MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguay to be miked for security reasons

Minister Heber heads the worst-rated government agency

Uruguay's Ministry of the Interior will deploy microphones in public places to capture loud sounds such as gunshots to help geolocate incidents, it was reported Friday in Montevideo. The agency has already launched a purchase process from the company Sound Thinking.

Minister Luis Alberto Heber said at an Association of Marketing Managers of Uruguay event that the new “shotspotters” would have the capacity to detect the caliber of the bullets fired. This technology seeks to provide a more precise location of events than the emergency 911 line can. The system works through wireless sensors that capture loud sounds and, through software, detect where these sounds come from.

Heber also said that bids would be put out for the purchase of cell phone jammers for prisons, in addition to a video surveillance system that would use artificial intelligence to detect “suspicious behavior.”

In this scenario, a survey released in Montevideo released Thursday showed that the Ministry of the Interior was the worst-rated agency in the popular opinion of Uruguayans. The Opción consultants' study mentioned “a clear deterioration of the [Ministry's] image.” The report also highlighted a “predominance of positive gaps in ministerial evaluation, except for the Ministry of the Interior, which registers a negative balance.”

“The portfolios with the highest approval ratings are the Ministry of Development [Mides], Tourism and Economy”, states the report, which includes the evaluation of Mides, Tourism, Defense, Economy, Labor, and Interior.

“The only management where the negative view predominates over the positive one is that of the Ministry of the Interior, headed by Luis Alberto Heber,” the study went on.