Randi Beers reports:
One Yellowknife city councillor wants to see the city’s security cameras used for more than security — he wants everybody to be able to log on and watch.
Coun. Niels Konge floated the idea during Monday’s municipal services committee meeting.
“The cameras that are in public places … would there be any reason why we couldn’t have a website where people can go online and see what’s happening out there?” he asked.
Council was discussing a proposed security camera policy drafted in wake of allegations city staff had used them to spy on residents.
Read more on CBC. And then turn to another Canadian city to see what they’re considering in Hamilton, where Kevin Werner reports:
Ontario’s privacy commissioner is condemning a proposed motion to allow private residents to use their CCTV cameras to target sidewalks and streets in an effort to assist the Hamilton Police Service.
“My office would be concerned if a municipal organization were to pass a bylaw permitting its residents to collect images of individuals in public places for law enforcement purposes,” stated the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Brian Beamish.
Read more on Hamilton News, while I hum “O Canada” to myself and mutter, “Oh Canada, oh Canada, what on earth are some of you thinking?!”
h/t, @fanCRTCProfling
Unfortunately, it shows how effective law enforcement’s sales job of monitoring has been. “If having cameras everywhere to catch criminals is a good thing, maybe I should point my camera at the street to help them out.” Certainly up here in Canada they’ve been very quick to tell us all how footage from private cameras helped them to solve a crime.
How long before insurance companies start giving you discounts if you have a camera and point it at the street?
Forgive me if I don’t see a problem with this. Publicly-funded cameras in public places showing public things being published online does not seem like a problem. As a matter of fact, it seems ideal.
The only problem I foresee is paying for enough upload bandwidth to feed all of the observers that would rather stare at a monitor showing a street corner instead of personally sitting on that same street corner.