SourceSecurity.com RSS - Words of Wiseberg

Illuminating security

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:00:00 GMT

Local authorities are trialling the switching off of selected street lights

In the modern world there are many things that we take for granted - and for more than a hundred years, street lighting has certainly been one of them - which makes it all the more shocking if it disappears, literally, overnight. When the sun sets, unlike our ancestors, we are not conditioned to expect total darkness to descend, unless we live well away from urban centres, however that is increasingly the experience of...

Signalling a sea change in maritime security

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:00:00 GMT

In 1960, the Canadian mass media theorist Marshall McLuhan commented, when discussing the impact of the new electronic media, that 'the world' had been transformed into "a global village". The example given was that when a major event such as an earthquake occurs, we all end up knowing about it. Of course the connections which now bind the far-flung corners of our planet are not confined to television or the virtual world of the Internet.

For a physical indication of our mutual interdependence, one only has to visit the dockside of any major sea port, where the markings displayed on row after row of shipping containers offer up a veritable who's who of trading nations. In Britain, the sea has been our lifeblood for many centuries and continues to be the preferred route for our exporters and importers. We are not alone in this as 90% of all global trade is conducted in this way, carried by more than 50,000 merchant ships, and - despite...

Seeking security in the credit crunch

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:00:00 GMT

Today, after more than a decade of sustained economic growth, we find ourselves in the midst of a financial whirlwind few had predicted and that, worryingly, is causing havoc in the banking system on which we depend. Banks have become increasingly reluctant to lend money to each other, never mind anyone else, with the inter-bank lending rate soaring and credit in short supply and we now have the incredible situation of the government stepping in to 'prop up' our major high street banks.

Many businesses are naturally concerned about their own prospects as governments debate the best approach to deal with the global 'credit crunch' - unparalleled in recent memory - in an effort to restore confidence in the market. In a situation, which shows no signs of abating anytime soon, companies are having to ask themselves whether they will be able to obtain the finance they need to operate as normal, and - even if the answer is yes - whether it will be at an...

Football crowd control in context

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:00:00 GMT

With the new football season in England now in full swing, it is perhaps opportune to reflect on the scenes captured on CCTV of Rangers fans running amok in Manchester city centre before and after the 2008 UEFA Cup Final - including a vicious attack on a police officer who became detached from his unit. To some commentators, this eruption of violence may have appeared to signal a return to the bad old days of soccer hooliganism in England. For my part, I believe that however shocking the scenes, this sort of behaviour is very much the exception rather than the rule which of course made it all the more newsworthy when it happened.

A combination of factors was undoubtedly at play in Manchester which appear to have fuelled the violence beyond what could realistically have been anticipated. The sheer number of visiting supporters - some estimates have put it as high as 150,000 - is unprecedented for Manchester and akin to the population of a small city...

Firefighters under attack

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:00:00 GMT

It seems beyond belief in a so-called "civilised society" that anyone would want to attack firefighters who are placing their lives at risk to ensure the safety of others. Sadly, time and again when responding to emergency calls, crews are threatened with physical assault, assailed by bricks, bottles and golf balls, and even have to contend with youths recording their anarchic exploits on mobile phones.

The seriousness of the situation was underlined last summer in Lincolnshire, England, when a fire engine, responding to an emergency call, had a slab of concrete dropped on it from a bridge, thankfully the crew escaped injury but it could have been so much worse. It is only a matter of time before a firefighter is seriously injured in the line of duty as the ferocity of attacks escalates with incidents involving fireworks, petrol bombs and air rifle wielding thugs, now commonplace.

Recent events in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, have also brought...

Campus safety and security

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 08:00:00 GMT

When it comes to maximising the safety and security of today's colleges and universities, there are undoubtedly tremendous challenges for surveillance systems in terms of securing such large-scale and diverse campus environments, with multiple buildings often situated in fast moving urban areas.

In specifying the right CCTV infrastructure, considerations which need to be taken into account include: student and public safety on campus against the threat of robbery and physical assault; the security of the adjacent car parks; the prevention of damage to buildings or other property and the handling of potential traffic accidents where roads pass through sites. Another key element of campus security, in these competitive times, is intellectual property with university research now a key source of income for many institutions. Naturally, this all has an impact on the positioning of cameras, number of DVRs required and how they are linked together.

With regards...

Securing water supplies

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:00:00 GMT

The simplicity of turning on a tap in the morning, to fill a kettle or run a bath, means that it is very easy for us to take the Herculean effort which goes on behind the scenes in the water industry very much for granted. In the UK, for example, the infrastructure which keeps water flowing 24 hours a day is based on an extensive network of water mains, over 1,000 reservoirs and 2,500 treatment plants, all of which have to be effectively managed and maintained.

While much of the news coverage which focuses on securing our future water supply tends to relate to potential shortages caused by a lack of rainfall or persistent leaks, the essential nature of clean drinking water for everyone's well-being means that other elements which could interrupt supply also need to be factored in.

In recent years a key concern, on both sides of the Atlantic, has been the very real danger of attacks orchestrated by terrorists who see assets like dams and water treatment...

Video analytics for warehouse fire safety

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 08:00:00 GMT

When it comes to fire safety in today's large-scale warehouse environments - which can cover thousands of square metres - undoubtedly an essential requirement is the ability to identify that there is a problem at the earliest possible stage so swift action can be taken to bring a fire under control.

This has become even more of an imperative in recent times given the high value of materials which are stored in these buildings and the need to move workers to safety in what can, in many instances, be a 24-hour operation.

Alongside this, as events such as the tragic fire in Warwickshire, England, last November demonstrated all too starkly, where sadly four fire-fighters lost their lives after a roof collapsed, the more information which the emergency services can access the better...

Heavy metal mania

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT

We are seeing a considerable escalation in metal theft driven by an insatiable appetite for all things metal from the fast expanding Chinese and Indian economies. Nowhere seems to be immune from attack, even churches are not a safe haven as thieves target their roofs, with Ecclesiastical Insurance having dealt with 1,400 claims worth £5 million across the UK. And it does not stop there: on a daily basis there are reports regarding the wholesale removal of road signs, railings, manhole covers and even statues, with a bronze statue of Olympic 800 metre champion Steve Ovett being a case in point. On the railways, the British Transport Police are particularly concerned as the theft of signalling copper has reached epidemic proportions.

This thirst for metal makes those involved in refining it from scrap especially vulnerable given the value of material located on their premises, which can seem like a veritable goldmine to criminal gangs. To address...

New solutions, new challenges

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:00:00 GMT

The capability of CCTV systems has changed dramatically in recent years with the move from analogue to digital allowing more powerful and flexible systems to be rolled out for commercial and public space surveillance; the ability to record more pictures per second (driven by the development of more powerful video signal processors); cheaper storage; mobile systems on buses and trains; the increasing application of CCTV in a networked environment and new ways to automatically analyse images - from automatic number plate recognition to patterns of behaviour - and associate images with data captured elsewhere.

Necessarily this rapid transformation brings with it new challenges to which legislation and industry standards must be able to respond.

Whatever the pressures from the police or security services in the fight against crime and terrorism we need to be extremely cautious in how - if ever - we choose to breach the terms of Human Rights Act and Data Protection Act...

Calling time on alcohol related violence

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 08:00:00 GMT

If you happened to read my recent article referring to my passion for the motorcar, you may be surprised to learn that I ever walk anywhere. However, it is often necessary to put the car keys away and opt for a more environmentally friendly mode of transport to travel the few hundred yards from car to shop, cinema, restaurant or similar establishment.

When walking in our town and city centres on a Friday or Saturday night, it is hard not to be struck by the level of anti-social behaviour - much of it drink related - and the perpetrators who readily display their antagonism towards anyone in authority. Not surprisingly, many people simply avoid the most troublesome areas after dark, fearful of unprovoked attacks or verbal abuse, making them virtual no-go zones for a considerable section of society.

In Britain we have been struggling to balance our love of alcohol with social responsibility for centuries, with the temperance movement an early response to...

Strange behaviour

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 08:00:00 GMT

When it comes to remotely monitored CCTV, fact can often be stranger than fiction as the operators at one hardworking RVRC (Remote Video Response Centre) I talked to in the North of England can testify.

One of the most blatant examples, captured by their cameras, concerns a mother and daughter who decided to stage a forecourt ‘incident' at a motor dealership. While waiting for the daughter's car to be fixed an apparently dishevelled mother told garage staff that she had slipped on some oil and was threatening to sue. Upon review of the CCTV images it became apparent that the truth was very different! In reality it had all been pre-planned with the mother coolly handing her bag to her daughter before proceeding to lie down in the oil. Needless to say the con artists did not have much success with a claim for damages.

In another case, according to the RVRC operators, playing a game of ‘hide and seek' with the police was not the smartest...

A journey from road to rail

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 08:00:00 GMT

Whilst it may not be politically correct, particularly as an invisible hand seems to be turning-up the Earth's thermostat to make parts of the UK as warm as the French Riviera, deep down most of us will admit that nothing quite beats the freedom of our own gas guzzling cars. I know that I love the whole driving experience, the man-machine relationship where the car becomes an extension of self. It is that feeling of control in a world where so much else seems out of control that is so appealing.

With the automobile as my favoured mode of transport, I can leave my front door, walk a few feet, and enter my very own hermetically sealed bubble. This is my world where I work to my timetable and take calls (on hands-free of course) without others being subjected to unwanted details of my life. I can even play the 1812 overture at full volume - cannons included - or sing along to the Stones without worrying about stressing out any fellow travellers....

Acting on air rage

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 08:00:00 GMT

When it comes to safety in the skies while the primary focus must be on the heightened terrorist threat, the same CCTV solutions can also be applied as a powerful tool to deal with a much more common and extremely disruptive problem, namely 'air rage' which can, in the worst cases, lead to physical assault and aircraft having to be diverted.

Most of us on our travels will have come across examples of ill tempered, abusive, intoxicated and out of control passengers, for flight attendants and air crew it is imperative that such situations - where passenger behaviour is plainly unacceptable and is putting the aircraft in danger - are effectively managed and that evidence is available for future prosecutions.

Recent air rage incidents serve to illustrate just what the airlines are up against. Last month at Arlanda in Sweden, for example, a flight was taxiing to the runway ready for take-off when a British passenger suddenly leapt from his seat and demanded...

Financial security

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:00:00 GMT

One of the most challenging areas for security technology has to be providing effective protection for banks and their associated infrastructure, such as cash machines (ATMs), given the fact that they are constantly in the sights of ever more audacious criminal gangs.

The extreme lengths to which the criminal fraternity are prepared to go has been underlined in recent weeks with the discovery by workmen of a large 40 foot tunnel in Manchester, England - including electric lighting - which it is thought was going to be used to target a cash machine nearby, with the plan being to steal the unit by taking it away, out of sight, through the tunnel.

Unfortunately attacks on bank branches, and ATMs, bring with them the ever-real danger of physical assault for workers and customers who, unwittingly, find themselves caught up in an event. A case in point being one incident during the summer where a member of the public, who was using an ATM in Cheshire, England, spotted...

CCTV on trial

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 08:00:00 GMT

The evidential value of having an extensive CCTV infrastructure in the UK - both for public space and private surveillance - has been underlined over the past month by the presentation of key footage in a number of major court cases.

Dramatic images released to the media with regards to the £53 million robbery at a cash depot in Kent - thought to be the largest incident of its kind in the UK - show an armed gang carrying out the raid, vital footage which has helped the police to piece together the sequence of events and, crucially, was presented to jurors in court as part of an ongoing case at the Old Bailey in London.

Some of the most impressive CCTV images used in a recent court case have to be those associated with the attempted attacks in London two weeks after the tragic events of 7/7. Images which have helped to support the convictions of four men for conspiracy to murder, a process undoubtedly assisted by nearly 28,000 CCTV recordings gathered by...

Student behaviour on the buses

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 08:00:00 GMT

As the new school year fast approaches the issue for the authorities and operators alike of dangerous student behaviour on buses will once again be centre stage. Disruptive pupils are problematic enough in a classroom environment but on a moving bus some of their antics can be positively life threatening. Typical incidents can range from minor damage to seats and graffiti to in the worst case scenario large-scale fights breaking out near the driver, distracting him or her from the road ahead with all the potential this has for accidents to occur.

Concerns over bad behaviour and its impact on other passengers and the overall safety of the bus are not confined to the UK; sadly this is as global phenomenon. In fact one of the real success stories with regards to addressing this issue comes from Tallahassee in Florida, where over the last four years they have rolled out mobile CCTV in more than a
hundred of the iconic yellow school...

A balanced approach in an uncertain world

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 08:00:00 GMT

It has been reported that the [London's] Metropolitan Police in the wake of the failed terrorist car bomb attacks in London's West End - which saw suspect vehicles positioned in Haymarket and near Trafalgar Square - are to be allowed access real time images from 1,500 congestion charge cameras. To allow this to happen, Transport for London (TfL) [the transit authority of London] and the Metropolitan Police are being given exemption to parts of the [UK's privacy legislation, the] Data Protection Act for terrorist incidents, this compares with the previous position where the police would have to apply for permission to access to such data on a case-by-case basis.

No one could argue, in this increasingly uncertain world, about the importance of the police being able to deal with terrorism effectively. In the case of the vehicles involved in the London incidents, for instance, officers have been able to obtain valuable information for their investigation...

A visible deterrent to anti-social behaviour

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:00:00 GMT

A growing concern for authorities across the UK is how to clamp down on underage drinking and general youth nuisance, particularly during the school holidays, when boredom can lead some individuals to drift towards anti-social behaviour and petty crime, which can have a detrimental impact on their lives and that of the whole community.

As a result of an escalation in this type of behaviour we are starting to see multi-agency Safer Neighbourhood Teams turning to high profile CCTV equipped patrol vehicles to address this problem in a way that is proportional, acts as a visible deterrent, makes the best use of available resources and, most importantly, actually reassures the local community that real action is being taken on the ground.

Such vehicles - which feature low light CCTV cameras, on-board monitors, digital recording and increasingly microphones - allow the effective management and integration of police officers, support officers and other team members tasked...

Australian growth in remotely monitored CCTV

Adam Wiseberg wiseberg@sourcesecurity.com — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 08:00:00 GMT

It is encouraging to see that remotely monitored, detector-activated, CCTV is really taking-off in other parts of the world. One Australian supplier I spoke to recently, who was visiting the IFSEC exhibition in May, reported an upsurge of interest resulting in a doubling of connections year-on-year - and with 60% of business coming from customer recommendations - this ties in with what I have been saying for over a decade now regarding the real benefits of this technology for site safety and security.

In Australia, as here in the UK, they are finding that remotely monitored, detector activated, CCTV is ideal for exposed locations out of hours where other measures may be too expensive and ineffective to deal with repeated attacks.

One such site was a truck dealership based in New South Wales. It had faced a catalogue of major thefts of tyres, other expensive equipment and damage to new trucks, mostly after hours and involving vehicles parked within an...