Philadelphia's Port Richmond neighborhood has its fare share of problems -- drugs, prostitution, muggings, and the curious refusal of any resident to properly deposit garbage in cans. Needless to say, business owners in the area have a hard time succeeding.

Fifty nine video surveillance cameras currently watch over the Guadalupe county jail, and officials want more. Concerned with drug trafficking and prisoner safety, Sheriff Arnold Zwicke is requesting the replacement of 15 current cameras and the addition of 45 more, bringing the total to 104.

Booming economies in China and India, along with record amounts of construction in the US and the rest of the western world, have created an extremely high demand for raw construction metals like copper and steel. Contractors and electricians complain about the soaring costs of metal as thieves ransack incomplete buildings, stripping copper wire and pipes to sell for scrap. Scrap metal thieves have become so brazen as to risk their lives - one man recently died trying to strip live electrical wire from a transformer.

Two criminals from the Miami area learned a tough lesson recently - don't steal from Uncle Bob.

Blake's Bar Harbor Marina in Pasadena, MD might just be the safest place on the planet to dock a boat, and that has nothing to do with the community's friendly sea-faring populace. The resounding sense of security stems from a new $30,000 video surveillance system installed to monitor the marina's parking lot and 40 boat slips. What makes this system special is that it spurns traditional CCTV, opting instead for the latest in Web-based video surveillance technology. Boasting 12 IP cameras strategically placed throughout the marina, the video surveillance network is a fine demonstration of high-end parking security. Streaming footage from the cameras is accessible online via the marina's Web site. The inclusion of password-protected accounts can restrict access to certain IP network cameras, while keeping others open to the general public.

2007 has been a controversial year for video surveillance in New York City. First, the controversial New York Civil Liberties Union report on public video surveillance and the release of the Surveillance Camera Project, and Katherine Mangu-Ward's counter-editorial on the benefits of public video surveillance.

Thanks to surveillance cameras at  Nordstrom department stores in the Portland, OR area, police and FBI agents have identified Jamie Lynn Bacon, of Beaverton, OR, as the thief who has defrauded Nordstrom of nearly $10,000 since fall 2006.

In November 2004, several plainclothes officers from the Fresno County Sheriff's department covertly attended a lecture presented by a well-known animal rights activist at Fresno State University. Read More

The Boeing Company, which in late 2006 was awarded a multi-billion dollar grant for securing the US-Mexico Border, has put in a request for a fund increase from the US Department of Homeland Security. Boeing's goal is to secure the 1,957-mile border through a combination of traditional fences, aerial drones, surveillance cameras, and a large force of Border Patrol officers by 2008.

In an effort to keep their tenuous border with North Korea more secure, the South Korean government has introduced a battalion of 1,000 intelligent surveillance robots to help in patrolling the border.

Katherine Mangu-Ward, a contributing editor to Reason magazine, recently published an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer with an interesting argument in support of public surveillance, especially the cameras that are appearing more and more frequently in large cities like New York and Chicago.