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Camera Watch: Links to Public Webcams 194

Posted by michael from the watching-us-watching-them dept.
Mikkeles writes "From an Associated Press story: 'It sounds like a chapter out of "Spy vs. Spy": Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have launched a project called Camera Watch that lists Internet cameras that monitor public spaces, letting Web surfers try the role of bored security guard.' The site permits searching for an available webcam in the geographical region (US) of your choice. About 600 webcams of 6000 in the pipe are now available."
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Camera Watch: Links to Public Webcams More

Camera Watch: Links to Public Webcams

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  • a great congestion reduction tool (Score:5, Insightful)

    by civilengineer ( 669209 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:37PM (#6882161) Homepage Journal
    if we have a lot of these at movie theaters, airport queues, and wherever else there might be congestion, people can adjust their travel behavior accordingly.

    • Oscillation (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, it would cause oscillation behaviour.

      If all people look at the line and it's full, nobody goes there and now it's empty, so everyone goes there. Repeat as many times as desired.

      This is why no routing algorithm takes in account queue length.

    • Re:a great congestion reduction tool (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Politburo ( 640618 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:58PM (#6882386)
      On the surface, yes. But your nick says "civil engineer". Surely you are familiar with the concept of peak period demand.

      For most infrastructure that we build, it goes unused for much of the time. There is a small percentage of time where the infrastructure is pushed to the limits. For transportation, this is rush hour, for power grids, it's hot summer days, for movie theatres, it's premiere night, etc.

      Usually, it is extremely difficult to abate peak period effects. They do not exist because that is when everyone "wants" to go somewhere or do something, they exist because that is the only time most people can use, or need to use, the resource in question. Most employers frown if you come in at 6 am, or 11 am, and if you leave at 3 pm, or 8 pm. You don't need a ton of juice to power your A/C when it's nighttime.
      • For most infrastructure that we build, it goes unused for much of the time. There is a small percentage of time where the infrastructure is pushed to the limits.

        That brings up something which has been bugging me for a while.

        Whose idea was it that everyone should go to work at the exact same time, eat lunch at the exact same time, and come home at the exact same time? Doesn't anyone ever get tired of being stuck in snarling traffic jams?

        For a while I worked a job in DC which required a 70-mile commute.

        • Re:a great congestion reduction tool (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Politburo ( 640618 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:36PM (#6882696)
          Management, of course.

          The thing is, a lot of business that goes on requires the services of another business. If I show up to work at 6 am, and a colleague at another company, or even a coworker, shows up at 11 am, that is 5 hours of my work day where I do not have access to their knowledge and/or decision making power. Likewise, if I leave at 3 pm, there may be workers who work later who then are shut out from me. By attempting to have everyone in and out at around the same time, you maximize the time that everyone is in the office together, theoretically maximizing the productivity of your office.
          • I suppose. I work with various people/groups that are all over the world. So I'm pretty much fscked no matter what time I try to set meetings. I go in to work at 10 and leave at 7, mostly because of traffic issues.

            Even if our work-schedules were aligned it wouldn't matter. Cause I can never find a conference room on short-order, nor can I find a time-slot when everyone is free. To make up for this, I often end up with phone-teleconferences at the oddest hours, ie 11 - midnight, etc etc. Nothing like trying
      • civilengineer is right. Many times I have turned on to a freeway on-ramp to be greeted by a heavily congested road. If I had known its condition in advance, I could have opted for an alternate route. (Hell, never mind the webcams, just build the ramps so that you can see what the freeway looks like before you commit to getting on it.)

        This doesn't really apply with power grids, of course, because you only have one available. Checking its utilization and drawing your power from elsewhere is not an option
        • Was driving up through Oregon back home after a vacation - overhead, saw a sign that told us the average transit time to (or maybe across?) the I-405 (from I-5). That was very cool! I'd love to see those sorts of signs in more places.
        • If one movie theatre in your area is not crowded when others are, there is a reason. That reason may be that the theatre is harder to get to, in a less dense area, more expensive, less comfortable, less selection, etc etc, but there is a reason. People aren't just going to theatre B instead of theatre A for fun. While not all theatres in one area will have the same exact saturation at any one point, if all things are equal, they should be equally crowded. Of course, all things are not equal. In your situati
      • Working as an architect for a V Large ISP it has been interesting to watch the "peak hour" for email go from 1-2 hours at night (1997) to a flat-line peak period of 8 hours from 9am to 5pm. We have always designed and built for peaks, now the peak is *all day*.
      • This is why matinee tickets are cheaper.

    • Re:a great congestion reduction tool (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EZmagz ( 538905 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:58PM (#6882389) Homepage
      Interesting you should say that. The Minnesota Dept. Of Transportation (MnDOT) has links to all of their cameras on the highway over here... [state.mn.us]
      For me at least, since I get the pleasure of driving across the metro everyday going to and from work, it can be a godsend. There's a saying around here that's pretty fitting: There's two seasons in MN...winter, and road construction. It's definitely convenient to be able to check from my laptop here at work and see what the roads are like before I head home and fight the other 9 million bad drivers.

      Of course it's not foolproof, as they'll always be accidents that aren't on camera. If nothing else though, it makes for fun viewing when you're bored out of your mind on a Friday afternoon.

      • There's something similar going on in and around Denver. As this gargantuan construction project lumbers on, they've been installing cameras and other monitoring gadgets throughout the area. As of right now, not much is completed, but what is done can be seen and monitored from www.trexproject.com [trexproject.com].
        • Actually that Denver area system goes back to a CDOT initiative five or six years ago. Traffic speed sensors in the highways will trip an alarm if the average speed goes out of range (adjustable to allow for known factors) and a traffic engineer can bring up a view on one of the nearby cameras. There are a bunch of other inputs (including weather sensors, etc) and outputs (the changeable text signs over some of the highways, low power AM broadcast systems near the Eisenhower Tunnel, Vail Pass, etc...).

          I
          • Hey, that's cool. Didn't know that. Is any of this stuff publicly accessable? I'd love to know a bit more about the driving conditions before I go out and about.
            • Yeah, a lot of the info, camera snapshots, etc gets posted to the web. Most of is linked from the COTRIP page [cotrip.org] (Colorado Transportation Resource and Information Partnership). You can also check out the links from CDOT's main page [state.co.us]. Part of the project was to deploy web-based information kiosks to places like DIA.

              Of course the cool stuff -- like live video feeds from the cameras and remote controls for the ones that can pan, tilt and zoom, or to reprogram the signs -- is of course restricted to the opera
    • wherever else there might be congestion, people can adjust their travel behavior accordingly.

      Agreed. However, a camera need not have 1600x1200 resolution or whatever for this purpose. A TV-quality camera (at best) would be sufficient to discern that cars are bumper to bumper on the highway.
    • We've had traffic cameras in Atlanta for a couple years now. Comes in handy once in a while for deciding the best route from/to work: Traffic Cams. The link was ./ed so hopefully this isn't already mentioned, but I would like to see some type of geographic view of the cameras locations. You could zoom in on an area and click on a camera icon and you would get a stream from that camera.

      --
      George
    • When I lived in Seattle in teh mid '90s we used to do this.

      The transportation department [wa.gov] setup monitors that showed the rate of movement of traffic, and displayed the route across the bridge from Bellvue to Seattle (520 IRRC) - it would show green dots or red dots depending on the speed of traffic, and you could use a couple of cameras along the route as well to see how traffic was.

  • No.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@NOSpAM.ColinGregoryPalmer.net> on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:37PM (#6882169) Homepage
    sounds like a chapter out of "Spy vs. Spy"

    Sounds more like 1984 to me.
    • Sounds more like David Brin's Transparent Society [davidbrin.com]. The difference is that here you are potentially watched by anyone at all, in 1984 you are potentially watched by a small group of people who control the cameras.

    • Re:No.... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by IIRCAFAIKIANAL ( 572786 )
      No, in 1984 they had camera's in people's homes. These are camera's in public areas, where you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

      There are gray areas of course - what about camera's aimed up women's skirts in public spaces, or public restrooms, or camera's that can view into a private backyard...

    • Re:No.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WegianWarrior ( 649800 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:16PM (#6882525) Journal

      Sounds more like 1984 to me.

      Wrong, on two things. Firstly, this isn't "big brother" watching you.. if anything, it's "little brother". Secondly, it's not in your home, but in public areas. You did know that people could see you in public, didn't you?

      I can't see why people get worked up over the fact that there are webcams in public places. The moment you leave your home someone is likely to see you - and if you plan on doing things you would rather that no one saw, you should have done them before you went out. If anything, cameras in public places can be a good thing - in downtown Oslo (thats in Norway) they placed a couple of cameras in one most popular parks for junkies, and look and behold; even thought the junkies still hang out there (everyone has to be somewhere I guess), they don't harass the other people walking by no more.

      • becausr there is nothing in place to protect us from there abuse.

        There is a different from being in the background of someones hioome movie, and being activly monitored.

        It would seem to me there would be SOME level of privacy expacted. I mean, If I'm teaching my child to ride a bike, there is no reason for anybody to go out of there way to hear are conversation. No reason for anybody to start corrolating my behavier to past behavior, etc...

        • Yet another interesting gray area to consider :)

          What you describe is no different than someone following you around, taking notes, etc. In some places, the consensus is that is harassment. In other places, that is perfectly acceptable behaviour (perhaps not socially, but legally). And in all places, it's something that is very difficult to prevent.

          Unfortunately (for you), you are in the minority here. Most people will willingly give up "privacy" in public places, since we don't really have it anyway. Most

    • Re:No.... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Just read the damn book. That is all I ask of people who say something is like 1984. Read the book. 1984 is starting to become like Nazi in dicussions. I think it is thrown out at least once in every discussion.

      What's even worse is that the mods obviously haven't read the book either. I would love to do a poll of slashdot to see how many people have actually read the book in the last few years.

      • Re:No.... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by CGP314 ( 672613 )
        I have read the book many times. It would not be difficult for a system like this to be automated... for example with the horrendous facial recognition software we have been reading about in the past few days.

    • Re:No.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Wiseazz ( 267052 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @04:15PM (#6883092)
      The 1984 reference is old and tired, guys.

      These are public web cams in public places. What difference is there between this and going to the park, sitting on a bench, and people-watching? People enjoy watching other people - it's interesting. I understand that in this case, people may not know they're being watched. But if you're out in public, you should assume *someone* can see what you're doing. By definition.

      Get over it and enjoy the show. Now, when government mandated cameras start showing up in peoples' homes, then you can start screaming 1984 and I'll be happy to join in.

      I'm off to enjoy my "college co-ed shower cam" subscription. You kids play nice.

  • I go here... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Wireless Joe ( 604314 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:38PM (#6882173) Homepage
    I like to use the World View of Live Webcams [ozemail.com.au] to get my voyeuristic fix. It's kept fairly up to date, and has hundreds of cams.

  • In other news...... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by losttoy ( 558557 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:39PM (#6882179)
    ....they were slashdotted within seconds. But seriously, how would you handle a DoS on a network of webcams? Anything over the internet is reliable enough for security monitoring given attacks like DoS/DDoS?

    • That brings up an excellent point.

      Screw stealing the tapes...DoS the company's webcams when you are robbing the place!

      However, no company has been nearsighted enough to use webcams as security cameras (that i know of) and without tape backups.

      So looks like I still have to find "saturday 5:30am" from that pile of tapes...
    • Have a public cached version that is separate from the version that is available to only "important" people. The public server gets DDoS'd, but big deal! you have mirror!

  • Shouldn't it be the other way around? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@NOSpAM.ColinGregoryPalmer.net> on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:40PM (#6882198) Homepage
    The site -- http://privacy.cs.cmu.edu/dataprivacy/projects/cam watch -- notes that a few of the "jail cams" had been disabled due to lawsuits.

    We don't want to let you see what happens in a jail. We do want to keep an eye on you so we can more easily put you in one.

  • Reminds me of a story (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slycer9 ( 264565 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:41PM (#6882205) Journal
    ...on http://www.e-sheep.com

    Look at the story called 'spiders', the one about al quaida.

    (Forgive me, it's early, haven't had coffee...not EVEN gonna try a link...so just cut n' paste).
  • I don't want to see the US, give me a cam in the red light district in over in Amsterdam that pans.

  • Next reality show (Score:5, Funny)

    by BillLeeLee ( 629420 ) <bashpenguin@NoSPAM.gmail.com> on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:42PM (#6882216)
    I think Fox is gonna license the camera footage as a new reality tv series "World's most exciting random camera footage."

    • Re:Next reality show (Score:5, Funny)

      by RevMike ( 632002 ) <revMike@gmail. c o m> on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:48PM (#6882289) Journal
      I heard about that. I think it comes on right after "When Animals Attack Buildings Collapsing on Police Chases."

      Every time I see that Simpson's episode from the future, I wait for Marge to say "Fox moved to soft core porn so gradually, no one even noticed." That always cracks me up.

      • Oh, to be on family guy and see the fox special:
        "Slow Children, Fast Animals"

        Camera 1
        Obese child seperated from scout troop
        Camera 2
        Tiger Closing Fast
        Camera 1
        Child: Oh no, I spilled honey on myself!
        Camera 2
        Tiger closing even faster

        This moment brought to you by a cartoon kicked off the air at least 4 times.

  • 6 Comments, site is gone (Score:4, Funny)

    by Christianfreak ( 100697 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:42PM (#6882220) Homepage Journal
    We interupt this program to bring you a special announcement.

    Users from the hacker website 'slashdot.org' today attacked an brought down the nation's super-duper internet monitoring system. Hacker's by the name of 'Hemos' and 'CmdrTaco' are said to be in FBI custody ... Film at 11.

  • False alarms? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EvilOpie ( 534946 ) * on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:43PM (#6882227) Homepage
    I wonder how they'll police this? Honestly, I think it's a good idea in theory, like especially when dealing with troublesome intersections that cause frequent accidents. Having the public watch the cams and call in accidents as soon as they happen could be a *very* good thing. But the problem is that you'd need someone to police the people viewing the cams to make sure that if they acted on what they saw (or think they saw) that it was a real and legitimate problem.

    Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding the article. I guess that at first read through, "the role of bored security guard" makes it sound like you'll watch the cameras instead of the guards, but I guess that you could be watching them in addition to the guards/security that normally view them.

    But if THAT is the case, then I guess this brings up the question, is this then just for entertainment value? You know it's a sad but true fact of life that if people saw something bad that happened, they'd just be like "oh, that sucks" or laugh or whatever, and then go on with life just being glad that it wasn't them.
    • "Having the public watch the cams and call in accidents as soon as they happen could be a *very* good thing. But the problem is that you'd need someone to police the people viewing the cams to make sure that if they acted on what they saw (or think they saw) that it was a real and legitimate problem."

      I don't think that web cams would add much to informing authorities about accidents since so many people have mobile phones. It migt aid in determining how bad an accident is though. Also, determining legiti

    • Re:False alarms? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by PostItNote ( 630567 )
      > I wonder how they'll police this?

      "they" won't police anything. But it does mean that privacy, instead of being only for cops, is for nobody. Thus, it gives interested citizens a chance to "watch the watchmen". You'll note that the link for the story goes to PRIVACY.cmu.edu.

      I view this technology as a democratization of the surveillance cameras that are ubiquitous in large areas. With this, anyone can get the data from the original source - no waiting for the police to release it, no FOX-ification
    • actually, evidience support that intersection cams don't work.

      Well, they work until they become part of the normally dailly background noise. Almost all intersections accident are caused becauses someone is not paying attention. How is a traffic cam going to magically make people pay more attention?
      • I think the point wasn't that webcams would prevent accidents, but rather that the accidents would be reported quicker. Not that there's really a problem with how quickly they get reported anyhow, thanks to cellphones...
    • Having the public watch the cams and call in accidents as soon as they happen could be a *very* good thing.

      Actually, most auto accidents are already quickly and rapidly reported by persons on the scene. Usually this process involves prying the cell phone from the collion victim's hand and using it to call the authorities.

  • The Camera Watch project is part of our Surveillance of Surveillances ( SOS) effort. We are constructing a repository of links to publicly available on-line webcams, where the webcams of interest are those that observe the public in public spaces. At present, we estimate there are about 10,000 such cameras displaying public places in the United States. Our goals are to assess the number and nature of such cameras, explore potential uses, and analyze and propose related policies and best practices.
    Our data

  • I use the traffic webcams daily (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Shiifty ( 704247 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:43PM (#6882230) Homepage
    I have 2 routes I can take to work. If my normal route, the fast highway is clogged up because of an accident or bad weather, I can take the normally somewhat slower alternate route. Gotta love technology.

    Whats funny is when there is an accident, the operators zoom in with the cameras so you can see the damage up close LOL
  • I remember that there was another site a while back on slashdot that was planning on paying people to watch webcams like this. Anybody remember the site. I can't find it with /.'s terrible search engine or google's.

  • Oooh -- Internet Security Guard (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hayzeus ( 596826 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:44PM (#6882237) Homepage
    Can I yell "You Kids! No running in the goddam mall" remotely?

  • Also lets terrorists.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by losttoy ( 558557 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:44PM (#6882238)
    .... watch public places sitting in a cybercafe or from the hills of Afghanistan!!!

    • a cybercafe or from the hills of Afghanistan!!!

      Well, the convenience of this shouldn't be ignored. What are the security implications of this, when intelligence gathering doesn't require an on-site visit?

  • .. it's like... (Score:3, Funny)

    by sporty ( 27564 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:44PM (#6882244) Homepage
    It's like millions of cams were used at once, and then suddenly silenced... by slashdot.
  • just sit at home in their poly/cotten shirts with clip-on ties and watch as other people might potentially be doing something that somebody else will have to deal with eventually anyway. All without the bother of "getting paid" or having to hide the pr0n that they are really watching.

    Technology: another prayer answered.

  • Existing city webcam project (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mr. Darl McBride ( 704524 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:45PM (#6882262)
    If this interests you, also check out CincyStreet.com [cincystreet.com]. They have an index with dozens and dozens of cameras from many different US cities.

    I discovered this a short while ago myself, and was surprised to find one within just half a mile of my own home, just off a street on my regular commute. I come within a hair's breadth of appearing on camera every morning, and I never knew it.

    I keep a couple locations on shortcuts, and sometimes I check out the sunrise in other states over my morning coffee.

  • We need one more camera... (Score:5, Funny)

    by H0NGK0NGPH00EY ( 210370 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:52PM (#6882335) Homepage
    Too bad there isn't a webcam on their server, so we could all watch it go up in smoke live.
  • Anyone in London remember this creepy campaign [samizdata.net]

  • Yowsa! My server is on fire! (Score:3, Funny)

    by tomzyk ( 158497 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:55PM (#6882373) Journal
    About 600 webcams of 6000 in the pipe are now available.
    And, of course now that this has been announced on Slashdot, within the next half-hour, there might be only 10% of those 600 that survived the /. effect.

  • Transparent Society (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tarranp ( 676762 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:02PM (#6882424)
    This is not a bad thing. David Brin actually discusses this in depth in his book Transparent Society."

    A person watching the camera is no different than a person standing on the street corner watching people go by. Well there si a difference: the person watching on the web is a witness wwho cannot be intimidated into silence, and nobody knows if they are being watched in that public space.

    I don't fear the loss of privacy, because there is no privacy in public spaces. I do like the idea that any would be wrongdoer does not know whether he is being watched or not.

    • Re:Transparent Society (Score:3, Interesting)

      by esme ( 17526 )
      privacy is not the real issue here -- as you say, there is no privacy in public.

      but our behavior in public, particulary in big cities, is generally anonymous. i have lived in big cities most of my life and have run into people out in public only a few times -- and only at places where we were both frequent visitors (grocery store, popular restaurant, etc.). in general, you almost never see anyone you know.

      the transparent society would end the anonymity of our public behavior, and this has huge consequ

      • You bring up some good points, however I feel they are minor drawbacks.

        For example, in the case of the businessman concerned that his people want to unionize. If he really wants to see where his people go, h can now hire a prvate investigator. In fact, he's much more likely to hire the investigator than to sit around watching the webcam since he's got other things to do with his itme.

        Similarly concerning stalking: A stalker sitting at home who never interacts with the stalkee does not matter, since the st

    • Re:Transparent Society (Score:3, Interesting)

      by krysith ( 648105 )
      There is a significant difference if the camera is hidden. When I see someone else on my street corner, I know that I am being watched. It makes me less likely to A) commit a crime B) talk to myself C) have sex with my girlfriend on the steps or D) pick my nose.

      I think that having hidden cameras in a public space is not an illegal thing, but certainly a rude one. The middle of a field in a national forest is certainly a public place, but there is an expectation of privacy if no one is there.
      • But the question is, *should* you have an expectation of privacy in such a place? It is public land, after all. Even if you expect privacy, some random hiker could come walking up on you unnoticed. Are they violating your privacy, even though they have as much right to be there as you do?
  • Someone here maintains a pretty good list [purdue.edu] of webcams on campus. There a few cams that I go past every single day and I never knew they were there. Same being said for the computer lab cameras. I always thought they were for security, and not being broadcast over the net
  • Posting a link on slashdot to a page that has links to a huge amount of the world's (public-sphere-invading big-brother) web cams is a great way to help prevent those cameras from being used.

    Woohoo!
  • report a neighbor!

  • Slashdot as tool of evil genius? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bopo ( 105833 ) * <bopo@ner[ ]et ['p.n' in gap]> on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:13PM (#6882502) Homepage
    Perhaps the submitter and his evil minions were planning a countrywide crime spree and needed a sure-fire way of bring all those cameras down?

    What? I'm bored, leave me alone.

  • How many of you clicked on "Beach or Ocean View"?

    And just what were you planning to surveil? : )

  • If they can be monitored... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:15PM (#6882518)
    ...

    One of the reasons I was told that a webcam may not go over well at the college I work at is the question of "If it can be monitored, is there an obligation to monitor it?"
    • I was wondering: there is this, um, camera that is viewable on the web. It's in the dorm room of a couple of college coeds. They really want me to see them because they sent me a piece of e-mail with poor grammer, but I cannot find the camera.

      Is that one of the cameras that we are going to get to use?

  • The Camera Watch project is part of our Surveillance of Surveillances ( SOS) effort. We are constructing a repository of links to publicly available on-line webcams, where the webcams of interest are those that observe the public in public spaces. At present, we estimate there are about 10,000 such cameras displaying public places in the United States. Our goals are to assess the number and nature of such cameras, explore potential uses, and analyze and propose related policies and best practices.

    I don'

    • ". A would be criminal is less likely to commit a crime, if he/she knows that a camera is watching/recording his/her moves."

      real world seems to suggest this is not true. First, many many people commit crimes when under urvailince, banks conviences stores, etc.

      second, camera are more widley distributed, but crime is increasing.

  • thus my moniker, circletimessquare

    everyone go to camera #3343

    that's me in the red shirt by the lightpole waving

    hi everyone! ;-P

  • Be on the lookout for a blurry individual... (Score:3, Funny)

    by migstradamus ( 472166 ) * on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:32PM (#6882654) Homepage
    Security guard? Maybe a collectively blind one. Ten thousand people looking at the same blurry, 10fps image isn't very helpful, at least not for identifying people. Most public cams are so lo-res and slow that unless we can get the crooks to move in slow motion and put their faces to the lens for a seconds, it's going to be limited to "hey, there's someone there, wearing something red, I think. Or maybe it's an Irish Setter, or a tomato."

    As usual then, it's all about the bandwidth. High-res cameras with 30fps minimum, swivel and zoom controls, and why not toss in sound? Then maybe you've got something. That something would still be a privacy catastrophe, but at least it would be a crisp, interactive privacy catastrophe.

  • Darn (Score:3, Funny)

    by r_j_prahad ( 309298 ) <r_j_prahadNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:32PM (#6882658)
    % grep "women\'s dorm" camwatch.htm
    %


    Darn.

  • Public service webcams... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fuqqer ( 545069 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:50PM (#6882834) Homepage
    I'm not so sure I care about public webcams. I'd like to see webcams focused on our public sector. Services like Police, Fire, City, State, and Fed. employees should be monitored at random. Screw letting the government watch us, let's watch them!
    If the govt. is so ancy to be watchdogs of the private citizens in our world, we should have the opportunity to be watchdogs for these organizations at our whim.
    I think that civil rights violations would go down. Police are crooked wannabe thugs anyway. Tax money would be spent more efficiently. Govt. employees are lazy.
    The unfortunate downside of this is that we have CSPAN in the US and our politicians are still crooked punks trying to sneak crappy laws by us everyday.

    I wish my sig link were broken so I had an excuse to manually craft a sig everytime...

  • Useful but not always entertaining (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tacoguy ( 676855 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @04:13PM (#6883075)
    I think this fits cause a store is a privately owned place with public access. I recently installed a system with 4 panning cameras in an antique store that was having very bad shoplifting problems. There is a monitor in plain view of people entering as well as tape recording and streaming via a web server. The shoplifting instantly stopped. Motion detectors autodial the 2 owners via wireless cell at night in case of a break in and they can instantly view activity inside the store via the Web. A UPS powers the system (including illumination) in case of electrical failure. Not entertaining but very useful. And a way cool project :-)

  • Dead Site Soon (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Atryn ( 528846 )
    This sounds like a perfect example of a site you would expect to be filled with dead links in about 8 months. This is espescially so as it is coming from a university and is therefore likely tied to some sort of research grant which will eventually run out leaving nobody paid to maintain the database....
  • Or perhaps "Gee, we can strike here! No one is watching except geeks!"

    BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

    Yeah, that'll work.

  • I know i'm late on this post, but I wrote a program that lets Win98+ have a live background w/webcams. I have some great cams listed too. Pretty nice to checkout if you have the time.

    Live Background Program for 98/ME/2k/XP [protista.com]

    Enjoy!

  • Secure communications (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lateralus ( 582425 ) <yoni-r@actcUUUom.com minus threevowels> on Friday September 05, 2003 @08:56PM (#6884948) Journal

    So here is my idea:

    Could one collect the information streaming from these cameras and use it as a source for random number generation? Over a large number of Webcams the rate of information change must be huge. At any given point you could also single out darkened cams and use their CCD noise too. Doesn't sound too difficult to do (for someone else, someone with brains that is). How would this compare to typing randomly and jiggling my mouse as a source of random numbers?

  • CCTV in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)

    by garyok ( 218493 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @10:22PM (#6885322)
    I live in Glasgow and we have CCTV cameras throughout the city centre (and quite a bit beyond), checking on us all the time and making us think harder about behaving nicely. If I could see what the folks monitoring the systems could see, I'd be a lot happier about the surveillance.

    Making all the CCTVs in a city centre webcams is the answer to "Who watches the watchers?" We do. If the naughty guard is zooming in on the booty shots or looking in folks windows we can check the time, report it directly, and get them the disciplining they need. It'd be a balance to the one-sided oppressive feeling the current systems engender. I wouldn't need any sort of control over where they were pointed, just being able to check out (whenever I felt like it) what they were watching would be good enough for me.

    It'd bring folks back to the city centre here, too. When they realise how boring it is these days. And they can see the lack of anything happening from the comfort of their desk.

  • 10 points (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    if you catch people kissing
    20 if they're both gals
  • No article on webcams would be complete without mentioning the coffeecam [cam.ac.uk], arguably the world's first webcam.

    It came online in November 1993 (the camera was actually put in service [cam.ac.uk] late 1991) but sadly, monitored its last pot [cam.ac.uk] of coffee on 22 Aug 2001.

    R.I.P., Number One.

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