Good news, folks. In the latest sign of the rapidly expanding scope of Web-based social production, Texas’s Virtual Neighborhood Border Watch Program has gone live, in a beta test open to all. The Del Rio News Herald reports that the Lone Star State began streaming video from nine surveillance cameras along the Mexican border on Friday, allowing regular citizens to tune in over the Internet and watch for attempts by illegals to enter the country. Beneath each video stream is a “Report Suspicious Activity” button, which can be used to alert local authorities should any potential mischief be spotted. There is also a button for ordering donuts.
In the meantime, Martin Scorcese lays out surveliiance and bigotry around a different group of immigrants in Boston in The Departed.
Our melting pot continues to take things in stride…
It only operated for only the month of November 2006 and the learning experience is supposed to lead to an RFP. With security cameras in more places (not as many as the Orwellian UK, yet) we are, in theory, become a more transparent society. I cannot imagine that they acted on anything reported unless somebody spotted a tunnel being built (in my opinion, quite unlikely). I mean, how fast are they going to respond to an email-like message when most are likely to be false alarms? They are asking the crowd to search for a needle in a haystack: the searches for Jim Gray and Steve Fossett were not successful. In theory, you could just watch any traffic camera, waiting for a crime or maybe an accident to be recorded, but that might be a long time (try it in real life without a webcam). Publicizing the existence of the system probably has the largest deterrent effect.