Tuesday, February 18, 2014
It once was the Night has a Thousand Eyes
But that is no longer true, at least not at Newark Airport. Thanks to a new type of LED lighting thos Thousand Eyes are available 24 hours so your Big Airport Brother can now keep a close watch on what you are doing.
Visitors to Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport may notice the bright, clean lighting that now blankets the cavernous interior, courtesy of 171 recently installed LED fixtures. But they probably will not realize that the light fixtures are the backbone of a system that is watching them.Of course it will only be used for good when it is introduced. But let's be honest, how long before the folks running it give into the temptation to use it for other purposes. Probably not very long at all.
Using an array of sensors and eight video cameras around the terminal, the light fixtures are part of a new wireless network that collects and feeds data into software that can spot long lines, recognize license plates and even identify suspicious activity, sending alerts to the appropriate staff.
The project is still in its early stages, but executives with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, are already talking about expanding it to other terminals and buildings.
To customers like the Port Authority, the systems hold the promise of better management of security as well as energy, traffic and people. But they also raise the specter of technology racing ahead of the ability to harness it, running risks of invading privacy and mismanaging information, privacy advocates say.
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