Watching You Watching Me
Watching you watching me
By MIYASE CHRISTENSEN
November 3, 2009
Traditional surveillance might mean one CCTV camera per 14 citizens in Britain, or 200,000 such cameras in the city of Shenzhen in China. But parallel to the old forms of surveillance, a new peer-to-peer voyeurism is on the rise. Watching friends, neighbors and colleagues for security reasons — or just for fun — is becoming common.
Take Adam’s Block. This was an open-access site Webcasting a live video feed from the intersection of Ellis Street and Taylor Street in San Francisco for entertainment purposes. Some people in the neighborhood did not approve and threatened the owner of the camera and site. “Adam” shut down the service.
But then, other people in the neighborhood installed their own cameras, planning eventually to live-cast the view at www.adamsblock.com under the name OurBlock.tv. The site, which says it is “empowering citizens to fight crime and save lives,” now wants to have thousands of people and homes around the globe visually accessible via the Web — voluntarily. This case is not unique.
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