N.Y. COURTS TURN TO IP VIDEO SURVEILLANCE

Sep 1, 2005 12:00 PM

The New York State Unified Court System has put the finishing touches on a network of more than 350 IP video surveillance cameras. The cameras will monitor New York court facilities statewide and link to a multi-terabyte storage system.

Last year, the courts rolled out a limited IP video system, assembled using Linux scripts and commodity IP cameras installed on a shoestring budget.

New York courts have had CCTV for years, but only on the outside of a few key buildings and main traffic areas. More than 100 cameras were added earlier this year — new IP cameras from Axis Communications, Chelmsford, Mass., as well as older analog cameras fitted with IP encoders and attached to the LAN. The court system also installed a software suite called NetGuard from OnNet Surveillance Systems that controls the court system's cameras.

At the court's Manhattan security command center, officers watch video on flat panel displays, showing heavily trafficked sites. Through an interface that mimics Internet Explorer, an officer can expand a directory of icons, representing all courthouses and facilities. Officers can pull up a similar interface on Wi-Fi-enabled PDAs.

The NetGuard system can be configured for motion detection and alerting to allow monitoring of closed buildings during overnight hours. When a person enters an empty room under surveillance, for example, a shake-up of recorded pixels occurs inside an IP camera. The software that controls the camera senses this and sends an e-mail, page or phone call to officers.

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