communitycam

VideoSurveillance.com Launches Crowdsourced Security Camera Map In Boston

VideoSurveillance.com, a virtual security integrator, today announced the expansion of its CommunityCam initiative to Boston in time for the 2014 Boston Marathon. CommunityCam is a free, crowdsourced security camera map that creates consumer benefit in the network of privately placed cameras like the Lord & Taylor camera that captured footage of the Boston Marathon bombers […]

ACLU: More Surveillance Cameras Don’t Make You Safer

video.surveillance.205×205.jpg Big images below. In a post last month , we told you about a new website called CommunityCam , which planned to use crowd-sourcing techniques to document and map all the security cameras in public areas throughout Denver and other nearby areas . The site’s founder mainly portrayed such surveillance devices as good things — no surprise, given that his main company sells and markets them. But the ACLU of Boulder’s Judd Golden doesn’t equate more cameras with more safety and is concerned about other possible infringements on personal privacy as they proliferate. Golden isn’t new to this issue. Back in August, he talked with us about license-plate readers , which he said had the technical capability of allowing authorities to track every driver in Boulder and beyond . So it’s no surprise he looked at the CommunityCam concept with a critical eye. Here’s a CommunityCam screen capture of Colorado from our original post. community.cam.denver.1.jpg Next, take a closer look at Denver metro, with designations for the number of cameras in assorted suburbs, plus Boulder and the city itself: community.cam.denver.2.jpg Finally, here’s a zoom-in of downtown Denver, with icons marking the locations for dozens of cameras, many just steps away from each other: community.cam.denver.3.jpg In the view of CommunityCam’s Josh Daniels, maps like these provide locals with “primarily social benefits — things like being able to plan safer, monitored routes for jogging, biking and walking. Obviously, Denver has a very active outdoor population of people, and this allows […]

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 […]