The Russian news site rt.com is reporting that police in Moscow have arrested the heads of a business that installed security cameras throughout the city that were streaming pre-recorded pictures instead of real-time video.
StroyMontageService has been accused of fraud after a routine check of some of Moscow’s 80,000 public CCTV cameras revealed the scam. The cameras were streaming pre-recorded video from May to September last year. The contractor was paid based on the number of cameras that were operational.
In addition to wonderful traditions of obscenities and humor, the Russian culture has given the world some fabulous stories of creativity. This is one of them.
Russia, like the U.S. is a big country based on a frontier culture to some extent. We had a wild-wild west; they had a wild-wild east. A frontier makes people think in different ways.
I suspect the police caught on to the scam when video from the cameras was showing daylight-lit street after the sun went down. In September the days would be getting short in Moscow.
Just imagine the moment they discovered it: “Hey Ivan. Look out the window. Now look at the monitor. Weird, huh?”
Story here: Moscow cameras streamed false pictures
Tom Kelchner