In its short, 40-year lifespans, video surveillance technology has brought about many security revolutions. Stores have shifted from man powered security to exclusive camera systems. Cameras are used almost universally in places never thought possible - even 10 years ago. But the cultural implications to security cameras started in 1949, before the age of security cameras, with George Orwell's novel 1984.

Eighteen year old Kelsey Smith has been missing since the evening of Saturday, June 2. Overland Park, KS law enforcement have used the traditional methods of looking for a missing person - canvassing, search parties, and offering rewards. But this time, feed from a surveillance camera inside a Target store may help find Kelsey quicker than before.

He said, she said...it's one of the oldest paradoxes of all time. How can two disparate opinions regarding the same issue be resolved? For hundred of years, it was a decision founded on trust, but in recent years, security cameras and video surveillance have been helpful arbiters when these issues arise. Officials at Trimet, Portland OR's public transit bureau, have come to painfully understand this dilemma in the past week.

Parallel parking for the first time is never easy - there's the careful initial alignment, and the tricky backwards steering and fingers-crossed reversing into the spot. Hopefully, if all goes as planned, the maneuver will be over soon. However, we all know that these things don't always go as planned - and sometimes, an attempt at parallel parking ends in a gut-wrenching crunch. This is how driving has been for years - a game of chance - a game that many auto makers are trying to change.

In the wake of the worst school shooting in US history, worries about student and classrooms afety are at an all-time high. Schools around the country have implemented security systems - ranging from the simple to the highly complex - in an effort to make the learning environment as safe as possible.

Over at The Consumerist, editor Ben Popken describes a situation reoprted by a reader who lost her cell phone while conducting business at a local credit union.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has ordered that Blackwater convoys transporting private contractors, supplies and weapons around Iraq be monitored by video surveillance after several controversial incidents involving Blackwater contractors in Iraq.

Frank Waterhouse had a major victory against the City of Portland when he was acquitted of charges of criminal trespass and disorderly contact. Now, he and three others are suing the Portland Police department for damages, claiming the police violated their constitutional rights when they tried to film a property search in May 2006. See video from Waterhouse's camera inside....

A man broke into Cesar's flowers in San Jose, CA in mid-December, ordering owner Celina Sandoval and her young son to the floor and emptying the cash register. He didn't get away with much cash - but the robbery has had Sandoval scarred ever since

2007 has been a great year for video surveillance - improvements in technology, widespread applications, and predictions for the future of network cameras. Here are some of our most memorable posts:

Many civil rights and privacy advocates have come together to oppose the widespread placement of video surveillance cameras in public and private places - saying that the constant recording of citizens and every day actions is an egregious invasion of privacy. Instead of battling the inevitable advances in technology, Mike Elgan at ComputerWorld.com presents a refreshing solution.

In an effort to further reduce crime in the city of Tayside, the Scottish city has decided to outfit its police force with a tiny video surveillance camera mounted directly onto the uniform starting next June. Tayside has been at the forefront of surveillance technology before - it was the first Scottish town to add security cameras to patrol bikes in 2006.

Home surveillance in the UK is on the rise. With its citizens already holding the status of most-recorded people in the world, Britons and Scots have turned to household security cameras with hopes that IP cameras placed around their house will work as well as the myriad of security cameras that record them when in public places.

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors gave preliminary approval to a citywide measure that would allow defendants in criminal cases to use recordings from the city's surveillance cameras to prove their innocence. The measure passed by a vote of 7 to 2, and it will require the city to hold on to the footage from 74 cameras for at least 30 days. However, city officials say that this is not possible with the city's existing equipment.

It's a good thing that 27 year old Christopher Hague, of Staten Island NY, asked to see the surveillance video from the bar where he was arrested. Hague was taken into custody in 2007 when the NYPD tied him to a leather jacket containing narcotics.

In Austin, Texas, private contractors are jockeying for the exclusive right to set up an expanded video camera network of their products on the United States-Mexico border. Even with two million dollars in federal grants to establish the border video surveillance program, the original goal of getting the program up and running by January 2008 proved overly ambitious, but the expansion of Texas' experimental pilot surveillance program should fall into place relatively quickly once a bidder wins the contract.

In an attempt to step up security at convenience and quick-stop stores in the area, Toledo lawmakers have created a law that requires all convenience stores to have business licenses and a functioning security camera system (and to share that recorded footage with the police). It's hoped that the convenience store IP cameras will help eliminate the drug, loitering and robbery problems that many quick stop and carryout stores are prone to.

There's been a lot of speculation about network cameras lately - that use will double by 2011, that analog video will never die, and so on. Research firm Frost & Sullivan has released a new report - "North American IT and Telecom Opportunities in the Network Video Surveillance Markets" which puts forth a much more drastic claim - that by 2013, half the surveillance cameras in North America will be IP cameras.