Surveillance

The city has agreed to pay $2.75 million to 125 of its police officers over charges that the Police Department illegally planted a surveillance camera in officers' locker room in 1996. In announcing the settlement, which will be paid partly by insurance, the city Tuesday said it was avoiding an expensive trial set to start this week. "Ontario officials denounce what occurred 13 years ago and current city officials would not allow such behavior to be repeated," they said in a prepared statement.

The Justice Department has reined in electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency after finding the agency had improperly accessed American phone calls and e-mails. The problems were discovered during a review of intelligence activities, the Justice Department said in a statement. The New York Times first reported the matter.

A dozen surveillance cameras have been installed inside a San Fernando Valley tunnel that has been hard-hit by graffiti vandalism. The 711-foot tunnel on Sherman Way under the Van Nuys Airport has been riddled with graffiti for years, and residents were fed up, said Stacy Bellew, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles City Councilman Tony Cardenas. "Our main message was, 'Taggers beware. You are entering a no-tag zone,' " Bellew said. "If you decide to get out of your car and tag, we are going to catch you at every angle."

The ninth-season winner of the reality TV show "Big Brother" told a federal agent that he used his $500,000 prize to buy thousands of oxycodone pills and resell them, authorities said. Adam Jasinski, 31, of Delray Beach, Fla., has been charged with attempting to sell 2,000 pills in Massachusetts to a government witness. Jasinski won $500,000 on "Big Brother 9" in April 2008. The CBS reality show features contestants who live under constant surveillance and vote once a week to evict each other in hopes of becoming the last houseguest standing and winning the grand prize.

The mighty boxing team from the tiny island of Cuba trudges through the Olympics in red warmup suits, their appearance similar to other athletes with this tiny exception: All they wear are warmup suits. In the village. On the buses. Two hours after their boxing matches when opponents are sitting two rows away, relaxing in jeans. "Their officials won't let them wear civilian clothes," says Jesse Ravelo, assistant coach for the U.S. Olympic boxing team and a former Cuban fighter.

In a country where good cops have often been quirky, Sherlock Holmes to Inspector Morse, some of the best detectives nowadays stand on poles and never blink. Telemetry, my dear Watson. Crime in Newcastle is etched in black and white at the flick of a joystick. This rough-hewn, hard-drinking city is improbably taking a leading role in a nationwide love affair with anti-crime street surveillance cameras.

From land, sea, air and outer space, a score of federal agencies now employ billions of dollars in high technology to try to track and intercept hundreds of tons of cocaine that feed an illegal U.S. drug market worth an estimated $38 billion a year. Still, despite the most sophisticated surveillance technology on the globe--from U.S.

Within a year, the progress of every car that passes through any of three major intersections in the city will be recorded on camera, officials said this week. The goal is not to catch red-light jumpers, at least not yet, public works officials said. The primary aim is to begin building what eventually could be a countywide, high-tech management system to keep traffic flowing smoothly.

California Highway Patrol pilot Roland Barry barely made his first pass over Interstate 15 looking for speeders when the CB radio crackled, "Bear in the air." The truckers spotted the black-and-white plane right away, but car drivers racing across the California desert appeared oblivious to the single-engine aircraft circling 1,000 feet overhead. Barry was up there to prove that those signs that say "Patrolled by Aircraft" are for real.