Free Republic

Mayor Bloomberg admits soon NYPD surveillance cameras will be on nearly every corner and in the air. 'You wait, in five years, the technology is getting better, they'll be cameras everyplace . . . whether you like it or not,' Bloomberg said Friday. 'The argument against using automation is just this craziness that 'Oh, it's Big Brother.' Get used to it!' Big Brother is watching. Now get used to it! Envisioning a future where privacy is a thing of the past, Mayor Bloomberg said Friday it will soon be impossible to escape the watchful eyes of surveillance cameras and even...

El Cajon may be the next city to put a stop to red light cameras. ... San Diego removed its red light cameras last month

Two months after the City Council thought they voted to add more red-light cameras, Mayor Bill Foster slammed the brakes on the increase. Foster's announcement came at a council meeting Thursday after a frequent camera critic pointed out possible problems with the timing of yellow lights at intersections with cameras. Resident Matt Florell gave council members a report this week that showed that 1,645 drivers might have received improper citations because the yellow lights changed to red quicker than they should have in some intersections. Foster said he needs more time to examine the program because the cameras are generating...

The chairman of the Australian company behind Chicago's red-light program resigned this week and trading in the company's stock was suspended amid an intensifying investigation into allegations of corruption in its Chicago contract. Redflex Holdings Ltd. announced the extraordinary actions just days after board members were briefed by an outside legal team hired to examine ties between the company's U.S. subsidiary and the city official who oversaw its contract, a relationship first disclosed in October by the Tribune. In a brief statement Thursday to the newspaper, the company also revealed for the first time that it is sharing information with...

The photograph above shows two D600 DSLRs. The one on the right is defective, while the one on the left isn’t. Both cameras have their aperture setting set to f/8.

Red-light cameras are gaining popularity across the country. Now, New York City is being sued after it was accused of rigging the lights to catch more drivers and write more tickets. They’re “gotcha” cameras, mounted at intersections. Their photos catch and fine drivers running red lights. New York City first had them in 1998. ... By federal law, drivers have to have enough time to get through a yellow light — three seconds at the typical 30 mph intersection. Back in October, engineers at AAA New York discovered a problem. At some intersections with the cameras, the yellow lights were...

DALLAS COUNTY (CBSDFW.COM) – According to Texas law, drivers must come to a complete stop when they see a school bus with its red lights flashing. New technology will now make it easier to catch those violating the law in Dallas County. As of Monday, Dallas County Schools and the City of Dallas are now using a high-tech program to protect students getting on or off school buses. Video cameras have been installed on the automated stop sign arm. The cameras are set up to identify license plates. The recordings are later reviewed by a licensed police officer and offending...

On Aug. 3, a mobile camera spotted Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak's city-owned car on 5th Avenue downtown. On Aug. 7, it found the car again on Nicollet Island. On Aug. 9, another camera saw the mayor's car on a side street near the University of Minnesota. All of that data resides in a city of Minneapolis database containing millions of license plates scans, captured by devices mounted on city police and traffic vehicles. As a Star Tribune public records request shows, knowing someone's license plate number gives anyone access to city data about where that vehicle has been seen.

HORICON -- The camera John Noerr found at the bottom of a small creek north of Pharaoh Lake in early July could have belonged to anyone. It wasn’t until he took the Cannon XT digital camera back to his parents’ home on Schroon Lake that he discovered the crusty, soggy memory card still worked, with the most recent picture time-stamped in June 2009. And the 581 photos it contained led the Poultney, Vt., art teacher on a three-week journey to find the camera’s owner. “I started to realize there might be enough information here to track this guy down,” Noerr...

This commercial should send shivers up your spine. A Coca-Cola ad released in June encourages us to look at security cameras in a positive lite by showing uplifting moments captured on security cameras.

This small mountain of gear leads to two very frightening thoughts. Firstly, there’s no ending in sight; one keeps accumulating more and more equipment in order to keep pushing the edge of what’s possible both from a compositional and artistic standpoint, as well as from an image quality standpoint. You’ve either got to have a great day job and very deep pockets, or some good recurring clients. The second thought is around obsolescence. In the film days, the camera body and lenses lasted a long time; you invested in glass, got a decent body – one that fulfilled your personal...

Monitoring a location or person with a camera or microphone has become a lot easier in recent years due to cameras having much higher resolutions while being fitted into ever smaller devices. Just about every smartphone now carries a high resolution camera capable of recording video along with a decent microphone. If you want to record someone covertly though, you still have the issue of hiding your recording devices from view. You’re also going to want to leave them recording for long periods of time without being discovered. Qwonn, a manufacture of security products, has come up with the...

A lone Jew dedicated to fighting for Judea and Samaria in Israel's courts has struck fear into the Arab residents of Arab Susya. The Susya in question, which lies between Kiryat Arba-Hevron and Arad, is eponymously named for a nearby Jewish community that pre-dates its construction. "He comes with small weapons and his camera, sometimes with armed forces, sometimes with settlers,” Susya resident Nasser Nawaja told the Bethlehem-based Maan News Agency. The man in question is Ovad Arad, director of the Judea and Samaria section of the Regavim non-governmental organization. Arad is tasked with photographing and documenting illegal Arab construction...

Amid unaddressed concerns, the Portland City Council on Wednesday sent Police Chief Mike Reese back to his bureau to draft stricter policies before allowing police to place surveillance cameras on private property in Old Town and Chinatown. Commissioner Dan Saltzman echoed concerns raised by the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon when he asked for assurances that police wouldn't use the cameras to peep into private residences. Reese, who wants to put up the video surveillance cameras to help officers monitor drug deals, said "These cameras are not focused on anything but public right-of-ways." The chief, though, did acknowledge in...

DES MOINES — The Iowa House voted Tuesday to ban red light cameras on a 58-42 vote that broke largely — but not completely — along party lines. The bill now goes to the Senate, where there seems to be little chance that it will make it to the floor for a vote. The legislation took a long route to Tuesday’s vote. A camera ban had momentum at the start of the session, including tentative support from the governor and one legislator offering a constitutional amendment to ban the devices in the state. But as the session wore on, support...

Continuing his pattern of appearing on every television show – and particularly, every major sporting event – that will have him, President Obama joined the halftime show of the championship game of the Final Four last night. There he was given a four-minute infomercial about what a great guy he was, in the guise of an interview with CBS’ Clark “Special K” Kellogg. If this wasn’t an in-kind contribution, nothing is. Did Obama talk about the game? Not really. Instead, he continued his obvious campaign to reach out to female voters with gems like this: "A couple of things. Number...

Using facial recognition to process surveillance footage isn't a new concept — Scotland Yard began using the technique in the wake of last year's London riots — but a new system developed by Hitachi Kokusai Electric could make the process quicker and more flexible than ever before. Shown off at this year's Security Show expo in Japan, the system processes footage from both still images and live footage, recognizing faces in real-time, and can search through up to 36 million different faces for a comparison in one second. Recognized faces are displayed as thumbnails and grouped with matching footage,...

I am looking to upgrade my camera. I have a point and shoot Sony. I am looking for better quality pictures and the ability to take pictures of my son playing sports (fast speed no blur). Having said this, I am a total novice.. any advice?

Nikon has unveiled a new superzoom compact camera called the P510 that offers a ridiculous 42x optical zoom — the highest zoom ratio ever seen in such a camera. In 35mm terms, the lens goes from a 24mm on the wide-angle side to a 1000mm on the telephoto end. The 16.1MP camera also boasts a 3-inch LCD screen, 1080p video recording, GPS, 5fps continuous shooting, and ISO 3200. It’ll hit store shelves later this month with a price tag of $430.

Investment tips for 2012 With all the turmoil in the market, the collapse of Lehman Bros and the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, we all need some good investment advice For any of you with any money left, beware of the next year's expected mergers. Watch for these consolidations later this year: 1.) Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and W R. Grace Co. will merge and become: Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace. 2.) Polygram Records, Warner Bros., and Zesta Crackers join forces and become: Poly, Warner, Cracker. 3.) 3M will merge with Goodyear and become:...