Cameras Everywhere

1984, Enemy of the State, or something else?

… because you made a phone call!

The 1998 action thriller, Enemy of the State, had a star studded cast of Will Smith, Jon Voigt, Gene Hackman, and… Seth Green? It depicted, long before Snowden’s revelations, that the NSA had a global surveillance program that was tracking everyone and everything. The film depicted how the NSA had access to almost every security camera in every store.

This would be incredibly difficult for 1998. Video streaming in any usable resolution would have choked even a cable connection and it’s doubtful that the NSA had and ISDN line for every location.

Fast forward to today and not only are cameras everywhere (in cities) but their feeds are usually streamed and stored for at least several days. Some of these feeds might be automatically analyzed and tagged for interesting events.

And now, the police don’t need to figure out whether a place is covered by cameras. Companies such as Ring (Amazon) have worked with local law enforcement to allow for people to volunteer access to their camera feeds in the event of a crime. In other jurisdictions, the police force allow residents and business owners to register their cameras in case the police need help gathering information.

Eventually (maybe 5 years from now), HD quality recording and cloud backup will be super cheap that we might choose to put a camera at every entrance. What this might mean is that hiding from police might make it difficult and getting away with a crime will require more ingenuity.