Neal Stephenson - Global Neighborhood Watch

I think that these are legitimate and interesting questions but I'm nowhere near having to worry about such issues yet. kadrey asks: The whole idea of setting up video surveillance seems to have touched a nerve with people. I suppose part of the concern is that once you set up the system, it's possible to lose control of it.

One wants to set it up in such a way as to minimize that possibility. For example, the cameras have to have a power source. Presumably that is going to come from inside the house. So you can shut off the cameras on your house just by pulling the plug. Beyond that, I think that crypto will be a really important part of making this a responsible system.

It is all about tradeoffs. When people see crime in their neighborhoods that have all kinds of reactions. Many of these are pathological in my opinion.

Hiring rent-a-cops, raising tax rates to beef up the size of the police force, moving out to gated communities in the suburbs - these are all responses to crime that give me the willies for one reason or another. I'm trying to dream up a response that is more community-based and benign. stac asks: ISDN is prohibitively expensive here 0 400GBP for installation -

about 600 dollars - and the penetration of Net-savvy types, while growing, is still as far as I know, low. Wouldn't the effort put into GNW be more useful directed towards traditional Neighbourhood Watch schemes, which have proved fairly effective (at least over here)?

By all means. I think it would be a waste of time to begin fooling around with all of this technology until the neighborhood was well organized and had set up its own schemes for discouraging crime. Once that's done, GNW can perhaps offer some additional security if it can be done wtihout spending a huge amount of money.

Right now it can't be done cheaply but this is likely to change. tom5 asks: Two words: implied use of force, and GNW!

Neither I nor anyone in my 'hood is interested in use of force. The people who cause us problems are not hardened violent criminals. They are mostly opportunists who go away as soon as they know that their activities have been observed. If it gets to the point where force is necessary, then it's time to call the cops. valis asks: Will this project work in all neighborhoods? How about the projects?

I would hope that it would work in projects. As always, there are economic barriers. Middle class people will get over those barriers before project dwellers. But certainly crime is more of an issue in projects than in middle-class 'hoods and so they would have more to gain by reducing it. rossum asks: This is a very high-resouce plan- What about those who can't afford a half-dozen cameras on their house?

I'm really concerned about the cost issue, and so I'm trying to do it with a minimum of expense. A QuickCam costs US$100. You can get a used computer for a few hundred and set it up to run a free OS like Linux. Bandwidth is still expensive but ought to start getting cheaper soon. Basically, this is not a very interesting project if it costs a hundred thousand bucks to set it up. If it can be done for a few thousand (or for a figure that is comparable to the cost of crime in the 'hood) then it becomes economically feasible. scrow asks: I've got 2 HUGE problems with things you (Neal) just said- #1. You assume that criminals are identified from the get go and that #2 Not near answering these questions?!?!?! Why not? They're integral concerns!

#1: The purpose of having the thing neighborhood-based is to prevent misidentification. There is a black family next door to us that includes a teenaged kid who likes to work on cars. The cops are always hassling him because when they see a teenage black kid with his head under a dashboard, they assume he's stealing the car. They don't know the neighborhood. But we who live here do know it and so we recognize this kid and we don't react in an inappropriate way.

#2: I don't disagree that these are crucial issues, just that I'm improvising this thing one little bit at a time, in my very limited spare time, and I can't figure out all of the answers ahead of time. I just have to make it up as I go along. gwire asks: does the whole system rely heavily on the communications links between each area being extremly reliable?

They don't have to be that reliable. It's not the end of the world if a link goes down and someone's car gets ripped off. We are just playing the averages here. scamp asks: Is it discouraging to have everyone react so negatively? How often do you meet with wholehearted enthusiasm, or at least willingness to check it out?

I think that most of the reactions are cautious rather than negative and that they reflect a totally appropriate skepticism about the possible downside of technology. There are plenty of people who are enthusiastic about the idea. scrow asks: Well, I respect your writing, but I gotta say it seems pretty irresponsible to propose something with such possibility for abuse without thinking it through.

I'm just a guy sitting around in his basement dicking around with spare compuuter parts, and have no power to implement such a system all over the country, as a government or major corporation might. It is impossible to think everything through in full detail ahead of time. Basically I'm going to mess around with it informally until I run into a brick wall, and then quit. Other people will be trying other approaches to the crime problem no matter what I do.

Some of these approaches will have a positive social effect and some will have a negative effect. kadrey says: We should probably wrap things up now. Thanks to Neal for coming on and answering people's questions. And thanks for asking so many provocative quetions. stac asks: I like the concept, its just that there as so many potential problems en route to a solution that I (and I suspect many other people) need to get cleared before we can say "yeah, count me in." The rewards could be worthwhile, but the effort is high. Can you really get this idea off the ground in your

"very limited spare time"?

Everyone seems to be making the mistake of thinking that GNW is some kind of a carefully thought-out and centralized program - that there is a policy manual somewhere that can be debated point-by-point. This may be my fault for giving it a catchy name and referring to it with an official sounding acronym. Really it is just an idea that I spun out in the same way that people commonly spin out ideas over a beer, and anyone is free to pick it up and take it in whatever direction they think is appropriate.

The key point I would like to stress is that everyone responds to crime in some way, and many of the existing response patterns are deeply troubling. So I'm trying to come up with a different kind of response. kadrey says: Thanks again to both Neal and our questioners.

You're welcome.

I'm out of here - have to go fight crime :)

kadrey says: Thanks, everyone. The Threads discussion will still continue -

HotWired Threads. Goodnight all.