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    The Security Check
    An odd home security monitoring concept
    Author: Geoff Kohl - (about)
    Date: Apr 27 2009 - 10:12am

    This may be the "open platform networking" gone to far. In Atherton, Calif., the police are offering to monitor home video surveillance cameras owned and used by the town's residents. Just pay your $300 initiatiion fee plus $269 per camera and an annual $50/camera monitoring fee and the police will monitor your cameras for you.

    Privacy is assuaged by the note that the cameras only deliver video to the police station if an alarm trips (note to Atherton residents: Don't trip the alarm in the middle of the night while walking around half-clothed or you'll be eyed by central dispatch). If residents don't have fancy IP cameras (the city uses Milestone's video management software, so it needs IP-based feeds), then they can use an encoder to connect their cameras into the system. It's probably not quite so simple as the city would have you think, but it's an interesting proposition nonetheless.

    Interesting, yes. Smart, probably not. In fact, the whole idea behind this project begins to seems a bit questionable when you consider that there are plenty of central station monitoring firms that offer video surveillance camera monitoring. It makes me wonder: Why should the police in Atherton, Calif., be duplicating the services of private industry? Consider also, do people in Atherton really want city government focused on alarm and video monitoring services as opposed to doing things like paving roads and enforcing laws?

    Ah, but here's the telling statistic: In 2005, the town's zip code, 94027, was listed as the most expensive zip code in the United States by Forbes magazine. So maybe this is about a bunch of wealthy property owners turning the city's police department into their own private alarm monitoring and guard services firm.

    Even if the city has fixed every leaky sewer pipe, eradicated crime and has every road freshly paved, I still say they should leave the monitoring to companies where that is there primary focus, and leave enforcement to the police. Dillution of duties doesn't help anyone.

    -Geoff

     

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Atherton Rapid Response system

Submitted by Bob Kusche (not verified) on Mon, 04/27/2009 - 4:07pm.

I suppose if you had been around when 911 was first invented that you'd be equally against the use of the telephone to enable rapid response from the police?

Please remove your personal and irrelevant bias against Atherton being a wealthy community and look at the potential benefits at hand for businesses, schools, civic locations, and the safety of the first responders.

Look at what Orsus, SRI International, Proximex, and VidSys are selling. Tell me that those systems are ANY different in function than this system is.

Look at the command center being constructed by the LAPD and the number of IP cameras being deployed to feed information back to the central command.

Not smart? Then why is our industry moving head-long in this direction?

Privacy issues? You should know as well as anyone that these can and will be addressed at set-up time.

All in all, yours is a petulant & peevish response to a leading-edge solution that may not be as necessary in Atherton as in Oakland, but still serves as a great example of how IPVS systems are redefining Police response to calls for assistance.

And in the interest of full disclosure, Ojo Technology was involved in the design and delivery of this solution. We invited local PDs to see this solution, and 27 of them attended our seminar.

Feel free to contact me for more details at bob.kusche@ojotech.com.

My response to Bob

Submitted by gkohl on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 9:42am.

My response to Bob Kusche:

1. There is a big difference between a city monitoring cameras from private homes for wealthy residents and monitoring public facilities like schools. Don't try to group the two as equals. I firmly believe the city should consider monitoring its public assets like schools and civic buildings and even public streets. I don't think they should have to monitor private cameras inside private spaces.

2. There is a big difference between someone calling the police via 911 and reporting a crime or an incident that they've actually seen and having the police develop a monitoring station to watch for videos to see if it's a real alarm. It's not a fair comparison to say that I'd be against the use of 911 via telephone, so please just toss out that ill-formed comparison.

3. Privacy issues are not my concern. I think they've probably addressed that pretty well and I'm not critiquing Atherton for that. For all I know, they are encrypting everything and doing really good two-factor authentication and so-forth. I can only assume that people signing up would do the due diligence to make sure the city's security is good...so no qualms there.

4. You still ignored my question of why the city should be doing this in direct competition with central stations that offer video monitoring in conjunction with normal alarm monitoring.

5. Finally, as the designers of this system, please realize that I was not critiquing you at all -- you probably did a wonderful job as a systems integrator to make this kind of thing work. In my original post, I was critiquing the city for even considering such an idea as monitoring of private homes. My problem is not with the technology of a "leading-edge solution", but with the government's competition with private industry.

6. Finally, I have no bias against Atherton for being a wealthy enclave. I like money as much as anyone. But what I don't tend to like is when government takes over from private industries when the private business offer competitive services. And I will not apologize for supporting capitalism and supporting private monitoring companies.

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