Municipal WiFi mesh is being used by cities to handle video surveillance, reports Unstrung:
- The Dallas Police Department has deployed mesh networks for video surveillance in the downtown business district. The surveillance system covers approximately 30 percent of the downtown area and delivers live 24-hour monitoring in City Hall and Police headquarters. The network was set up by BearCom, a Dallas-based wireless system integrator. They use Firetide wireless mesh nodes, Sony IP cameras, and BridgeWave Communications transfer units with 60GHz and 80GHz links for the backhaul which also conserves the low frequency spectrum for other public safety access applications.
“Portable pods” can be moved from light pole to light pole as necessary, expanding to as many as 150 cameras in the future. That could even extend to mobile cameras in police cruisers. The network’s initial phase was finished in January. The mesh itself runs in the 4.9GHz radio frequency, which is reserved by the FCC for use by first responders. - Motorola’s latest video surveillance network in Los Angeles maintains a private network on the 4.9GHz band, using Motorola’s Motomesh wireless LAN nodes. The network encompasses 10 wireless video surveillance cameras connected with Motorola’s Motomesh. The Motomesh nodes can support up to four radios in a single access point, enabling networks on both the 2.4GHz and 4.9GHz The Los Angeles police department deployed a surveillance network in the city’s Jordan Downs complex, described as one of the worst “high-crime public housing areas” in L.A.
- Tropos Networks and integrator NetMethods, in the city of Savannah, Ga., completed its public safety network right before its Saint Patrick’s day parade. Now police officers can view the parade route remotely on laptops in their squad cars. The city is also currently in the process of installing additional Tropos MetroMesh routers and surveillance cameras in 22 of the city’s historic squares.
There are some 36 safety camera partnerships operating cameras at 6,000 sites across Britain. An increasing number are using cameras to help boost revenue.
Motorists outside London last year paid out an average of £275,000 per day in parking fines. Across England income from parking charges (including fees, fines and clamping) has risen from £638.5m in 1997 to more than £1 billion and speed cameras now fine about 2m drivers each year.
Britain is now the most spied upon nation in the free world. The national network of 4.2 million CCTV cameras catch people an average 300 times a day.
The Information Commissioner last year warned the UK risked “sleep-walking into a surveillance society”. A Report on the Surveillance Society (pdf) predicts that by 2016 shoppers could be scanned as they enter stores, parents could monitor what their children eat, and jobs may be refused to applicants who are seen as a health risk. An inquiry into the growing use of surveillance in society is to be held by an influential committee of MPs.
