Daniel's Window

            Has anybody else ever wondered why banks and stores can’t purchase and deploy better security cameras?  It seems that every time a crime is committed at such an establishment we get a grainy, low resolution photo of the suspected criminal.  I am always bemused when such pictures are shown on the news in the hope that somebody will recognize the suspect and turn him or her in.  How hard can it be to get a higher resolution camera in place with a good auto-focus mechanism?  It just seems weird that these businesses wouldn’t want to have the best pictures available in order to track down these criminals.

            A lot of people get upset when they discuss cameras in public places, but not me.  How much of my privacy is at risk to these expensive, out-of-focus, low resolution monitoring systems?  Not much, unless these systems get a lot better in quality and get set up correctly.  I can imagine the conversations of some of these security personnel.  “Yes sir!  After going through all of the available images we have our man.  He’s a man and he has hair…and he’s wearing clothes…shouldn’t be hard to track down!” 

             I ran a test in my house with a jury-rigged motion detector, a compact digital camera and a computer.  With the camera and the motion detector connected to the computer and almost invisible on my bookshelf, I set my cheap “security system” to snap three photos every time somebody came through my front door.  Much to my surprise, I got a perfect, in-focus photo almost every time.  I thought that this was too easy, so I rearranged the camera several times at odd positions, but I got clear pictures every time.  I guess I just got lucky!