dcist has a post up today called Fast Track To Nowhere, in which it talks about Surveillance cameras in DC. The bit that caught my eye was of course …
Image by Flickr user takomabibelot, used under a Creative Commons license. If you’ve got a shot of a D.C. surveillance camera, consider geotagging it and adding it to the D.C. Surveillance pool.
Here’s a map of the Group’s pool.
This is the kind of information I’d like to see mixed in with various CrimeMap ‘Mash-ups’. Letting you see where the crime’s committed and where the cameras are, watching for any connection between the two.
Does the crime happen where the cameras are?
Does the crime happen regardless of the cameras?
Bringing time into it, does the placement of cameras reduce crime or just move it to areas without cameras?
I’m not sure if mapping is the answer, but it makes it far easier to visualize.
Filed under: flickr
Thanks for the fave Dan!
And thanks for the pointer to CrimeMap, a project I was not aware of. I think that geotagged shots of cameras offer a new tool for shedding light on the extent of often unidentified or unattributable surveillance. Would be fabulous if maps like these could be linked to empirical data.
Me, I’d love to see geotagged maps of the visible cameras above our heads in all major urban areas. There is a dangerous lack of publicly-available information about who is running these camera systems, who is monitoring them (if anyone), what the data retention and data-sharing policies are … not to mention the obvious but usually unasked question: do they help deter, prevent, or solve crime?
- tako.