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Posts Tagged ‘Security Cameras’

If you need to partially conceal your cameras from view, wireless security cameras are the way to go. Locations such as banks use a combination of wireless and wired, visible and hidden cameras to intimidate potential robbers, but continue photographing them even if they disable the wired cameras.

Las Vegas casinos do the same. Look around you the next time you enter a casino or a bank. There are cameras evident and these are for “publicity” purposes. That is, they are there to intimidate a potential robber or petty thief from doing anything, knowing that their actions are being recorded. The owners of these establishments want you to see these cameras and they want you to think twice about doing anything naughty in their places of business.

Then there are the hidden cameras. Almost always wireless so they can be placed anywhere, they photograph through small holes in the walls or ceilings, or from behind specially designed ordinary devices you’d expect to find in the location. Wireless security cameras are the ones that provide information to the police about who may have committed some crime after they disabled the visible systems.

Wireless cameras can be battery operated. That is, they are used to monitor the activities of people for a limited amount of time. Their advantage is that they can be placed in a variety of easily concealed positions, much more so than a camera that requires a wire to be connected to both its power source and a recording device.

Lately, these cameras have been built into clocks, children’s toys and other common household devices and have been nicknamed “nanny-cams.” They came into more popular use to catch babysitters and nanny’s who watch over precious youngsters who may not be talking yet. Horrible abuse sometimes occurs when unbalanced adults are left in charge of toddlers who can’t speak.

Concerned parents started using these devices to record the actions of the adult in charge while they were gone. Then the couple could play back the tapes and see what went on in their absence. Some of these tapes were so outrageously awful in what they captured on videotape that they led to prosecution of the adult offender and oftentimes ended up on national tabloid TV shows. Since then they have become a built-in, cleverly concealed device that’s quite often found in homes where young children are being watched by hired help.

Are fake security cameras effective? The answer is a resounding “Yes.”

Fake security cameras have helped to prevent many crimes. Mounted in high profile, totally visible locations, these cameras are not hooked up to anything, they mostly operate for a long time on batteries and sometimes have a few flashing lights or other obvious characteristics to make them look as if they are doing something.

Many a would-be robber has changed his or her mind about entering someplace illegally after spotting one of these dummy security cameras looking right at them. With today’s technology, an inexperienced thief really has no way to know whether or not he’s looking at a wireless, state of the art surveillance device or a fake security camera. Some of them actually pan back and forth, although these require more frequent battery changes.

Fake security cameras are especially effective in areas that you expect to be covered by security cameras. For instance, many of the cameras in subway stations around the world are fake security cameras and nobody can tell the difference. During hard times, when the crime rates inevitably rise and cities are strapped for cash, the ratio of fake cameras to real ones was about 2-to-1 in some metropolitan areas.

Knowing that the fake cameras would be regarded as real, the fakes were sprinkled in among the real ones to provide an extra incentive for would-be robbers and thieves to practice their trade in another location. Except for the lack of recorded footage provided by the real cameras, dummy security cameras are almost as effective in reducing crime rates in subways as the real ones are.

Only sophisticated thieves can tell — at a distance — whether they are being observed by a real security camera.