UK civil rights campaigners slam ‘Stasi-style’ CCTV alert website
By ANITuesday, October 5, 2010
MELBOURNE - Campaigners have criticized a new website that allows anyone in Europe to monitor commercial CCTV footage live online as a “Stasi-style citizen spy game” that should be banned.
According to the Herald Sun, Internet Eyes will pay up to 1,000 pounds to subscribers who regularly report suspicious activity such as shoplifting.
But civil rights campaigners said the website, which was launched yesterday, “marks another dubious chapter in Britain’s surveillance society”.
The website, which evoked images of Stasi-style surveillance seen in the 2006 film The Lives of Others, was designed to tackle shoplifting by enabling viewers to spot the crimes live as they happen online and then click an alert button to notify the business owner within moments.
An Internet Eyes spokesman said it was “a tool to allow citizens to assist trained personnel in the fight against crime”.
Every viewer is allowed five alerts each month to prevent abuse of the system. (ANI)
