The residents of a Lake Highlands subdivision have voted to install cameras to “look for suspicious people, vehicles lacking homeowner stickers, people walking through alleys and obvious criminal activity” because of the high level of criminal activity in their community. Who knew that walking through an alley was such a dangerous activity?
As far as I can tell, this movement is the wave of the future but that doesn’t make it any less frightening. It will be the residents who monitor these video feeds and then provide the footage to police if a crime is caught on tape. The threat to privacy is not trivial and the very fact that it’s residents monitoring this would scare me. People aren’t typically known for their judicial use of restraint when it comes to gossip about their neighbors.
I’d bet this gets misused at least on a 2 to 1 basis in the actual implementation of things. Another thing to add to the list of “Why I like living in a small town with access to a really big town.”
Hat tip: Barking Dogs