Sirius Binary Star System Captured with a Neurotype Camera
Satyapreet Singh, Chetan Singh Thakur, Nirupam Roy, Indian Institute of Science, India
Neurotype cameras, designed to emulate human vision, offer significant benefits for astronomers by enabling the capture of both bright and dim celestial objects in a single frame. This allows for tracking swift-moving entities without the risk of motion blur.
Unlike conventional digital cameras that sample a grid of pixels multiple times per second, recording data for each pixel each time, neurotype cameras, or event cameras, function quite differently. Each pixel is activated only if there’s a change in brightness at that specific location. If the brightness remains constant, no new data is saved, resembling how the human eye processes visual information.
This innovative approach presents various benefits. By recording only changing pixels, less data is generated while maintaining a much higher frame rate. Furthermore, these cameras measure light on a logarithmic scale, enabling the detection of fainter objects next to brighter ones that may saturate conventional camera images.
To investigate the potential of this technology for astronomical applications, Chetan Singh Thakur and his team at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru mounted a neurotype camera on a 1.3-meter telescope at the Aliyabatta Observatory in Uttarkhand, India.
Sirius A is approximately 10,000 times brighter than Sirius B, making it challenging to capture both in a single image using traditional sensors, as noted by Mark Norris from the University of Central Lancashire, UK, who was not part of the study.
According to Singh Thakur, neurotype cameras excel at tracking fast-moving objects due to their high frame rates. “For high-speed objects, you can capture their movement without blur, unlike conventional cameras,” he explains.
Telescopes typically utilize multiple sensors that can be swapped as needed. Norris points out that a neurotype camera could serve as an additional tool for viewing scenarios where both very bright and very faint objects need to be observed concurrently, or for quickly moving targets like the recently identified interstellar object 3i/Atlas.
Traditionally, to follow fast-moving objects, astronomers would need to pan the telescope. However, neurotype cameras can accurately track the movement of these objects precisely while maintaining background details and resolving their locations.
“Do you want to know the brightness of an object or its location? In quantum mechanics, you can’t ascertain both at the same instant,” Norris states. “This technology offers a potential method to achieve both simultaneously.”
While neurotype cameras provide unique advantages, they may not replace all sensor applications. Their resolution is typically lower than that of charge-coupled devices (CCDs), which are commonly used in digital cameras, achieving an efficiency of about 78% compared to the 95% efficiency of CCDs. This disparity makes traditional sensors more effective at capturing dim objects near their detection limits.
Authorities anticipate that live facial recognition cameras may soon be “prevalent” across England and Wales, as indicated by internal documents revealing nearly 5 million face scans conducted last year.
A joint investigation by the Guardian and Liberty investigates showcases the rapid integration of this technology into UK law enforcement practices.
The government is simplifying police access to a wide range of image repositories, including passports and immigration databases, for past facial recognition searches, alongside significant financial investments in new hardware.
Live facial recognition entails real-time identification of faces captured by surveillance cameras, compared against a police watch list.
Conversely, retrospective facial recognition software allows police to match archived images from databases with those recorded on CCTV or similar systems.
The implementation of this technology is believed to be widespread in urban areas and transportation hubs across England and Wales, as noted in funding documents produced by South Wales Police and shared by the Metropolitan Police under the Freedom of Information Act.
The inaugural fixed live facial recognition camera is set to be trialed this summer in Croydon, located south of London.
This expansion comes despite the absence of any mention of facial recognition in the relevant congressional legislation.
Critics contend that police are permitted to “self-regulate” this technology, while there have been instances where previous algorithms disproportionately misidentified individuals from Black communities.
Following a 2020 Court of Appeals ruling that deemed South Wales Police’s live facial recognition practices unlawful, the Police College issued guidance emphasizing that “thresholds must be carefully set to enhance the likelihood of accurate alerts while keeping false alert rates within acceptable limits.”
There remains no statutory framework directing the standards or technology applied in this context.
Earlier this month, Police Minister Diane Johnson informed Congress that “we must evaluate whether a tailored legislative framework is necessary to govern the deployment of live facial recognition technology for law enforcement,” but further details from the Home Office are still pending.
Facial recognition cameras have been tested in London and South Wales since 2016; however, the pace at which police have adopted this technology has surged over the past year.
A survey conducted by the Guardian and Liberty revealed:
Last year, police scanned nearly 4.7 million faces using live facial recognition cameras—over double the figures from 2023. Data indicates that a minimum of 256 live recognition vans were operational in 2024.
Mobile units comprising 10 live facial recognition vans can be dispatched anywhere in the UK within a matter of days to bolster national capabilities, with eight police forces having deployed this technology, while the Met has four such vans.
Authorities are exploring a fixed infrastructure to establish a “safety zone” by deploying a network of live facial recognition cameras throughout London’s West End. Met officials indicated that this remains a viable option.
The force has nearly doubled the number of retrospective facial recognition searches on the National Police Database (PND) from 138,720 in 2023 to 252,798. The PND contains administrative mug shots, including many held unlawfully for individuals not formally charged or convicted of any offenses.
Over the past two years, more than 1,000 facial recognition searches have utilized the UK passport database, with officers increasingly accessing 110 matches from the Home Office immigration database last year. Authorities concluded that using a passport database for facial recognition “presents no risk.”
The Home Office is collaborating with the police to develop a new national facial recognition system termed strategic facial matchers, which will enable searches across various databases, including custody images and immigration records.
Lindsey Chiswick, Met’s Intelligence Director General and the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s Facial Recognition lead, stated that five out of five London residents support the police’s utilization of advanced technologies like facial recognition cameras, based on the survey findings.
Recently, registered sex offender David Chenelle, a 73-year-old from Lewisham, was sentenced to two years after being caught alone with a 6-year-old girl through live facial recognition technology. He had previously served nine years for 21 offenses involving children.
In 2024, the Met arrested 587 individuals, with 424 of those arrests backed by live facial recognition technology, leading to formal charges.
Among those arrested, 58 registered sex offenders faced serious violations of their conditions, with 38 subsequently charged.
Chiswick noted: “Given the limited resources and time available, the demand is high, and we see criminals exploiting technology on an expansive scale.
“There’s a chance for law enforcement to evolve. Discussions about leveraging AI are abundant, but we must embrace the opportunities presented by technology and data.”
Chiswick emphasized that the Met’s approach is to “proceed cautiously and evaluate at each phase,” while noting that “there may be advantages to some form of framework or statutory guidance.”
The MET employs facial recognition cameras in contexts aimed at ensuring statistical significance regarding gender or ethnic bias in misidentification instances.
Chiswick remarked: “I refuse to utilize biased algorithms in London. Each instance carries weight. The government raises concerns: Is there no issue regarding artificial intelligence?
“When selecting an algorithm’s purchaser, determining the training data employed, and assessing the origin of the technology, testing it thoroughly is paramount; you are obliged to operate within a specific context.”
The Ministry of Home Affairs did not provide a comment upon request.
The supportive living facility in Edina, Minnesota, where Jean H. Peters and her brothers operated their mother in 2011 looked lovely. “But you start to discover things,” Peters said.
Her mother, Jackie Hoygan, was 82 years old and widowed with memory problems.
“She wasn’t in the bathroom so her pants would be soaked,” said Peters, 69, a retired nurse prettier in Bloomington, Minnesota. She dropped to 94 pounds.
Most ominously, Peters said, “We’ve noticed that we’ve noticed that there’s no bruise in her arm.” The complaint to the administrator brought “many excuses” directly, by phone and email.
So Peters bought a cheap camera from Best Buy. She and her sisters set it up on the fridge in their mother’s apartment.
Monitoring from the app on the phone, the family watched Hourigan go for hours without any changes. They heard her screaming and yelling at her assiding her, treating her roughly.
They saw another aide woke her up for breakfast and leave the room despite the fact that he opened the door to his heavy apartment and was unable to go to the dining room. “It was traumatic to know that we were right,” Peters said.
In 2016, after filing a police report and lawsuit, Peters helped discover the elder voice advocate after his mother’s death. Minnesota passed in 2019.
Though they are still controversial subjects, care facilities cameras have acquired status. By 2020, eight states will join Minnesota and enact laws that allow them to be made. According to national consumer voices for quality long-term care: Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington.
Since then, the pace of legislation has been featured, with nine states in place: Connecticut, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. Several other laws are pending.
California and Maryland use guidelines rather than law. State governments in New Jersey and Wisconsin lend cameras to families who are interested in the safety of their loved ones.
But Bill was defeated too. Recently in Arizona. March, second year, Camera invoice It overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives, but failed to get floor votes in the state Senate.
“My temperatures are getting a little higher now,” said Rep. Quang Nguyen, a Republican, who is the main sponsor of the bill and plans to reintroduce it. He denounced Arizona’s opposition from industry groups, including Reading, representing nonprofit aging service providers, for the failure of the bill to pass.
The American Medical Association, whose members are primarily for commercial use, has not achieved national status on camera. However, the local affiliate also opposed the bill.
“These people who vote for no should be called out publicly and said, ‘You don’t care about the elderly population,'” Ngguen said.
Some camera laws only cover nursing homes, but most also include living support facilities. Most obligations require residents (and roommates) to provide written consent. Some people are looking for signs to warn staff and visitors that their interactions may be recorded.
The law often prohibits tampering with cameras and retaliation against residents who use them, and “contains stories about people who have access to the footage and whether it can be used in lawsuits,” added Lori Smetanka, executive director of National Consumer Voice.
It is unclear how seriously the facility takes these laws. Some relativesIn the interviewed report for this article, the administrator said that cameras were not allowed, but never mentioned the issue again. The cameras placed in the room remained.
Why is it a surge in legislative conditions? During the Covid-19 pandemic, families have been locked up from the facility for several months, Smetanka noted. “People are looking at their loved ones.”
The change in technology has probably contributed to Americans as they become more comfortable with video chats and virtual assistants. Cameras are almost ubiquitous in public places, in workplaces, in police cars, in police uniforms and in people’s pockets.
Initially, camera propulsion reflected fears about the safety of loved ones. Kari Shaw’s family, for example, had already been sacrificed by a trusted home care nurse who stole the painkillers her mother had prescribed.
So when Shaw and his sisters, who live in San Diego, moved their mother to life in Maple Grove, Minnesota, they quickly set up a moving camera in her apartment.
Their mother, 91, is severely disabled and uses a wheelchair. “Why wait for something to happen?” Shaw said.
In particular, “people with dementia are at high risk,” added Eilon Caspi, a gerontologist and researcher of elder abuse. “And they may not be able to report the incident or recall the details.”
But these days, families simply use cameras to keep in touch.
Anne Sewardson, who lives in Virginia and France, uses the Echo Show for a video visit with her 96-year-old mother at Memory Care in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Art Siegel and his brother had a hard time talking to their mother, who was 101, who was helping her live in Florida. Her cell phone frequently died as she had forgotten to charge it. “I was worried,” said Siegel, who lives in San Francisco and had to call the facility and ask staff to check on her.
Now, an old-fashioned phone is installed next to her favorite chair, and a chair-trained camera uses a trained camera to know when she can speak.
As Camera discussion Continuing, the central question remains unanswered. Do they enhance the quality of care? “There are studies that are not cited to back up these bills,” said Clara Bellidge, a gerontologist at the University of Washington. We are researching elder care techniques.
“Do cameras actually prevent abuse and neglect? Will the facility change or improve its policies?”
Both camera opponents and supporters cite concerns about the privacy and dignity of residents.
“You should also consider the importance of ensuring privacy during visits related to mental, legal, financial or other personal issues,” Reading spokesperson Lisa Sanders said in a statement.
You can turn off the camera, but it’s probably unrealistic to expect residents and growing staff to do so.
Furthermore, surveillance can treat these staff as “survivors who have to stop bad behavior,” Dr. Bellige said. She has seen facilities that have cameras installed in all residents’ rooms.
Ultimately, experts can’t replace the improved care that hinders problems, even if the camera detects them. It is an effort that requires engagement from families, better staffing by facilities, training, supervision, and more aggressive federal and state oversight.
“I think of cameras as a symptom, not a solution,” Dr. Bellidge said. “It’s a band-aid that can distract you from the difficult question of how to provide high-quality, long-term care.”
In In July 2022, Morgan Rose Hart, an aspiring veterinarian with a passion for wildlife, passed away after it was found unresponsive in the Essex mental health unit. She’s just turned 18. Diagnosed with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Hart’s mental health was affected by bullying, which forced her to move from school several times. She previously tried to take her life and was transferred to Harlow’s unit three weeks before her death.
Hart, from Chelmsford, Essex, passed away on July 12, 2022 after it was found unresponsive on the bathroom floor. The prevention report of future death reports issued after her questioning turned out to be overlooked, and it turns out that important checks were missed, observation records were forged, and risk assessments were not completed.
Investigation by observer And newsletter Democracy for Sale Her death has established that she is one of four, including a high-tech patient surveillance system called Oxevision, which is deployed in almost half of mental health struts across the UK.
Oxevision’s system allows you to measure the patient’s pulse rate and breathing, interfere with the patient at night, and also broadcast CCTV footage temporarily if necessary, without the need for a person to enter the room. The high-tech system can detect a patient’s breathing rate, even when the patient is covered with a futon.
Oxehealth, which was spin-out from the University of Oxford’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering in 2012, has agreed to 25 NHS mental health trasts, according to its latest account, reporting revenue of around £4.7 million by December 31, 2023.
However, in some cases, it is argued that instead of doing physical checks, staff rely too heavily on infrared camera systems to monitor vulnerable patients.
There are also concerns that systems that can glow red from corners of the room could exacerbate the pain of patients in mental health crisis, which have increased their sensitivity to monitoring or control.
Sofina, who had experience being monitored by Oxevision among patients and who asked not to use her full name, stated:
“The first thing you see when you open your eyes, the last thing you do when you fall asleep. I was just in a visually impaired state. I was completely hurt.
Advocates argue that the technology can improve safety, but this weekend there will be a call to stop the deployment of Oxevision, raising concerns about patient safety, privacy rights and the conflict of interest in research supporting its use. The campaign group said Oxevision was often installed in patients’ bedrooms without proper consent, with surveillance technology likely causing distress.
In a prevention report of future deaths issued in December 2023 after Hart’s questioning, the coroner pointed out that if a person was in the bathroom for more than three minutes, a staff member would “have to complete a face-to-face check.” Instead, “Oxevision Red Alert has been reset” by staff and Hart was not observed for 50 minutes, and was discovered to be “not responding on the bathroom floor.”
The coroner expressed concern that “some staff may have used Oxevision in their place of instead of just an aid to face-to-face observation.” The conclusion of the judge’s investigation was death from misfortune, which contributed to the contributions of negligence.
Two days before Hart’s death, Michael Nolan, 63, a warehouse operator at risk for self-harm, passed away as a mental health patient at Basildon Hospital. The study said staff used Oxevision as an alternative to physical observations and failed to carry out effective observations. The story’s verdict by the judge included the findings of inadequate training on the Oxevision system.
The following month, 27-year-old Sophie Alderman, who had a history of self-harm, passed away in a patient at Rochford Hospital under the custody of the University of Essex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. Her family says the Ooshivision system caused her pain and hurt her mental health. A few months before her death, she complained about the camera in her room, but she believed it was hacked by the government.
Tammy Smith, Alderman’s mother observer: “I don’t think Oxevision is effective in keeping patients safe. It’s a major invasion of patient privacy.
“Staff aren’t properly trained or used properly on it. People have died while Oxevision is in use, and questions have been raised about its use. That’s enough to pause deployment and actually consider whether this technology will keep patients safe.”
The Care Quality Committee also raised concerns. “A sad death was found in the safety room,” said the NHS Foundation Trust’s testing report, which was released last February. [St Charles hospital in west London] If staff were not fully involved and monitored patients, they were dependent. [Oxevision] It was turned off at the time. ”
The Trust said this weekend that a “tragic death” in March 2023 led to the firing of three individuals, with the use of technology never being designed to replace responsibility and care from staff.
The Lampard study, which examines the deaths of mental health hospitalized patients under the control of the NHS Trust in Essex between January 2000 and December 2023, is being asked to investigate Oxevision.
Sophina of a former patient monitored by Oxevision.
Bindmans, a law firm representing Alderman’s family and another patient’s family, spoke to Baroness Lampard about the concerns about consent and the safety and effectiveness of the system. He said there are concerns that staff may delegate the responsibility to monitor patients to “Digital Eye.”
A review by the National Institute of Health Therapy, published in November and commissioned by the NHS England, examined nine studies on Oxevision along with other studies, finding “inadequate evidence” suggesting that inpatient mental health unit surveillance techniques achieve intended results and achieve “improve safety, improved costs, etc.”
Only one of these papers was rated as “high quality” for their methodology and no conflicts of interest were reported. All eight other studies report all conflicts of interest, all related to Oxehealth. In some cases, OxeHealth employees were co-authors of the paper.
“There’s no independent research done. There’s almost always been involvement of the companies that create and market these devices,” said Alan Simpson, professor of mental health nursing who co-authored the review.
The Stop Oxevision campaigner said he was worried about the threat that technology poses to patients’ “safety, privacy and dignity.”
Lionel Tarassenko, professor of electrical engineering at Oxford University and founder of Oxehealth, said Oxevision only intermittently broadcast CCTV footage of patients. This is up to 15 seconds, and if clinical staff respond to alerts, they will only see blurry videos.
Tarassenko Lord said the paper reviewed by the National Institute team showed the benefits of Oxevision, including reduced self-harm, improved patient sleep and safety. He added that it was written by an independent clinician who maintains editorial control and in some cases, OxeHealth co-authors were included to reflect their contributions.
He said: “There is no evidence that proper use of Oxevision technology is a factor that contributes to inpatient deaths. The experience of Oxevision patients is very positive.”
In a statement, the company said the Oxevision platform was NHS England Principles Regarding mental health digital technology, the decision to use technology, announced last month for inpatient treatment and care, said it must be based on consent.
The company said: “Oxevision supports clinical teams to improve patient safety, reduce incidents such as falls and self-harm, and ensure staff can respond more effectively to clinical risks,” he said, adding that it welcomed the dialogue on responsible ethical deployment of technology.
Paul Scott, chief executive of the University of Essex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (EPUT), said that his patient’s death was devastating because he was in charge of caring for Hart, Nolan and Alderman, and that his sympathy was sympathetic to those who lost loved ones. He said: “We are constantly focused on providing the best possible care and use remote surveillance technology to enhance safety and complement the treatment care and observations our staff has implemented.”
A spokesperson for NHS England said: “Vision-based surveillance techniques must support a human-based rights approach to care, be used only within the scope of legal requirements, and ensure that patient and family consent is implemented.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health’s Social Care said: “These technologies should only be used in line with robust staff training and appropriate consent, with robust staff training and appropriate consent, and are transforming the care that people facing a mental health crisis receive by modernizing mental health law.
EElectronic shelf labels, return machines, robotic bagging machines and even self-service tills are just some of the many technologies UK retailers are adopting to solve the problem of rising labor costs.
Big retailers have been releasing a flurry of festive deals in recent weeks as they face rising labor costs from April following increases in the national minimum wage and employers' National Insurance Contributions (NICs). , investment in automation has always been active.
The investment could boost productivity in an industry that has long relied on cheap labor – a key goal of the government. But they will also replace entry-level jobs and reduce the number of roles in the sector, which is Britain's biggest employer.
When the British Retail Consortium asked finance chiefs at major retailers how they would respond to the impending increase in employer NICs, almost a third said they would make greater use of automation, but this Hours of what's behind the hike, head office job cuts, and reductions in working hours.
So what innovations are they considering and whose jobs might they impact?
electronic shelf price labels
Electronic shelf labels are already common in some other countries, and could be on UK high streets in the blink of an eye by 2025. One retailer's manager told the Guardian that NIC's rising labor costs suddenly made the switch economically viable.
Change prices with the push of a button, saving staff time removing and replacing hundreds of small paper labels. Electronics chain Currys plans to introduce electronic pricing to 100 of its 300 UK stores by the end of this year after trials in stores in Northern Europe, with supermarket groups Sainsbury's and Co-op also experimenting.
self service
Shopper-operated checkouts are widespread in supermarkets, and we expect to see more of them in fashion and home goods retailers this year.
Primark is rolling out the service in 41 stores in the UK and plans to expand to at least five more this spring, while Next is piloting it in one branch.
Inditex, owner of Japanese fashion chains Uniqlo and Zara, has led the way with technology that allows customers to recall entire baskets of goods without having to scan them with wireless tags. Marks & Spencer is experimenting with this approach for customers purchasing non-food items.
Grocery stores are also continuing to innovate. Co-ops are testing hybrid checkouts that can be operated by self-service or staff, and some supermarkets have added larger self-checkouts suitable for handling full carts.
Self-scanning systems, such as Sainsbury's SmartShop and Tesco's Scan as you Shop, where shoppers use a handheld device or smartphone app to recall prices, are also on the rise. Sainsbury's said 30% of the groceries it sold during the peak holiday season were processed through SmartShop, leading to “lower costs and faster checkouts”.
Automated return machines have also been introduced, allowing shoppers to drop off unwanted items by simply swiping a QR code. John Lewis is testing the product at three Waitrose stores.
But the idea of leaving stores completely unmanned has been questioned. Amazon's “Just Walk Out” store, where shoppers sign in through an app and technology automatically monitors and charges their purchases, hasn't been a huge success. The company has 21 stores in the UK, with one store opening in north London in November after several closures in 2023 and 2024. Tesco only has four GetGo self-service stores, the first of which opened in 2021, while Aldi only has one such store in the UK.
Retailers have been gradually increasing automation in their warehouses for years, but rising labor costs are accelerating that trend.
Sales of assembly line robots to food and drink, logistics and consumer goods companies rose 31% in the first nine months of last year, according to industry body Automate UK. This number does not include autonomous mobile robots, which move and complete tasks without a human operator and are becoming increasingly popular.
For example, Amazon and John Lewis use autonomous robots to move goods around their warehouses and bring them to the humans who pack them. Ocado's entire business model is based on the use of warehouses run by robots, but the company has expanded its use to go beyond just picking products out of crates and putting them into shoppers' bags and into vans. It's starting to expand.
One Irish retailer recently introduced a robot that patrols its stores to monitor out-of-stock items and mispricing, according to the Institute of Grocery Distributors (IGD), and a U.S. retailer is also rolling out the same technology. It is said that they have been able to increase their inventory level to 98.5%.
artificial intelligence
IGD also cited AI-powered cameras, which check shelf gaps in real time and monitor how shoppers interact with products, as one of the key technologies to improve store operations this year. There is. Last year, Morrisons added cameras to supermarket shelves that allow customers to reorder stock if needed.
Retailers also want to reduce waste and improve marketing efforts by using AI to analyze vast amounts of data and handle simple, repetitive tasks.
Sainsbury's has introduced an AI-enabled predictive tool to ensure it has the right amount of products on its shelves as part of a £1bn cost-cutting plan. Waitrose uses this technology to schedule the right workers for deliveries from stores and analyze food trends for product development. Meanwhile, M&S uses the technology to create product descriptions online and advise shoppers on clothing choices based on their body type and style preferences.
Tesco uses AI to make purchasing decisions and optimize routes for delivery drivers. The supermarket's CEO Ken Murphy said customer interactions will be “truly enhanced and driven by AI in almost every aspect of our business.”
He uses this to analyze shoppers' loyalty card data and learn how to save money and take care of their health by not buying too much (or perhaps too much) of certain products. suggested it could provide “relevant inspiration and ideas for shoppers and their families.” .
circleIf you work security, stopping thieves can be an uphill battle. Most would-be thieves know that they have the same legal powers as security guards, so it can be hard to know who can use “appropriate force” when a teenager is trying to cut your bike lock right in front of you.
My shift coworker and I recently witnessed a heroin addict walking through the parking lot, repeatedly typing a shopping list into her phone of shampoo, school uniforms, and other low-quality items. She was part of a growing number of heroin addicts. Steal for othersIt focuses on things that people need but don’t want to pay for.
Shoplifting by telephone (aka “deliverobbing”) seems like a natural thing to happen when you consider the overall number of reported shoplifting cases. Store theft increased 37%But nobody wants to be caught in the act, and while the UK lacks police patrols to catch shoplifters, we make up for it in another area: cameras.
The UK is one of the most surveilled countries in the Western world. 13.21 cameras per 1,000 people That may seem Orwellian until you compare it with the estimated percentage for Chinese cities: 439.07.
It’s crazy to think that one of those cameras is now me. As a security guard who wears a body-worn camera (BWC) on his protective vest, I’m part of a growing demographic. This year alone, Pret a Manger staff members,BP and Greggs They are the latest employees to be issued BWCs to protect against misuse and theft.
Essex County Council Librarian Apparently “please be quiet” signs are no longer of any use: Rochdale crossing officers start recording the lollipop lady immediately after she crosses the road. Beaten Trying to stop traffic.
There’s a part of me that’s still in awe of this technology: when I was a kid in London in the ’80s, the only way to get on a screen was to walk past Rumbelows, an electronics store that happened to be promoting camcorders.
When I started working in security, I watched surveillance hardware evolve from bulky CCTV monitors like furniture to slim smart screens. Perhaps if frontline workers like me were issued BWCs, the conviction rate for shoplifting cases would be 100% today. 14% – Grow.
Recorded footage undoubtedly helped accelerate convictions after this summer’s riots, as far-right looters were quickly charged and convicted for stealing bath bombs (among other violent crimes) and begged for sympathy in court.
Some reports suggest the recent increase in shoplifting is due to gangs, not prices. account They were the “exploited middle class” who steal in the name of revenge against multinational corporations, then boast about the “big smile” they would give to security guards like me when we came out of the stores with our stolen goods.
I haven’t encountered any middle-class robbers yet, but it’s probably just a matter of time. Like many facilities that require security guards, my workplace is privately owned, but the doors are wide open. The premises are used as a public thoroughfare, and frontline workers like me can encounter everyone from users of the brain-damaging synthetic cannabinoid Spice to violent drunks and even mentally ill dropouts.
The recent surge in shoplifting is Attack on store clerk Given the abuse and attacks against frontline NHS staff, it is understandable why ambulance staff are issued with BWCs. 3,500 attacks In one year. This is despite the maximum prison sentence for attacking emergency workers being doubled in a 2020 consultation.
As a uniformed intermediary, I often have to call 999, and my boss has made it very clear to me when to press the record button. I can only press record following a “dynamic risk assessment”, but that can be difficult to implement during sudden outbursts of violence.
When my boss explained to me how BWCs worked — that they would always record but the footage would be dumped unless the “capture” tab was pressed — I became nervous: I feared that coworkers who forgot to press “stop” after a confrontation would furtively scroll through their phones or archive something inappropriate, like a nasty comment about their team leader.
Knowing when to press the button isn’t the only thing I fear about BWCs. My starting pay for my job is £11.44 an hour, the current minimum wage. The retail price of the camera I’m wearing is £534. I don’t even want to think about what would happen if I broke it. Sometimes I feel like the uniform is worth more than I am.
One group that doesn’t seem to care much about prices or digital overexposure are teenagers: the gangs we encounter are more interested in smashing windows and tearing open manhole covers.
If we approach them and say we are being recorded, they will film us with their cell phones and broadcast it to their followers, or they will threaten to stab us.
Perhaps only once the current backlog in the courts is cleared will the wider impact of BWCs be seen. Another London memory of the last century is the installation of CCTV in football grounds. Millwall’s 96-strong camera system has been used to track down Bushwhacker hooligan hangouts. “A well managed venue.”
If they can do it at the Den, they can do it downtown, and I don’t mind being the referee in the meantime, which makes sense considering I already wear black for work.
Airbnb has announced that it will prohibit the use of indoor surveillance cameras in rental properties worldwide by the end of next month.
The online rental platform, based in San Francisco, stated that it aims to “simplify” its security camera policies while emphasizing privacy. This policy change will be implemented on April 30th.
Juniper Downs, Airbnb’s Community Policy and Head of Partnerships, stated in a prepared statement, “These changes were made in consultation with guests, hosts, and privacy experts, and we continue to solicit feedback to ensure our policies work for our global community.”
Previously, Airbnb permitted indoor surveillance cameras in common areas like hallways and living rooms, as long as their location was disclosed on the property page. With the new policy, hosts can still use doorbell cameras and noise decibel monitors in common areas, but they must make the devices’ presence and location known. Outdoor cameras monitoring indoor spaces are now prohibited.
Reports from Airbnb guests have highlighted instances of hidden cameras in rental rooms. Downs anticipates that this policy change will impact only a small number of hosts, as most Airbnb properties do not have indoor surveillance cameras. Any host found to violate the new indoor camera policy risks losing their Airbnb account.
In its fourth-quarter earnings report last month, Airbnb stated that demand remained strong, with bookings and revenue on the rise.
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