Use Of Video Surveillance Research Articles

Ethical and Practical Issues in Video Surveillance of Psychiatric Units.

Video surveillance is used in inpatient psychiatry in many countries and institutions. However, its use varies considerably because of a lack of research, discussion, and agreement on best practice. This review provides an overview of current issues in the use of video surveillance in psychiatry, with a focus on ethical questions and their practical implications. A narrative review of literature on video surveillance in psychiatry was conducted. References were identified through searches of PubMed, CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar for articles published before December 2018. Sixteen articles in English and German were reviewed. The ethical challenges and practical implications differ between surveillance of public spaces versus private areas, such as bedrooms or seclusion rooms. The most common reason for video surveillance was to increase security and safety. However, empirical evidence suggests that it is not useful in increasing security of shared spaces on psychiatric wards. Some evidence exists for clinical benefits of video surveillance in private spaces (e.g., allowing patients to sleep undisturbed). Video surveillance can increase patients' choices regarding monitoring options. The main ethical conflict lies in balancing patients' autonomy and privacy versus patient and staff security and safety. Whether video monitoring is used in the most effective and ethical manner needs to be reconsidered. Available evidence does not support its use as a security measure. More research is needed to evaluate the benefits, risks, and best practices of using video monitoring for patient observation, with consideration given to increasing the role of patient consent.

«Brace yourselves! La videovigilancia ya viene»: situación de la videovigilancia en el ordenamiento jurídico peruano

This article seeks to analyze the legal bases of video surveillance, the state of the current unsystematic regulation in the Peruvian legal system and the first juridical-factual consequences that are emerging from its progressive application. In this way, the article begins with the study of the protection of the image of the person, with special attention to the phenomenon of video surveillance, from the point of view of Civil, Constitutional, Administrative and —even— Criminal law. Later, it studies the way in which the Legislator and —in other cases— the Executive have established the specific and particular rules on video surveillance in Peru at the national level. Finally, it continues with the description and analysis of some of the factual assumptions that have been challenging Peruvian authorities; among which we have the use of video surveillance as a method of monitoring by entities for security purposes, as a tool for the use of employers to detect labor infractions, as an obligation of the service providers to guarantee the security of the consumers, and as evidence of the correct conduct at the start and ending of a family visit’s regime when sons or daughters are taken out of regular home, this last is an example of the use of recorded video material of the private form or material of video surveillance as evidence in judicial and/or administrativeproceedings.

Применение средств видеонаблюдения при таможенном контроле погрузки лесопродукции

Применение средств видеонаблюдения при таможенном контроле погрузки лесопродукции

El sistema de videovigilancia policial en Cúcuta y la inviolabilidad del domicilio

El presente artículo analiza los alcances y límites de la videovigilancia policial en la ciudad de Cúcuta frente al derecho a la inviolabilidad del domicilio dentro del ordenamiento constitucional multinivel en Colombia, ante su posible restricción y/o vulneración, resaltándose que si bien se parte de un presupuesto de que los Estados deben resguardar su seguridad interior para garantizar que sus ciudadanos cuenten con las condiciones mínimas de seguridad en las cuales puedan ejercer democráticamente derechos y libertades, se logra evidenciar cómo el uso generalizado e indiscriminado de la videovigilancia, puede llegar a afectar y vulnerar derechos fundamentales. El análisis propuesto parte de la investigación financiada por la Universidad Francisco de Paula Santander, identificada con el contrato FINU 034-2015 denominada “Sistema de Videovigilancia en el Espacio Público de la Ciudad de Cúcuta. Límites y Garantías frente a su utilización por parte de la Policía Nacional”, desarrollada por el Grupo de Investigación Jurídico Comercial y Fronterizo, que tuvo por objetivo general estudiar y analizar el uso de videovigilancia en el espacio público de la ciudad de Cúcuta por parte de la Policía Nacional y la relación que existe entre éste mecanismo y los derechos fundamentales.

Behaviour of European badgers and non-target species towards candidate baits for oral delivery of a tuberculosis vaccine

In the UK and the Republic of Ireland, the European badger (Meles meles) is a maintenance host for Mycobacterium bovis, and may transmit the infection to cattle causing bovine tuberculosis (TB). Vaccination of badgers using an injectable Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine is undertaken in some areas of the UK with the intention of interrupting this transmission, and vaccination research is underway in Ireland. An oral badger TB vaccine is also under development. We investigated the behaviour of badgers and non-target wildlife species towards three candidate baits being considered for delivering BCG to badgers orally. Bait preference was investigated by recording removal rates of baits and through the use of video surveillance at 16 badger setts. We found high variation in rates of bait removal by badgers among setts but no significant differences in removal rates among bait types or in preference behaviour from video footage. Variation in bait removal among setts correlated with the number of nights on which badgers were seen at the sett, with most baits being removed where badgers were seen on >50% of nights during the ten-day study period. Relatively few baits were removed at setts with low levels of recorded badger activity. Monitoring badger activity prior to bait deployment may therefore be useful in increasing bait uptake and vaccine coverage. Bait removal by badgers increased over the ten-day study period, suggesting initial neophobic behaviour at some setts and that a period of ‘pre-feeding’ may be required prior to vaccine deployment. Our results indicate that all three candidate baits are attractive to badgers. Removal of baits by non-target wildlife species was generally low, but varied among bait types, with smaller baits in packaging less likely to be removed. Enclosing baits in packaging is likely to deter non-target species, although in some cases non-target species did remove up to 13% of packaged baits.

Biometric Technology Solutions to Countering Today's Terrorism

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relevance of biometric technologies in increasing the fight against terrorism and other related border security challenges such as identity dominance. Since the 11th September, 2001 catastrophe in USA the need for biometrics technology for identification purpose has become important. Consequently, the many ripostes that were renewed on identity management included enhanced use of biometrics to verify and authenticate travellers at various airports as well as the use of video surveillance equipped with facial recognition sensors. The growth in data and storage devices have also become a critical phenomenon in biometrics deployment, the swiftness and accuracy with which these biometrics details can be processed is a prevailing challenge. This paper provides an extensive review of literatures on prospects of biometric technologies and other interrelated technologies in the fight against terrorism. To date, there is relatively meagre academic research examining how biometric technologies enhance border security as well as individual security.

The Electronic Control of the Employer in Portugal

The way the work is made has been suffering in the last years countless changes related with the huge increase and development of the use of new information and communication technologies in the work relationship. The theme of privacy and surveillance of the employer have been turning in a matter of considerable interest and surrounded of great controversy in the last years all around the world and Portugal is no exception.The technological innovation allows, through several instruments as the use of video surveillance, GPS, RFID, control of electronic communications, control of online social networks or the internet, the continuous surveillance and monitoring of the workers and new questions arise in the horizon. These new forms of control constitute powerful means of surveillance and of memorization, but also of analysis and of interference in the people’ privacy, and one of the major challenges put today is the regulation of this new forms of control in the workplace because the advancement of modern technology has made it possible to collect and store information on a seemingly limitless scale, while also facilitating access to it. The question that arises before the use of this technology is to know what limits should be established. And the answer is related, it seems, with the principles of data protection, mainly, in Portugal, articles 20, 21 and 22 of Portuguese Labour Code and also the Portuguese Data Protection Act, Law number 67/98, from 26th October, and, most of all, the legitimate principle, the proportionality principle and the transparency principle.This as led to a new form of control much more intrusive and that controls almost everything even the way the worker thinks.

Use of video surveillance to measure the influences of habitat management and landscape composition on pollinator visitation and pollen deposition in pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo) agroecosystems.

Pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo) production relies on insect-mediated pollination, which is provided by managed and wild pollinators. The goals of this study were to measure the visitation frequency, longevity and temporal activity patterns of pumpkin pollinators and to determine if local habitat management and landscape composition affected this pollination service. We used video surveillance to monitor bee acitivty within male and female pumpkin flowers in 2011 and 2012 across a pollination window of 0600–1200 h. We also quantified the amount of pollen deposited in female flowers across this time period. In 2011, A. mellifera made significantly more floral visits than other bees, and in 2012 Bombus spp. was the dominant pumpkin pollinator. We found variation in visitation among male and female pumpkin flowers, with A. mellifera visiting female flowers more often and spending longer per visit within them than male flowers in both 2011 and 2012. The squash bee P. pruinosa visited male flowers more frequently in 2012, but individuals spent equal time in both flower sexes. We did not find variation in the timing of flower visitation among species across the observed pollination window. In both 2011 and 2012 we found that the majority of pollen deposition occurred within the first two hours (0600–0800 h) of observation; there was no difference between the pollen deposited during this two-hour period and full pollination window (0600–1200 h). Local additions of sweet alyssum floral strips or a field buffer strip of native wildflowers did not have an effect on the foraging activity of bees or pollen deposition. However, semi-natural and urban habitats in the surrounding landscape were positively correlated with the frequency of flower visitation by wild pollinators and the amount of pollen deposited within female flowers.

Fixed-point Gaussian Mixture Model for analysis-friendly surveillance video coding

With the recent explosion in the use of video surveillance in security, social and industrial applications, it is highly desired to develop “smart” cameras which are capable of not only supporting high-efficiency surveillance video coding but also facilitating some content analysis tasks such as moving object detection. Usually, background modeling is one of fundamental pre-processing steps in many surveillance video coding and analysis tasks. Among various background models, Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) is considered as one of the best parametric modeling methods for both video coding and analysis tasks. However, a number of floating-point calculations and division operations largely limit its application in the hardware implementation (e.g., FPGA, SOC). To address this problem, this paper proposes a fixed-point Gaussian Mixture Model (fGMM), which can be used in the hardware implementation of the analysis-friendly surveillance video codec in smart cameras. In this paper, we first mathematically derive a fixed-point formulation of GMMs by introducing several integer variables to replace the corresponding float ones in GMM so as to eliminate the floating-point calculations, and then present a division simulation algorithm and an approximate calculation to replace the division operations. Extensive experiments on the PKU-SVD-A dataset show that fGMM can achieve comparable performance with the float GMM on both surveillance video coding and object detection tasks, and outperforms several state-of-the-art methods remarkably. We also implemented fGMM in FPGA. The result shows that the FPGA implementation of our fGMM can process HD videos in real-time, just requiring 140 MHz user logic and 622 MHz DDR3 memory with 64-bit data bus.

Cameras tracking shoppers: the economics of retail video surveillance

We test theories of information asymmetries, search costs, and procedural justice with retail store video surveillance data. We analyze sales data collected from six sporting goods stores in the northeastern region of the United States over the period January 1, 2013 to May 9, 2013. We relate the sales data to an experiment where 3 stores had placebo video surveillance, and 3 stores made use of information learned in the video surveillance starting on March 1, 2013. The data indicate the use of video surveillance enables a substantial increase in total sales per hour, the number of transactions per hour, and the average size of each transaction. We discuss other interesting findings in the data, including but not limited to lower sales among couples and among customers shopping with children.

'Caught on Camera': The media representation of video surveillance in relation to the 2005 London Underground bombings

This paper explores the representation of video surveillance by the print media in the immediate aftermath of the London Underground bombings in 2005. It presents the findings of a mixed methods analysis, drawing on content and discourse analysis to present the main themes that arise in the print media at the time. The paper shows that there is a recurrent theme of ‘them’ and ‘us’ during this time; a broader theme also found in the traditional sociological literature and other analyses of surveillance. Coverage of the use of video surveillance during this time is resoundingly positive, with only a few dissenting voices drawing out the ethical and social implications of the strong calls for increased surveillance in the immediate aftermath of the bombings (both in the UK and worldwide). Finally, the paper focuses on the dichotomy that exists in the print media at the time; a juxtaposition of visibility and invisibility of the bombers. Alongside this dichotomy there is also a contradiction. There are repeated calls for increased surveillance despite recurrent statements that however much surveillance there had been on the Underground, the bombings would not have been preventable.

Cameras Tracking Shoppers: The Economics of Retail Video Surveillance

We test theories of information asymmetries, search costs, and procedural justice with retail store video surveillance data. We analyze sales data collected from six sporting goods stores in the northeastern region of the United States over the period January 1, 2013 to May 9, 2013. We relate the sales data to an experiment where 3 stores had placebo video surveillance, and 3 stores made use of information learned in the video surveillance starting on March 1, 2013. The data indicate the use of video surveillance enables a substantial increase in total sales per hour, the number of transactions per hour, and the average size of each transaction. We discuss other interesting findings in the data, including but not limited to lower sales among couples and among customers shopping with children.

CCTV in Spain: An empirical account of the deployment of video-surveillance in a Southern-European country

Over the last two decades the use of video surveillance has grown in scope and numbers. However, research on the national contexts that have driven such developments tends to concentrate on Northern and Western Europe. This article explores the situation of CCTV in Spain, its legal framework, perceived shortcomings, public perceptions and specificity - such as a pre-9/11 concern for terrorism but its minimal impact on the justification for CCTV, a rights-based and a priori control of video surveillance devices and a deployment pattern that differs from those identified in the literature on CCTV at the European and global level. In providing an account on how Spain has joined the 'surveillance society', it exposes a picture of unevenness, legal loopholes and resistance, and provides a unique overview of CCTV deployment in a Southern-European, post-authoritarian country.

CCTV in Spain

Over the last two decades the use of video surveillance has grown in scope and numbers. However, research on the national contexts that have driven such developments tends to concentrate on Norther...

Privacy enabled video surveillance using a two state Markov tracking algorithm

Nowadays video surveillance systems are widely deployed in many public places. However, the widespread use of video surveillance violates the privacy rights of the people. Many authors have addressed the privacy issues from various points of view. In this paper we propose a novel, on-demand selectively revocable, privacy preserving mechanism. The surveillance video can be tuned to view with complete privacy or by revoking the privacy of any subset of pedestrians while ensuring complete privacy to the remaining pedestrians. We achieve this by tracking the pedestrians using a novel Markov chain algorithm with two hidden states, detecting the head contour of the tracked pedestrians and obscuring their faces using an encryption mechanism. The detected pedestrian face/head is obscured by encrypting with a unique key derived from a master key for the privacy preservation purpose. The performance evaluations on many challenging surveillance scenarios show that the proposed mechanism can effectively and robustly track as well as identify multiple pedestrians and obscure/unobscure their faces/head in real time.

Pedestrian and Bicyclist Violations at Highway–Rail Grade Crossings

Each year numerous pedestrian and bicyclist crashes involving high injury levels are reported at highway–rail grade crossings (HRGCs) across the United States. Such crashes are invariably the result of errors on the part of the pedestrians and bicyclists. The focus of this paper is to investigate pedestrian and bicyclist violations at a dual-quadrant gated HRGC and to report on four types of gate violations, including factors associated with those violations. For both pedestrians and bicyclists, the violations studied were (a) passing under descending gates, (b) passing around fully lowered gates, (c) passing under ascending gates, and (d) passing around fully lowered gates between successive trains. Data on pedestrian and bicyclist violations were collected at a grade crossing in Nebraska through the use of video surveillance. Analysis indicated that there were no significant differences in the mean frequencies of pedestrian and bicyclist violations at HRGCs. When data for pedestrians and bicyclists were pooled, 1.27 gate-related violations were recorded per crossing event. Children of around 8 years of age or younger were involved in 25% more gate-related violations than older crossing users (pedestrians and bicyclists). Violations increased with the presence of more individuals at the crossing during train crossing events, but the contribution from young children was greater than that from older crossing users. The implications of the findings for HRGC safety are discussed.

Compression Independent Reversible Encryption for Privacy in Video Surveillance

One of the main concerns of the wide use of video surveillance is the loss of individual privacy. Individuals who are not suspects need not be identified on camera recordings. Mechanisms that prote...

Compression Independent Reversible Encryption for Privacy in Video Surveillance

One of the main concerns of the wide use of video surveillance is the loss of individual privacy. Individuals who are not suspects need not be identified on camera recordings. Mechanisms that protect the identity while ensuring legitimate security needs are necessary. Selectively encrypting regions that reveal identity (e.g., faces or vehicle tags) are necessary to preserve individuals' right to privacy while recognizing the legitimate needs for video surveillance. The video used in surveillance applications usually needs to be transcoded or recoded for distribution and archival. Transcoding a traditionally encrypted video is not possible without decrypting the video first. This paper presents a compression algorithm independent solution that provides privacy in video surveillance applications. The proposed approach uses permutation-based encryption in the pixel domain to hide identity revealing features. The permutation-based encryption tolerates lossy compression and transcoding and allows decryption of the transcoded video at a later time. The use of permutation-based encryption makes the proposed solution independent of the compression algorithms used and robust to transcoding. The cost of providing this privacy is an increase in bitrate that depends on the percentage of blocks encrypted.

Video Recording in the Assessment of Violent Incidents in Psychiatric Hospitals

Research into causes and management of aggressive behavior in mental illness has been hampered by difficulties related to the accurate detection, description, and classification of aggression. Much aggressive behavior, particularly verbal aggression, is unreported or reported inaccurately. We describe the use of video surveillance to study aggression in psychiatric inpatients. The videos supplement or correct eyewitness accounts, accurately identifying aggressors and victims, as well as specific aggressive behaviors. Video has provided a tool for studying behavioral precursors and environmental catalysts of assaults. These observations have contributed to our efforts to create a typology of aggression based on underlying causes. Furthermore, video has played a direct role in clinical care, documenting or revealing medication side effects, as well as feigned or self-induced injuries. The ethical and responsible use of video surveillance of psychiatric inpatients has the potential to enhance our understanding and treatment of aggression.

Reactive Attention: Video Surveillance in Berlin Shopping Malls

The paper examines the practice of use of video-surveillance in Berlin Shopping Malls. The video systems observed here do not seem to be an efficient instrument of social control and exclusion. They are used more on demand for various purposes such as the monitoring of daily tasks and the co-ordination of persons working inside the mall. The objectives publicly claimed by management – crime prevention and the like – could not be achieved because the everyday practice presents other tasks to the operators. The workplace, the personnel, their multiple tasks, their qualifications support more a reactive use of video surveillance than a proactive targeted observation of individuals, even if the equipment would allow for that. It may turn out that the CCTV infrastructure of Berlin shopping malls can be characterised best as test-beds – open for various applications. There are, however, obstacles to this in the form of data protection concerns and the lack of political and economic support to go further (tied of course to financial constraints). Finally, as shown in our study, the social practice in everyday life continues to resist one-dimensional expectations of the technological possibilities of CCTV.