Philadelphia’s recent crowd sourcing craze is great for tracking shitty landlords, neighborhood blights and the like, but let’s remember that a little common sense goes much further than even the most robust of aggregated data sets.
The latest effort to digitize our city comes from the developers behind videosurveillance.com, and it allows users to upload the location of private security cams across Philadelphia so that police can use them as evidence in criminal investigations.
But is this really something the general public should have access to? I mean, let’s say, hypothetically, I wanted to kidnap a small child in South Philly to toil away in my counterfeit Nike sweatshop. A quick glance at the map would immediately let me know to stay away from the area between Broad and 16th Street. Yes, west of 17th Street will do just fine…
Videosurveillance.com is also a retailer of surveillance camera, touting the “largest selections of high quality security products from top manufacturers and professional solutions that suit every budget,” so that should put things into perspective a bit.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are business owner and you notice that every other proprietor on your block has one or more security cameras. Then you consider that any small-time crook with an ounce of resourcefulness will probably think to check www.videosurveillance.com/communitycam before he/she robs you blind. What is the next step?
“Well, I’m already on Videosurveillance.com, and they do have ’50 years of video surveillance experience.’ I should buy one from them!”
Source: ABC 6
Related Posts:
Chris Lipczynski
