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Camera Watch: Links to Public Webcams

Posted by michael on from the watching-us-watching-them dept.

Mikkeles writes "From an Associated Press story: 'It sounds like a chapter out of "Spy vs. Spy": Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have launched a project called Camera Watch that lists Internet cameras that monitor public spaces, letting Web surfers try the role of bored security guard.' The site permits searching for an available webcam in the geographical region (US) of your choice. About 600 webcams of 6000 in the pipe are now available."

13 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. a great congestion reduction tool by civilengineer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    if we have a lot of these at movie theaters, airport queues, and wherever else there might be congestion, people can adjust their travel behavior accordingly.

    --

    New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
    1. Re:a great congestion reduction tool by Politburo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      On the surface, yes. But your nick says "civil engineer". Surely you are familiar with the concept of peak period demand.

      For most infrastructure that we build, it goes unused for much of the time. There is a small percentage of time where the infrastructure is pushed to the limits. For transportation, this is rush hour, for power grids, it's hot summer days, for movie theatres, it's premiere night, etc.

      Usually, it is extremely difficult to abate peak period effects. They do not exist because that is when everyone "wants" to go somewhere or do something, they exist because that is the only time most people can use, or need to use, the resource in question. Most employers frown if you come in at 6 am, or 11 am, and if you leave at 3 pm, or 8 pm. You don't need a ton of juice to power your A/C when it's nighttime.

    2. Re:a great congestion reduction tool by EZmagz · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Interesting you should say that. The Minnesota Dept. Of Transportation (MnDOT) has links to all of their cameras on the highway over here...
      For me at least, since I get the pleasure of driving across the metro everyday going to and from work, it can be a godsend. There's a saying around here that's pretty fitting: There's two seasons in MN...winter, and road construction. It's definitely convenient to be able to check from my laptop here at work and see what the roads are like before I head home and fight the other 9 million bad drivers.

      Of course it's not foolproof, as they'll always be accidents that aren't on camera. If nothing else though, it makes for fun viewing when you're bored out of your mind on a Friday afternoon.

      --

      "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."

    3. Re:a great congestion reduction tool by Politburo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Management, of course.

      The thing is, a lot of business that goes on requires the services of another business. If I show up to work at 6 am, and a colleague at another company, or even a coworker, shows up at 11 am, that is 5 hours of my work day where I do not have access to their knowledge and/or decision making power. Likewise, if I leave at 3 pm, there may be workers who work later who then are shut out from me. By attempting to have everyone in and out at around the same time, you maximize the time that everyone is in the office together, theoretically maximizing the productivity of your office.

  2. No.... by CGP314 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    sounds like a chapter out of "Spy vs. Spy"

    Sounds more like 1984 to me.

    1. Re:No.... by WegianWarrior · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sounds more like 1984 to me.

      Wrong, on two things. Firstly, this isn't "big brother" watching you.. if anything, it's "little brother". Secondly, it's not in your home, but in public areas. You did know that people could see you in public, didn't you?

      I can't see why people get worked up over the fact that there are webcams in public places. The moment you leave your home someone is likely to see you - and if you plan on doing things you would rather that no one saw, you should have done them before you went out. If anything, cameras in public places can be a good thing - in downtown Oslo (thats in Norway) they placed a couple of cameras in one most popular parks for junkies, and look and behold; even thought the junkies still hang out there (everyone has to be somewhere I guess), they don't harass the other people walking by no more.

      --
      Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
    2. Re:No.... by Wiseazz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The 1984 reference is old and tired, guys.

      These are public web cams in public places. What difference is there between this and going to the park, sitting on a bench, and people-watching? People enjoy watching other people - it's interesting. I understand that in this case, people may not know they're being watched. But if you're out in public, you should assume *someone* can see what you're doing. By definition.

      Get over it and enjoy the show. Now, when government mandated cameras start showing up in peoples' homes, then you can start screaming 1984 and I'll be happy to join in.

      I'm off to enjoy my "college co-ed shower cam" subscription. You kids play nice.

      --
      My sig sucks.
  3. In other news...... by losttoy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ....they were slashdotted within seconds. But seriously, how would you handle a DoS on a network of webcams? Anything over the internet is reliable enough for security monitoring given attacks like DoS/DDoS?

  4. Shouldn't it be the other way around? by CGP314 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The site -- http://privacy.cs.cmu.edu/dataprivacy/projects/cam watch -- notes that a few of the "jail cams" had been disabled due to lawsuits.

    We don't want to let you see what happens in a jail. We do want to keep an eye on you so we can more easily put you in one.

    1. Re:Shouldn't it be the other way around? by CGP314 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you think that most of the 2x10^6 people in prison are there because they are 'dangerous criminals' you are very, very wrong. More than half are there for drug offences.

  5. Oscillation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, it would cause oscillation behaviour.

    If all people look at the line and it's full, nobody goes there and now it's empty, so everyone goes there. Repeat as many times as desired.

    This is why no routing algorithm takes in account queue length.

  6. If they can be monitored... by i.r.id10t · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...

    One of the reasons I was told that a webcam may not go over well at the college I work at is the question of "If it can be monitored, is there an obligation to monitor it?"

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
  7. Public service webcams... by fuqqer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not so sure I care about public webcams. I'd like to see webcams focused on our public sector. Services like Police, Fire, City, State, and Fed. employees should be monitored at random. Screw letting the government watch us, let's watch them!
    If the govt. is so ancy to be watchdogs of the private citizens in our world, we should have the opportunity to be watchdogs for these organizations at our whim.
    I think that civil rights violations would go down. Police are crooked wannabe thugs anyway. Tax money would be spent more efficiently. Govt. employees are lazy.
    The unfortunate downside of this is that we have CSPAN in the US and our politicians are still crooked punks trying to sneak crappy laws by us everyday.

    I wish my sig link were broken so I had an excuse to manually craft a sig everytime...