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December 01, 2004

Waiting for the Gun

So much surveillance up to now has been silent, in part because of the extremely restrictive legal code that governs audio recording (e.g., "wiretap" laws). A new generation of surveillance experts are using sound in new ways, as a guide to the video.
writes: Waiting for the Gun

A USC biomedical engineer's pioneering brain cell research has led directly to a patented system that is now being rolled out to stem gun violence on the streets of Chicago and Los Angeles. The engineer is Theodore Berger, director of the USC Center for Neural Engineering, whose life's work has deciphered the way in which nerve cells code messages to each other. Berger is also a key researcher in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems Engineering Research Center. A microphone surveillance system now is using his insights to recognize - instantly, and with high accuracy - the sound of a gunshot within a two-block radius. The system can then locate, precisely, where the shot was fired, turn a camera to center the shooter in the camera viewfinder and make a 911 call to a central police station.

Posted by Richard Smith at December 1, 2004 10:23 PM