With the kind of night time images that makes all those police criticisms suddenly understandable, reader Tim wrote for help before pulling all his hair out.
And readers have been quick to respond, proving the power of the internet – and more particularly our website info4security – to help out an installer in distress.
Now, buoyed up by our community do-gooding, we want to help other installers with problems.
Yes, here at Security Installer/info4security we’re becoming quite the little security clinic.
Not only have we got Siemens’ Jon Hill, our resident “CCTV Doctor” on call, but in the July edition we start the “Access Control Doctor” (aka Paxton’s Adam Stroud) which will also be online.
Readers have been suggesting ideas for subjects which we’ve been passing on to our ‘clinicians’ but if you’ve got some particular problem like reader Tim and you want the help of our knowledgeable and mighty online audience then email it to me.
If you’ve got screen shots/photos, all the better (we can all have a good laugh). Sorry, don’t mean that – we won’t publish any details of the application’s whereabouts, or even your company name, if you want ‘private’ treatment.
Battered again
Yet again surveillance hits the headlines – and the CCTV industry comes in for another unfair battering.
National media coverage convinces me of one thing, and that is that they are totally unable, or more likely unwilling, to see the distinction between “CCTV” and “surveillance”. They are not mutually exclusive.
Surveillance includes CCTV as one of a huge range of techniques, some highly suspect.
But CCTV’s name is being dragged through the mud by the blanket use of the word “surveillance” and particularly “surveillance society”.
First the shadow Home Secretary resigns over the 42 day detention issue (some would say high principle some would say political stunt).
Here was a man, no doubt due to take that high office in a couple of years, and, seemingly, not showing a distinction between surveillance (including all those nasty things even we in the industry don’t like) and CCTV (one surveillance concept that protects society and has hitherto been popular with the public).
Is this bad?
In his resignation speech he decries “a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens” (so what’s wrong with that?) in the same breath as “the creation of a database state opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data careless civil servants and criminal hackers”(obviously not a popular option).
Given the choice, the public might prefer one ‘beat bobby’ for every 14 people, but that’s not on offer and many welcome the security CCTV can provide.
What I object to is this continual muddying of the waters from those who should know better, just because CCTV is the most visible manifestation of “surveillance” and makes an easy picture option for newspaper and TV editors who find “the database state” more difficult to illustrate.
As a friend used to say “All llamas eat grass but not all grass is eaten by llamas” (he preferred them to cows).
Our talking heads would do well to remember that although CCTV is surveillance, not all surveillance is CCTV.
Pooper snooper
Then yesterday we had it again – local councils being warned not to use anti-terrorism laws to crack down on parking violators and “trivial offences” such as dog fouling.
Yet again, CCTV being dragged into it, the same libertarian talking heads, grave tones from bubbly BBC Breakfast presenters, photos of cameras all over the papers and TV news.
I fear this gradual drip-drop anti-“snooper” coverage will turn a previously welcoming public away from CCTV altogether.
My colleague Anthony Hildebrand suggests that industry should publicly take a stance urging the responsible use of CCTV. The industry should do this while we’re still the “good guys”.
However, I have to take issue with the assessment that dog fouling is a “trivial” offence. Try telling that to a parent whose child has just had an unfortunate fall in the park. I think this is an excellent use of covert CCTV along with catching people who blatantly abuse disabled parking stickers and claim sick pay when they are fit.
God knows, these self-serving local authorities who bleed us dry with their spiralling council tax demands have got to do something useful with our money.
Real fuel crisis
Talking of being systematically robbed, the fuel situation at the pumps is having more consequences than merely those on our pockets.
In my last newsletter I mentioned Castle Care Tech’s new alarm kit concept to protect agricultural fuel supplies as rocketing prices result in increased thefts from farms.
Now the sad news of a death following such an incident throws a sharp focus on this problem.
Suddenly ‘red’ diesel is a valuable commodity. A number of manufacturers are concentrating on products suitable for agricultural security and, in our August edition, we will look at the options for protecting supplies and machinery.
It was foretold
Finally thank you to Tracey Postill, an info4security reader and Bucks Fizz fan who suggested our latest security song. You can hold your head up, Tracey. It’s no shame to appreciate the unsung qualities of this eighties supergroup, now being re-assessed for their thought leadership and uncanny ability to foresee long term shifts in world affairs.
More than a quarter of a century later, ‘My Camera Never Lies’ illustrates deep domain knowledge of today’s surveillance space. Their Eurovision smash ‘Making Your Mind Up’ is chillingly prophetic of the EU’s refusal to take “No” for an answer and the ‘The Land of Make Believe’ can only be referring to today’s ‘falling’ crime figures.
So shove over, Nostradamus. When did you last have a Number One?
See you next time
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