DHS/Police are turning public CCTV cameras into surveillance cameras, Part 1

Joe Cadillic is working on a series of posts. I was going to wait to post the whole series, but I’ve decided to go ahead and post something about the first one now, because I don’t think the topic’s gotten enough attention.

Joe writes:

Thanks to Purdue University and Homeland Security, police can now access public CCTV cameras anywhere.

Purdue researchers have developed a prototype system called ‘Visual Analytics for Command, Control and Interoperability Environments‘ (VACCINE) which allows law enforcement to tap into thousands of CCTV cameras. This means police can spy on you in parking garages, college campuses, national parks, highways etc., no place is safe from Big Brother.

VACCINE allows police to spy on millions of images of citizens daily.

“Although the [CCTV] cameras are not deployed for surveillance purposes, they can be utilized to increase public safety by properly integrating with current surveillance systems” said Yung-Hsiang Lu, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.