Lucent Technologies has signed up its first customer for a technology that could herald a market for remarkably compact and inexpensive video cameras. The cameras could capture images comparable in quality to today's camcorders, Lucent said.
Vanguard International Semiconductor will use the technology to build chips that will, in turn, be sold to video equipment manufacturers.
"You can expect small cameras and cheaper camera systems," said Bryan Ackland, head of the DSP and VLSI systems research department at Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent. That's because Lucent has found a way to integrate disparate video circuitry into a single chip, without losing image resolution.
"You can also expect lower-power, lighter-weight systems," he said. His examples include a camera in a cell phone and a camera "you can just stick on the wall as part of a security system."
In other words: more cameras in more places, a notion that already has organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union trying to stem proliferation of the technology until there are laws regulating its use.
John Crew, director of police practices for the ACLU of Northern California, said he can't speak to the specific technology Lucent is marketing. But the news reinforces a point the organization has been making for a long time, he said, "namely, that the technology is evolving much faster than the law."
The security industry counters that it, too, is seeking industry-led guidelines for acceptable use of surveillance technology but that there is no point in keeping it off the market.
Lucent expects cameras based on its technology – some as small as a marble – to be well-suited to applications in PC videoconferencing and security. Cameras will only need a quarter-inch silicon chip to perform their functions.
Vanguard International Semiconductor plans to make some of those chips.
Vanguard's Bob Swartz said in a statement that he expects third-party camera and computer peripheral manufacturers who buy Vanguard's future chips to use them in cameras with small lenses. The final product is likely to sell for less than US$50, Swartz said.
The "camera-on-a-chip" technology is based on the same CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) technology used to produce standard computer chips.
Video cameras have normally required multiple-chip designs because they use a specialized imaging process using charge-coupled device (CCD) technology. By using CMOS technology instead, multiple camera functions – timing and control, analog-to-digital conversion, and signal processing for exposure and color control – are piled onto a single integrated circuit.
"People have not been able to integrate technologies onto single chips because the [ video ] imager [component] is built in CCD technology, which is a different fabrication process than is used to build normal computer chips," Ackland said.
Other companies have tried to use a single CMOS chip in video cameras, said Ackland, but Lucent's is the first to produce high-quality images.
Lucent also said CMOS-based cameras will offer access to particular sections of an image, and will use less power than CCD cameras: A nine-volt battery would provide enough power for five hours of use. In contrast, Lucent said, today's computer-based desktops provide about 30 minutes. The extra power makes the CMOS-based cameras ideal for handheld and security use.
Already, video surveillance technology can zoom in from great distances, capturing faces, license plate numbers, even print from the pages of books, said Crew. "People don't understand that the current generation of high-tech video surveillance cameras is much more intrusive than they've assumed."
Even the video surveillance industry has acknowledged the potential for abuse of current technologies, Crew said, "Yet they're unwilling to hold off marketing and establishing video surveillance until legislation can be formulated."
Specifically, Crew referred to the national Security Industry Association, which represents the companies that build and market security technology.
"Just because it's technologically available and increasingly less expensive than it once was doesn't mean it's a good idea to start using it," Crew said. "We believe there is a pressing need for some line to be drawn here." Although privacy protection and meaningful sanctions for those who would abuse the technology are needed, he said, "We don't even have the rules."
The Association's Richard Chase said halting the market until guidelines or laws are in place is unrealistic. "In an ideal world that would be great. But my real-world perspective tells me that's not going to happen."
There is an advantage to the technology getting to market before it is regulated, according to Chase. That way, he said, "We know some of the pitfalls that need to be avoided, whereas before we did not."
The association is holding a summit this fall to establish recommendations for state and federal legislation. Chase said the ACLU will be invited to participate, as will representatives from other private and public sector areas.
Existing California law governing the use of recorded audio is a good model for legislation, Crew said. "California has a series of statutes that say you cannot audio-record confidential conversations surreptitiously. It requires that both parties have to know and consent to the recording."
The statutes not only make surreptitious recording a crime but establish meaningful penalties for breaking the law. "That is the sort of model, a beginning point that could be used for inappropriate video surveillance," Crew said.
He cited the example of a borough in England, which recently installed more than 60 cameras on the streets of four towns – 15 cameras for each town center – as part of a unique government-funded law enforcement effort. City leaders have pointed to surveys showing a resulting 30 percent drop in crime. They say people feel safer at night.
Crew said the video surveillance industry is a $250 million-a-year business in England and is even producing a burgeoning side-market for surveillance outtakes. "We have seen where people's private, intimate moments have not only been recorded, but commercially marketed for entertainment and titillation value," Crew said. "Most people in this country," he added, "would not want their moments of embarrassment or intimacy or victimization of crime commercially marketed."
In a police pilot program in Oakland, California, officials considered the ACLU's research and other materials and decided not to use video surveillance cameras, Crew said. "The Oakland Police Department reversed their participation and said they couldn't find credible evidence that these systems actually reduced crime anyway."
Karen Coyle of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility concludes that new technologies like Lucent's are a given and not the central issue. "The technology already exists to fully invade our privacy. The issues today are social, not technological. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"
