Surveillance cameras at the entrance of the Iranian embassy in Beirut – Source
Beirut’s Municipality has decided back in August to install CCTVs all across the city due to the security situation, and based on what Annahar reported yesterday, the budget allocated to installing between 1500 and 2000 cameras will be around $40 million dollars. Honestly, it’s quite a huge amount for a couple of thousand cameras (Around 20,000$ per camera), but nothing’s clear yet about the bids submitted and Beirut’s Mayor is saying he’s expecting the real cost to be 30% less. In all cases, the proposal has to be approved by the Ministry of Interior and the government and hopefully will be done in a transparent way.
On another note, I liked the suggestion made by one of Beirut’s municipality members in that article that consists of giving the Park Meter officers devices to scan cars and make sure they are bomb-free, but I wish he had elaborated and specified which type of devices they should be given, because a decent bomb scanner costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. A better idea maybe is to invest in bomb sniffing dogs and let them patrol the city along with the Park Meter officers.
A simpler way is to have the Park Meter Officers be able to tell if the parked cars are stolen or not.
All they need is an OCR application on a smart phone, to read the license plates – and a small software app in the ministry of interior to indicate stolen/not-stolen.
All bombed cars were stolen, right?
Hi Elie,
I actually proposed this idea once on a larger scale to include mall security staff and all army and ISF checkpoints. It’s a very simple and efficient idea.
That’s great! How was the reception of the proposal?
One could also argue that the 1500-2000 CCTV cameras (assuming they’re HighDef given the price tag) could also do OCR (at varying levels), and be hooked into the central database for license plate recognition.
I’m pretty sure they meant the fault bomb scanners. Only a few days ago, I saw an officer walking around with one.
Pitty.
these cameras are useless
do you think that the guy who blow his self up cares if he gets caught on camera?
they will only serve to reconstruct any bombing incident apart from that i doubt that someone will be able to monitor all these cameras and try to stop anything from happening in real time.
sometimes i dream of a bomb detector like the one we see in the movies…those who detects nuclear radiation from the chopper or plane..if something like that existed for basic bombs it will be the solution
we’ll be able to scan lots of region in no time by simply flying and scanning
but for the moment it seems like a gadget in a james bond movie
What is the point in investing such a big amount of money for “security” cameras, while there would definitely be a corrupt government employee capable of deleting/manipulating the recordings upon the request of any political party, or maybe have those cameras used to record the paths of some prominent political figures and use this data in planning an attack against their convoys.
And i guarantee this will happen, just like the car registration info ( one of hundreds of examples) which was released by some corrupt government employee, allowing everybody access to a citizen’s personal information just by looking at his car’s plate.
it is funny how they fool us with their foolish plans. All they need is to have a budget allocated for them to steal.
I would like to have a reply from a Government official to prove me wrong, if they ever read this.
I did some research, based on a case study done by Schneider Electric’s security camera brand Pelco (One of the biggest brands in this domain).
The case study is about surveillance cameras installed in Italy to help with the security of the G8 summit (Read here: http://www.pelco.com/documents/business-solutions/en/shared/government/g-8-summit.pdf)
The study mentions that two types of cameras were used, so I researched their prices online:
– Spectra III : Costs $1,389.61 ( http://www.amazon.com/Pelco-Schneider-Electric-SD53TCPG1-Spectra/dp/B00FT0JXA4)
– Esprit Camera: Costs $1,861.95 (http://shop.neobits.com/pelco_schneider_electric_es3012_2_pelco_esprit_es3012_2_camera_enclosure_1_fan_s_1_heater_s_1032057567.php)
Let’s assume we’re going crazy and buying 1,500 pieces of each model (3,000 cameras) instead of a total of 1,500 pieces, and that we’re buying them at a full retail price:
– Spectra III cost: $2,084,415
– Esprit cost : $2,792,925
Total Cost : $4,877,340
Let’s assume taxes on these items are 100% + VAT and add some extras, this will bring the total to 10.5 Million Dollars. (Although I think these items are Tax Free given their purpose)
Additionally, let’s account for around 7 Millions in Network Design, control rooms, servers and equipment, and another 3 Millions in training and maintenance for the first period.
Total should not exceed 20 Million dollars with all the above exaggerated costs. I think the offers should be re-considered by the municipality.
Elie
The deal was fishy from the start.
The ‘tender’ was not made public, it was only opened for only five pre-selected companies, of which, only one had anything to do with security (you’ve guessed it, they were the ones selected). No one was even informed of the tender, it was a surprise to the members of the municipality as much as it was to the Syndicate of Security and Safety Professionals in Lebanon!
In any case, it seems that it has finally been made right, as a court ruled the deal as illegal.