IR Cameras

[Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>]

Forwarded message:

> Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 20:19:34 -0700
> From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
> Subject: Re: opinions on book "The Truth Machine"
> 
> Today's newspaper (SJ Mercury News) carried a long article about
> increasingly ubiquitous video surveillance cameras, and singled out the
> U.K. as a place that is leading. Apparently even small villages have 50 or
> more cameras scattered around...men have been arrested for urinating in
> bushes outside pubs, caught by the infrared pickups (I hadn't thought about
> the cameras being IR, but this makes sense, as a large fraction of street
> crimes take place in dark or semidark areas).

Here in Austin, TX there is at least 1 IR camera located at the top of the
police building downtown (8th & IH-35). Many intersections have stoplight
synchronized cameras for getting license plates of red light runners (eg N.
Lamar & 51st). I know the output of the cameras is cabled off-pole (can see
the cables) to a NEMA style box. Don't know the format from there. It would
be no technological leap to buy cable channels and mux the pictures back to a
centralized site. This city is lousy with cable and fiber and the city
bought in from the get-go with a project called I-Net in the mid-80's.

                                                     Jim Choate