Using CCTVs, technology to fight crime

Posted on The National

DALE LUMA

TWO hundred Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras were installed for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) leaders’ summit security operations in the National Capital District (NCD) last November at a cost of K42 million. The National’s reporter DALE LUMA looks at how this technology can enhance policing operations and crime prevention in the NCD.

FOR more than 10 months after the Apec leaders’ summit, the 200 security cameras installed in strategic locations in NCD were left unused or had remained as White Elephants.
However, police in the NCD are set to make full use of the CCTVs for crime prevention and, law and order enforcement operations.

A surveillance camera is seen next to a sign of Huawei outside a shopping mall in Beijing, China. Photo: Reuters

This follows the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) between the police force and the NCD Commission (NCDC) on Oct 11 for the police to have control and use of the CCTV surveillance system.
NCD governor Powes Parkop previously commissioned and handed it over to NCD Metropolitan Supt Perou N’dranou. But the police could not use security monitoring system because the management of the building (Oakley Haus) where the CCTV control centre is located did allow police access.

David Manning

Manning … security cameras to be installed near schools
Acting Police Comm David Manning said the previous arrangements on the use of the CCTVs was under the “auspicious” of the Apec summit security operations, hence the MoA.
“The MoA has enabled police to operate the control centre to monitor public security in the strategic locations where CCTVs have been installed.
“The surveillance system has the capacity to cover most of the major suburbs in the NCD known for criminal activities and petty crimes. These include Erima, Gordon, Koki, Badili and Boroko,” he added.
Police and the NCDC had started discussions on July 19 to reactivate 190 cameras.
“The cameras will help police to keep security watch on a much wider coverage, adding more bite to crime prevention patrols and, law and order enforcement, to our limited manpower.
“We are also mulling the installation of more cameras in crowded places where human movement is high. These include bus stops and shopping centres,” he added.
“Certain areas are popular for public gatherings. CCTVs will help enhance our operations to ensure law and order with our limited manpower. CCTVs can also deter criminals.
“The advantage of CCTVs is enhancing the planning of security tasks with lesser manpower. This has been the subject of many discussions and we will be looking at installing more cameras at shops and even school areas,” he added.
Manning said: “We have to consider the privacy of citizens. Thus, CCTVs will only be installed in public areas. Cameras will be installed on street poles near schools.
“Now that we have access to the CCTV control centre, policemen who were trained for Apec security will be tasked again to man the centre.
“In preparation for Apec, our men were trained to operate the controls at the centre. We also sent some of our technical staff to overseas for training and camera maintenance.
“But, going forward, we will need more personnel and will be looking at options to continue such trainings to ensure that we have adequately trained our people to operate the TV cameras.”

Powes Parkop

Parkop … more CCTVs installed can fight crime
Parkop reiterated said vision to have more CCTVs installed in as many parts of the city as possible.
“This will help us to manage and check the rise of crime by identifying and arresting suspects with swift response to emergencies. CCTVs can also help manage traffic,” he said.
“We already have CCTVs at selected traffic lights but we need coverage at Ela Beach as soon as possible and at the new Gordon Market and its surrounding.
“CCTVs can help us identify and catch suspected criminals and check violence.
“The long-range cameras can capture even petty crimes such as bag-snatching at roundabouts, markets and other hotspots,” he said, adding that the surveillance system had worked well in many cities in the world.

Rio Fiocco

Fiocco … applauds NCDC-police joint fight against crime
PORT Moresby Chamber of Commerce and Industry (POMCCI) president Rio Fiocco expressed the business communities’ support for the use of the CCTV control centre for law and order enforcement.
“We believe that making Port Moresby a safer environment will not just be better for business houses but also for our employees, residents and visitors,” he added.
Fiocco said POMCCI also applauded NCDC’s initiative to work closely with the police other problems like graffiti that often occurs in the middle of the night.
“We are very glad to work closely with the governor and metropolitan superintendent to make Port Moresby a safer and better place for all.”
He said one way business houses could help was by paying for the installation of CCTVs in its neighbourhood.
“This will help police widen their public law and order monitoring. Our members can also work with other interested groups to set up neighbourhood watch schemes,” he added.
Fiocco said police and NCDC should better monitor bus stations to ensure that passengers commuted safely on PMVs (Public Motor Vehicles).

Panuel Mogish

Justice Mogish … CCTVs and technology in general must be used to fight crime
National Court judge Justice Panuel Mogish had previously remarked on how CCTV and technology in general must be used to fight crime.
He said this when sentencing a 28-year-old man who raped a 19-year-old student in 2015.
Justice Mogish also urged the Government, business houses and individual property owners to install CCTVs to assist in the fight against crime.
“CCTVs and mobile phones are today vital assets that can be used to deter crime,” he stressed.
The rape was recorded on a mobile phone, posted on social media and the video clip was used to identify the accused who was jailed.
“This is the first case I have heard in which the offender’s images were posted on the internet, successfully prosecuted, convicted and sentenced.
“Capturing images on the mobile phones and making them available to the police confidential line is an effective method ordinary citizens can use in the fight against crime. Citizens can fight crime with the use of technology,” he added.

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Photo: China News Service

China’s hi-tech cameras watching every move

Life has gotten a lot tougher for China’s public-transport pickpockets.
A new metro line in Guangzhou, a wealthy city in the southern province of Guangdong, has been fitted with 4K CCTV cameras that enable real-time surveillance of every inch of the train in ultra-high definition.
The 22km route is thought to be the first subterranean train line in the world to be armed with the cutting-edge security system that beams live images to a control room with spectacular clarity.
– South China Morning Post

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Ecuador fighting crime using Chinese technology

Ecuador’s hi-tech security surveillance control centre.

Ecuador says its network of security cameras has helped bring down the crime rate, according to Xinhua.
Its network of cameras has been installed across the South American nation’s 24 provinces – keeping watch on its population of 16.4 million people – using a system known as the ECU911 Integrated Security Service.
Used by the country’s police, armed forces and fire brigade, it went into operation in November 2016 and features an emergency response and monitoring system.
Service deputy director Sixto Heras said the system had helped to bring down the country’s crime rate by 24 per cent since the cameras were installed.
He added that Ecuador went from a ranking of 11th safest country in South America in 2010 to the fourth safest country in 2016.

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Artistes on a mission to promote indigenous languages

Posted on The National

AN Australian indigenous singer is in the country to work with a local female artist in promoting the International Year of Indigenous Languages and ending violence against women and girls.
Emily Wurramara will work with Mereani Masani in a range of activities organised by the Australian High Commission.
Wurramara and Masani took part in cultural identity workshops and mentored high school students and youths in Port Moresby yesterday.
They travel to Goroka today.
The workshops are to highlight to young people the importance of preserving and promoting languages which are an important component of their cultural identity.
They will also introduce the “No Moa” video at the PNG 2019 Human Rights Film Festival in Goroka.
The video is being used as a campaign tool to raise awareness on ending violence against women and girls.

Go to this link for more: https://www.thenational.com.pg/artistes-on-a-mission-to-promote-indigenous-languages/

LNG money inquiry put off

By REBECCA KUKU - The National

THE Public Accounts Committee has the “ultimate power” to inquire into public entities as it is “an extension” of Parliament, according to Acting Auditor-General Gordon Kega.

Kega told The National yesterday, after the committee-sanctioned commission of inquiry into the Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited (KPHL) had to be called off, that it was a State-owned entity even though it operated as a business.
“Public money was used to set up KPHL, so it is a state entity.
“Although they operate as a private entity they are still owned by the state.”
KPHL lawyers, on behalf of the board chairman and managing director, late on Monday requested in a letter to committee chairman Sir John Pundari that the inquiry be postponed for 14 days because “key persons named in the summons” were out of the country.
It will now be held on Nov 5.
Kega said in his capacity as the auditor-general, he could go and audit KPHL because it was a state-owned entity.
“My audit reports are given to the Parliament.
“The Speaker then gives the reports to the Public Accounts Committee for deliberation before being presented to Parliament or to the National Executive Council,” he said.
“So the public accounts committee has the ultimate power to inquire into KPHL.”
The inquiry into KPHL is in relation to information sought on the aggravated income generated from the 500-plus shipments made since the start of the PNG LNG project and the first shipment in May 2014.
Sir John Pundari said it was the first time during his five terms in Parliament to see public servants unable to attend a Commission of Inquiry on a date set by the committee.
“Well I guess because they are occupying important offices, they have got other business to attend to on the date set by the committee for the Commission of Inquiry,” he said.
The committee had asked for KPHL to provide information on:

• How much had been made so far in the export of Liquefied Natural Gas;
• how much of that money had been given to the State and landowners;
• how much had been given to the provincial government of the affected areas for development and infrastructure; and,
• How much was used for KPHL’s operational cost

Sir John at an earlier press conference said that the people had the right to know how much was made from the shipment of LNG and where that money was.

Go to this link for more: https://www.thenational.com.pg/lng-money-inquiry-put-off/

Paper money and tooth brushes

By BETTY GABRIEL WAKIA - The National

WITH the invention of paper and printing on its account, China was almost destined to produce the first paper money.
The first paper money was invented in the ninth century and was made by the Tang Dynasty so that wealthy merchants would not have to carry large amounts of heavy copper coins.
It was called ‘flying money’ in those time because it was so light it could blow out of one’s hand. The paper money was made as an offshoot of the invention of block printing. The first paper money was a draft rather than real money. Original paper money like the today’s deposit receipts with the amount of total money available to the merchant written on them.
During that time, in order for merchant to exchange for cash in the provinces they deposit their cash in the capital and received a paper certificate called an exchange certificate. In this way paper money was quickly adopted by the government for forwarding tax payments. The first people to use a checking system were Muslim bankers in the 1200s, followed by Italian bankers in the 1400s.
The first Western money was issued in Sweden in 1661 followed by America in 1690, France in 1720, England in 1797, and Germany in 1806. The paper money is seen as the most common form of currency around the world today.

One of the greatest Chinese inventions of the medieval world was the mechanical clock. It was invented by the Buddhist monk, court astronomer, mathematician and engineer Yi Xing in 725 AD during the Tang Dynasty. Xing called it “Water Driven Spherical Birds Eye View Map of The Heavens” to keep track of celestial activity but unfortunately lasted only a few years before the water in the mechanism caused the metal to corrode. Without causing metal to corrode, later clocks used mercury with iron and bronze mechanisms. Hundreds of years later, an astronomer and mechanist of the Song Dynasty Su Song developed a more sophisticated clock called the Cosmic Empire in 1092. The first mechanical clock was developed in Europe two centuries earlier, but they did not have the escapement mechanism that is characteristic of mechanical clocks.
The compass was probably invented in between 221 BC and 206 BC during the Qin Dynasty by Chinese fortune-tellers who used lodestones to construct their fortune telling boards. During the Han Dynasty, they used this knowledge to create a direction finder device which resembles a spoon and when it is placed on a plate on the ground, the handle points to the south. It was first used in determining direction for the layout of buildings.
During the Song Dynasty, they come up with magnetised needles replacing the loadstone and it became very important to map makers and for the navigational devices on ships. The first person recorded as using a compass for navigation was Zheng He from Yunnan Province, who made seven ocean voyages between 1405 and 1433.
Around 960AD, Arab traders sailing to China probably learned of the Chinese method of sailing by compass and returned to Europe with the invention in 1127. Before those times, the compass had opened up the oceans for exploration and led to the discovery of the New World by using the sun, moon and the pole star to give a constant bearing and made navigation safer.
The world’s first toothbrush is thought to have been created in China. For thousands of years ago, Chinese found different tools to keep their gums and teeth clean, their teeth white and their breath fresh. They came up with water and rough cloth to clean their teeth and also rubbed things like chalk and salt across their teeth to try to get rid of grime. For mouth freshener, they used chewing twigs culled from aromatic trees and also sharpened at one end to use as a toothpick.
However, in 1498, the Chinese invented the bristle toothbrush, similar to the type used today. The bristles toothbrush was invented during the Tang Dynasty and was most likely made from coarse hairs taken from the back of a hog’s neck and attached to handles made of bone or bamboo. The first people to use the instrument to clean the teeth were Northern Chinese monks. The use of tooth brushes then spread to Europe by travelers and was adopted in Europe during the 17th century.
The Chinese-invented toothbrush might not be as interesting as paper or gunpowder but it is something that everybody uses every single day.

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Gunpowder changes war forever

By BETTY WAKIA - The National

ANCIENT Chinese made a variety of inventions and were very good at using what nature gave them.
One of the most powerfully explosive substances and best known inventions that the Chinese ever created and it is still in use to this very day is gunpowder. Ancient Chinese gunpowder made war more deadly, and it has more interesting uses, including bombs, fireworks, mining, guns and even rockets. Civilisation would be less civilised without gunpowder.
In the Han Dynasty around 1,000 AD, gunpowder was invented by the Chinese Taoist alchemists. They tried to create a recipe that would keep them alive forever, but unfortunately, this immortal panacea was never discovered, but they came up with the formula of ancient Chinese gunpowder. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, ancient Chinese proposed their knowledge of potassium nitrate and sulphur to develop a formula for gunpowder. The gunpowder still used today is very similar to the gunpowder used before, which is a mixture of charcoal, sulphur and potassium nitrate.
They are originally used to make flares of signals and fireworks which used to scare away evil spirits. Gunpowder was used in Chinese New Year, weddings and many other specials celebration in China. Today, the fireworks are still very popular in China and used around the world for celebrations.
The knowledge of ancient Chinese formula of gunpowder spread across the rest of the world and weapons powered by gunpowder stated to appear in India, Europe and the Middle East. In Europe, the use of gunpowder was first recorded in 1313 which they used it as cannons while the Chinese used it mainly for firecrackers.
In the mid to late 19th century, despite early understanding of explosives and their use, Europeans were still able to rule China by using cannons and guns; China did not pursue the development of weapons and equipment like the West. Other countries are also working to refine and find the use of gunpowder, but it is not clear whether China or other countries have a responsibility to improve the mixture of refining but they can still be attributed to its creation.
Whether you are against war or not, the Chinese have taught this knowledge to the world. You must agree that ancient Chinese gunpowder does have its benefits and still used to these days and follows the original Chinese formula.
Before printing was invented, knowledge could only be passed on by word of mouth. After that extremely expensive handwritten manuscripts were invented, but it was slow, and there was no guarantee each copy would be the same. In the Western Han Dynasty from 206 BC to 25 AD, a form of printing had been developed and it was a stone tablet rubbing, very similar to brass rubbing in principle and was used to spread Confucian knowledge and Buddhist sutras. Building on this idea, Chinese came up with two types of printing; the woodblock printing and movable type printing.
Printing
Woodblock printing was invented in 868 AD during the Tang Dynasty and it was perfectly suited to print Chinese characters. It was created by carving text and design pictures on a flat piece of woodblock by dyeing and printing the relief onto the paper or fabric. In that same year, this technology produced the first ever book, using full page woodcuts. It was a Buddhist sutra called “The Diamond Sutra”. All of a sudden, this technique of woodblock printing spread across Asia, through Japan, Korea, Philippines and Vietnam.
During the Song dynasty in 1045 AD, movable type printing was first invented by Bi Sheng. He used the idea of carving a single character on a small, identical square piece of clay and then hardened them with fire. He later glued them to an iron plate to print a page and then broke it up to redistributed for another page. Once the print was completed, the pieces were put away for future use. This invention made books cheaper and more available which spread across to Korea, Japan, Vietnam and later Europe.
In 1400s, Johann Gutenberg of Europe separately invented movable type printing further by making the individual characters of metal. The first European book printing with movable type was called Gutenberg’s Bible and it was printed in 1450s. Interestingly, until the 1490s, the Chinese started using metal type. So the printing technology remained until the invention of computers and photocopying in the 21st century makes all books are printed using movable type.
Paper
Paper was first invented in China around 105 AC and played a big role in the development of civilisation and which spread throughout the world. Before the invention, bones, tortoise shells and bamboo slips were used as writing surfaces, and their civilisation developed more creatively, which proved to be unsuitable due to their weight and volume.
In those ancient times, silk and hemp fibers were used for papermaking but the quality was far from satisfactory. During second century in the Eastern Han Dynasty, paper was traditionally assumed to be invented by Chai Lun, who was the head of a royal workshop that time. He made his paper by mashing up the bark of a tree, hemp, fishing nets, linen and also adding water until a wooden frame with interwoven weed sieves was immersed and removed from the mixture and allowed to dry in the sun. In terms of concept and technology, the earliest paper is very similar to modern paper.
Paper gradually spread from China and around 610 AD; it was brought to Japan then at the beginning of the sixth century it moved to Vietnam and India. During the eighth century, paper spread throughout Chinese Turkestan in central Asia, the Arab world, reaching Syria, Egypt, Morocco, and Spain.
It took a thousand years after inventing the right paper to reach southern France and the rest of Europe. It was not until around 1490 when it reach Britain and the first well-known paper mill was built in England. In the 16th century, paper reached the Americas, by which time it had become a truly global product.


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Ancient land of inventions, discoveries

By BETTY WAKIA - The National

IN PNG and other Pacific Island countries, China plays a significant role in providing both investments and development aid. More than 40 of its firms are established in PNG’s infrastructure development and property construction, while the Ramu Nickel and Cobalt mine leads China’s resource extraction.
Chinese firms contribute to PNG in investment and development helping make PNG the fastest growing economy in the Pacific region today. Currently China is trying to connect itself to the Pacific Island countries through the trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative by pushing more of their university students to study some of the Pacific Island languages.
Because of those investments between the two countries, every household in PNG has products ranging from store goods to material goods from China.
One thing that we in PNG don’t realise is that those products in one way or another have been invented or discovered in China.
As we all know China has changed faster in the last 20 years than any other country in the world. With its high speed economic growth, it has impacted the world, increased its global reach and participation in international organisations.
It created a worldwide unbeatable manufacturing and export empire and its products can be found in houeholds the world over today.
As the economy, science, technology, society and culture make rapid progress, people around the world fix their eyes on this great ancient nation that may provide clues to the driving forces behind the current rapid economic growth.
As time went by the skills and materials improved the quality and type of tools available at that time.
Chinese are known for several important inventions that later spread around the world.
Although China may currently export a large number of products, it once was exporting very valuable information, and without it, the rest of the world would have lost it.
China is known as the land of inventions and discoveries, which the whole world are eager to learn about its past that has led the world and given birth to a brilliant ancient science and technology.
The development of science and technology in those times was based on the concept of ‘integration of nature and man’ which was observing and studying of the human body, the objective world, the heavens and earth which nourished Chinese culture and civilisation and contributed greatly to mankind.
For centuries China stood as one of the world’s oldest and leading ancient civilisations, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences.
China can trace its culture back to a mixture of small primitive tribes that have expanded to become the great nation it is today.
For over 40 centuries, they have created a culture with a strong tradition, values, and philosophy that was included in the orthodox version of the traditional religion called the Confucianism.
This was taught in the academy, and tested in imperial civil service exams.
These values are widely used throughout Chinese society, and are characterised by a secular emphasis on society and administration.
The Ancient Chinese are known to be the pioneers in many fields and very clever civilisation, innovative and creative people and were able to utilise the materials they had available to make tools that they found useful. Many of the things that we take for granted today were first invented or created by the Chinese.
Prime examples of their creativity and inventiveness are printing technology, paper, compass, clock, gunpowder and small things like the tooth brush or tooth paste that everybody uses every single day.
The Chinese are also best known for their creative muscles in various forms of artistic practices ranging from literature to pottery and music to painting.
Today the Chinese have managed to preserve their traditions that have attracted worldwide attention.

Go to this link for more: https://www.thenational.com.pg/ancient-land-of-inventions-discoveries/