[Shoreditch] council, who announced a pilot for the scheme in December, plan to allow 20,000 Shoreditch residents to spy on each other using a set of 500 CCTV cameras in a deprived neighbourhood, relayed through set-top boxes. They can compare suspicious characters against a most-wanted list of Asbo “offenders” and report them to the police.
isn’t that nice?
more on this from El Reg
Isn’t Shoreditch full of a load of Nathan Barleys who’d treat it as an opportunity to stage some sort of flashmob “happening” these days?
Surely it’s all to the good and the innocent have nothing to fear?
It’s a difficult one really; ostensibly it could help reduce crime, etc. by having pairs of eyes watching the cameras who are more ‘involved’ than your typical security guard who just wants another mug of tea .. but …
If you can see who enters and leaves a particular house/flat then it is (a) *possibly*[1] an invasion of the privacy of that person, and (b) and open inviation to those watching to ‘do’ that place knowing that the resident is out. Clearly, cameras must always be positioned so as to not see *into* a property in all cases.
[1] I saw ‘possibly’ on the basis that you could see people coming and going from a particular property at all times by just standing on the street, CCTV just makes it warmer/drier/less conspicuous of you to do so
There is no Shoreditch council. It’s in Tower Hamlets.
Yes – the organisation in question is the Shoreditch Trust
http://www.shoreditchtrust.org.uk/about.asp
I thought Shoreditch came under Hackney council.