Internet Eyes: Earn Money Spotting Crimes on CCTV [Cash Prizes for Remote CCTV Snoopers, Civil Rights Groups Unhappy (For A Change)]

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The internet is about to get a new reality game, known as Internet Eyes, that already has civil rights groups up in arms on account of the fact that you’ll be cast as a ‘remote snooper’ who’ll get paid cash for spotting real crimes via CCTV cameras installed in shops and shopping centres through out the UK.

The Internet Eyes internet ‘game’, which is the brainchild of David Steele, Tony Morgan and James Woodward, and which is set to be rolled out across Britain by December, with a worldwide rollout following in 2010, will pay out up to a purported £1,000 should users report crimes, via SMS, seen via live CCTV streams streamed directly via the Internet Eyes site to their computers at home with then ‘game’ awarding points for confirmed crimes and deducting points for mis-reports.

Civil rights groups, as you’d except, aren’t in the least bit happy and claim that Internet Eyes will ‘encourage people to spy and snitch on each other’ which, pinch me if I’m wrong, is the whole premise of the game, isn’t it? (10 points there for stating the bleeding obvious). On a more sober note they also claim that the ‘game’ will be open to abuse by fringe groups such as racist organisations who may ‘decide to send alerts every time a black person is seen on screen’.

‘This could turn out to be the best crime prevention weapon there’s ever been. I wanted to combine the serious business of stopping crime with the incentive of winning money. There are over four million CCTV cameras in the UK and only one in a thousand gets watched. Crimes are bound to get missed but this way people the cameras will be watched by lots of people 24-hours-a-day,’ said Tony Morgan, one of the people behind Internet Eyes, adding ‘It gives people something better to do than watching Big Brother when everyone is asleep.’

Internet Eyes is set to initially encompass CCTV cameras in shops and businesses across Stratford-upon-Avon prior to drawing CCTV streams from across Britain and, eventually, it would seem, across the globe.

From our perspective we already know we’re watched and to what extent we are watched and this ‘game’ is hardly going to see CCTV cameras felled so why not put the power of Big Brother into the hands of the people?

We welcome your thoughts? Are you a potential Internet Eyes remote snooper in the making? Let us know.