Archive for the ‘Surveillance Services’ Category

« Older entries
Newer entries »

Police Busted for Alleged Gun Smuggling

By Dawn in Crime, Investigations, MSI Detective Services, Police Records, Stolen Property, Surveillance Services at October 27th, 2011 | No comments

Eight NYPD officers and one New Jersey corrections officer have been arrested on charges that they were running a gun-smuggling ring that trafficked more than $1 million in illegal weapons and stolen goods.

The officers arrested include five active-duty officers assigned to Brooklyn and three retired NYPD officers, although two of the retired officers were active when committing the alleged crimes, prosecutors said. All those arrested were picked up by FBI agents and NYPD Internal Affairs investigators early Tuesday.

According to the criminal complaint, some of those arrested  smuggled 20 firearms as recently as Sept. 22. The cache included three M-16 rifles, one shotgun and 16 handguns, most of which had their serial numbers removed.

One officer bragged to an informant in July, as an associate displayed a shotgun for sale, that it was a “sample” and that they could get anything “from A to Z.”

The allegations are no doubt troubling for the NYPD, whose commissioner, Ray Kelly, has joined with Mayor Bloomberg in speaking out on illegal guns as a nationwide scourge that threatens public safety, particularly that of police officers.

Bloomberg said in a statement that the charges, if true, are a “disgraceful and deplorable betrayal of the public trust.”

Read entire story@ msnbc

Tags: , , ,

Dallas plans on tracking down its debtors with surveillance

By admin in invasion of privacy, Privacy, Surveillance Services, Technology at September 10th, 2011 | No comments

The city of Dallas will soon employ a collections team armed with security cameras who will roam the streets to catch people with outstanding city debt.

The kicker is a law firm will fund the new project and will reap profits for every person who pays the city what’s owed. The law office of Linebarger, Goggan, Blair and Sampson doubles as a collection agency. They are prepared to collect from violators and use the money collected to pay for the system. According to The Dallas Morning News, Linebarger, Goggan, Blair and Sampson have decided to use Houston-based, Municipal Intelligence Group as violation hunters using this license plate recognition software to help catch those who owe money to the city. More than 1,800 field agents will be armed with cameras scanning and photographing vehicles for violations. The software will process your vehicle if you owe money to the city and a sticker will be placed on your car as a warning for you to contact the law office for an outstanding debt – if you don’t pay within a certain amount of time, you could go to jail.

The North Texas Transportation Authority (NTTA) has already been using this technology with its TollTag system, sending bills to customers months after they pass through toll ways. The major difference is that no one is physically scanning your vehicle and entering the information into the city’s database. Now, the same system used by the NTTA will hit the streets, but with human collection officials scouring roads for people who owe the city money. Read the full article »

Tags: ,

Casino uses surveillance cameras to catch negligent parents

By admin in Crime, Surveillance Services at August 24th, 2011 | No comments

In the past two years, Parx Casino in Pennsylvania has already had about twelve different people arrested for leaving their kids in the car while they went to gamble.

The casino has stepped up its security, not to catch thieves, but to catch parents who leave their children in the parking lot. This form of child abuse has caused Parx to double the number of surveillance cameras trained on its 5,000-car parking lot, and it also added a second patrol.

Tags: ,

Easy access to unsecured IP camera streams

By admin in hidden cameras, Home Security, invasion of privacy, Privacy, Security, Surveillance Services, Technology at August 9th, 2011 | No comments

Know that whenever you’re in public, it’s likely that you are on camera. Whether you’re caught on the coffee shop’s camera, a neighbor’s security camera, or a red light camera, it’s not guaranteed that these IPs are secured. With so much monitoring taking place, and with surveillance systems gaining more online functionality every year, it’s natural that securing these systems would become more than complicated.

So many cameras and surveillance systems are completely open so it’s possible for anyone with Internet access to watch literally thousands of cameras online using only Google and a 6-year-old’s understanding of the ‘Net.

With a little time and patience, almost any given system, from a set of residential cameras to those used by your local police, can be accessed, viewed, and even reset if not properly secured.

Using the same basic technology that your computer uses, IP cameras take their own IP addresses and stream video directly onto a network without connecting to a DVR or control platform. Once an IP camera is installed and online, users can access it using its own individual internal or external IP address, or by connecting to its network video recorder (or both). In either case, users need only load a simple browser-based applet (typically Flash, Java, or ActiveX) to view live or recorded video, control cameras, or check their settings. As with anything else on the Internet, an immediate side effect is that online security becomes an issue the moment the connection goes active.

Though most NVRs require usernames and passwords for access, many individual cameras do not. An NVR can have the most advanced password imaginable, but if its remote cameras are online and unprotected, anyone with a web browser can completely bypass the system’s security, no hacking required. Read the full article »

Tags: , ,

« Older entries
Newer entries »