Suppose a major search engine company builds a cloud-based
policing app for small communities. The app is aimed at any small
community from a village to a street.
Anyone may buy web cams and use the app to link them to a
cloud-based policing system which monitors images for suspicious activity and
the presence of known offenders. Web cam images of your house frontage and your bit of the street outside for example.
Anyone with previous who ever had their photo in a newspaper
may be recognised by the system. If they disguise their appearance then the cloud-policing
system will confine itself to suspicious activity.
It’s just another gadget, but people buy and the market
grows.
Lots of political issues here of course, but think ten years
down the line. Think micro web-cams used for personal security and the sheer scope
of data on who, what and where.
Maybe a small monthly charge would be made for the app depending
on the package purchased. Maybe the basic package would include reporting
suspicious activity to the police.
A more expensive package could have extra functions such as logging
police response. Maybe the police officers themselves would be identified by
the system or maybe it would use private security outfits.
Eventually the system would cover everything from drunks
pissing in shop doorways, speeding, parking, kids playing truant, disability
claimants playing football – the list is endless.
Universal policing. You may have nothing to hide, but you
have nowhere to hide anyway.
5 comments:
We could all wear a little web cam which continually sends images to the cloud, where they are monitored for what it recognises as "danger" (known criminals, dodgy areas, logos of rip-off or poor value companies) and then warns us.
Different providers of this service would vie to gain greater commercial credibility. Cheapo ones would be operated by companies in cahoots with certain vested interests. But we would never know, because Virgin and Tesco and Microsoft would spend a lot of money to set up fake providers. The UK government one would be pretty basic, but utterly dependable, of course.
Aren't we almost there already? Personally I would like my own Spitfire.
Kind of a modern gauleiter system, then.
Sam - good idea. Would that little web cam eventually stop you from going anywhere at all?
Demetrius - your own Spitfire? Do you have to borrow one at the moment?
Sackers - yes, although I can't see it ever being used as the brand name.
iPlod, then.
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