Ogden, Utah is about to launch its Crime Blimp, which will be linked with thousands of private and government CCTVs around the city.
Officials are shooting for an April launch date for the blimp, under construction by Weber State University’s Utah Center for Aeronautical Innovation and Design, which will feed video to a fledgling version of the RTCC. They hope the center is fully operational by July.
The idea is to give officers information about a crime scene while they are still rolling up on an event in progress, officials say. Operators in the real-time crime center linking with any camera systems in the area can immediately relay information on what they see to responding officers.
At the moment, the city is only concerned with linking external cameras together.
Planned at 52 feet long and 4 feet in diameter to hold a 20-pound payload of cameras, GPS gear, and telemetry, the blimp will likely be the first to patrol the skies of an American city, according to Greiner and UCAID.
The blimp causes more heartburn to local civil libertarians like Bernie Allen, a defense attorney for more than 30 years, than do the integrated real-time cameras.
“If police can’t go into your backyard without probable cause, then why would they be allowed to fly over your backyard with a blimp?” he asks.
This will cause numerous privacy and legal issues. The response from the city has been a bit snarky.
“We’re not interested in filming the city’s 80,000-plus population,” Weloth said. “Just the ones causing trouble.”
Eventually, everyone will be filmed because they might, someday, cause trouble. The truth is, you will never be able to stop all crime. A crime blimp is there mainly to spy on all the people, not just the ones who might be causing problems. It’s designed to make everyone afraid at all times so as to better control the citizenry.
