Free Republic

A Southern California homeowner discovered a hidden camera disguised with fake grass on his property — part of a growing trend in which burglars plant covert cameras in yards in the area to monitor homes and track when residents leave... George Nguyen, who is a homeowner in West Covina, California, was watering the hedges in his front yard after dark on Friday (April 25) when he noticed a light coming from one of the bushes. However, when Nguyen investigated further, he discovered that the light was coming from a well-hidden device — with a lens and a green light —...

A Venezuelan criminal gang that for the past few years has been extending its operations and causing havoc throughout Latin America has made an appearance in South Florida, police say, claiming that at least one of its members was involved in a recent Miami murder. José Luis Sánchez Valera, a 43-year-old retired Venezuelan police officer who lived in Doral, was lured by women into a hotel room in Miami in late November and killed after he was abducted in the parking lot. Yurwin Salazar, 23, a Venezuelan immigrant who lives in South Florida, has been charged with the murder. According...

U.S. Border Patrol agents will stop using body cameras immediately in all field operations following social media posts that revealed how to identify Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, NewsNation reported on Saturday. “All U.S. Border Patrol Agents will cease the use of body-worn cameras (BWC) in all operational environments,” reads a statement to Border Patrol received by NewsNation. The directive follows notification “regarding a potential security risk,” the statement said. “Pending completion of investigation and risk mitigation, all Agents will stand down the use of their BWCs [body worn cameras] until further notice. Additional guidance and...

This lady tries her best to zoom her camera onto a very weird point of light in the sky. Weird stuff. She did a better job than our government at using a camera phone.

A metalens, composed of an array of nanostructures with arbitrary rotational angles, acquires an image, which is restored to generate an output image that closely approximates the quality of the original “ground truth” image. Credit: Seo et al., doi 10.1117/1.AP.6.6.066002. ============================================================================ AI-powered metalenses enable high-resolution, full-color imaging for compact optical systems. Modern imaging systems, including those in smartphones, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR) devices, are continually advancing to achieve greater compactness, efficiency, and performance. Conventional optical systems, which depend on bulky glass lenses, face challenges such as chromatic aberrations, inefficiency across multiple wavelengths, and large physical sizes. These...

For comparison, the Morrison Police Department issued a total of 1,700 speeding citations in 2023.. MORRISON, Colo. — In its first two weeks, the Town of Morrison's new automated radar camera issued more than 10,000 tickets to speeding drivers, according to Morrison Police Chief Bill Vinelli. The camera is permanently stationed at Bear Creek Avenue and Mount Vernon Avenue. With a posted speed limit of 25 miles per hour along Bear Creek Avenue, the eastbound camera automatically captures the license plate of drivers going 35 mph or more.. ... Tickets are then mailed directly to drivers. The camera was installed...

The creators of PaintCam Eve want it to be a new, rather artistic force in neighborhood watchPaintCam The humble security cam is now ready and willing to choose violence. A big-thinking Slovenian startup has created a curious smart security camera that doesn't just spy on your visitors, but will actively open fire on potential intruders with paintball pellets – or even tear gas rounds – with "ultra high precision." What could possibly go wrong? Do-it-yourself home security systems are commonplace these days. They're clever and simple enough that more or less anyone can install one to keep watch on property...

The unexpected discovery of the dwarf galaxy PEARLSDG, which is isolated and quiescent, challenges established views on galaxy evolution and highlights the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope in uncovering cosmic phenomena. (Artist’s concept.) Credit: SciTechDaily.com PEARLSDG, an isolated dwarf galaxy found by the James Webb Space Telescope, defies standard galactic evolution theories by not forming new stars, indicating a need to revise our understanding of galaxies. A team of astronomers, led by Arizona State University Assistant Research Scientist Tim Carleton, has discovered a dwarf galaxy that appeared in James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) imaging that wasn’t the primary...

The teen killed in a grisly caught-on-camera stabbing in a North Carolina school gymnasium has been identified by his loved ones as a sports-loving high school freshman — while relatives of the alleged perpetrator insist he acted in self-defense and was bullied. Devlin J. Ferrell, 15, died from a stab wound sustained in the vicious Monday-morning brawl that spilled into the gym of Southeast Raleigh Magnet High School, his family confirmed to WRAL News. Ferrell and an unnamed second victim, 16, were struck with a sharp object by a classmate, footage of the incident showed.

The New York paper of record has drawn a “false moral equivalence” between those who put up posters calling for the release of hostages and those who tear the posters down, per CAMERA. Posters depicting Israeli hostages that Hamas terrorists are holding in the Gaza Strip near a large billboard that the watchdog group CAMERA took out near the Midtown Manhattan offices of “The New York Times,” November 2023

Gov. Katie Hobbs on Friday vetoed legislation that would have outlawed red-light cameras in Arizona. ... studies have shown increases in rear-end collisions due to drivers abruptly stopping when a light turns yellow ... Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, said the cameras are "cash cows" for municipalities and the companies that operate them. "Cities and towns use the photo radar scheme to collect millions of dollars from unwitting statewide drivers each year. This traffic citation scam enables third-party companies to exploit Arizona drivers, ... Rogers said in a hearing that the companies who operate red-light cameras keep roughly 75% of the...

The World Economic Forum is trying to make the Red Bishop’s dream a reality. Who is the most dangerous person in the world? An increasing number of people say it is World Economic Forum chairman Klaus Schwab. This Swiss engineer is not a head of state, nor does he command his own army. He does not possess his own nuclear arsenal. Yet as the architect behind covid-19 lockdowns and the Great Reset, Schwab has done more to suppress individual freedom, end free markets, destroy national sovereignty, and promote global tyranny than anyone alive. Klaus Schwab’s father, Eugen Schwab, was a...

CAMERA’s exposé, which can be read here in full, demonstrates that the four journalists failed to live up to France 24’s charter of ethics. In numerous social media posts, the journalists can be seen praising Hitler, minimizing the Holocaust, and glorifying Hamas-affiliated terrorists who murdered and maimed scores of Jewish civilians. “Professional journalists are expected to hold up basic standards of objectivity, which obviously includes not cheerleading for Hitler and Hamas-inspired terrorism,” said Andrea Levin, CAMERA executive director. “We commend France 24 for promptly investigating this serious situation, and we hope that the news outlet cuts ties with these apologists...

The week of last Thanksgiving, Michael Larkin, a business owner in Hamilton, Ohio, picked up his phone and answered a call. It was the local police, and they wanted footage from Larkin’s front door camera. Larkin had a Ring video doorbell, one of the more than 10 million Americans with the Amazon-owned product installed at their front doors. His doorbell was among 21 Ring cameras in and around his home and business, picking up footage of Larkin, neighbors, customers and anyone else near his house. The police said they were conducting a drug-related investigation on a neighbor, and they wanted...

At the February 7 Pontotoc Aldermen meeting Pontotoc Police Chief Randy Tutor addressed concerns and assured a small group of residents that the police department’s soon to be installed Flock Safety cameras would be used solely to fight crime and bolster safety and not invade or spy on the privacy of Pontotoc residents. At the January 17 board meeting Pontotoc Aldermen voted unanimously to approve a two year subscription contract with Flock Safety Inc. for operation of eight of their license plate reader cameras in the city of Pontotoc. Pontotoc County resident Adam Miller and Pontotoc resident Kyle Eubank addressed...

A recently unsealed court document reveals for the first time that two top officials at a red-light camera company were caught on undercover FBI recordings talking about giving a suburban mayor campaign contributions and other perks at the same time their firm was pressuring the mayor to increase ticket revenue. The 2018 FBI search warrant, which sought court approval to search an email account of then-Crestwood Mayor Louis Presta, was part of the broad, yearslong investigation into corruption surrounding red-light cameras operated by SafeSpeed LLC, a probe that has netted charges against more than half a dozen public officials, businessmen...

Plans by the city of Houston to require businesses to install surveillance cameras – and then give police access – has drawn a warning letter from a second civil-rights organization. WND reported in May when the Institute for Justice warned city officials the spy plans were unrealistic and illegal, because they would be in violation of the 4th Amendment. Now the Rutherford Institute is raising related concerns. The civil and religious rights organization said the city's "Exterior Security Cameras Ordinance" is nothing more than a "thinly veiled attempt to evade oversight and accountability for Fourth Amendment violations." The ordinance was...

Tech PING! Thinking I need a camera security system. Has anyone looked at them? Thoughts? I want a stand alone camera system with night vision and recording capacity. Something that would work with my wifi? Something that works in the dark? (we live in the woods) Is there such a duck?

Micro-sized cameras have great potential to spot problems in the human body and enable sensing for super-small robots, but past approaches captured fuzzy, distorted images with limited fields of view.Now, researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington have overcome these obstacles with an ultracompact camera the size of a coarse grain of salt. The new system can produce crisp, full-color images on par with a conventional compound camera lens 500,000 times larger in volume, the researchers reported in a paper published Nov. 29 in Nature Communications.Enabled by a joint design of the camera’s hardware and computational processing, the...

The camera relies on a light capture system called “synthetic wavelength holography,” according to a press release from Northwestern Engineering. It works by scattering laser light onto hidden objects, then bouncing it back to the camera, where an AI reconstructs the signals to show the hidden object. A paper of the researchers’ findings has been published in Nature. Since the holography method allows the scientists to see fast-moving objects such as cars driving around corners, or even a heart beating through a person’s chest, it could be used in early-warning navigation systems for automobiles or for non-invasive medical imaging. The...