Smile! You're On Closed Circuit Camera (Game)
A new internet program in Britain has ordinary people fighting crime and civil rights groups up in arms. Turns out that a new form of interactive entertainment called Internet Eyes is coming to Britain that will allow for average citizens to watch close circuit camera feeds to try and catch criminals in the act. The "game" allows people to watch live feeds from cameras around the city and then click a button to report when they think an individual is committing a criminal act. This will send still image to the private camera operator who can then follow up on whether the activity on film warrants attention.
Civil rights groups are worried that the game will be a safe haven for snoopers and could be used to discriminate, since users of the program could be acting racist or bigoted motives; however, the company running the system says that they will try to curb this type of behavior by giving participants a three strike system. If you report three times different activities that do not help catch criminals in a month, than you can't do it anymore for the month. At the same time, there will be scoreboards to help show who has been caught be players, and which players are in the lead with catching people, with cash prizes given out monthly of up to £1,000.
Overall it seems like a "game" that is definitely blurring the line between gaming and real life consequences, and it'll definitely be interesting to see how this pans out in the end. While it may not be the government in charge of this, the game does have a certain Big Brother feeling to the fact that people will be watching what you are doing. Then again the company behind Internet Eyes reminds us that all the video is already being record of people daily, they are just adding more eyes to it.
Internet game that awards points for people spotting real crimes on CCTV is branded 'snooper's paradise' [Mail Online]
[via: GamePolitics]
PixelPoet
Posted to Miscellany on 9 October 2009
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: britain, civil rights, close circuit camera, internet, internet gaming, law enforcement
The US has already been doing this for four years to keep the evil spics from stealing our jarbs.