Via Tamsyn Strike (click image for original)
I ran into Relja from Beating Tolstoy at the weekend . He’s a super interesting young man. We talked about Evolutionary Fitness (Art De Vany), the Prisoners dilemma of Serbian politicians and the idea a trained ruling class (Plato’s Philosopher-Kings). I also told him about an idea I had about a 911/999 phone.
The idea came to me in the shower (where most ideas are born) whilst pondering the problem of bystanding and the Bystander Effect, .
If citizens witness an incident, say a mugging of a gang attack, instead of intervening and perhaps risking their own lives, they could simply dial 911 (0r 999 in the UK). Apart from putting them through to the emergency operator, their phone camera would automatically stream to the CCTV network where the feed could be used by the police to respond to the incident and recorded for evidence if charges are filed and/or the attacker steals the phone. Attackers would know that any phone being pointed at them was potentially the eye of the police recording their crime.
Relja argued the idea into the ground though. There is too much scope for abuse. The police could have an army of spies, who could stream their observations directly into a police video database with no oversight or restrictions. It could be abused or used in spite.
Maybe a better idea would be to have that panic button, but the feed streams to you own, private and secure repository. If your phone was taken, you could submit the footage to the police like any other. Or if you are dead, your repository could be accessed by investigating police.
