New CCTV Site In UK Pays People To Watch 214
pyrosine writes "Have you ever felt like being paid for watching live CCTV footage? The BBC are reporting CCTV site, 'Internet Eyes' is doing exactly that. Offering up to £1000 to people who report suspicious activity, the scheme seems an easy way to make money. Not everyone is pleased with the scheme though; the Information Commissioner's Office is worried it will lead to voyeurism or misuse, but what difference does it make when you can find said webcams with a simple Google search?"
Re:One difference (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like most voyeurs will end up paying the company, not the other way around:
http://interneteyes.co.uk/community/index.html [interneteyes.co.uk]
It's £1.99/month or £12.99/year to use the site. To do marginally better than breaking even you'd need to pay annually and watch it for 2 hrs/day, which can get you back £1.50/month, but the only large payment mentioned explicity is £1000 for 'the Viewer who receives the most award points'. More like a paid-entry competition than a job.
Trying it out (Score:5, Informative)
It's only 2 pounds a month so I tried it out. Here's the slashdot review summary..
- You have the choice between 1 camera, 2x1 camera and 1x2 cameras.
- You don't get to choose which camera however you can click to choose another random camera.
- You get to click to watch for another 5 minutes on the same camera
- If you don't click you will switch to a different camera automatically
- You get 5 alerts a month.
- There is some kind of buffering going on here however the video footage seems to be very close to live. The camera has a clock in it which matched my desktop to the minute.
- You don't have to be in England to use it. I'm currently half way around the world so it takes a long time for video to show up
Re:Surveillance = False accusation (Score:5, Informative)
Got any more stupid arguments you'd like to trot out as excuses so that nobody can watch you while you're shopping?
Sure, I'll bite.
I think you're forgetting that CCTV is used as evidence, and since it's "unbiased", it must be admissible, and 100% accurate evidence.
Of course, Judges and Police don't often realise that mistakes are often made with CCTV [bigbrotherwatch.org.uk], nor that it's bloody expensive to keep it running [thisislondon.co.uk], and would be cheaper to employ police instead.
I'd rather get arrested for climbing a wall, than have a mugger or rapist go free because there is no evidence.
That is, until they lock you up thinking you are a mugger/rapist?
That's not just your problem. Then we've got an innocent person in jail, and a mugger/rapist that the police has stopped looking for.
Previously reported (Score:1, Informative)
http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/10/08/1919244/Real-LIfe-Distributed-Snooping-Web-Game-To-Launch-In-Britain [slashdot.org]
Re:oh look, it's Tory time! (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, and then Labour can come back into power, run up a massive debt, fuck things up just as much - but more subtly than the Tories so it takes longer for people to notice - while pretending to give a shit about poor people.
Same shit, different colour.
Re:Why this kind of crap always comes from the UK? (Score:3, Informative)
The kind that enter a city, get called in and are not able to be made safe.
Now the UK likes the OCR to track any car's id from street to street or via helicopters, (drones?) ect.
Add in computer tracking at home, voice prints if you use a cell phone.. it completes the total surveillance package built on the old phone based systems via the early sat/tower 24/7 intercepts.
Further back you have Enigma, before that 1927 when Neville Chamberlain read out decyphered Soviet telegrams in Parliament,
Its generational and addictive.
Re:Im suprised they didn't think of this sooner. (Score:3, Informative)
That's because the "massive CCTV system" is largely a sprawl of private cameras owned and run by businesses to benefit themselves, rather than (even nominally) the public. Publicly owned and run CCTV systems are on a much smaller scale than you might expect.
10,000 cameras for £200 million [thisislondon.co.uk] is a small scale operation?
Re:Surveillance = False accusation (Score:5, Informative)
That is, until they lock you up thinking you are a mugger/rapist? That's not just your problem. Then we've got an innocent person in jail, and a mugger/rapist that the police has stopped looking for.
That seems to be a bit of a strawman considering mistakes are made all the time without CCTV too. With really crappy quality CCTV it isn't that much use as evidence (I should know our CCTV system completely sucks here at work, wish they'd get a decent system), but with high quality stuff it's a lot more useful. A lot of businesses around here run their own CCTV, it isn't costing the government anything. The Police occasionally request some footage of certain times if there's been dodgy goings on on our street (which there often are as we live next to one of the roughest areas in the city).
Of course mistakes are made with other systems, but they don't cost £200 million to solve 10 crimes over ten years [thisislondon.co.uk].
CCTV was originally called a PREVENTATIVE measure. It hasn't worked. So what happens now? The Government push for more, and more.
I'd prefer that £200 million to pay for the 666 new police officers we could've had for the last ten years, not some childs' plaything.
You don't best stop crime by constantly monitoring people. You best stop crime by trust and education.
Re:Trying it out (Score:4, Informative)
Some extra details since I posted.
The alerts seem to be going up. I have 6 now so I guess I was wrong and they go up with usage or something.
They're using RTMP (Not RTMPS) for streaming the content and JWplayer. Their site kinda sucks to be honest, a lot of it is unsecured (security by obscurity) and I'm pretty sure you could look at this content without a need to login first if someone gave you the details to do so.
The prize of 1000 pounds is for only one person a month, so if you report 10 crimes and someone else reports 11, sucks to be you.
New? (Score:5, Informative)
It's been online for at least a year and was posted by timothy [slashdot.org] almost exactly a year ago.
Also they don't pay you to watch, you pay them to watch and if you happen to see something happening, you might get paid.
Good work, editors.
Re:One difference (Score:1, Informative)
well.. 1000£ for suspicious activity. there has to be a catch there, since conjuring up suspicious activity is much cheaper than 1000£. and you can't sue anyone for 1000£ for suspicious activity. even if the suspiciously acting guy is found guilty, how/why would money flow to these chaps?
Only the individual who has scored the highest number of "points" in a given month will receive £1000. Points are given for correctly reporting suspicious activity. That's a long way off receiving £1000 per report.
By the way, the £ (pound) sign always comes before the number, without exception, as correctly shown in the comment that you replied to, the grandparent comment, the summary, and the article.