The speed with which Abu Dhabi authorities identified and held the suspect in the Reem Island Mall stabbing at the start of this month highlights the robust security infrastructure of the country.
Those who watched the video released by Abu Dhabi Police will have noticed the clarity of the security cameras on the streets of the emirate. These are not merely token gestures to deter wrongdoing, they are sophisticated pieces of surveillance equipment, designed to identify and to help catch criminals.
By the end of this year government spending on physical security such as video surveillance cameras and security gates across the GCC will reach US$6.4bn according to Messe Frankfurt. This is set to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (cagr) of 10 per cent every year until 2017.
Some insider sources, who did not want to be identified, claim the UAE alone has a budget of $10bn to spend on both physical and digital security.
Suppliers are lining up to provide security cameras, video analytics software and cyber security solutions to help keep the country secure.
From video surveillance cameras with built-in microphones to forensics experts employed to intercept messages from mobile phones, the UAE has managed to create one of the safest environments in the world. Street crime rates are especially low in Dubai and Abu Dhabi when compared with other metropolises not only because the consequences are severe but because it is easy to get caught.
From the moment you step outside your door, video cameras located in lifts, hallways, and entrances will record your movement. Every public space, be it a restaurant, hotel, or car rental office, is legally required to have video cameras with facial recognition technology. The recordings are transferred to the police departments and stored on their servers for three months in Dubai and six months in Abu Dhabi.
The five-star St Regis hotel in Abu Dhabi already has more than 2,700 video cameras installed on the property. The security team there is adding another 300 or so to comply with new measures and the cameras in the lifts already contain microphones and speakers that can enable emergency teams to communicate with whoever is inside should the lifts fail.
“It is not simply the collection of information,” says John Swainson, the president of software at Dell. “Having thousands of video cameras does nothing.
“It is the ability to take that data and extract from it something that is very relevant based on some insights into what that person might be wearing or the time frame.”
Using video analytics software, the country’s police can track an individual’s entire day. There are strict regulations dictating the position of cameras across the UAE. While there has to be a camera at every doorway, entrance, exit and hallway, cameras are not allowed to face into people’s private property.
“Globally everyone needs to add video surveillance. It is driven by events like bombings,” says Kevin Kennedy, the president and chief executive of Avaya, which supplies video analytics software. “Now police want to see the footage, IT people want to see it, so there are different sources that need to analyse it. They need to see the content and now we’re finally enabling stronger security with high definition [cameras] and leveraging that same technology for video analytics.” Video analytics software cuts the need to trawl through hours of footage. Instead, if police want to identify the journey of a certain type of car, the software will be able to draw out the relevant footage from the raw data within minutes if not seconds.
“Intelligence in video is a growing trend, however the level of maturity depends on what it is being used for,” says Dave Dalleske, the vice-president of sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Pelco by Schneider Electric, a supplier of security cameras. “Licence-plate recognition is very advanced, but facial recognition still needs improvement,” he adds.
Near-perfect facial recognition requires high-definition cameras and access to a database of all images on file. While this exists at the moment, it is very slow, so many establishments are using cameras with fewer megapixels to be able to transfer the footage at a faster pace. In some countries such as the United Kingdom, there are still analogue cameras in place – which have very poor picture quality.
It will, however, only be a few years before software and hardware can work in unison without today’s compromises or glitches.
The only place where you are to avoid getting caught on camera in this country is in the desert but even then police can know of your exact whereabouts through your mobile phone. It is a governmental requirement for telecoms operators to monitor every single bit of communication conducted on their networks, both mobile and fixed. The two telecoms operators in the country, Etisalat and du, have a dedicated server in a room only accessible by a handful of people that monitors all this data. This room is so secretive that most employees within the organisation are unaware of its existence and its function.
It is here that every single text message, email, tweet, phone call, Google search query, Whatsapp message, everything you write and send or upload on from the internet is recorded and monitored. Mobile forensics experts can obtain this data to help foil terrorism plots or threats to national security.
“Today, information security plays a number one part in our strategy. It is vital, it is important. Management is interested to make sure we safeguard all our assets,” says Marwan bin Dalmook, the senior vice-president of technology, security, risk and management at du. “In other countries you can buy a sim card without ID but here in the UAE we have many nationalities, many activities happening and [given] where we are geographically and the tensions around us, it is important for us to implement the right security.”
User privacy concerns remain on the agenda for both telecoms and if any government entity wishes to obtain a user’s communications data, they require a police search warrant.
But while all of this technology and the staggering security budget may leave us safe, it does not leave us entirely secure. This data is incredibly sensitive and as it is increasingly being stored in a centralised manner. That makes it more vulnerable to attack and misuse – an unwelcome thought when considering the Middle East is the most targeted region in the world for cyber attacks, according to research from Kaspersky Labs.
Government and financial institutions are the most vulnerable and as more services become automated and go mobile, the data they hold becomes ever-more enticing to criminal gangs and other nation states.
“By 2020 Dubai Police will have some officers riding on motorcycles with a mobile device that needs to have access to the complete police system and database and links to the registered cars and records,” says Sheikh A Ali, the managing director at Solutions Middle East, which supplies the Government with surveillance equipment. “This data has to be kept secure and away from the criminals because if they access the database and see what the police is doing against them they can run away.”
One of the biggest risks comes when entrusting a security firm to encrypt all this data.
There are a handful of companies that provide military-grade encryption and security services to governments around the world but while that can be hundreds of times more sophisticated than your internet banking system, there will always be a way in. “Nowadays the way intelligence agencies get their hands on information is by going to the chipset manufacturer, which are usually based in China,” says a former security supplier to the UAE Government who asked not to be named.
“They change one little chip that goes into a component, which goes into the machine that ends up in a government office,” the former supplier says.
“Once they’re in, they can wreak havoc.”
thamid@thenational.ae