Follow-up on ‘Doktor Jon’

After I posted yesterday’s blog (see: “More Reader Responses from 10-31-08 Blog”) I got an email from Doktor Jon. He wanted to clear up my confusion about “a British outfit (company? Individual? I am not really sure) Doktor John”. The DoktorJon.co.UK website is the work of a single person, Jon. And a very busy person he must be, because he claims to have 1600 pages on his site (I’m not verifying that number, I’ll take his word). He provided some more information about his Viper program:

“The whole VIPER concept is very specifically aimed at optimising images for possible Forensic Surveillance or evidential use, and to that end, it has generated quite a bit of interest amongst some in the Law Enforcement community.”

He also provided a .PDF version of a one-page sample Viper report. The example is apparently abbreviated somewhat since a typical report runs to about three pages. This appears like this may be a valuable service. It would certainly be better to have the photo surveillance system optimized before a picture from the system had to be used to track down an intruder that had made off with a couple containers of chemical weapon precursors. One caveat; this system is designed to optimize a stationary camera watching a relatively fixed location (security door or gate for example). Jon does have a version (Viper 4) for moveable cameras, but it is designed to optimize the ‘parked’ position of the camera. Even that is for fixed location within the scan area of that camera. In any case, this seems like an interesting service. Submitting camera data for evaluation (and applying the suggested changes) would certainly be a show of diligence that should be impressive to security system evaluators (DHS inspectors, insurance companies and the like).