INTELLIGENT VIDEO: Who’s Watching You?

U.K. company launches an intelligent surveillance system to the private sector.
Scyron, the security and surveillance services company, has launched the availability of its ‘intelligent, incident-based surveillance system’ to the private sector.

It follows successful deployments at 48 U.K. police forces, transforming the efficiency with which they gather surveillance evidence against criminals and analyze surveillance/ CCTV videos -- in some cases reducing the time it takes to analyze a 24-hour tape from one week to less than three hours.

The breakthrough technology is saving police forces millions of pounds while removing the need for blanket surveillance of law-abiding people.  If all U.K. surveillance footage was analyzed manually, the estimated cost would be nearly GBP1.25 billion per annum.  Automating the process saves more than 90% of the cost.

Scyron believes the use of its technology in the private sector has positive implications for protecting civil liberties.

“There are over 4.2 million CCTV cameras in the U.K. making us the most spied-upon country in the world,” said Scyron CEO, Mike Wilks.  “Collectively, they record around 35 billion hours of footage.  Analyzing footage of everyday people going about their business costs tax payers’ millions of pounds every year.  What our technology does best is to sort the wheat from the chaff by helping target the criminals.”

Scyron’s technology uses a sophisticated ‘intelligent’ algorithm that triggers a surveillance/CCTV camera to record specific events or be used retrospectively on a video tape to capture specific incidents.  For example, it may be set to capture only people lingering longer than a specific time, such as five seconds at a known haunt for drug dealers while ignoring passers-by.  Alternatively, it can be set to trigger an alarm if people approach a perimeter fence, while ignoring animals or unusual light anomalies.