14 DAY TRIAL // A UK company has launched an Internet-based service called Internet Eyes that allows anyone to sign up and monitor closed-circuit television (CCTV) feeds for signs of crimes. The Information Commissioner's Office is not convinced that the initiative complies with the Data Protection Act and plans to conduct an investigation.
The crime prevention model adopted by Internet Eyes focuses around the fact that there are insufficient specialized personnel or available resources to allow watching all of Britain's 4.2 million CCTV cameras in real time. Most of footage captured by such a camera will likely never be viewed by anyone, except for when a crime happens and the authorities need to identify the perpetrator.
Internet Eyes wants to change all that and provide a real-time crime prevention solution to businesses operating CCTV systems, possibly taking away what little privacy the Brits have left in the process. The new Internet-based system offers free registration of “viewer” accounts for any individual located in the European Union. Yes, not only UK, but the entire EU and soon the entire world, according to the company.
The viewers will be able to watch four different camera feeds at a time and press an alert button each time they notice something potentially illegal going on. Apparently, the feeds will change every 20 minutes and these users will not be able to choose or know the location of the cameras they are watching; unless they recognize the setting, obviously.
When the alert button is pressed, the owner of the camera will get a notification via SMS or MMS and will be able to verify if a crime is in progress. The owners will then be able to rate the alerts they receive as negative, neutral or positive, thus awarding points to the viewers who triggered them. The viewer who scores most points in a month gets a cash prize of £1,000 (almost $1,600).
According to The Guardian, Internet Eyes trials have already begun in Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare, where several shops and businesses have signed up for the service. The provisional launch date is planned for November 2008.
Despite the fact that the Internet Eyes founders claim that the service is compliant with UK's Data Protection Act and that a legal team works to ensure that, civil liberties watchdogs are not happy about the initiative. Michael Laurie, head of a crime-fighting charity called Crimestoppers, says that it opens up a "wide range of opportunities for abuse and error.”
The Information Commissioner's Office, the independent authority guarding the use and protection of personal information in the UK, is also planning to take a closer look at the service. Jonathan Bamford, the assistant information commissioner, considers that only trained staff and law enforcement officers should have access to CCTV footage. "It is not appropriate to disclose images of identifiable individuals for entertainment purposes, or to place them on the internet," he commented for The Guardian.