The UK's surveillance camera commissioner has told the British government to adopt a "common sense position" and bring all bodies using surveillance camera systems under its code of practice. Tony Porter, whose term as commissioner was in 2017 extended for another three years, used his annual report, published yesterday, to …

A Scottish couple have been awarded damages of more than £17,000 in total for the "extreme stress" they suffered as a result of the "highly intrusive" use of CCTV systems by the owner of a neighbouring property. Debbie and Tony Woolley were awarded £8,634 each after Sheriff Ross, in a ruling issued at Edinburgh Sheriff Court, …

Criminals infected 70 percent of storage devices tied to closed-circuit TVs in Washington DC eight days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump. The ransomware infection downed 123 of its 187 network video recorders, each controlling up to four CCTVs, and forced the city to wipe its affected IT systems which it says …

Sony has killed off what, charitably, looks like a debug backdoor in 80 of its web-connected surveillance cameras that can be exploited to hijack the devices. The hardcoded logins can be potentially used by malware, such as variants of the Mirai bot and its ilk, to automatically and silently commandeer swathes of Sony-built …

Updated Here we have yet another example of an internet-facing home security camera with chocolate-padlock-grade security. The surveillance cam, examined by security firm Bitdefender, comes with motion and sound detectors, two-way audio, built-in lullabies to send children to sleep, temperature and humidity sensors and a microSD/SDHC …

A massive network of hacked CCTV cameras is being used to bring down computers around the world, we're told. The unusual 25,000-strong botnet was apparently spotted by US security outfit Sucuri when it investigated an online assault against an ordinary jewelry store. The shop's website was flooded offline after drowning in 35 …

After more than a year of debate and public submissions, the Victorian government is pressing ahead with getting rid of the “emergency help phones” that are a familiar sight on the side of freeways. Last year, prompted by the high cost of maintaining the fixed-line phones, the state's government opened up a public consultation …

Closed circuit TV systems, designed to protect organisations' physical assets, commonly create holes for hackers to exploit and tunnel their way into enterprise systems. Research carried out by independent consultant Andrew Tierney on behalf of Cloudview – a video surveillance company based in Hampshire, England – found major …

Crooks are hijacking CCTV cameras in shopping malls to launch denial-of-service attacks, datacenter security firm Imperva warns. The abuse is possible because camera operators are taking a lax approach to security and failing to change default passwords on the devices. CCTV equipment are common Internet-of-Things (IoT) device …

Cops in crocodile-infested Northern Australia will use facial recognition matched to photos from CCTV and body-worn cameras to capture felons across the vast state. The law will identify potential criminals from its network of 190 CCTV cameras and those in use in the Northern Territory's ongoing trial of body-worn cameras …

Feature Last week, I looked at two home camera systems: Arlo from Netgear and Welcome from Netatmo. To recap, Arlo is pretty much a straightforward cloud-based CCTV system, offering you cameras with motion sensors and notification, together with an app to view things on your phone. Netatmo's Welcome is a stand-alone camera – again …

Concerns regarding the secret use of facial recognition technology at the recent Download Festival were absolutely spot on, said surveillance camera commissioner Tony Porter, speaking at the Security Twenty 15 conference last week. Leaked by a Police Oracle interview published a week ahead of schedule, and picked up by The …

The Surveillance Camera Commissioner has written to local authority chief executives, reminding them of their duty to "pay regard" to the surveillance camera code of practice. Tony Porter, appointed as the first Surveillance Camera Commissioner in March 2014, has circulated a letter reminding those who are responsible for …

Ofcom has rejected a claim that Channel 4 infringed the privacy of a pregnant Southampton woman by broadcasting CCTV footage of her administering drunken oral pleasure to a chap in a tower block lift. "Ms K" lodged a complaint of "unwarranted infringement of privacy" to the TV watchdog regarding the 9 June 2014 episode of CCTV …

Queensland's Logan City Council has opened a $1.3 million CCTV surveillance centre using facial recognition technology to track drunks, criminals, and burst water mains. The monitoring program has grown over the last decade from nine CCTVs to more than 300, and runs on the Teleste platform used in Paris, Sweden and in Austria' …

Something for the Weekend, Sir? My wife is parading naked in front of a webcam again. Here's the funny thing, though: she doesn't even know that the webcam is on. In fact, it's not even her computer – it's mine – and she's not doing it deliberately. Come to think of it, I wasn't even aware that my webcam was on until just now when the green LED illuminated all …

Nikon is braced for weeks of fun after it was targeted by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV in an annual consumer complaints show which last year forced a grovelling apology from Apple. The investigative program “3.15” broadcast a special edition last Saturday to coincide with World Consumer Rights Day, however it’s often used to …

China’s mobile phone industry has turned up the heat on Qualcomm after submitting a damning report to government regulators in an on-going antitrust investigation into the US chip giant. China’s Communications Industry Association, consulted 20 out of its 30 key member companies before submitting its findings to the National …