Sign of things to come, law enforcement officials refuse to identify who installed surveillance cameras on utility poles.

NY - Some area law enforcement officials apparently know who is installing the mysterious camera boxes on utility poles around St. Lawrence County, but they’re not saying who it is.

The boxes, with a window for cameras to peer out of, have popped up in Norwood, Raymondville, DeKalb Junction, Waddington, Massena and Canton, according to witnesses.

Law enforcement officials at local, state and federal agencies agree the boxes contain license plate readers that take snapshots, and are not video cameras that send live feeds. But none of them are willing to identify what agency the cameras belong to and who is operating them.

The cameras appear to be identical to license plate readers advertised on web sites as containing a visible light camera, infrared camera and an infrared light source. The cameras can read plates on passing vehicles, record the plate number, date, time and location, send it to a database for storage, and alert law enforcement if it detects a vehicle or driver being sought.

They are similar to vehicle-mounted units that St. Lawrence County Sheriff Kevin Wells says his department has been using for 10 years.

But about the pole-mounted cameras, Sheriff Wells says, “They are not mine.”

A spokesperson from National Grid, the major electric distributor in the region, said the company periodically agrees to requests from police agencies for placement of such devices on utility poles, but they are not permitted to reveal any details about whose cameras they are or where they might be.

National Grid’s Virginia Limmiatis, a senior media relations representative in Syracuse, said their policy “authorizes the user to plug into our system. Under the agreement they are required to install and maintain their own equipment.” The user will get a bill for a usage fee. But she couldn’t say whose cameras these are.

Meanwhile, a box Massena Electric employees found on one of their poles was turned over to the Massena Police Department. “We didn’t even know it was a camera,” said Superintendent Andrew McMahon. “We called the village police to pick it up.”

Massena Police Chief Timmy Currier said he returned it to the owner, but wouldn’t say how he knew who the owner was, nor would he say who he gave it to.
 
A Border Patrol operations officer in the sector station in Swanton, Vt., said he had no knowledge about the use of the cameras. He referred questions to an investigator apparently associated with Franklin County law enforcement, who said he knew about other cameras, but didn’t know about deployment of license plate readers, and wouldn’t discuss it further.

State Police Lt. Kevin Boyea of Troop B said he has no knowledge of the cameras, their origin or their purpose.

However, not all police agencies were aware of the boxes. After discussing it at a periodic meeting of police chiefs from around the county this morning, Wells said, “none of the local chiefs were ever contacted about the existence of these cameras.”

Several of the law enforcement representatives said use of cameras – license plate readers and surveillance cameras – is increasing, and while we might not be used to such scrutiny in the North Country, each cited reports about how people living in cities should expect to be on camera at any given moment.

But any law enforcement agency that wants data stored by the cameras can have access to it if they need it and can show why. But they can’t tell us who they send their requests to.http://northcountrynow.com/news/law-enforcment-officials-refuse-identify-who-installed-mystery-cameras-utility-poles-throughout
  
Cameras being installed across north country.
Canton, NY - In an effort to protect the northern border, federal authorities are installing cameras on utility poles to read license plates.

St. Lawrence County Sheriff Kevin M. Wells said the cameras are the same as those put up in major cities across the state.

Citing a recent news release from Franklin County District Attorney Derek P. Champagne, Sheriff Wells said the cameras were put up on public roadways and will help prevent a variety of crimes.
“This is something that’s common,” Sheriff Wells said. 
 http://www.mpcourier.com/article/20120601/DCO01/706019931/-1/dco

US Border Patrol says borders safer than ever.

In a recent interview with Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News, David Aguilar, Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency, said the Southwest borders of the United States are safer today than they have been in the last twenty years.

The crime rate is down 35% in some cases he said, with El Paso experiencing the 2nd year in a row as the safest large city in the United States.  “It is not a war zone,” said Aguilar, in reference to recent comments made by residents living in nearby towns that it is just that; a war zone.

The years 2000 – 2001 were peak years for illegal activity; “Illegal immigration numbering 1.6 million apprehended,” Aguilar said, “when compared with last year when we had 340,000; an 80% drop.”

“Violence on the border does exist,” he said, stating that it is only on the Mexican side.  The border Patrol officers are standing between the Mexican cartels and the American public.  They are “standing between good and evil” he said; they are the ones holding it back.
http://worldnewsresource.com/us-borders-safer-than-ever/1776/judy-cook
  
Virginia Tech working toward camera-covered campus.
Since the April 16, 2007, campus shootings, the university has become a testing ground and even model for campus safety, including an extensive threat assessment program.
The project could result in up to 2,500 security cameras being installed around the 2,600-acre campus over the next several years, and add one more layer to Tech’s security efforts.
“You never stop trying to make the campus safer,” university spokesman Mark Owczarski said.
The contract with X7 Systems, dated April 2011, allows for three phases of the project, including the already completed $221,098 installation of cameras in the Perry Street parking garage that opened last year. Phase two of the project will upgrade the approximately 250 cameras scattered across campus. That work is expected to be completed by December and cost $708,736, Owczarski said.
The initial three-year agreement can be renewed for up to five additional years, and could include a third phase of installations of up to 2,500 cameras, contract documents show.
“The university has not defined what it seeks in a phase three,” Owczarski said. So no dollar amount has been assigned for that phase.
For a decade or more, there have been security cameras on campus, but the technologies and the oversight have been decentralized. They range from cameras on automated teller machines installed and monitored by banks to a camera trained on a piece of the moon kept in the dean of engineering’s suite.
Police have talked about a centralized security camera system for years, Owczarski said. Now with the X7 contract, that process is under way.
The centralized system includes a strict acceptable use policy for the cameras and those who monitor them, and outlines ethical and legal guidelines, as well as regulations for archiving and using footage.
The policy also establishes a five-member Surveillance Oversight Committee, including representatives from Tech police, student affairs, facilities, emergency management and university relations to review all requests for cameras. The police department, in cooperation with the information technology division, ensures that best practices are followed for all cameras installed, according to the policy.
Private industry has used surveillance systems for a long time, said Tech police Maj. Kevin Foust, assistant director for campus security.http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-tech-working-toward-camera-covered-campus/2012/05/29/gJQAWb5LzU_story.html

Spy cams installed in NY hospital bathrooms to monitor handwashing.
Going to the bathroom has now been monitored in a hospital in NY where sensors were placed on the doors to identify workers entering and exiting and cameras placed to view sinks to insure proper hand hygiene. We are one step away from the all intrusive commode-cam to see who wipes their butt in the right direction.

Granted, this was instituted to evaluate hand hygiene compliance which is critical in a hospital. But this Big Brother system also does shift compliance analysis to report the last two shifts in LED readouts covering the statistics for "hygiene events." Is this a contest between shifts? But Big Brother also has a word to say as the LEDs also offer "encouragement" to anyone passing by. The good news is that the number of "hand washing incidents" reportedly went from 60 percent to 81 percent in a few months. That's nice.

The feedback for compliance is called "observations." But how effective is it when the actual hand-hygiene compliance rates during these hospital shifts ranged from a low 30.8 percent to still-too-low 91.2 percent? The author of this Medscape report out May 30th states that "...hand-hygiene compliance is probably much lower than most visual observations would predict..."

So this helps with the private bathroom hand-washing security check but what about washing hands before and after patient contact? That was not monitored in this hospital and this is where you come in. When the doc, nurse, intern or candy striper comes in, you have the perfect right to ask them to wash their hands before touching you. As they leave the room, feel free to mention to them that they failed to wash their hands after the exam or procedure.
 http://www.naturalnews.com/036053_spy_cams_hospitals_handwashing.html