Surveillance Camera Walking Tour in Downtown Santa Cruz

I just want to remind people that some surveillance is good. Especially in parking garages. Just last week my co-worker had her fuel line cut in her car while it was parked in the parking garage on cedar street by cafe limelight. Cutting someone's fuel line in their car can kill them. Someone was making an attempt on her life and because there was no surveillance she has no idea who or what to watch out for. Don't forget also that just two years ago there was the man who kept attempting rape on young females who were going to their cars in the parking garage on Walnut Street. I am not personally okay with all of this spying that the government is allowing, but having a visual of people trying to hurt or kill innocent people can prevent further attacks. we have to consider all the reasons for surveillance.

Thanks Bradley for the photos and the report. I'm sorry I missed the class.

Here are things that are commonly thought to be cameras but are not:

* The little box with the eye above floodlights. That is a motion sensor box, and while part of the security aparatus, not a camera.
* The very camera-looking things mounted above some traffic lights. They are cameras for a type, but are intended to tell the traffic signal when to change. They replace the maintenance-intensive inductive wire sensors buried in the street. While they may be able to be modified to record images, they function as traffic sensors only.
* smaller devices mounted over stop lights. These are designed to pick up the strobe flashes from emergency vehicles to turn the light green.
* not all smoked glass bubbles in stores are cameras. Sometimes they are just theft-deterents.

Places where there are always cameras that could potentionally record your movement:

* tollbooths
* auto bridges
* auto tunnels
* ATM machines

Lastly, note where the cameras are trained in retail business. Less often on the customers and more often watching the register and the employees. This is because the vast majority of loss in a retail store is the result of employee theft.

Here are some interesting articles:

How to ZAP a Camera: Using Lasers to Temporarily Neutralize Camera Sensors
http://www.naimark.net/projects/zap/howto.html

Guide to Closed Circuit Television Destruction
http://www.rtmark.com/cctv/

Is 'Big Brother' coming to a street corner near you? A ballot referendum on Tuesday's primary election will decide whether video cameras can be deployed throughout the city (of Philadelphia, PA). The referendum, handing sweeping powers of surveillance to the City, is vaguely worded and has had little public dialogue.

full story here:
http://www.phillyimc.org/en/2006/05/22970.shtml

It's a Sad day when FREE Americans are held prisoner by the Powers that be. Though our right to change is constantly shoved in our face we know the Whole Truth and Nothing But and that is that we really can't change what the big wheel is grinding out such as Mom & PoPs or even change the direction it is going. So we must live like PRISONERS in our FREE

No such beast. Never has been. Only slaves, fools, and the class parasites who claw into their guts like cancer til they drop dead. They're all insane with greed, so it's not like a soul of them would know the difference. Hell, it's greed what brought 'em skittering onto these shores like rats in the first place, snapping and snarling to grab up LAND man! All they had to do was encircle some village of the only free Americans there ever were, the ones who spoke stuff like Hokan and Algonquian, beat some baby's head in with a big stick and slurp its splattered brains off the ground with bloodthirsty relish. What a bargain! Who'd turn that down? Someone who wasn't inhuman fucked up garbage you say? Well there ya go! After all, we're CIVILIZED. Yeah. Give us a good look at real freedom and we'd just be grossed out, our asses puckered up tight around that Silver Spoon. We carry our prison cells around with us everywhere, all-in-our-heads like, and we dang proud of it! Murkah tha wunnaful!

The reason we installed cameras was to try and stop the vandelism,under aged drinking of alcohol, and damaged caused by people hanging out after the Cafe was closed. We're definitely not into violating a persons privacy but after owning a buiness and losing thousands of dollars to vandalism you start doing what ever it takes to curb people that don't have respect for other people and cause damage at the same time. If anyone has a better way to curb the vandalism, under age drinking and trespassing we would be more than happy to hear it. The cameras were the last reort.

This picture is a prime example of the vandalism we are trying to curb. Great picture!

This camera actually caught someone breakiong into the cafe at 4:00 am one morning. Once they saw the camera they left without taking anything and the police have their picture on file.