Colorado
CO State Lawmakers Want To Restrict How Long Governmental Surveillance Can Be Kept On Citizens
DENVER – Republican lawmakers at the state Capitol want to send "Big Brother" to his room. Legislation being proposed would require government entities to purge their surveillance video and images within six months of the recording. According to the bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Polly Lawrence, R-Roxborough Park, this is in direct response to surveillance concerns at the federal level. "It has really been brought to our attention with the NSA and their surveillance techniques and their data collection on everyone across the United States," said Lawrence. "I don’t think the government should be surveilling its citizens and retaining that information indefinitely." Government surveillance can include security cameras at state or local buildings, H.A.L.O. cameras, photo red light, photo radar and toll collection devices. Her proposal is to make sure government entities are not keeping tabs on citizens unnecessarily. "If we hadn’t had that in Boston, we wouldn’t have found the Boston bombers, but do we need to let the government retain that information indefinitely," said Lawrence. "Surveillance helped protect me in a significant way. My life would be very different without the vindication of that video," said Shawn Johnson. A downtown H.A.L.O. camera captured Denver police beating Johnson and his friend, Michael DeHerrera, in April 2009. "The surveillance helped our case significantly. It changed the narrative, it gave us a voice," said Johnson. Denver Police saved the video as part of the investigation. Denver Police policy is to purge H.A.L.O. recordings after 30 days, unless the recording is needed […]
Source www.thedenverchannel.com
CommunityCam Launches Online Mapping Tool For Security Cameras
Dec. 01–You’re walking down the street. Someone jumps out from behind a wall, grabs your purse and takes off. Time to cancel the credit cards and get a new purse? Perhaps not. A Portland, Ore.-based company that specializes in video surveillance solutions has just launched an online crowdsourced mapping tool in Boulder County that could help victims of crime track down perpetrators and bring them to justice. The tool is called CommunityCam, and it allows people to map online where surveillance cameras are located in a given area. Victims can visit the map — at videosurveillance.com/communitycam — to see if there was a camera in the immediate area where the crime was committed, be it a mugging or a hit-and-run. They can then request that police try to obtain any footage captured. “We’re seeing this as a community-based safety initiative that is being embraced because of the shortfalls in law enforcement budgets,” said Josh Daniels, founder of CommunityCam and president of VideoSurveillance.com. “Most of the cameras out there have been in place for years, and people simply don’t know that they are out there.” So far, 32 cameras in Boulder have been plotted on CommunityCam, with another 500 or so mapped in the Denver area. The first city to go online was Philadelphia, late last year. The Denver metro area went live last month. CommunityCam is also operating in San Francisco, Portland, Ore., Oakland, Chicago and Orange County, Calif. Daniels estimates that about 10,000 surveillance cameras have been mapped […]
Source www.securityinfowatch.com