Internet Eyes

This week we have a company in the UK that monitors CCTV cameras, you might be wondering.. what's is out of the ordinary about a company that does this? This is very common nowadays and England is well known about the usage of surveillance cameras. Well, they are actually using regular internet users to watch the videos and report any suspicious activity they might catch from them.

So how Internet Eyes works?


As of right now, people in the UK and US can subscribe to the web site and been able to be a watcher. The viewers get to see four live video feeds at the same time, and in the event of catching any particular behavior that might lead to a crime they will click on the alert icon which will send an automatically text message and an email to the business which will evaluate if they take action.


Privacy Issues?

Of course this new type of surveillance has brought a lot of controversy, mostly because of all the privacy issues that they are exposed. The majority of the concerns point out to the ability of control who are the viewers and the lack of control on the storage of this videos. There are many programs out there that might let you keep records of those videos or a viewer can simply point a video camera towards the monitors and record the videos. On their defense, Internet Eyes states that people will not have the choice to pick what to watch, they will not know the location of the business been watched and also they will be restricted from watching video feeds from their local area.

There's a lot to talk about this topic and in the end. It will be good for some people and bad for others. They will be people that agree on the fact that security will be overcome the privacy issues objections. And I guess will be a matter of time to realize the effectiveness of this system. It might be very useful for small businesses, not that productive for big retail chains. A similar idea was taken in place a couple years ago when the Texas Virtual Border  was implemented, which basically consist of allowing people to watch through a web site live video of the US Texas border in order to report any suspicious activity nearby the border. But a year later the project was declared ineffective mostly because of the multiple reports such as "Cow or deer walked by" or "armadillo by the water.” Very suspicious activity huh?


  Besides of the possible effectiveness of this system, it is obviously that will open the door to many likewise technology in pro of "our security".   What about if the system get integrated a database with real criminal faces on which the system is able to recognize the suspect via facial recognition software and alert the business of a possible threat? Interesting huh? Lets see what coming in the future...



REFERENCED WEBSITES
The Internet is watching you
Internet Eyes Citizen Spy Game

Off the mark