watch the lives of others, get cash prizes!

["Alex Eckelberry" <AlexE () sunbelt-software com>]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/07/cctv-surveillance-internet

So these three guys - two IT professionals and a former restaurateur - have this idea. There are 4.2m CCTV cameras in 
Britain, they say to themselves, except only one in a thousand is being watched at any one time, because manning them 
all would cost too much. The average Brit is filmed 300 times a day, yet overall crime 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/ukcrime>  rates are rising and conviction rates are down (their assertions, by the way).

But what if the whole nation - heck, why not the world? - were to be monitoring those cameras? What if you streamed 
them on to a website, and offered internet users a cash reward whenever they spotted a crime? You could charge the 
camera owners £20 a week per camera to have their feed included: loads cheaper than spending hours trawling through 
footage to see who nicked what. Brilliant, no?

Tony Morgan, James Woodward and David Steele plainly reckon so. They've sunk, one imagines, a tidy sum into Internet 
Eyes. There's the software, a website, a Facebook page, a press release. The scheme is currently trialling in 
Stratford-upon-Avon with an undisclosed number of shops and businesses (although as yet neither the police nor the 
local authority, who are diplomatically declining all comment), and will go live nationwide next month.

Registered surfers will compete for up to £1,000 a month, collecting points by watching a selection of anonymous 
cameras and clicking a button whenever they see something suspicious. The click will send an SMS and a still image to 
the camera operator, who decides whether to do anything about it. (You can lose points for sending a false alarm.) Says 
Morgan, who insists this is "not a game - these are not prizes, they're rewards for spotting crime", Internet Eyes 
"could turn out to be the best crime-prevention weapon there's ever been". What's not to love?

Um, quite a bit. The civil liberties people are up in arms, obviously. Even Michael Laurie, head of Crimestoppers, 
foresees a "wide range of opportunities for abuse and error" in what is, for him, "essentially no more than a 
commercial venture exploiting some people's baser characteristics". And while Morgan is confident his scheme complies 
with the Data Protection Act, the assistant information commissioner, Jonathan Bamford, is not so sure.

 

 

Alex Eckelberry, CEO 
Sunbelt Software
33 N. Garden Avenue, Clearwater, FL 33755 p: 727-562-0101 x220 
e: alex () sunbeltsoftware com <mailto:alex () sunbeltsoftware com>  MSN: alexeck () hotmail com <mailto:alexeck () 
hotmail com>  
w: www.sunbeltsoftware.com <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com>  b: www.sunbeltblog.com <http://www.sunbeltblog.com> 

 

 

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