Jonathan Gerhardson, a journalist in Western Massachusetts, mapped police-owned cameras in Chicopee using public records requests and some digital sleuthing. He posted an article about his work and his camera map. It is also at his Github. Thanks to Jonathan for contacting us and sharing his work.
We will add his data to Open Street Map and cctv.masspirates.org. If you want to map surveillance cameras in your community, check out our how to guides.
He is somewhere in Western Mas. and yet he maps camera not in his area What gives? Camera’s are around so they can catch people doing the wrong things! Now give away all the locations of camera’s so that would be criminals get subvert (not be in the camera’s) .
google is another issue post others personnel personnel data but you cannot be posted yourself and complain when you cannot find other people! Leave me alone google thief!
Know the difference between Aggregate data and Personally identifiable data!
Hi K,
Good to hear from you. Chicopee is in Western Massachusetts, and is local to him, IIRC. I routinely map cameras in other cities as far away as New York City, New Hampshire and Vermont. We don’t see a limit on who can legitimately map cameras.
Police surveillance cameras can be used catch criminals, but they can also be used to spy on people who are doing nothing wrong. When you add accurate facial recognition technology, they can be used to track people, just like how Google does with their ad network. That’s why China has millions of them. In the end, though, they are never as effective as how TV cop shows present them and their cost often outweighs their benefit.
We agree with you that we all should protect our personal data from Google, Facebook and thousands of other companies.
Take care, K.