Smart ID Badges To Be Rolled Out to Massachusetts Police Departments

Police officers across the state of Massachusetts will likely be getting standardized police badges this year.  A bill has been proposed to supply police departments with high-tech badging identification to reduce the occurrence of police officer impersonations. At the end of 2010, the bill was passed by the Senate, and would make Massachusetts the first state nationwide to adopt such a practice.

It’s unusual that there hasn’t been movement toward this initiative prior to now.  It seems like a no-brainer to want to easily identify police officers from those posing as one.  If this standardization was around when I was a teenage driver, I doubt my parents would have felt the need to tell me over and over again to “never open the window” to a police officer in an unmarked car, if by chance they would pull me over. Instead, I was instructed to say through the glass, “I’ll follow you to the nearest police station.”

Luckily I never had to resort to that unorthodox approach, as I was a stellar teenage driver.  Yet the upcoming generations could surely get some mileage out of this new system.  And that’s just one example in a myriad of uses of how standardized ID badges would improve civilian relations and strengthen cooperation.

Much like the Massachusetts-issued driver license, all police ID badges will be uniform, stating who may carry them, how long they are valid, when the must be renewed, and what to do with them when they are no longer required (i.e. retirement, expiration). 

The new statewide badges (that will be used at the state and local levels, as well as for the Transportation Police) will certainly make it easier for us to know who we are dealing with.  However, there needs to be sufficient communication to the public about this new program, so that we know what to be looking for.  It’s all well and good for the new cards to be issued, but how is the public to know what the card should in fact look like?

We can only assume that because the state has been so forward-thinking and first-to-market in this program in the first place, Massachusetts will continue along these lines and make sure everyone is in the know about this extremely valuable initiative.

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Hunter Systems Group provides public safety and security tools for police departments, governmental agencies, educational institutions and companies worldwide.  Our products include smart ID badging cameras, mug shot capture systems, fingerprint and facial recognition, and other biometric applications.

Fingerprinting Systems for School Lunches Makes Some Queasy

The Ohio County Board of Education just approved a pilot fingerprinting system for use in an elementary school for cafeteria efficiency.  They say the fingerprinting system will allow for a faster, more accurate way of tracking school lunch accounts. With a quick scan of a student's finger, the system accesses that student's account and deducts the lunch fee all in less than a second.
 
One has to wonder, is this a necessary way to combat the sharing/borrowing/stealing of students' lunch money?  The Board of Education says the fingerprint records will be stored with the same level of security of all other school records, and that they will be destroyed after graduation.  But, again, is this the best use for what seems to be a surplus of available finances?  And what happened to getting to know each student and being able to personally identify them, rather than relying on a fingerprint scanner to distinguish identification. 
 
Read the entire article here and let us know what you think about this issue below, by leaving a comment.  Do the privacy concerns have you objecting to this proposal, too? Or the dehumanizing of our students? Or maybe the cost concerns of this undertaking, which are slated to spread to other school functions and throughout high schools in the area as well? Or do you feel it is just a natural application of a growing-in-popularity technology? We'd love to hear from you.

Fingerprint Systems Meet Scrutiny in UK Schools

Fingerprint systems for school children? Have we gone a little too Big-Brother? That's what people are asking in the UK, where biometric identification of school children is on the rise.  Already more than a quarter of Scotland students are being identified this way - having to use thumbprints to access restrooms, acquire library books, obtain lunch and even check in their attendance throughout the day.  And even more schools have the capability and are yet to start using it.
 
The use of tracking mechanisms is poised to become mainstream within the British education system -- that is, as long as the critics don't get their way.  And there are plenty.  Parents and legislators alike are arguing that this unnecessary breach of minors' privacies is not only dehumanizing, but is also in violation of EU laws.
 

Salford University Researcher Dr Emmeline Taylor found that in 2010, 3,500 schools in the UK — one in seven — are using fingerprint technology.  It is evidently gaining acceptance even though the dissenters are expressly against the practice.

 

It is not so offensive as the RFID chips that are being used in school children’s ID cards in Texas and California (people have likened this to the tracking of cattle or warehouse inventory).  Yet still, there seems to be no logical reason why children as young as 4 need to be exposed to thinking that the government will be tracking their every move throughout their lives.

 

Many feel that just because the technology and efficiencies exist, there is no reason to replace human involvement and physical monitoring (not to mention ‘teaching’) of our children with them.  Are the schools so surplused with budget money that this was the expenditure of choice? I am sure we could all think of a few other, more education-centric ways to spend this.

 

What do you think? Leave us a comment below  telling us how you feel about the biometric tracking of school children.

Biometric Fingerprint Systems Not Just For Use in Law Enforcement

Of all the biometric techniques available now – from vein recognition to iris recognition to facial recognition – fingerprinting is the oldest and most well-known.  Not just for use in crime scene investigation or heavily secured laboratories anymore, biometric devices are being widely employed throughout various industries now. 
 
While fingerprinting may have started as simply a component of suspect processing and identification within law enforcement scenarios, its use has been used for far more mainstream activities over the past decades. Personal laptops now even come with fingerprint scanners built right into the keyboard. Cars are now being introduced with fingerprint access, to further reduce the “burden” of getting into your car, say, without your keys or remembering a numeric code.
 
Fingerprint recognition is also being used in health club settings for access controol; in places where multiple users log onto shared computers or networks; and as part of a unique identifier for financial transactions. More and more everyday activities involve types of biometric security. Now that the application of these methods continues to expand, we wonder how accurate is it?

Each person has unique, immutable fingerprints. The patterns of our ridges and furrows, as well as our minutiae points, make our fingerprints different from everyone else’s. These make us uniquely quantifiable and verify our identity for security purposes.
 
Some fingerprint systems stop at these measurements, as that is what makes a system AFIS compliant.  But the true leaders in this market take it even further. The most successful technology companies incorporate palm prints, vein recognition, and flexible recording options into a comprehensive fingerprint system, where breaching is practically unheard of.  Add a more than 100,000 record database, varied search capabilities and 100% non-manual interaction, and the risk of unreliability is extremely diminished.
 
While no system is ever 100% infallible, the right combination of screening methods can provide utmost security and authenticity. And nothing happens in a vacuum. Human interaction, in addition to state of the art gadgets is the best way to protect against vulnerability.  After all, that’s what happens when I lose my car keys – I call someone on my very high-tech phone.

Body Worn Video Heralded a "Game Changer"

Body Worn Video is taking hold in police departments nationwide.  More forces are starting to employ this state of the art aid in their daily beats -- about a handful in each state.  And the more these devices become operational, the more we are hearing about the necessity of using them.

Most officers don't know what they're missing until they start using the comfortable, reliable and easy-to-use systems, which are worn on their headgear. In Burnsville, Minnesota, for example - dashboard video cameras are being removed in favor of the body worn devices on each and every officer.  The benefits far outweigh the critiques, as far as Hunter Systems Group is concerned.

The portable video recorders are constantly in "active" status, and with the touch of the record button, the previous 30 seconds of "live action" becomes part of the intentional recording.  Recordings then become a digital part of the police department's RMS, allowing for easy archival, retrieval and management of files.  The files are password protected, and are not able to edited.  This is especially helpful is credibility issues, since the recording cannot be altered.  With such indisputable evidence, cases develop -- or are dismissed for lack of supporting evidence -- more quickly than ever before.

In these cases, the body worn video systems, while an expense to the city or state operating budgets, are predicted to more than pay for themselves in fewer fruitless cases being pursued,  and processing efficiencies that are made possible with these "gold-standard" accessories.  These are not just niceties to a police department -- they are absolute requirements.  No longer viewed as a product of the future, body worn video has entered the scene and shown its utmost worth.

Hopefully more police departments, government agencies, border patrols and law enforcement everywhere will soon follow suit,  This trend has exploded, and we don't see it dissipating anytime soon.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Zooming in on Facial Recognition -- Not Giving In

Methods and products are constantly improving.  We are never satisfied with the “good enough”, and consistently aim for the next version, the faster operating system, the smaller smartphone.  Why should biometrics such as facial recognition be any different?  No, they are not 100% infallible perfection now – but isn’t that what makes us work harder to improve them?

A study was published stating that Biometric Security Products are inherently fallible and therefore should not be relied upon for crime prevention and processing scenarios.  So that’s it? End the billions of dollars of research; eliminate the funding and release all of the programmers? That’s what the National Research Council would have us all believe.

If we take a step back and look objectively over our technological discoveries and creations over the past decades, haven’t they all improved periodically? Apple didn’t stop after version 1 of the iPod.  Intel still continues to introduce faster processors.  So why do the critics of biometrics feel this genre won’t improve as well?  And, as any security professional knows – security is about redundancy and layering of techniques; not simply relying on one security aspect to answer all concerns.  If we use them for that they are – one more piece of validation in a process that helps identify, track and manage issues – then they are one of the greatest innovations of the security landscape.

Each month the technology improves.  Now we can track biometrics of faces, veins, irises and even ears.  It would be a lot easier to walk through an entrance gate and be scanned while inputting a unique code (a layered approach) than it would to have manual intervention at every access point.  The potential is endless for what biometrics could do for police and security scenarios. 

Shopkeepers in London, for example, have integrated facial recognition into their CCTV cameras, so that they are instantly alerted if a repeat offender enters their establishment. This has cut down on the occurrence of theft that had been on the rise before the installation of the biometric capabilities. 

Some people worry about breach of privacy issues with this technology.  The purpose is not assert a” Big Brother” watchful eye over us.  The purpose is to use innovation to keep us safer and to rectify issues faster and with more confidence when situations to arise.  Why wouldn’t we all want what’s better?

This Kind of Body Worn Video is Always Handy -- And Controversial

It's body worn video in a sense, and once again it's a hot topic: videotaping by cellphones.  With recent arrests caught on tape, videos posted to YouTube and court battles regarding felony wiretapping, we wonder -- what is the law on this prevalent feature, the pocket video camera.  A few months back we posted a blog on this same topic, which I will reprint below:

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iPhones, Smartphones, Dime-sized video cameras. Even kid-focused Nintendo DS's and candy-colored Nickelodeon-character video recorders. Personal videotaping devices are more portable and easy-to-use than ever. The primary purpose of these devices -- pure entertainment (though the woman caught on tape, who attacked a McDonald's worker over morning Chicken McNuggets may think otherwise). Videotaping amongst children doing pop-a-wheelies on their bikes is one thing. But what about videotaping that is far from child's' play -- like police officer encounters?

There have been several newsworthy occurrences of alleged illegal wiretapping of police officers lately. This recent trend can be directly correlated to the smartphone craze. Always handy, the cell phone has recorded police arrests, altercations, and police interrogations that otherwise would have gone undocumented. And when the police officers realize the recording is taking place, some situations become even more argumentative.

Take Tasha Ford, for instance, a South Florida woman who was jailed for "eavesdropping" when she, along with her video camera-phone, approached police that had handcuffed her son in a parking lot for allegedly trying to sneak into a movie without a ticket. The police told her it was illegal to record someone without them being aware. She quickly responded ,"My name is Tasha Ford and I am recording you." The police abandoned the trite charge against her son, and changed their focus to Ms. Ford, arresting her under Florida's electronic surveillance law.

"What's the big deal?" one might ask. If a police officer is doing his or her duty, that officer should have no beef with the fact that a recording is being made of the actions, right? After all, police and government work for US, the people. Not the other way around. It could be argued that the more transparent and out in the open the law enforcement exchanges are, the better.

But is that what is really happening? Or are these recordings problematic under the Wiretap Act, which prohibits all wiretapping of citizens without a warrant from a three-judge court? Mostly, this Act pertains to the videotaping of private matters, and without the other person's consent. It could be argued that police matters are always public matters serving the public interest. But what about receiving their consent? It is a murky area, that has been argued under many different circumstances in many state and federal courts.

No consent was given to Anthony Graber, a Maryland National Guard officer, before he videotaped his traffic stop from his motorcycle helmet and released it onto YouTube. He is now facing up to 16 years in jail for violating the state's wiretap laws, for recording the state trooper that pulled him over, without his consent. The fact that the recording shows the trooper cutting Graber off and pulling his revolver on him during the traffic stop could have added fuel to the fire. We also don't have the context of these actions to get the whole unadulterated story of the incident -- just Graber's video portrayal.

One of the arguments against videotaping of police activities by civilians is that no one can be sure that the original recording has not been altered after the fact. Editing software is just as easy and commonplace as the video recording devices themselves. It wouldn't take much for a grudge-wielding accessory to a crime, or any editing novice to completely change the sentiment or "evidence" within the recording, and then release it to news organizations to influence an ongoing investigation.

The major point seems to be the potential inconsistencies and varying points of subjective views that one civilian's video may have toward a police officer or ongoing case. And it seems the only satisfactory way to deal with these issues is to continue barring civilians from filming and capturing police scenes themselves. A government-sanctioned, police-endorsed product that records, that cannot be overridden or edited, and that expertly captures the entire encounter, both video- and audio-wise, needs to be the only acceptable media for such endeavors.

Hunter Systems Group's body worn video recorder, Hunter iCapture(TM) does just that. Its high quality picture, audio and remote operating capabilities make it a best-in-class alternative to grainy, inaudible and indecipherable recordings by civilians or lesser products. It's worn comfortably by officers in any situation, whether a routine traffic stop or a more active S.W.A.T-scenario, and is not susceptible to any after-the-fact rogue editing.

Because it is password-protected and technologically superior to any other handheld or personal video recording mechanism in existence, there is no reason to use anything but Hunter iCapture. Additionally, the camera device may be mounted in the police cruiser as an in car video or may easily be detached to act as a body worn video recorder. The more universal the operating system for police departments, security organizations, border patrols, and any other crime-prevention entities, the better and more useful the evidence.

If police wear these types of cameras, citizens like Ms. Ford and Mr. Graber wouldn't feel the need to pirate their own recordings, getting themselves into even more trouble than the initial instigation. In the meantime, let's save the iPhone and handheld cameras for what they were intended --the birthday parties and pop-a-wheelies. And the occasional drive-through debacle. 

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To read the latest news on this topic, please visit this link.

 

http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/special_reports/cell-phone-video-know-your-rights-20101117