Angelo J. Pompano
Security vs. Privacy
Video surveillance has been commonplace in England and Europe for some time. In recent years it has been a growing phenomenon in the United States as well. By means of the technology of closed circuit television, individuals are observed without their knowledge in stores, at the ATM, in elevators, in restaurants, in school hallways, and when stopped police in patrol cars.
The Technology
The technology of video equipment has gotten to the point where the units can be activated by motion detectors and can tape in color even at night. One reason why the use of video surveillance is becoming so prevalent is because cameras are shrinking, thus making it easier to conceal the equipment. Video surveillance cameras can be so small that they can be hidden almost anywhere in the workplace and even worn on clothing. These little devices are capable of zooming in on the smallest of details and can pan and tilt.
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The PVSS (Personal Video Surveillance System) is the size of a badge and can project images of arrests to video recorders in a patrol car.
A drawback to miniaturization however, is that smaller cameras result in blurrier images. Technology is addressing this problem by developing software to clear up out of focus video. According to Albert Janjigian of STAT Resources, software is being developed to bring those fuzzy pictures into sharp focus.”
It remains to be seen if manipulated images will be questioned as valid evidence. Who is to say that when an image is “made sharper” it doesn’t become distorted to the point where it changes a person's features, resulting in misidentification? One thing that video does have in its favor is that it records what it “sees” and unlike the human mind does not forget.