An article (registration required) in yesterday's New York Times discusses the prevalence of security cameras and, in particular, their usage by public offices. It describes how so-called 'Tiny Brothers' are watching our every both at security desks across the country. The issue was highlighted recently when an Indiana woman was caught on camera beating her daughter.
On a related front, the new Nokia 6650 (and several other phones) enables you to capture 20 seconds of video.
Imagine the democratizing effect of video cameras becoming standard features on cell phones. Would you commit a crime if you knew that, say, 80-90% of the people around were capable of recording your actions? Imagine the impact on automotive insurance settlements...there'd be much less ambiguity about who was at fault. There's even some chaos theory concerning how many incidents would be accidentally captured while people were taping other events. It would certainly help to straighten out that whole Yeti controversy. Could all of this result in a peer-to-peer anti-crime strategy?
10:31:32 PM 
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