Squad Car Video Cameras Go Digital
from the welcome-to-the-twenty-first-century dept
The cameras found in police cars are apparently ready for quite an upgrade. They’ve decided to join the digital age, and will start recording video digitally to a hard drive, letting police departments more easily store the data – while also being able to combine it with other digital data, such as GPS location info. Using digital video also means that police can leave the cameras constantly rolling, as opposed to just turning them on after they witness a crime. Finally, it will make it much easier to annotate and search through old video files whenever needed. Seems like a reasonable idea. IBM is generating some press for launching just such a system, but there are others out there as well. So, next time you get pulled over, make sure to smile and wave to the digital camera.
Comments on “Squad Car Video Cameras Go Digital”
a few things...
first– I thought it was much more difficult to get digital video admitted as evidence because of the ease with which it faked, though in retrospect, that doesn’t make any sense since you can copy from digital to analog.
second– I’m all for this. I know police have a dangerous and important job and I’m grateful they do it, but– I’m terrified of them. I’m law-abiding and have no police record of any kind– not even traffic violations, but the fact that police have so much power and that even an tiny percentage of them abuse it makes me distrust all of them. This might help.
searching the video
Perhaps lessons learned in sorting through a constantly rolling police video camera archive will help with life video concepts (My Life In A Terabyte). Or, vice-versa.