Video Surveillance vs Kidnapping

One of the most basic necessities for any person is safety, but not just for oneself. If those we hold dear are safe, we feel safer as well. Ask any parent whose safety concerns them the most and the invariable answer will be “My child’s”.

Of course, the best security for a child protecting him from kidnapping is the parents’ constant presence, but nowadays it’s hardly possible. The obvious second choice is to find a trusted person who would attend to the child while the parents can’t. Yet this raises an important question of who to trust and makes particularly concerned couples spend a lot of time on their search for one. However, security can have more than one layer.

Video cameras don’t sleep, take breaks, neglect their duties or give biased opinions.

“They can’t move” – yes, but they can turn, or better yet, follow people’s movements (PTZ-tracking really helps).

“They can be easily vandalized” – not anymore, quite a few modern IP-cameras are made for street surveillance and are impressively sturdy (and even if it is vandalized, you can be the first to know).

“They are really hard to install” – the only effort required to install an IP-camera is one for screwing it to a wall (or ceiling).

Software-wise it is as simple as downloading an app.

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“How do I know that it actually works?” This question is somewhat trickier than the others. Consider this: would a criminal attempt to harm a person knowing that a camera is watching their every move? Unlikely. But there is more: how often do criminals get caught on tape? Today – all the time. Believe it or not, modern day court proceedings rarely deal with cases without any video-evidence (especially kidnapping cases). Another important factor to keep in mind is that state-of-the-art intelligent video surveillance software is capable of not only detecting people but recognizing them as well. Face detection and recognition are no longer a sight of distant future. Now it’s possible to make the camera check the face of everybody approaching the child and if it happens to be a stranger… Sound alarms, SMS alerts, running specific applications – the list of possible reactions goes on.

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Another issue that tends to cause a lot of concern is the security of the camera itself. Stories of hacked baby monitors are circulating around the web, so what makes cameras any better? First of all, it is important to understand that what gets hacked is not actually the camera (or baby monitor) itself but the software that controls its activities. The software intended for actual security cameras is impressively well-defended. Logins, passwords, specific ports, cutting a camera off the Internet – these are just the outer layer of defense. Don’t think that hacking into a valid security system is as easy as movies make it seem.

So, does a camera deserve your trust? Safety technologies are on the rise – why not give it a go?

14 September 2016