Cameras

Plate readers, average-speed towers, gunshot sensors, surveillance trailers and a flood station in the mountains. Twelve kinds of unattended cameras, how to tell them apart, and what each one actually watches.

I photographed unexplained boxes on Pueblo utility poles, asked Black Hills Energy what they were, and later found commercial covert cameras built to look exactly like transformers and electrical equipment.

A camera platform that only spoke encrypted RTSPS quietly refused to talk to the NVR — until I found the plain-RTSP back door it was hiding.