missing. Which might be how they figured it out - getting pics from a camera they KNEW as too screwed up to send.