OverView

OverView was prototyped at Hack the Police 4 Sep 2019, and subsequently presented at the showcase in New Scotland Yard, Nov 2019.

To reach out to Lukas and Wendi about OverView, please contact: team@policerewired.org

Mapping out investigations

Wendi, Lukas

What is Overview right now?

Overview shows a map of different points of interests such as bus stops, tube stations and most importantly CCTV cameras. A camera point on the map right now is one of three different kinds: it either is a road traffic camera web scraped and linking to this website, an ATM which may or may not contain a useful camera or a placeholder for private cameras. The rotation period of all cameras is stored if known and it is possible to specify a point in time that will hide cameras which rotation period expired. The project is designed for the exclusive use by the police.

Direction

We can now take the project in a couple (not exclusive) directions:

  • Implementing any real cameras the police has access to by displaying their location and possibly linking to a life feed, a link to download the footage or at least including an image of what the camera is picking up.
  • A special focus might be council cameras.
  • Another idea might be to allow third parties to maintain their cameras through a third portal directly (like providing councils with a website in which they can input their cameras).
  • Creating a central database of camera footage, standardising formats and download procedure and linking it to the map appropriately.
  • Implementing the website that allows civilians to sign their own cameras, including a still from the camera or even a life feed.
  • Reaching out to the TFL to use the TFL’s data on bus positions to include the cameras on busses and allow the police to visualise which bus exactly might have been in proximity at a given point in time.
  • Utilising automatic analysis of license plates in the video feeds of cameras to request dash-cam footage.
  • Including information on how to request live feeds for third-party cameras and displaying them with the camera location (ATM’s of different banks might be a focus here).

What we need now

In order to now continue the project, structure would be very helpful for us: what exactly is the police looking for, in which timeframe should the project be complete, when could we give a furthered project to officers to try and if we are being compensated for our work are all questions that are still open to us.

Nevertheless, developing the project so far and creating something that may a meaningful impact on the world has been both fun and exciting and we are glad for allowing us this opportunity!

Thank you for making this possible.