New Pentagon vehicle surveillance systems in foreign cities
 

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon (news - web sites) is developing an urban surveillance system that would use computers and thousands of cameras to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a foreign city.

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com...eras_ny812.jpg

Dubbed "Combat Zones That See," the project is designed to help the U.S. military protect troops and fight in cities overseas.

Police, scientists and privacy experts say the unclassified technology could easily be adapted to spy on Americans.

The project's centerpiece is groundbreaking computer software that is capable of automatically identifying vehicles by size, color, shape and license tag, or drivers and passengers by face.

According to interviews and contracting documents, the software may also provide instant alerts after detecting a vehicle with a license plate on a watchlist, or search months of records to locate and compare vehicles spotted near terrorist activities.

The project is being overseen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is helping the Pentagon develop new technologies for combatting terrorism and fighting wars in the 21st century.

Its other projects include developing software that scans databases of everyday transactions and personal records worldwide to predict terrorist attacks and creating a computerized diary that would record and analyze everything a person says, sees, hears, reads or touches.

Scientists and privacy experts ? who already have seen the use of face-recognition technologies at a Super Bowl and monitoring cameras in London ? are concerned about the potential impact of the emerging DARPA technologies if they are applied to civilians by commercial or government agencies outside the Pentagon.

"Government would have a reasonably good idea of where everyone is most of the time," said John Pike, a Global Security.org defense analyst.

DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker dismisses those concerns. She said the Combat Zones That See (CTS) technology isn't intended for homeland security or law enforcement and couldn't be used for "other applications without extensive modifications."

But scientists envision nonmilitary uses. "One can easily foresee pressure to adopt a similar approach to crime-ridden areas of American cities or to the Super Bowl or any site where crowds gather," said Steven Aftergood of the American Federation of Scientists.

Pike agreed.

"Once DARPA demonstrates that it can be done, a number of companies would likely develop their own version in hope of getting contracts from local police, nuclear plant security, shopping centers, even people looking for deadbeat dads."

James Fyfe, a deputy New York police commissioner, believes police will be ready customers for such technologies.

"Police executives are saying, `Shouldn't we just buy new technology if there's a chance it might help us?'" Fyfe said. "That's the post-9-11 mentality."

Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said he sees law enforcement applications for DARPA's urban camera project "in limited scenarios." But citywide surveillance would tax police manpower, Kerlikowske said. "Who's going to validate and corroborate all those alerts?"

According to contracting documents reviewed by The Associated Press, DARPA plans to award a three-year contract for up to $12 million by Sept. 1. In the first phase, at least 30 cameras would help protect troops at a fixed site. The project would use small $400 stick-on cameras, each linked to a $1,000 personal computer.

In the second phase, at least 100 cameras would be installed in 12 hours to support "military operations in an urban terrain."

The second-phase software should be able to analyze the video footage and identify "what is normal (behavior), what is not" and discover "links between places, subjects and times of activity," the contracting documents state.

The program "aspires to build the world's first multi-camera surveillance system that uses automatic ... analysis of live video" to study vehicle movement "and significant events across an extremely large area," the documents state.

Both configurations will be tested at Ft. Belvoir, Va., south of Washington, then in a foreign city. Walker declined comment on whether Kabul, Afghanistan (news - web sites), or Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites), might be chosen but says the foreign country's permission will be obtained.

DARPA outlined project goals March 27 for more than 100 executives of potential contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.

DARPA told the contractors that 40 million cameras already are in use around the world, with 300 million expected by 2005.

U.S. police use cameras to monitor bridges, tunnels, airports and border crossings and regularly access security cameras in banks, stores and garages for investigative leads. In the District of Columbia, police have 16 closed-circuit television cameras watching major roads and gathering places.

Great Britain has an estimated 2.5 million closed-circuit television cameras, more than half operated by government agencies, and the average Londoner is thought to be photographed 300 times a day.

But many of these cameras record over their videotape regularly. Officers have to monitor the closed-circuit TV and struggle with boredom and loss of attention.

By automating the monitoring and analysis, DARPA "is attempting to create technology that does not exist today," Walker explained.

Though insisting CTS isn't intended for homeland security, DARPA outlined a hypothetical scenario for contractors in March that showed the system could aid police as well as the military. DARPA described a hypothetical terrorist shooting at a bus stop and a hypothetical bombing at a disco one month apart in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, a city with slightly more residents than Miami.

CTS should be able to track the day's movements for every vehicle that passed each scene in the hour before the attack, DARPA said. Even if there were 2,000 such vehicles and none showed up twice, the software should automatically compare their routes and find vehicles with common starting and stopping points.

Joseph Onek of the Open Society Institute, a human rights group, said current law that permits the use of cameras in public areas may have to be revised to address the privacy implications of these new technologies.

"It's one thing to say that if someone is in the street he knows that at any single moment someone can see him," Onek said. "It's another thing to record a whole life so you can see anywhere someone has been in public for 10 years."

Geez, isn't that the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco in the background of that pic above where they are installing that system?

:ak47:

I think in Washington(state) they track you via your GPS


foreign city. what a joke

More like in every city.

Remember before Bush when Republicans used to claim they wanted less government. :1orglaugh

Just shoot them down!

:ak47: :ak47: :ak47: :ak47:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is where the government goes too far and crosses the line. If we allow this there is no turning back. For them to be able to track us 24/7 is a bit too much.

The two round cannisters on the side are Pelco LL27 Infrared lights....for night vision. I never imagined anyone needing two of those for one camera :eek2


http://spyromike.com/ebay/pelcoll27/DSC04682.jpg

I want to know why if its for foreign use in the background of that pic where its being installed is the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

What the fuck is up with that BS?

This is way over the line to be recording everyone's face's while they are driving.

If they have 2.5 million I'm sure we have 6 million. All it would take is a little modification and this is a monster. The funny thing is we can't stop it since most of those cameras belong to private security for buildings and institutions but can be co-opted for government use.

What the hell can we do about this? Damnit!

hope we can have it here....to lessen the traffic violators!!!!!!!!!!!:thumbsup

Want to monitor who will eventually want to have a gay marriage : rep beleives it destroys the society.

government may have over stretched its reach with this one. Also is this really spending our money wisely?

GG is the only bridge i know of that is that color(i maybe wrong),i think they made a mistake...most likey where ever you got this story they will see the mistake and take it down.


Edit-(mistake as in trying to fool ppl it's for foreign use)


anyone know of any other bridge that is this color..

I've taken pics of that bridge and thats the GG for sure.

Fuck our gov is really get Orwellian with this crap. I bet the foreign countries we stick this in will flip out as well.

One World Order it seems in the making. The Octopus grows and grows.

thats YOUR government working for YOU.

be happy, ya'll cried about our insecurities because some ragheads crashed planes. so this is what you get!

call your fucking congressman and tell them homeland security has got to go.

http://www.votetoimpeach.org


:thumbsup :thumbsup

what happened to the good old days when everyone had a gun by thier side? and people didnt fuck around cause they knew they might get shot right there on the spot?

oh theres those left wing pansies again!

up until about 100 years ago killing a person if they fucked up was an OK thing to do, now all of a sudden its bad.

Oh sooooooooooo true

Nope and I've been across the Golden State many many times, and that sure the hell looks very much like it. I'm about 99.9% sure that is it. I'm getting sick and tired of this god dam shit.

A bit more technology from this administration:

More countries to be liberated....

Could this qualify as a WMD ????

I live in SF and that sure looks the Golden Gate.

This article has me thinking.... On the one hand it does make us more safe because they could located criminals a lot easier. But what are the negative aspects of this? With so many millions of people moving through the camera view daily how would this intrude on you unless you're doing something wrong?

It's not the technology that's scary. Being able to track threats to society is really a great thing. Unfortunately we have a government that cannot be trusted. Who can be considered a threat to society is a decision made by people who are threats to society themselves. So, with that in mind, that camera can one day track you - the pornographer - once you cross a state line into a non-porn jusridiction and arrest you. There are millions of different cases where this can be a terrible thing.