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CCTV to outwit Jason Bourne
Jasper Copping
London
Telegraph
Sunday October 14, 2007
A closed circuit television (CCTV) system to
outwit even the most elusive secret agent or criminal has been
devised by scientists.
The flaws in the present systems were revealed in the Hollywood
blockbuster The Bourne Ultimatum.
In the film, Jason Bourne, a rogue CIA agent played by Matt Damon,
tells another character, via a mobile phone, how to evade the
searching eyes of CCTV cameras while charting his way across the
concourse of Waterloo Station in London.
The new system plugs the surveillance gap by enabling an operator
to choose a suspect and follow him through dense crowds, and any
subsequent changes in appearance.
It works by attaching about 30 "tags" on small clusters
of pixels on the footage, fixing them on different parts of the
subject. It then "locks on" to these tags, and as the
subject is filmed, the computer is able to follow his or her exact
progress on the film, as the target moves about.
(Article continues below)
The system has been developed by scientists at the defence company
BAE Systems, the University of Reading and Sagem, a French telecoms
company.
Andrew Cooke, the project manager, said: "This kind of technology
would allow us to track someone like Bourne."
Present CCTV surveillance "hits a brick wall" when
a suspect mingles in a crowd or even takes off his jacket. The
new system will even be able to pass information from one CCTV
camera to another and can be programmed to pick out potential
criminals by detecting suspicious body language.
Police officers will be able to use the technique to trace an
individual's movements on recorded footage after a terrorist attack
or serious crime.
The project has been funded partly by the European Commission
and is already being tested by a British store chain.
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