Citizen Snoopers could Win Cash and Prizes for Monitoring CCTV Cameras on the Internet - iWatch and Internet Eyes

[TriWooOx]

Quote:The new scheme, called Internet Eyes, involves web users scouring CCTV cameras installed in shops, businesses and town centres across Britain looking for offenders.

The cameras’ owners will be charged a fee for putting live footage from their cameras online, while members of the public who help catch criminals can win cash prizes.

The project will be trialled in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warks, next month, but the consortium behind the idea hopes that it will eventually attract a global audience of viewers monitoring Britain’s 4.2 million security cameras.

However, it has already provoked criticism from civil liberties campaigners, who claim that it will create a “snoopers paradise” and erode people’s privacy.

Internet Eyes is being promoted as a game in which players collect points by watching the cameras and clicking a button every time they see something suspicious.

An SMS or text message, along with a still image of the alleged crime, is sent to whoever controls the camera who then decides whether or not to take action.

The camera controller will send a feedback email back to the player indicating whether a crime has taken place.

Players are awarded one point for spotting a suspected crime and three points if they see someone committing an actual crime They also lose points if the camera operator rules the alert was not a crime.

Players who help catch the most criminals each moth will win prizes up to £1,000.

The service’s website will also feature a gallery of the so-called “criminals” along with a list of their offences and which internet user caught them.

Tony Morgan, who devised the site, said: “This could turn out to be the best crime prevention weapon there's ever been.

“I wanted to combine the serious business of stopping crime with the incentive of winning money.

“There are over four million CCTV cameras in the UK and only one in a thousand gets watched.

“Crimes are bound to get missed but this way people the cameras will be watched by lots of people 24-hours-a-day.”

However, critics claim that the site could lead to nosy neighbours snooping on home owners putting the wrong rubbish in bins and motorists guilty of the most minor misdemeanours.

Charles Farrier, director of the No-CCTV pressure group, said: “It is an appalling idea for a game and will create a snoopers paradise.

“It is something which should be nipped in the bud immediately. It will not only encourage a dangerous spying mentality by turning crime into a game but also could lead to dangerous civil rights abuses.

“What if a group of racists decide to send alerts every time a black person is seen on screen and what's stopping criminals using the cameras to scope out where to commit crimes.”

James Woodward, head of the technical team for Devon-based Internet Eyes, said safeguards – including blocking players out for sending three incorrect alerts – would prevent the game being abused.

He said: “For privacy reasons users will not know the location of the cameras. They will find it very difficult to work out where the camera is.

"It is possible that someone who is blocked out could see a crime taking place but be unable to alert the operator.

“But it is probably safe to assume someone else looking at the same camera will raise the alarm.

“Whoever has a CCTV camera, be it the police, local authorities or business or home owners can sign up to have their cameras watched. We hope to include police cameras very soon.”

Last month it was disclosed that Britain has 4.2 million CCTV cameras – the equivalent of one per 14 people.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/cri...e-internet.html

[FastTadpole]

This needs to be stopped now. Not only because it will create the aforementioned snooper's paradise and turn countrymen against eachother but, pending it's usage, could suck up so much bandwidth with 4,200,000 cameras streaming live feeds and routing them to millions of homes in one country alone. A compressed 720x480 DV (4:1:1) @25 Mbps stream requires 11GB / hour just from the source to server. Albeit there will be node caching to increase delivery, an implementation of this at a lower "YouTube" quality could take ~2.3 MB for a minute of lo-res content.

A user would likely view ~10 feeds at once on average although many would get more monitors (bingo cards) and a faster home connection to increase the odds of scoring a crime catch (BINGO!). At this rate only ~1.5M UK residents (only 2.5% of the population) in 8 hour shifts at five days a week and weekends off for complete 24/7 coverage of it's 4.2 M CCTV cameras.

The total cost in bandwidth @ low-res would amount to 13,266 TB per day or 3.23GB per camera per day. This is on top of the current bandwidth usage for the UK system alone. This would create a problem and the solution would most likely be internet price increases for more infrastructure, cloud computing models with incentives to join the cloud and lobbying to get rid of 'bandwidth wasting' protocols and sites like youtube and p2p or at least taxing it somehow to discourage use.

I'm not sure what total capacity for the net is but I'll bet if this was implemented in a few countries the infrastructure would suffer. An implementation such as this would no doubt be funded via tax dollars, we already paid for the cameras, utilities, maintenance and personnel why not heaps of bandwidth, marketing and rewards too.

[Easy Skanking]

Anyone read or seen "A Scanner Darkly"?
Citizens monitoring each other 24/7...state sponsored drug manufacturing...state sponsored "drug rehab"...

There you go.:angry:

[---]

Quote:Anyone read or seen "A Scanner Darkly"?
Citizens monitoring each other 24/7...state sponsored drug manufacturing...state sponsored "drug rehab"...

There you go.:angry:

we need to be adaptive and learn the art of persona like Howard Marks. All of us have the capability for at least a few disguises if we needed to and knew how with competence. They haven't got the DNA controls on the cctv yet.

[rsol]

i think this is a bit like the whole "god is watching" thing. they cant get to believe in god but they can make you think that there are actually ppl watching all those cameras.

[mexika]

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- Civil activists on Thursday voiced concern over an anti-terrorism program launched by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), saying the program could lead to racial and religious profiling.

The LAPD launched the so-called iWATCH program earlier Thursday to encourages people to report suspicious activities and behaviors.

Peter Bribing of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California warned that iWATCH could lead to racial and religious profiling.

"Of course people should be able to report activity that they think is suspicious, and the LAPD has long maintained a hotline for residents to do so," he said. "But iWATCH actively encourages people to report a variety of ordinary activities -- such as people wearing clothes that are too big, or who are drawing buildings, or who are doing something else that could be innocuous. That could lead to racial and religious profiling."

But LAPD Chief William Bratton dismissed those concerns, saying "I think that we are in a position to indicate that we have no fear that it is going to go in that direction. I think that we can do this constitutionally, we can do this comprehensively, and we can do it safely."

"iWATCH is intended to be the next evolution of keeping America safe from terrorism by enlisting the 300 million Americans who care about this country, who care about our way of life, to work with their local police," he said.

He called it the "Neighborhood Watch of the 21st century."

He said the program intends to educate the public about what constitutes suspicious activities and behaviors, and to train police on how to deal with the reports.

The program has been endorsed by the Major Cities Chiefs Association and may be expanded nationwide soon.

Calling for heightened vigilance, Bratton said that from 1980 through 2000, 250 out of the 335 confirmed or suspected acts of terrorism in the United States were by American citizens.

"Local police have to have a place at the terrorism table because we have many more eyes and ears to work on these issues," Bratton said.

iWATCH encourages people to report:

-- people drawing or measuring buildings;

-- strangers asking questions about security procedures;

-- abandoned items;

-- vehicles left in no parking zones in front of important buildings;

-- intruders in secure areas;

-- people wearing clothes that are too big and hot for the weather;

-- chemical smells or fumes;

-- questions about sensitive information such as building blueprints, security plans or VIP travel schedules; and

-- buying items that can be used to make bombs or weapons, or purchasing uniforms without the proper credentials.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-10/...nt_12196507.htm

[---]

it's true that the simultaneous across the board implemetation of schemes like these really do evidence the international shadow power structure.

[FastTadpole]

Quote:LAPD's Orwellian anti-terror ads creeping out viewers
By Daniel Tencer
Sunday, October 25th, 2009 -- 2:15 pm

An ad released by the Los Angeles Police Department urging the public to participate in an anti-terror snooping program is being described by numerous observers and news sources by a single word: Creepy.

The one-and-a-half minute spot, which can be viewed below, features a multicultural line-up of speakers explaining why they participate in iWatch, a "neighborhood watch for the whole city," as the ad describes it.

"If you see, hear, or smell something suspicious, report it. Reporting is easy. Use the web or the phone," the speakers state. "A single report can lead to actions that can stop a terrorist attack. Think about that. Think about the power of that. Think about the power of iWatch."

And indeed plenty of people are now thinking about the power of iWatch, and many observers are not impressed. Allison Kilkenny, on her TrueSlant blog, says it won't be long before iWatch will be exploited by people for their own purposes.

"These kinds of anonymous hotlines are ripe for abuse, and there exist endless possibilities of innocent citizens being reported by their neighbors for the crime of 'Living While Being Arab'.

After the 9/11 attacks, we were told the solution to terrorism was to have citizens spy on each other, and not to, say, elect a competent government. That’s when TIPS (Terrorist Information and Prevention System) was born, an initiative to recruit one million volunteers in 10 cities across the country that encouraged them to report suspicious activity that might be terrorism-related. An investigative political journalist, Ritt Goldstein, observed in Australia's Sydney Morning Herald that TIPS would provide America with a higher percentage of 'citizen spies' than the former East Germany had under the notorious Stasi secret police."

The LAPD is "creeping out America" with the ad, states KNBC in Los Angeles. The station cites outgoing LAPD Chief William Bratton, who said that "a single terrorism incident would do more harm to the city's image and economy than 50 gang murders."

"Absolutely true -- but do we really have to be so creepy with the promotional videos?" asked the station in its report. "This is LA. There are probably one or two writers, actors and directors that would be willing to cut out some of that creepiness."

Tina Dupuy at the media-affairs blog MediaBistro writes that the ad "is universally thought to be creepy and not unlike we've imagined PSA's on Orwell's telescreens to be like."

But our reaction is why did this take so long? Hello! September 11th 2001 was like eight years ago. It's taken the LAPD this long to ask Angelenos to be on the look out for anything suspicious in regards to terrorism?! What, did they get stuck in traffic for the better part of a decade?

This video is from LAPD, broadcast Oct. 3, 2009.

http://digg.com/politics/LAPD_s_Orwellian_...ing_out_viewers
http://rawstory.com/2009/10/lapds-orwellia...r-ads-creeping/
Promo Video Download (Flash)
http://216.87.173.33/media/2009/0910/iWatc...ond_091003a.flv

iWatch LAPD - Anti-Terrorism Ad (1:16)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdkF9YQ96YY
http://digg.com/politics/iWatch_LAPD_Using...lves_on_the_Net


iWATCH Community Training Film - LAPD (7:08)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tuyFlMBTa4
http://digg.com/politics/iWATCHLA_Stasi_Li..._in_Los_Angeles

Official Sites:
http://iwatchla.org
http://lapdonline.org/iwatchla

[April]

Oh but look at their new commercial! Don't you want to help fight terrorism? :rolleyes:

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/&lt;object width="480" height="385"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RkmRPJv5jZE&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RkmRPJv5jZE&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/&lt;object width="480" height="385"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RkmRPJv5jZE&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RkmRPJv5jZE&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

[Easy Skanking]

Fuck this! Don't be a snitch!

[daniel9]

lol anyone find it funny they disabled commenting on the video and that it only is rated one star? looks like no one is a tattletale....... yet

[FastTadpole]

Reposting from the Snoopers could win £1,000 prizes for monitoring CCTV cameras on the internet thread since it's a better fit here.
http://concen.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=30545

Quote:LAPD's Orwellian anti-terror ads creeping out viewers
By Daniel Tencer
Sunday, October 25th, 2009 -- 2:15 pm

An ad released by the Los Angeles Police Department urging the public to participate in an anti-terror snooping program is being described by numerous observers and news sources by a single word: Creepy.

The one-and-a-half minute spot, which can be viewed below, features a multicultural line-up of speakers explaining why they participate in iWatch, a "neighborhood watch for the whole city," as the ad describes it.

"If you see, hear, or smell something suspicious, report it. Reporting is easy. Use the web or the phone," the speakers state. "A single report can lead to actions that can stop a terrorist attack. Think about that. Think about the power of that. Think about the power of iWatch."

And indeed plenty of people are now thinking about the power of iWatch, and many observers are not impressed. Allison Kilkenny, on her TrueSlant blog, says it won't be long before iWatch will be exploited by people for their own purposes.

"These kinds of anonymous hotlines are ripe for abuse, and there exist endless possibilities of innocent citizens being reported by their neighbors for the crime of 'Living While Being Arab'.

After the 9/11 attacks, we were told the solution to terrorism was to have citizens spy on each other, and not to, say, elect a competent government. That’s when TIPS (Terrorist Information and Prevention System) was born, an initiative to recruit one million volunteers in 10 cities across the country that encouraged them to report suspicious activity that might be terrorism-related. An investigative political journalist, Ritt Goldstein, observed in Australia's Sydney Morning Herald that TIPS would provide America with a higher percentage of 'citizen spies' than the former East Germany had under the notorious Stasi secret police."

The LAPD is "creeping out America" with the ad, states KNBC in Los Angeles. The station cites outgoing LAPD Chief William Bratton, who said that "a single terrorism incident would do more harm to the city's image and economy than 50 gang murders."

"Absolutely true -- but do we really have to be so creepy with the promotional videos?" asked the station in its report. "This is LA. There are probably one or two writers, actors and directors that would be willing to cut out some of that creepiness."

Tina Dupuy at the media-affairs blog MediaBistro writes that the ad "is universally thought to be creepy and not unlike we've imagined PSA's on Orwell's telescreens to be like."

But our reaction is why did this take so long? Hello! September 11th 2001 was like eight years ago. It's taken the LAPD this long to ask Angelenos to be on the look out for anything suspicious in regards to terrorism?! What, did they get stuck in traffic for the better part of a decade?

This video is from LAPD, broadcast Oct. 3, 2009.

http://digg.com/politics/LAPD_s_Orwellian_...ing_out_viewers
http://rawstory.com/2009/10/lapds-orwellia...r-ads-creeping/
Promo Video Download (Flash)
http://216.87.173.33/media/2009/0910/iWatc...ond_091003a.flv

iWatch LAPD - Anti-Terrorism Ad (1:16)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdkF9YQ96YY
http://digg.com/politics/iWatch_LAPD_Using...lves_on_the_Net


iWATCH Community Training Film - LAPD (7:08)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tuyFlMBTa4
http://digg.com/politics/iWATCHLA_Stasi_Li..._in_Los_Angeles

Official Sites:
http://iwatchla.org
http://lapdonline.org/iwatchla

[Shinobi]

Got to love the fake personalities and the WIDE eyes from their paid actors in these propaganda ads
all part of the psychological programming to get the viewer interested.
Is it me or do they all look like they're brainwashed and on some really good drugs too ? lol

[mexika]

when do we get to see Hitler?

[TriWooOx]

Quote:A London council is recruiting 2,000 residents to report on their neighbours and join a growing network of “citizen snoopers” in the capital.

“Neighbourhood Champions” will be expected to pass on evidence of graffiti, fly-tipping, litter and excessive noise.

They could eventually be trained to report child abuse, domestic violence, racial harassment and other “hate crimes”.

The plan is expected to be approved this week in Harrow. The council says the scheme, which has the backing of the Met commander for the borough, will increase pride in the community.

But critics today raised fears over civil liberties, warning that it is the latest example of a surveillance society.

Susie Squires, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: “Community spirit and looking out for your neighbours is one thing, but snooping is another. Residents are already able to report nuisances as part of normal procedure. Taxpayers are sick and tired of being spied on. This creates distrust.”

Harrow is the latest London borough to ask residents to report bad behaviour. Islington has been running an environmental watchdog scheme since 2002 — with up to 1,200 recruits including children. Hillingdon claims to have 4,800 volunteers.

Harrow's volunteers will log on to a special website to report suspicions. Details will be passed to council departments and enforcement action could be taken against offenders. Participants will be vetted and trained with the help of the police and council. Councillor Susan Hall, Harrow's spokeswoman for environment services and community safety, said: “This is about extending more influence to our residents to help us deliver cleaner and safer streets.

“We have already invested in anti-social behaviour and cleaning teams, but the reality is that we are not always in a position to know when problems suddenly crop up.

“I believe the Neighbourhood Champions network will help us to deliver cleaner and safer streets. We often talk about the loss of community spirit in our neighbourhoods — I think this is a great way of reclaiming some of that.”

Chief Superintendent Dal Babu, Harrow borough commander, said: “Harrow's Neighbourhood Watch scheme is one of the largest in London and plays an important role working alongside police to fight crime. I am sure that the Neighbourhood Champion scheme will be equally successful in helping to make Harrow a better place.”

The council said a poll of residents had found 87 per cent backed it and 25 per cent expressed an interest in getting involved. The minimum age for recruits is expected to be 18.

The council, which plans to set aside £100,000 a year to run the scheme, admits volunteers could be targeted by neighbours “particularly if they are viewed ... as providing feedback on criminal activities”.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/a...ndoners.do