I recently joined a company that is involved in video surveillance, and what I've learned there has made me very concerned about whether the security we expect is really the security we're getting delivered.

A shocking statistic reported about security video systems (or surveillance video systems) is that they work only about 70% of the time.  There have been reported cases (like in Kansas City) where even newly installed systems failed to work, and there was no video evidence of a child being raped.  The city of Philadelphia did an audit a couple years ago, and found their security video only worked 47% of the time.  In San Francisco a non-functioning security video network is seen as one of the reasons a patient was found dead inside the hospital weeks after going missing from her room there (Lynn Spalding).  

As members of the public, we deserve to know that if we are spending money on security, that the security actually works. 

This petition asks that when the Dept. of Homeland Security provides grants to schools for security (including security video), that they also require that institution report on a yearly basis to the community on how well that system worked.  We ask that DHS require that uptime of the video streams, what percent of video data met retention compliance requirements, and if there was any tampering of the video data files.  

We should know that the security systems we are funding are really working, and if not that the community have some information to understand their own potential security risks.