Intercity Transit has nearly finished installing camera systems on all of its regular coaches – almost 70 in all. Most of these installations involve seven cameras, while some shorter coaches have only five. All of them record video and audio information in a digital form for storage on a removable hard drive on the bus. The system records video on the bus for approximately 7 to 10 working days.

According to news stories (and Verint’s own website) these camera systems also wirelessly transmit the imagery to anyone with the knowledge and tools to make a wireless connection to the bus’ WiFi system, located above the driver’s head:

“In the event of a security incident, Nextiva Transit will allow supervisor and police vehicles to view live video from within the bus, enabling more effective actionable intelligence and emergency response.” 1

“Verint Systems Inc., a leading provider of analytic software-based solutions for workforce-enterprise optimisation and security, announced an agreement with Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) to enable the use of Verint Nextiva™ Wireless devices on MOTOMESH broadband wireless networks. (…) By deploying Nextiva wireless video management solutions on a Motorola mesh network, private security, law enforcement and emergency response personnel have immediate, high speed access to security video and data delivering heightened situational awareness to enable a more effective response.” 2

With the ability of the system to monitored live by those with the access tools, these systems have likely become a prime target for detectives seeking to identify those responsible for the Evergreen Uprising (Feb 15, 2008). Recent late night extensions of the routes to Evergreen have resulted in more “face time” for those who travel via bus to TESC.

When I was logging camera installations in the post-uprising weeks I noticed only 3 of the 30 buses seen on the Evergreen routes were NOT ones with camera systems installed. Prior to the uprising, it was rare for the buses on the 41 / 48 routes to have cameras installed. It is not known at this time whether this intelligence “take” has proved useful to the Sheriff’s Department, but one can imagine others who would find its data quite useful.

I've already begun to exploit this data pool by requesting bus video and audio from IT Bus #808, which in November 2007 was used to move Olympia Police into the Port of Olympia. Their conversations were quite telling...

For the past nine months or so, I had the pleasure of sitting on a small group with tctvjohn, epersonae and chad360 (among other folks like Deb Vinsel from TCTV), putting our brains to work about how a city sponsored wifi network might work in downtown.

From what I can tell, even though the city council put out $20,000 to jump start the process, a public wifi network isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Here is the summary of the report we sent to the council's General Government committee (Joe Heyer, TJ Johnson and Jeff Kingsbury):

The deployment of WiFi is not a simple process. The $20,000 the City has set aside for the project will not build a system. Many other cities have tried to deploy WiFi using a variety of models and many have decided to end or postpone their projects due to high costs and low revenue potential.

Many wireless companies do not want to franchise for Wi-Fi without a guaranteed anchor tenant (the city) because the financial returns from subscribers have not been sufficient to sustain a system.

It may be possible to deploy a great deal of WiFi connectivity in the downtown core by simply encouraging area businesses to create ‘hot-spots’ in their stores. However, Wi-Fi in downtown public areas (and we hope city-wide) will require a much bigger, expensive process. Questions about operation, ownership, policy issues and access to City owned assets will need to be ironed out.

It is not outside the realm of possibility, but it is not a process that can be accomplished in a short period of time without a significant financial investment.