We pride ourselves on offering the most advanced CCTV camera systems and in recent years we believe these have been supplied by the North American manufacturer, Avigilon, now part of Motorola Solutions.
CCTV Camera makes interesting mistake
A recent news story has highlighted the need to get the technology right, or it could have consequences. As reported by the BBC a couple living in Surrey were recently sent a fine for driving in a bus lane when a camera mistook a word on a woman’s clothing for their number plate.
Dave and Paula Knight were sent a letter demanding they pay a fine for driving in the bus lane in Bath despite not being in the city at the time.
A camera had registered the word ‘knitter’ on a pedestrian’s clothing as Mr Knight’s personalised number plate KN19 TER. Bath and North East Somerset Council, who were responsible, unsurprisingly subsequently cancelled the fine.
Protection offered by the Surveillance Camera Code of Practice
Commenting on the story in a recent blog, the Surveillance Camera Commissioner (SCC), Fraser Sampson said, “This incident reminded us that, while human surveillance decision-making is approximately right, when the tech fails it’s precisely wrong.”
He added, “This is also one of the 5 reasons why “if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to worry about” is probably the poorest surveillance reassurance you can receive.”
To provide some protection for the public in England and Wales if the police or local authorities want to use surveillance cameras in a public space, they have a legal duty to follow the government’s Surveillance Camera Code of Practice. The Code says that if there’s a less intrusive way of achieving the same objective, the police or local authority should use it. Businesses are also encouraged to follow the Code, and doing so will help them meet their legal data protection obligations.
Avigilon CCTV System: Advanced features to support human operators
Ecl-ips offers the advanced video management software, Avigilon Control Center 7 which has features such as license plate recognition, facial recognition capabilities to create watchlists and appearance search.
Additionally, the Focus of Attention (FoA) interface was introduced with the ACC7 software and provides users with a more intuitive way to consume information being picked up by the Avigilon cameras. Using the latest technology, especially if it includes tools for helping human operators, will make life simpler for law enforcement and security officers.
If you want help to ensure you have the right CCTV cameras and video management software to meet your needs then we will be delighted to demonstrate the Avigilon system to you – just get in touch.