The purpose of this study is: to explore and analyze the Communication Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (CALEA), to identify problems related to CALEA, to identify solutions devised by other countries to overcome problems similar to CALEA's, and to propose feasible solutions to CALEA problems.

This research was initiated as a result of the ever-evolving sophistication of criminal syndicates in their perseverance of organised crime and their use of electronic covert methodologies. Based on the researcher’s extensive managerial and operational experience, and on his unofficial observation of prosecutors, investigators and intelligence operatives, it became clear to him that there is a lack of evidence in court regarding serious and organised crime prosecutions. This can be attributed to the lack of use of investigative techniques, or investigative techniques being incorrectly used and/or a lack of knowledge regarding the use of investigative techniques. One such example of an investigative technique is surveillance or electronic surveillance. In this research study, the use and legality of electronic surveillance as a technique in the fight against organised crime, is discussed. Both national and international literature have been perused on the topic in question. Interviews were conducted with experienced former SAPS officers who were exposed to the use of electronic surveillance in the investigation of organised crime, as well as interviews with prosecutors, outlining the positive attributes of, as well as the shortcomings in, the use of electronic surveillance as an investigative tool in the investigation of organised crime. Surveillance or electronic surveillance has been in existence for a long period of time, but its usage or “know how” has been limited to only a few. The main purpose of the research is to highlight the importance of electronic surveillance as a covert technique in the investigation of organised crime. / Criminology and Security Science / M. Tech. (Criminal Justice)

The numerous surveillance videos recorded by a single stationary wide-angle-view camera persuade the use of a moving point as the representation of each small-size object in wide video scene. The sequence of the positions of each moving point can be used to generate a trajectory containing both spatial and temporal information of object's movement. In this study, we investigate how the relationship between two trajectories can be used to recognize multi-agent interactions. For this purpose, we present a simple set of qualitative atomic disjoint trajectory-segment relations which can be utilized to represent the relationships between two trajectories. Given a pair of adjacent concurrent trajectories, we segment the trajectory pair to get the ordered sequence of related trajectory-segments. Each pair of corresponding trajectory-segments then is assigned a token associated with the trajectory-segment relation, which leads to the generation of a string called a pairwise trajectory-segment relationship sequence. From a group of pairwise trajectory-segment relationship sequences, we utilize an unsupervised learning algorithm, particularly the k-medians clustering, to detect interesting patterns that can be used to classify lower-level multi-agent activities. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach by comparing the activity classes predicted by our method to the actual classes from the ground-truth set obtained using the crowdsourcing technique. The results show that the relationships between a pair of trajectories can signify the low-level multi-agent activities.

This thesis examines the representations of surveillance in mainstream cinema. Using ideology critique it will show how filmic illustrations of monitoring depoliticize the relationship between surveillance and structural relations of power.In order to provide a foundation for this inquiry, a political economy critique of surveillance will be undertaken in four areas. Focusing on the workplace, consumer surveillance, urban policing and intelligence gathering, this thesis will contextualise surveillance as historically relevant and intimately connected with modern constructs such as the nation-state, military power and capitalist economic organisation. In recent years, the role of surveillance has been intensified in response to the challenges posed by globalization, the restructuring of capitalism in the 1980's and 90's and the declining legitimacy of nation-state governments. These developments are both aided by, and in turn promote, pervasive networks of surveillance. Driven by risk management and other forms of economic reasoning as organisational logic, developments in information communication technologies accelerate surveillance capabilities rendering them more invasive and intense. In this way, surveillance can be conceived of as complicit with prevailing relations of power on a macro, sociological level.In order to show how mainstream cinematic representations of surveillance ideologically obscure this relationship, this thesis begins with an overview of 30 popular films. It then moves to a comparison of four recent Hollywood portrayals of surveillance with the four areas of political economy critique identified above. This analysis will reveal that these films have a tendency to focus on sentimental themes such as individual heroism, antagonist versus protagonist struggles and romantic subplots, in a way which deflects attention from collective experience with surveillance webs. More pertinently, the narrative structures of these films feature dichotomies between malevolent and benevolent monitoring, aligning legitimate and benign surveillance with the state. At the same time, the accompanying imagery of surveillance devices fetishizes monitoring, deterministically glorifying technology as a powerful and omniscient force. The overall effect is to depoliticize monitoring as a natural part of the fabric of everyday life.

Human right protection is a trend all over the world. Nowadays, there¡¦s no country that implements democratic constitution doesn¡¦t take Constitution as the basic regulation for human right protection, expecting to achieve the goal of protecting human right with the implementation of constitutional government. However, does human right receive absolute protection? Should conflicts occur between public interest and private interest, based on the consideration of public interest, restrictions shall be imposed on private interest. Fighting crimes to establish a society of justice, then there can be space created for individual basic rights. As progresses of the times and advancements of technology, techniques in collecting criminal evidences are renewed constantly. The more advanced high tech crime investigating instruments would have the greater inclination to violate people¡¦s rights. Although the society can¡¦t exist without controls to certain extent, an individual can¡¦t survive without freedom to certain degree, either. Communications surveillance, though a keen weapon applied to criminal investigation, would unavoidably clash with the maintenance of individual rights. High tech monitoring of communications surveillance would inevitably infringe upon personal privacy. As our society changes and develops rapidly, there¡¦s room derived for advancement and development concerning the delimitation of human rights protection and associated concepts. It¡¦s hoped that the problems dwelling in the legal system of communications protection and electronic surveillance of Republic of China can be examined based on administrative law, by means of its five frameworks, namely, basic principles, administrative organization, limitation of administrative power, administrative relief, and administrative supervision. Furthermore, it¡¦s expected that practical suggestions against items required improvement in existing legal system can be brought forth herein pursuant to the discourse of five major frameworks of administrative law mentioned hereinbefore to make the legal system of communications protection and electronic surveillance more sound and complete.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009. / Includes abstract. Title from first page of PDF file (viewed January 27, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-105). Issued in print and online. Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations.

This study examines the deployment of automated red light camera systems in the state of Texas from 2003 through late 2007. The deployment of new technologies in general, and surveillance infrastructures in particular, can prove controversial and challenging for the formation of public policy. Red light camera surveillance during this period in Texas was increasingly discussed in a variety of public forums, creating a discourse involving many stakeholders and multiple opinions on the use and purpose of red light cameras. Public policy resulted when the Texas legislature, which had traditionally been viewed as hostile to the technology, regulated red light camera systems in 2007. My research examined the language choices made by various discourse communities in their discussion of red light camera systems, and their use of language structures in framing positions that either supported or opposed the cameras. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, I analyzed a corpus of texts that represented the public discussion of red light camera technology in Texas. By examining metaphor constructions used to describe the camera systems, I found that metaphors played an important role in framing arguments for or against the deployment of the cameras. My findings provide insight into the ways that language can be used to engage in a discursive and rhetorical conflict. This study has implications for understanding how technology and surveillance policy can be affected by language choices and rhetorical strategies, and how these choices can frame and influence public policy decisions. / text

Piracy is still a significant threat to ships in a maritime environment. Areas such as the coast of Somalia and the Strait of Malacca are still plagued by pirates, and the total international cost of piracy numbers in the billions of dollars. The first line of defence against these threats is early detection and thus maritime surveillance has become an increasingly important task over the years. While surveillance has traditionally been a manual task using crew members in lookout positions on parts of the ship, much work is being done to automate this task using digital cameras equipped with computer vision software. While these systems are beneficial in that they do not grow tired like their human counterparts, the maritime environment is a challenging task for computer vision systems. This dissertation aims to address some of these challenges by presenting a system that is able to use prior knowledge of an object’s shape to aid in detection and tracking of the object. Additionally, it aims to test this system under various environmental conditions (such as weather). The system is based around the segmentation technique known as the level set method, which uses a contour in the image that is evolved to separate regions of interest. The system is split into two parts, comprising of an object detection stage that initially finds objects in a scene, and an object tracking stage that tracks detected objects for the rest of the sequence. The object detection stage uses a kernel density estimation-based background subtraction and a binary image level set filter, while the object tracker makes use of a tracking level set algorithm for its functionality. The object detector was tested using a group of 4 sequences, of which it was able to find a prior-known object in 3. The object tracker was tested on a group of 10 sequences for 300 frames a sequence. In 6 of these sequences the object tracker was able to successfully track the object in every single frame. It is shown that the developed video tracking system outperforms level set–based systems that don’t use prior shape knowledge, working well even where these systems fail. / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

With technological advances digital video and imaging are becoming more and more relevant. Medical, remote-learning, surveillance, conferencing and home monitoring are just a few applications of these technologies. Along with compression, there is now a need for analysis and extraction of data. During the days of film and early digital cameras the processing and manipulation of data from such cameras was transparent to the end user. This transparency has been decreasing and the industry is moving towards `smart users' - people who will be enabled to program and manipulate their video and imaging systems. Smart cameras can currently zoom, refocus and adjust lighting by sourcing out current from the camera itself to the headlight. Such cameras are used in the industry for inspection, quality control and even counting objects in jewelry stores and museums, but could eventually allow user defined programmability. However, all this will not happen without interactive software as well as capabilities in the hardware to allow programmability. In this research, compression, expansion and detail extraction from videos in the surveillance arena are addressed. Here, a video codec is defined that can embed contextual details of a video stream depending on user defined requirements creating a video summary. This codec also carries out motion based segmentation that helps in object detection. Once an object is segmented it is matched against a database using its shape and color information. If the object is not a good match, the user can either add it to the database or consider it an anomaly. RGB vector angle information is used to generate object descriptors to match objects to a database. This descriptor implicitly incorporates the shape and color information while keeping the size of the database manageable. Color images of objects that are considered `safe' are taken from various angles and distances (with the same background as that covered by the camera is question) and their RGB vector angle based descriptors constitute the information contained in the database. This research is a first step towards building a compression and detection system for specific surveillance applications. While the user has to build and maintain a database, there are no restrictions on the size of the images, zoom and angle requirements, thus, reducing the burden on the end user in creating such a database. This also allows use of different types of cameras and doesn't need a lot of up-front planning on camera location, etc.

This thesis examines the representations of surveillance in mainstream cinema. Using ideology critique it will show how filmic illustrations of monitoring depoliticize the relationship between surveillance and structural relations of power.In order to provide a foundation for this inquiry, a political economy critique of surveillance will be undertaken in four areas. Focusing on the workplace, consumer surveillance, urban policing and intelligence gathering, this thesis will contextualise surveillance as historically relevant and intimately connected with modern constructs such as the nation-state, military power and capitalist economic organisation. In recent years, the role of surveillance has been intensified in response to the challenges posed by globalization, the restructuring of capitalism in the 1980's and 90's and the declining legitimacy of nation-state governments. These developments are both aided by, and in turn promote, pervasive networks of surveillance. Driven by risk management and other forms of economic reasoning as organisational logic, developments in information communication technologies accelerate surveillance capabilities rendering them more invasive and intense. In this way, surveillance can be conceived of as complicit with prevailing relations of power on a macro, sociological level.In order to show how mainstream cinematic representations of surveillance ideologically obscure this relationship, this thesis begins with an overview of 30 popular films. It then moves to a comparison of four recent Hollywood portrayals of surveillance with the four areas of political economy critique identified above. This analysis will reveal that these films have a tendency to focus on sentimental themes such as individual heroism, antagonist versus protagonist struggles and romantic subplots, in a way which deflects attention from collective experience with surveillance webs. More pertinently, the narrative structures of these films feature dichotomies between malevolent and benevolent monitoring, aligning legitimate and benign surveillance with the state. At the same time, the accompanying imagery of surveillance devices fetishizes monitoring, deterministically glorifying technology as a powerful and omniscient force. The overall effect is to depoliticize monitoring as a natural part of the fabric of everyday life.