SI Editor's View: CCTV criticism, hackers, and government jobs

08 Sep 09

We seem to be in CCTV bashing season at the moment. Chief stirrer-upper currently is Mick Neville of the Met, whose name is becoming as well known as Ms Chakrabarti’s, the reliable talking head at Liberty.

Neville’s comments guarantee coverage in the national media because it’s a good story. We expect a libertarian group to knock CCTV but, if he’s a policeman, shouldn’t he be supporting it?

Personally, I think his criticisms can be useful, and even considered supportive of CCTV, by getting the security industry to examine itself and keep remembering what all this kit is meant to be doing.

Unfortunately, we do have to suffer the national media flack.

Despite its slavish thirst for footage of kids trashing cars and half naked girls throwing up in the street, the mainstream media doesn’t like CCTV.

So any criticism by a high profile individual gives them a valid excuse to bang the anti-CCTV drum.

Cue tiresome re-hashes of the same old criticisms about too many cameras, poor images and cameras not working.

Useful schedule/column fillers for the media, they enable the reporters to display their libertarian beliefs upfront.

It’s easier to hold “anti-surveillance society” principles if your nice media salary means you don’t have to live on a sink estate - where the beleaguered residents generally welcome cameras with open arms.

No doubt these long suffering residents would prefer a manned 24 hour police station, but not much chance of that, so cameras are the next best thing.

Nobody wants to live in a “surveillance society”. But with blinkers full on we are already drifting towards that with the proliferation of databases, radio frequency applications, payment by phone, loyalty cards, tracking systems etc etc.

This is “the internet of things” - something the EU is worried could get out of hand.

But what does the national media always pick on to illustrate this “Big Brother” danger?

CCTV cameras, of course. Easy footage and not as much research needed for a newsroom short on staff.

Inner exploration

Inside the industry, and away from mainstream media glare, there is always debate going on about improving CCTV.

I agree with one of the commentators quoted in our end user survey on info4security: “We must get away from thinking that the ‘end user’ is a CCTV operator – the ‘end user’ is the court. Producing images is the beginning, not the end of the process.”

This is more or less what Neville is calling for – a more systematic approach from installation to the court room. More training and better management of the system to make sure the images are effective as evidence.

But what seems to be continually downplayed in all the concentration on CCTV’s ability to detect and identify, is how effective it is as a deterrent.

Who knows how much more crime and mayhem there would be without it?

Of course this is never going to be quantifiable – lucky for us - but what would happen if tomorrow every camera was turned off?

Who could seriously argue that there wouldn’t be a massive rise in crime and anti-social behaviour, overwhelming the police and making life unbearable for business, commerce and every law abiding citizen?

Perhaps we shouldn’t have manoeuvred ourselves into this reliance on technology, but thank god we’ve got it.

Nice bald patch

Sometimes successful CCTV hinges on a simple case of camera positioning and it’s not always fair to blame the installer over that.

How many badly positioned cameras in stores, hotels etc were at the insistence of the manager who didn’t want them to spoil the décor or the display?

That’s great lads, the camera looks unobtrusive up there out of the way of the foyer, even though it will only give an image of the suspect’s baseball cap.

I was interested to receive a comment following the Graff jewellery raid from Sean Goodman, MD of Acctive Systems, who said it would be a good idea that every jewellery shop should have a camera looking directly out of the shop window and entrance door to record facial images.

Eye level cameras are not appropriate in many applications - certainly outdoors - but inside, where there’s little chance of masking or vandalism, wouldn’t they give the best facial image?

Door to more work

No one wants to appear too optimistic, but we are told there is a slowing down of the slowdown, a decline in the decline rate. Yippee, things are looking less down.

Birds are singing, sheep are gambolling in the fields and government funding is said to be filtering through to construction starts.

If, like many small to medium businesses, you’ve never been involved with competing for lower value government contracts, now might be the time to start.

The reason being it’s now free of charge to access thousand of government contracts online.

For the last three years businesses have had to pay to access these smaller government contracts worth up to £100,000. (Why businesses should have had to pay again when they’ve already paid for this through taxation is anyone’s guess.)

But now that the charge has been removed the hope is that this will encourage many small companies to compete with the big boys.

The Forum of Private Business, which speaks up for SMEs, has welcomed this opening of the doors, but warns that it’s not only the fee that makes smaller companies shy away from tendering.

It’s that companies have to provide a stack of information about themselves, which can be “tedious”.

However, once those forms are filled in properly, a large number of contracts can be bid for.

So if you want to offer security, or any other service, take a look this site.

A business or a job?

If, on the other hand, you are getting so fed up with trying to survive this recession that you’re thinking of putting the firm up for sale, you might be interested in the views of one successful businessman.

According to “millionaire entrepreneur” David Abingdon, most businesses for sale are “worthless”.

He says most businesses “are not businesses, because a business is an entity that should run by itself. But with many companies the owner has to be there all the time to make sure it is operating properly.

“In other words they don’t have a business they have a job, and who wants to buy a job?”

His idea is that you systemise the business so that it runs on autopilot.

He’s got a point. There are many who would prefer to be on the golf course or some foreign beach while the business is running itself.

But there must be just as many proprietors who want to be in the thick of it. Want to pilot their firm through the choppy security waters hands-on. They like making the day-to-day decisions, drinking with the lads, being thought of as “the boss”.

In other words, they don’t just want a business, they want a job.

No longer hacked off

Is it surprising that hacking into company sites has become a respectable pastime when it’s the hackers who provide the best information on how company security can be tightened up?

Most hackers work for the forces of good, with less than 25 per cent having gone over to the dark side of malicious hacking. They’ve even got their own convention in Las Vegas.

A survey carried out at the gathering revealed that a company’s site is most vulnerable at Christmas when hackers have got some time on their hands and it’s too cold to play outside.

Don’t worry too much about being hacked during the summer holidays because the hackers have also gone to the seaside.

According to the survey, most hacking is done on weekday evenings, which could suggest that the hacking community are gainfully employed in respectable IT jobs during the day.

In a similar way, there’s no doubt that the best information on tightening up physical security can come from reformed intruders who knows all the tricks.

If they got together as a “community”, pooled their “consultancy” knowledge, secured some security industry sponsorship, it could even become an interesting annual convention.

Barcode of practice

The barcode army marches on. I see that miniature ID barcodes are now being put on chickens beaks.

Meanwhile scientists have developed an even smaller, more interactive alternative to barcodes – the Bokode.

This tiny label just 3mm across can encode visual information that can be read with a standard camera or even a mobile phone up to a few metres away.

For instance, just point your mobile at it and get all the nutritional information about a product.

I’ve floated my “human tagging” idea a few times in this column (chipping at birth and regular upgrades until the minor is old enough to make up his own mind) and I think the NHS might be approaching this from the barcode angle.

According to a recent report, barcoding could save the NHS millions of pounds caused by medical errors in identification.

In future all patients should be given RFID wristbands, says the report. This would eliminate the risk of typing errors that could result in wrong treatment being dished out – leg amputated when you only needed your appendix out.

But what happens when someone gives you the wrong wristband? Error can only really be eliminated when the human role is eliminated and the chip is embedded. It’s the only sensible way forward.

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