Was that Dept. of Homeland Security airport restroom surveillance camera we posted about last week for real?
SnapStream CEO Rakesh Agrawal, you’ll remember, snapped the now-famous urinal photo shown above. The text on the official-looking DHS sticker read:
Automatic infrared flush sensors also provide video monitoring for security purposes
Agrawal has now posted an update on his blog:
First of all, the photograph was NOT photoshop’ed. It went straight from my iPhone to Natuba (what I use to post photographs to twitter) with no editing in between. If anyone is at Hobby Airport and wants to see this thing, it was in the men’s restroom near gate 51 last week Wednesday.
More importantly, though, what’s the story here? Is DHS actually monitoring airport restrooms using cameras installed at the urinal? I exchanged emails with Marlene McClinton at the Houston Airport System (as a side note, HAS uses SnapStream to monitor mentions of themselves on TV) over the weekend and she wrote:
***
“…I talked to all of our security folks and they talked to DHS and said no way, there is no such program or video or cam in stalls or urinals.â€
So it sounds like this was a simple prank… I’ll update this post if I hear anything else from DHS or from the Houston Airport System (HAS was going to check out the particular location I mentioned seeing the stickers at).
Agrawal notes that Swamplot’s story reporting his original urinal discovery was featured on Slashdot.org. His favorite reader comment from that site:
I’m sure this is a prank. Since this is generating bad publicity for the DHS, they will probably catch the person who put these stickers on the urinals after reviewing the video from the real, covert hidden cameras they have covering the urinals.
- Airport urinal surveillance cameras? [Rakesh Agrawal’s Blog]
- Video Surveillance on the Fly: Here’s Looking at You! [Swamplot]
Photo: Rakesh Agrawal
