joyful surveillance

Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Thu, 30 Sep 1999 20:57:55 -0700

den Otter wrote:

> ...I bet that neigborhoods using this system wouldn't be very
> high on any burgular's agenda. The system could of course
> be expanded with personal (portable) alarm systems and such...

There is such a neighborhood that is doing something a lot like this already, in Palo Alto CA. Interesting experiment, brings up a lot of big brother kinds of comments, but of course the cameras are being set up and run not by any government but by a large number of little brothers hoping for nonlethal means of protecting their property.

Heres one point that hasnt come up in this thread: Eliezer (or someone) once had a tagline that was about how societies change. It is not so much by individuals changing their minds, but by new generations of people with different ideas coming along.

Our whole notion of privacy will soon be transformed by a generation of young people who have *always* been under constant surveillance, starting at their daycare. There is a webcam there. These will simply fail to understand why anyone would be squicked by having a camera broadcasting their every move. spike