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| 02-17-2005 | Previous edition: 02-16-2005 |
        
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Printer-friendly version Surveillance cameras keep an eye on campus, studentsBy Alysha DaytnerAssistant Campus Editor You’re being watched. Purdue has set up surveillance cameras throughout campus to monitor areas such as the engineering mall, computer labs and commons areas. But the feeds from these cameras are not just for private viewing — they can be found on the Internet. One recent graduate, Dan Noland, now a software security analyst at Purdue Research Park, created a Web page to display 43 Purdue Web cameras. The site, http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~nolandd/voyeurism.html, was created after Noland’s computer science class discussed the issue of privacy regarding surveillance cameras. The class, CS626, "Advanced Information Assurance," was taught by Eugene Spafford, professor of computer science and electrical and computer engineering. "Several people in the class knew about a Web cam in a lab or on a building somewhere. There are probably a lot of them at Purdue that people set up for one reason or another," Spafford said. Spafford also said although people may be comfortable knowing there is one security camera in a specific area, they may be less comfortable if all of the camera locations are revealed to them. Noland said, "The original attempt (for the Web site) was to make it more dramatic. "It’s one thing to say there’s a camera in this room, it’s another to see them all together." Because all of the camera feeds on his site are also on various other Web sites, Noland wasn’t expecting to get the feedback that he did. "The next day I came to class and wrote the URL (of my site) on the board, just to show my fellow classmates they were being watched all the time. "I think I may have started a little uproar there briefly," Noland said of the numerous letters and amount of feedback he received. Since the launch of the site in the spring of 2003, the computer labs in the Computer Science building have placed placards outside of the labs, making students aware they are being watched while in the lab. Although some may feel that the cameras are an invasion of privacy, Spafford said the cameras are all in public places. "It’s no different than someone with a video camera. If it’s a place legal for me to take a picture, then there you go," he said. "It applies to more than video. We’re in a world where great amounts of information are being collected about each of us, and we don’t always know why." Printer-friendly version |
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