From the Belfast Telegraph: There are reports today that Oglaigh na hEireann, the splinter dissident republican outfit, had established a sophisticated operation of four digital spy cameras in a forest overlooking the MI5 base at Palace Baracks in Northern Ireland. The cameras, which are likely to have been there for months, are reported to have been battery powered, equipped with memory sticks and to have successfully covered all angles of the base.
With recent increases in personnel, the barracks are the largest MI5 base outside London, employing more than 300 people.
It is feared ONH, which bombed Palace Barracks in April, has used the recordings to target soldiers and build profiles on spooks working at the new spy base.
Senior security sources in London tried to play down the cameras being found, saying only that trees were cleared and a new fence erected because of concerns the wooded area could conceal gunmen.
From BBC News: Video analytics programmes are being developed at military research laboratories at Porton Down in Wiltshire. They are emphasising the use of the technology for tackling the use of improvised explosive devices. By automatically highlighting footage of unusual behaviour, such as going off road, captured by plane and helicopter mounted cameras, they hope to make the tracking of enemies more effective:
Andrew Seedhouse, from the Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), said: "Think of it as the ultimate CCTV system.
"An incident occurs, perhaps an IED goes off, and we can use this host of data to back track over time.
"Who was near the scene and where were they before the incident? What buildings or vehicles can we now associate with the incident?"
He said the research could help scientists to look for anomalies in behaviour and environment and alert appropriate forces before an incident occurred.
The video analytics are being combined with other methods for sophisticated modelling of the surveyed terrain, as you can see in the 'British Forces News' video below.
Also interesting is the same scientist Andrew Seedhouse's comment that the only way to tell insurgents from everybody else is "by what they do -so the whole experiment is about tracking people, finding what they're up to each day, who they're meeting, what they take with them, what they do, where they place things, and then hopefully we'll be able to track back through all that stuff and find out where they are now":
This is the blog for the FP7 DETECTER project, co-ordinated by the University of Birmingham. This blog will go live in early March, in conjunction with the DETECTER website.
