Slashdot Mirror
New CCTV Site In UK Pays People To Watch
pyrosine writes "Have you ever felt like being paid for watching live CCTV footage? The BBC are reporting CCTV site, 'Internet Eyes' is doing exactly that. Offering up to £1000 to people who report suspicious activity, the scheme seems an easy way to make money. Not everyone is pleased with the scheme though; the Information Commissioner's Office is worried it will lead to voyeurism or misuse, but what difference does it make when you can find said webcams with a simple Google search?"
Cue the stupid people in the UK who will say the tired out line "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear." Strangely the phrase does not apply when people like politicians, footballers and the film / record industry have something to hide, who run to the courts for crooked "Super Injunctions" to protect their criminal behaviour / scandals from being made public.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I always thought the CC in CCTV stood for 'Closed Circuit', meaning the pictures are not being broadcast.
I know they're not being broadcast over RF but shouldn't making them available to anyone via a website be classed as 'broadcasting' therefore making it Open Circuit TV or just 'TV' ?
I wish there was a US version.
Give it time. There'll be a vastly inferior US remake soon enough, that will still make a lot more money and be more popular, while purists will prefer the original British version.
Looks like most voyeurs will end up paying the company, not the other way around:
http://interneteyes.co.uk/community/index.html
It's £1.99/month or £12.99/year to use the site. To do marginally better than breaking even you'd need to pay annually and watch it for 2 hrs/day, which can get you back £1.50/month, but the only large payment mentioned explicity is £1000 for 'the Viewer who receives the most award points'. More like a paid-entry competition than a job.
By linking to their site from here you just violated their "no linking" policy found here: http://interneteyes.co.uk/terms-conditions.html
"Linking to our site
You may not link any other site to our website."
Whoops - and now I have as well
This part is funnier:
You may not use our website, or material available through our website:
[...]
In a way that abuse or invade [sic] another's privacy, [...]
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Most crimes are committed in boardrooms and government. Let's put CCTV there.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
It's only 2 pounds a month so I tried it out. Here's the slashdot review summary..
- You have the choice between 1 camera, 2x1 camera and 1x2 cameras.
- You don't get to choose which camera however you can click to choose another random camera.
- You get to click to watch for another 5 minutes on the same camera
- If you don't click you will switch to a different camera automatically
- You get 5 alerts a month.
- There is some kind of buffering going on here however the video footage seems to be very close to live. The camera has a clock in it which matched my desktop to the minute.
- You don't have to be in England to use it. I'm currently half way around the world so it takes a long time for video to show up
Got any more stupid arguments you'd like to trot out as excuses so that nobody can watch you while you're shopping?
Sure, I'll bite.
I think you're forgetting that CCTV is used as evidence, and since it's "unbiased", it must be admissible, and 100% accurate evidence.
Of course, Judges and Police don't often realise that mistakes are often made with CCTV, nor that it's bloody expensive to keep it running, and would be cheaper to employ police instead.
I'd rather get arrested for climbing a wall, than have a mugger or rapist go free because there is no evidence.
That is, until they lock you up thinking you are a mugger/rapist?
That's not just your problem. Then we've got an innocent person in jail, and a mugger/rapist that the police has stopped looking for.
That is, until they lock you up thinking you are a mugger/rapist? That's not just your problem. Then we've got an innocent person in jail, and a mugger/rapist that the police has stopped looking for.
That seems to be a bit of a strawman considering mistakes are made all the time without CCTV too. With really crappy quality CCTV it isn't that much use as evidence (I should know our CCTV system completely sucks here at work, wish they'd get a decent system), but with high quality stuff it's a lot more useful. A lot of businesses around here run their own CCTV, it isn't costing the government anything. The Police occasionally request some footage of certain times if there's been dodgy goings on on our street (which there often are as we live next to one of the roughest areas in the city).
Of course mistakes are made with other systems, but they don't cost £200 million to solve 10 crimes over ten years.
CCTV was originally called a PREVENTATIVE measure. It hasn't worked. So what happens now? The Government push for more, and more.
I'd prefer that £200 million to pay for the 666 new police officers we could've had for the last ten years, not some childs' plaything.
You don't best stop crime by constantly monitoring people. You best stop crime by trust and education.
It's been online for at least a year and was posted by timothy almost exactly a year ago.
Also they don't pay you to watch, you pay them to watch and if you happen to see something happening, you might get paid.
Good work, editors.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!