LEVA Highlights

Didn't make the LEVA conference? Here's some of what you missed:

"At the 2009 conference of the Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association this week, Graeme Gerrard, Cheshire’s deputy chief constable and one of Britain’s top CTTV experts, spoke of the kingdom’s experience, and it’s not all as clear-cut as one might think.

While surveillance technology has exploded over a couple of decades, there are still a host of issues with coordination and operation—most notably the lack of standards on digital multipixel cameras.

Gerrard framed the issue as dual policy mission: How does government do its job of keeping people safe without diminishing the individual rights that lie at the heart of the free society? What are the costs of living in a free society? And just because we have the technology to implement, should we do so?

He offered a little history.

First of all, he said, Britain has no privacy laws along the lines of those in the United States and Canada—not even a consitution. In the United Kingdom, he said, the police can do pretty much anything they want, in terms of surveillance, unless there’s a specific law saying they can’t. They can wiretap communications without warrants, for example.

Combine that absence of American-style individual rights with an exponential growth in crime from the 1970s to the 1990s, along with high-profile bomb attacks from the Irish Republican Army, and the public largely cheered the security improvements."

Read the rest of this interesting article by clicking here.

Enjoy.