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Wireless Video Surveillance can keep your business secure even when you're away—try a wireless video surveillance device on for size -

NEED TO MONITOR YOUR OFFICE OR warehouse overnight? Want to keep an eye on retail locations or branch offices even when you're not there? Setting up a surveillance system used to be a struggle. But the spread of 802.11 wireless networks in homes and businesses, with the Internet connecting them, has given rise to wireless video surveillance cameras for extra security.

The CRN Test Center reviewed the Toshiba IK-WB11A and the Veo Wireless Observer, both of which can attach to wireless networks. These wireless video surveillance cameras are easy to use and allow recorded images to be sent to a Web site where they can be viewed anywhere in the world. The wireless video surveillance cameras don't require cables of even a PC hookup, and can send video clips via e-mail when motion is detected.

Toshiba's IK-WB11A wireless video surveillance camera offers industrial-strength wireless video capability with mounting brackets for indoor of outdoor use and the ability to communicate over either a wired or wireless network. Initial setup of the unit is a bit tricky, but it offers outstanding video that's both crisp and clear.

Business owners will appreciate the unit's accurate remote pan, tilt and zoom operations, although the price is steep at $649 (all prices street). Toshibas's wireless video surveillance cam era is less intuitive to use than others, but overall, it offers an impressive list of features for almost any location and can be integrated into other alarm systems for motion detection.

The Veo Wireless Observer wireless video surveillance camera looks and feels much more like a consumer video camera--and is priced like one, too. The unit incorporates all the basics needed for a wireless security camera in an easy-to-use package. That includes 2X zoom capability and full pan and tilt.

Like the IK-WB11A, setup was tricky. The camera requires a serial connection, a spare of which can be hard to find even on today's computers still supporting legacy ports. The Wireless Observer lacks today's more common USB or Ethernet connections.

But once plugged in to a serial connection, the Setup Wizard makes final installation a snap. The Wireless Observer's browser based console is easy to use, and almost anyone will be able to connect and control the wireless video surveillance camera quickly.

Those seeking additional functionality can use the Veo Observer Studio, a stand-alone tool included with the wireless video surveillance camera. Observer Studio offers video recording and basic editing capabilities, and it adds camcorder-like functionality to the wireless video surveillance camera, though the camera's resolution is too low to create videos. The Observer Studio is great for light indoor wireless video surveillance and is a perfect compromise for small businesses at only $300.

Nanny-Cam May Leave a Home Exposed

Some states have passed laws that prohibit placing surreptitious wireless video surveillance cameras in places like dressing rooms, but legislatures have generally not considered the legality of intercepting those signals. Nor have they considered that the signals would be intercepted from wireless video surveillance cameras that people planted themselves. ''There's no clear law that protects us,'' Professor [Clifford S. Fishman] said. ''You put it all together, the implications are pretty horrifying.''

Surveillance has been a growing part of American life, especially since Sept. 11. Video cameras have been installed on city streets, and some cities and airports have tried to tie cameras into facial recognition systems, with mixed results. Privacy advocates argue that the benefit to security is questionable and the intrusiveness is high. But the cameras continue to proliferate -- with many people buying them for personal use. Surveillance cameras have also sprouted at intersections to catch drivers who speed or run red lights and as a part of many voyeur-oriented pornographic Web sites.

A laptop computer equipped to intercept wireless signals displayed images sent by a wireless video surveillance camera used as a baby monitor in Chatham, N.J. A hacker captured the wireless video surveillance image of a woman in a New Jersey home. An employee at a Staples store in Madison, N.J., viewed by a hacker who intercepted images from a wireless video surveillance camera system in the store. One expert on eavesdropping said such digital peeping is apparently legal.

Thousands of people who have installed a popular wireless video surveillance camera, intending to increase the security of their homes and offices, have instead unknowingly opened a window on their activities to anyone equipped with a cheap receiver.

The wireless video surveillance camera, which is heavily advertised on the Internet, is intended to send its video signal to a nearby base station, allowing it to be viewed on a computer or a television. But its signal can be intercepted from more than a quarter-mile away by off-the-shelf electronic equipment costing less than $250.

A recent drive around the New Jersey suburbs with two security experts underscored the ease with which a digital eavesdropper can peek into homes where the wireless video surveillance cameras are put to use as video baby monitors and inexpensive security cameras.

The rangy young driver pulled his truck around a corner in the well-to-do suburban town of Chatham and stopped in front of an unpretentious house. A window on his laptop's screen that had been flickering suddenly showed a crisp black-and-white video image: a living room, seen from somewhere near the floor. Baby toys were strewn across the floor, and a woman sat on a couch.

After showing the nanny-camwireless video surveillance images, the man, a privacy advocate who asked that his name not be used, drove on, scanning other houses and finding a view from above a back door and of an empty crib.

In the nearby town of Madison, from the parking lot of a Staples store, workers could be observed behind the cash register. The driver walked into the store and pointed up at a corner of the room. ''Take a look,'' he said. Above the folded-back steel security shutters was a nubbin of technology: a barely perceptible wireless video surveillance camera looking down on the employees.

''I can only imagine driving around the Bay Area with one of these,'' said Aviel D. Rubin, a security researcher at AT&T Labs, which identified the problem.

Around San Francisco, high-technology toys like security cameras are likely to be far more common. Mr. Rubin tries to help the business world recognize security threats and address them. Although there is no evidence that video snooping is widespread, it is so easy and the opportunity to do it is so great that it is a cause for concern, said Mr. Rubin, who was along for the ride.

Such digital peeping is apparently legal, said Clifford S. Fishman, a law professor at the Catholic University of America and the author of a leading work on surveillance law, ''Wiretapping and Eavesdropping.''

When told of the novel form of high-technology prying, Professor Fishman said, ''That is astonishing and appalling.'' But he said that wiretap laws generally applied to intercepting sound, not video. Legal prohibitions on telephone eavesdropping, he said, were passed at the urging of the telecommunications industry, which wanted to make consumers feel safe using its products. ''There's no corresponding lobby out there protecting people from digital surveillance,'' he said.

With no federal law and no consensus among the states on the legality of tapping video signals, Professor Fishman said, ''The nanny who decided to take off her dress and clean up the house in her underwear would probably have no recourse'' against someone tapping the signal. Police officers with search warrants could use the technology for investigative purposes, as well, he suggested.

Surveillance has been a growing part of American life, especially since Sept. 11. Video cameras have been installed on city streets, and some cities and airports have tried to tie cameras into facial recognition systems, with mixed results. Privacy advocates argue that the benefit to security is questionable and the intrusiveness is high. But the cameras continue to proliferate -- with many people buying them for personal use. Surveillance cameras have also sprouted at intersections to catch drivers who speed or run red lights and as a part of many voyeur-oriented pornographic Web sites.

Ads for the ''Amazing X10 Camera'' have been popping up all over the World Wide Web for months. The ads for the device, the XCam2, carry a taste of cheesecake -- usually a photo of a glamorous-looking woman in a swimming pool or on the edge of a couch. But, in fact, many people have bought the cameras for far more pedestrian purposes.

''Frankly, a lot of it is kind of dull,'' and most of the women being surreptitiously observed are probably nannies, said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. He calls the X10 ads ''one of the weird artifacts of the Internet age.''

The company that sells the cameras, X10 Wireless Technology Inc. of Seattle, was created in 1999 by an American subsidiary of X10 Ltd., a Hong Kong company. It is privately held and does not release sales figures. A spokesman, Jeff Denenholz, said the company had no comment for this article.

Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public stock offering that was later withdrawn provide some figures, however. X10 lost $8.1 million on revenue of $21.3 million for the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2000, and said that 52 percent of its revenue came from wireless video surveillance camera kits. At the camera's current retail price of about $80, that would translate to sales of more than 138,000 wireless video surveillance cameras in those nine months alone.

Rob Enderle, an analyst at the Giga Information Group, a technology consulting business, said he was a big fan of X10 -- which sells the most popular wireless video surveillance cameras on the consumer market -- and its wares. ''Theirs is the least expensive option out there, and they actually do a good job,'' he said.

Mr. Enderle was surprised to hear of the wireless video surveillance cameras' lack of security, but said he did not see a cause for great concern. ''Clearly, if you are pointing that at areas like your bathroom or shower, there may be people enjoying that view with you,'' he said. ''But fundamentally, you shouldn't be pointing it that way anyway.''

The vulnerability of wireless products has been well understood for decades. The radio spectrum is crowded, and broadcast is an inherently leaky medium; baby monitors would sometimes receive signals from early cordless phones (most are scrambled today to prevent monitoring). A subculture of enthusiasts grew up around inexpensive scanning equipment that could pick up signals from cordless and cellular phones, as former Speaker Newt Gingrich discovered when recordings of a 1996 conference call strategy session were released by Democrats.

More recently, with the advent of wireless computer networks based on the increasingly popular technology known as WiFi, yet another new subculture has emerged: people known as ''war drivers'' who enter poorly safeguarded wireless networks while driving or walking around with laptops.

In the case of the XCam2, the wireless video surveillance cameras transmit an unscrambled analog radio signal that can be picked up by receivers sold with the cameras. Replacing the receiver's small antenna with a more powerful one and adding a signal amplifier to pick up transmissions over greater distances is a trivial task for anyone who knows his way around a RadioShack and can use a soldering iron.

Products intended for the consumer market rarely include strong security, said Gary McGraw, the chief technology officer of Cigital, a software risk-management company. That is because security costs money, and even pennies of added expense eat into profits. ''When you're talking about a cheap thing that's consumer grade that you're supposed to sell lots and lots of copies of, that really matters,'' he said.

Refitting an X10 camera with encryption technology would be beyond the skills of most consumers. It is best for manufacturers to design security features into products from the start, because adding them afterward is far more difficult, Mr. McGraw said. The cameras are only the latest example of systems that are too insecure in their first versions, he said, and cited other examples, including Microsoft's Windows operating system. ''It's going to take a long time for consumer goods to have any security wedged into them at all,'' he said.

Another wireless video surveillance camera, the DCS-1000W from D-Link Systems Inc., does offer encrypted transmission and ties into standard WiFi networks -- but it costs at least $350.

As a security expert, Mr. Rubin said he was concerned about the kinds of mischief that a criminal could carry out by substituting one video image for another. In one scenario, a robber or kidnapper wanting to get past a security camera at the front door could secretly record the video image of a trusted neighbor knocking. Later, the robber could force that image into the victim's receiver with a more powerful signal. ''I have my computer retransmit these images while I come by,'' he said, explaining the view of a would-be robber.

Far-fetched, perhaps. That is the way security experts think. But those who use the wireless video surveillance cameras and find out about the security hole seem to grasp the implications quickly.

Back at the Staples store in Madison, employees said they did not know that they were being watched by security monitors. The manager of the store, when asked whether he knew that his cameras were broadcasting to the outside world, seemed somewhat shaken, and excused himself to go into his office, he said, to put down the small display carousel he was carrying.

He did not return.

Wireless Video Surveillance in the palm of your hand

In a university, corporate complex or other campus environment, video cameras help security officers see what's going on around corners and behind walls. But when a suspicious image crosses a TV screen, only a few get the whole picture. When the dispatcher in the central office radios a guard with instructions to investigate, that guard "has no further intelligence on the situation, other than what dispatch has told him," said Jordan Serlin, chief operating officer at Cenuco in Boca Raton, Fla.

Is there an intruder? Is there a weapon? Is the figure on the screen just an employee working late "or is it somebody stealing computers out of the warehouse," Serlin said.

Cenuco is one of several companies trying to bring the full benefits of video surveillance to officers who patrol campus facilities, along with others on the move who need to monitor security cameras. The company's Mobile Video Transmitter System lets users view surveillance video on wireless hand-held computers or cellular phones.

Demand is growing among security professionals for wireless video surveillance systems that transmit video images to hand-held devices, said Alan Matchett, security project development engineer at Johnson Controls in Minneapolis and author of the book CCTV for Security Professionals. If they have wireless access, officers who patrol a large venue don't need to return to the CO to view an image before responding to an incident or rely on a dispatcher's description of a suspect, he said.

"A second-hand description of somebody is not necessarily the best," Matchett said.

"Without a question, one of the hot areas of the market is wireless video surveillance cameras," said Joseph Freeman, president of market research and consulting firm J.P. Freeman & Co. in Newtown, Conn., which discussed wireless video surveillance cameras in a recent report. Although the market for wireless access to security video is still very small, Freeman said sales of such products for business, government and consumer applications are growing by 35% to 40% per year.

Other companies that offer wireless access to images from security cameras include Sweden-headquartered Axis Communications, which has offices in Boston, San Diego and Sunnyvale, Calif.; Pocketmultimedia of Mystic, Conn.; and Verint Systems of Melville, N.Y. Integrators also design systems of this kind for customers, using off-the-shelf technology, Freeman said.

Although few have been installed, wireless video surveillance systems are generating "a lot of talk" among security professionals, said Matchett, noting that he expected to see new products in this category at the annual meeting of ASIS International, the industry's trade association, conducted last month.

Cenuco got its start by creating systems for distance learning. In the late 1990s, its engineers developed a process for transmitting video to the Nokia model 9290 cell phone. "Then Sept. 11 occurred," Serlin said. Executives at Cenuco decided that if they could enhance their technology, encrypt the data and make it available to a variety of wireless devices, it had great potential in security applications.

"We've entered a new era of security," Serlin said. "Everybody wants to have just-in-time, real-time information, irrespective of where they are." And in large corporations or homeland security organizations, several different facilities would have to be monitored simultaneously.

Cenuco's system transmits wireless video surveillance images from any kind of surveillance camera over an IP network, so users can view them from a variety of devices equipped for Internet access. These could include desktop PCs with wired connections, personal digital assistants (PDAs) equipped for 802.11 wireless local area networks (LANs) or late model cell phones.

Cenuco markets three systems based on its technology - MommyTrack for consumers, Mobile Monitor for small businesses and the Mobile Video Transmitter System for large enterprises.

In the Mobile Video Transmitter System, a server takes video from a closed-circuit TV (CCTV) system, an IP-based video system or a digital video recorder. Software installed on the end-user devices lets users access images from the server via the Internet. If the device is a PDA, it must run under Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system. Cenuco doesn't support other platforms, such as the Palm operating system, because few customers have asked for that option, Serlin said.

In addition to viewing video images, security officers can use their handheld devices to send and receive instant messages via Cenuco's server, Serlin said. Cenuco can configure the system to send users an alert when a motion detector goes off near a wireless video surveillance camera.

The technology works with networks running under the GSM, CDMA, PCS and 802.11 protocols. Users can migrate from one wireless technology to another without reconfiguring the system.

"As long as the device can connect to the Internet, the product works," Serlin said.

For example, if an organization starts out using cellular and then implements an 802.11g network, "it will still work, and it will increase performance," Serlin said. With faster, better wireless options on the horizon, "we made sure that the technology from the get-go took all those potential future models into account so that the customer won't have to worry about it," he said.

After logging onto the system with a user name and password, the user sees a list of cameras he or she is authorized to view. Cenuco encrypts the image data to protect it as it passes over the air. Some users also set up a virtual private network, both to add another layer of security and to dedicate a portion of the network bandwidth for security images, Serlin said.

One organization using the Mobile Video Transmitter is the University of Miami, which is transmits security video over its 802.11 network. Authorized personnel use PDAs to view images from selected security cameras and can remotely pan, tilt or zoom the cameras to adjust their views.

As of August, FCI Associates - a Cenuco reseller and a major subcontractor in the security alarm industry - had yet to close a sale on the Mobile Video Transmitter System. But representatives of the firm have been talking with many business owners who might use the technology to monitor multiple retail stores via their cell phones, said Todd Morgan, vice president of business development at FCI in Colorado Springs, Colo.

"I guess the main reason we decided to partner with Cenuco is the unique flexibility they bring to the marketplace," Morgan said. "With the Cenuco product, you basically have unlimited access to your video data."

While wireless video surveillance stands at the center of Cenuco's business, Axis Communications offers its Axis Camera Explorer (ACE) for the Pocket PC as part of a larger line of IP-based surveillance products. It allows users to view video images from multiple cameras on a Pocket PC-based PDA, or a notebook or tablet computer, by accessing a server over an 802.11 network.

With IP-based wireless video surveillance camera systems, security personnel on large campuses have the freedom to roam beyond traditional limits, said Fredrik Nilsson, general manager for Axis Communication in the U.S.

"You can use any Web browser from any location, any room inside or outside the campus, to monitor any cameras you have access to," Nilsson said.

The first product Axis introduced for viewing video over the Internet delivers images to desktop PCs over a wired network. The system takes the video from an IP camera or from an Axis video server that converts images from analog cameras into a digital stream.

Although it extends access to wireless video surveillance cameras, the desktop system does not let security guards view images while patrolling the campus.

"Once people got the concept that you're no longer tied to those monitoring rooms, they also started to request the ability to use hand-held computing devices with Web browsers to monitor different cameras," Nilsson said. The result was the wireless product, ACE for Pocket PC.

To view images from multiple cameras on a Pocket PC device, the user must download special software. A tablet or notebook computer needs only a standard Web browser.

Like Cenuco, Axis employs a user name and password for authentication and managers can assign different levels of access to different users. For additional data security, Axis relies on the encryption and other measures an organization already has deployed on its wireless LAN.

"There are technologies from Cisco, Nortel, etc. that you can use," Nilsson said. "It's nothing specific to our equipment."

Third-party developers working with Axis have created functions that allow users to control awireless video surveillance camera's pan, tilt and zoom functions from their hand-held devices and to view recorded, as well as live, video.

"So, if you hear that something happened at the back door a couple of minutes ago, you can go back and view the recorded video," Nilsson said.

Users also can get software that automatically triggers an image to appear on screen when a motion detector goes off near that wireless video surveillance camera.

"You don't have to browse through the 25 cameras you have access to," to view the right image, Nilsson said. "It's an automatic pop-up."

Most Axis customers use the desktop version of ACE rather than the wireless version, but ACE for Pocket PC has proven popular on large college and university campuses, Nilsson said. "It's been used in some industrial applications as well, where operators need to monitor certain areas where you can't have access because it's too hot, or too clean, or something like that."

Axis currently has no plans to develop more software for the wireless video surveillance system, but it's creating standard interfaces to help third parties create their own enhancements. Versions of the product for other kinds of wireless devices, such as cell phones and Blackberries, are "around the corner," Nilsson said.

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