"Global Neighborhood Watch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stephenson Neal)

The one USWest employee who apparently does ISDN for the entire Eastern Seaboard
still has not answered my phone calls.
Excuse me, that should be Western Seaboard.
Right now I'm upgrading my Linux box and so that has kept me busy and I have not
been pestering this guy as much as I'll probably have to.
stac asks: I live in Brighton, UK. (well, hove actually) We have unregulated
Police security cameras watching our every move in the town centre. While GNW is
a more community-based concept than Brighton's "Big Brother" - how do you
propose letting the people being watched know that it's 'friendly' surviellance,
and not just more of the same?
Depends on whom you mean. If by "people being watched" you mean criminals, then
I don't see any need to be friendly. If you mean the neighbors, then they should
know it's friendly because if this is done right it will be done as a
neighborhood project.
geebee asks: You said you want to know the people that are going to be
monitoring the cameras. What sort of screening process are you proposing? How
are you planning on introducing communities to one another? What if member in
the community sabotage the system? Punishment?
I think that these are legitimate and interesting questions but I'm nowhere near
having to worry about such issues yet.
kadrey asks: The whole idea of setting up video surveillance seems to have
touched a nerve with people. I suppose part of the concern is that once you set
up the system, it's possible to lose control of it.
One wants to set it up in such a way as to minimize that possibility. For
example, the cameras have to have a power source. Presumably that is going to
come from inside the house. So you can shut off the cameras on your house just
by pulling the plug. Beyond that, I think that crypto will be a really important
part of making this a responsible system.
It is all about tradeoffs. When people see crime in their neighborhoods that
have all kinds of reactions. Many of these are pathological in my opinion.
Hiring rent-a-cops, raising tax rates to beef up the size of the police force,
moving out to gated communities in the suburbs - these are all responses to
crime that give me the willies for one reason or another. I'm trying to dream up
a response that is more community-based and benign.
stac asks: ISDN is prohibitively expensive here 0 400GBP for installation -
about 600 dollars - and the penetration of Net-savvy types, while growing, is
still as far as I know, low. Wouldn't the effort put into GNW be more useful
directed towards traditional Neighbourhood Watch schemes, which have proved
fairly effective (at least over here)?
By all means. I think it would be a waste of time to begin fooling around with
all of this technology until the neighborhood was well organized and had set up
its own schemes for discouraging crime. Once that's done, GNW can perhaps offer
some additional security if it can be done wtihout spending a huge amount of
money.
Right now it can't be done cheaply but this is likely to change.
tom5 asks: Two words: implied use of force, and GNW!
Neither I nor anyone in my 'hood is interested in use of force. The people who
cause us problems are not hardened violent criminals. They are mostly
opportunists who go away as soon as they know that their activities have been
observed. If it gets to the point where force is necessary, then it's time to