The plan is simple: A company called Internet Eyes wants to stream CCTV feeds from businesses—or anyone willing to pay them $30 a month—that want their cameras to be watched by humans 24/7. At the same time, they are signing up bored citizens, peeping toms, pervs, and any other loser wanting to watch those camera feeds. These people don't pay a dollar. Instead, they will get paid: Up $1,600 to whoever reports the most crimes happening on camera.

The viewers—who will monitor four cameras simultaneously—can report a crime in real time using the companies web page, which will send a CCTV frame to the owner of the camera via SMS. The watchmen, however, wouldn't know the location of the cameras, which will change every ten minutes.

The company says they are serious, and that this is not a game. According to Tony Morgan, their managing director:

This isn't a game - it's serious. This is all about crime prevention and it could be very, very effective. At the moment people look at CCTV and think someone might or might not be watching so they commit the crimes anyway. Once this gets going and we get signs saying that the CCTV is part of our scheme, it will be an extra deterrent because people will know they are probably being watched.

Needless to say, civil liberties groups are protesting the concept. Protest all you want, but this looks like it may happen. To give you an idea of how far this may go, Britain has one camera per fourteen people, even while the Metropolitan Police said in an August internal report that only one crime for every thousand cameras in London was solved.

Señor Alan Moore, you are the true Nostradamus. Off to get a Guy Fawkes mask, peeps. [IBTimes]

The Spoticam security lamp, available in white or aluminum, elicits the feeling of being monitored while simultaneously providing a convenient, bendable light source. Your friends and family won't trust your assertions that it's just a lamp, of course, and it won't be long until everyone refuses to visit your apartment. But that's OK. The thrill of exploring your own nasal cavity with CCTV is more than enough entertainment on a Friday night to balance out a general lack of company. [Antrepo via MoCo Loco via DVICE via OhGizmo!]

The justification for this action is that if kids have structured upbringings, they won't get sucked into street crime and drugs. And because the housing is subsidized, the government isn't technically putting cameras in private homes; these are public homes.

But still, the precedent this sets is terrifying. This is the definition of a nanny state, a government that doesn't trust its citizens to live their lives autonomously so it sticks its nose into every little aspect of them for their own good.

Really, I think this can all be traced back to the Children's Secretary, Ed Balls. I mean, obviously Mr. Balls was mocked mercilessly as a child for his hilarious name. But really, Balls, do you have to take it out on the children of Britain? [Daily Express via Gadget Lab]

Made out of weatherproof pine wood, the £139 ($211) Nest Box works in degrees from -10 to 50°C during both night and day, although the 9V battery only can run for 2 hours at a time. Using a base-station that connects to any RCA-compatible TV set, the camera can also transmit feedback up to 328 feet away. [Proidee via OhGizmo]

For now, the seemingly innocuous bugs (get it? double entendre), which look a little like an ultra-low tech version of the bat bot, will make their way around Seoul and other parts of South Korea, and according to Newlaunches, will be in Tokyo soon. There's even a butterfly. How can a gentle butterfly turn you over to the cops for selling pot? There's no way that would happen!

The building that caught fire was the Rem Koolhaas designed companion to the CCTV angular marvel. Named the Television Cultural Center, it was supposed to be a more lighthearted companion to its hulking sister. Besides a 300 room luxury hotel (The Mandarin Oriental), it would have also held restaurants and spas, recording studios and a 1,500-seat theater.

The design was equally as fascinating as the CCTV headquarters (nicknamed Big Underpants or Big Hemorrhoids by the Chinese public). The Office of Metropolitan Architecture, Koolhaas' firm, drew inspiration from giant termite mounds.

The first four floors protruded from the building's facade like randomly-arranged boxes and the entire building was to be wrapped in a unique titanium zinc alloy. OMA had chosen the material, ironically, because it would "endure time better than other metal buildings."

Right now the official story is that the Mandarin Oriental, which was located at the top, caught fire from the myriad of fireworks set off to mark the Lantern Festival. Beijing usually bans the fireworks from its downtown area, but eases restrictions during the Spring Festival period (we really, really love our fireworks). But did you see how that building burned? Has anyone ever seen a skyscraper light up like that without... you know, being hit by a jet?

But what weirds me out the most is the government response. This notice went out to news websites, BBS and blogs telling moderators to stop reporting on the CCTV fire. That means posting no more pictures, videos and only using the officially-sponsored Xinhua report.

Why? Some say it's because the CCP doesn't want anybody to know about it until they've determined the cause of the fire – having millions assume that Beijing was under terrorist attack would be damaging to the country's harmony. But wouldn't a "The CCTV building caught fire last night. Cause is unknown, but terrorism is unlikely" blurb solve that?

I know I'm living in a country that doesn't find anything wrong with censorship. And sometimes, considering the scarily huge masses of people they have to deal with, I can understand why. Nonetheless, my jaw's really on the floor right now. I never thought that something this newsworthy, and this hard to hide, would get the silent treatment. I eagerly await what they government say when they finally hold a press conference on it.

The pictures are from Flickr user fuzheado. Here's another amazing gallery of the TVCC building by Ai De Ke.

The China Central Television headquarters is a 6.45 million square foot complex that involves twin leaning towers connected by two massive sections in midair. It's an amazing feat of engineering, but everyone in Beijing is now worried that it might collapse if the building directly next to it, right now said to be the incompleted Mandarin Oriental hotel, isn't put out quickly (It's been on fire for a good three hours now).

Right now it's the Lantern Festival, the 15th day of the first month of the new year on the Chinese calendar, and quite inauspiciously, one of the most important landmarks of new Communist China and the message it's trying to portray – is this close to getting obliterated.

Probably not surprisingly, I can't find any news of this on local Chinese television (though some channels over here in Shanghai are mysteriously silent). Rather, I'm relying on blogs and Chinese twitter feeds for updates. [Shanghaiist]

The video shows the building burning from the first moments after the fire broke out.

The China Central Television headquarters is a 6.45 million square foot complex that involves twin leaning towers connected by two massive sections in midair. Designed by Rem Koolhaas, it's an amazing feat of engineering and architecture. But when CCTV proposed that they call it Zhichuang (meaning Knowledge Window), Chinese netizens saw its homophone, “Hemorrhoids.”

CCTV is now scrambling to find a different nickname to call the building, and have bandied about things like “Harmonious Gate,” “New Angle” or “Future Window.” Chinese netizens, always happy to help out, have offered their suggestions of "Big Underpants," “Wild Man,” and “Slanting Stride.”

The current squabble is reminiscent of how the Beijing National Center for the Performing Arts got its nickname. French architects had envisioned a pearl rising from the water. Chinese people thought it looked like a big duck egg, a slang term for "zero." [Danwei]

And yes, it says "this is a surveillance camera" on the side, but it's still damn cute. Record my every move all you want, Daruma-san! [Japan Probe via Crunch Gear]

As anyone who's been to Japan knows, there are vending machines all over the place there, especially in the cities. They're on every block and ever corner, offering up hot coffee in a can and cigarettes whenever you need them. The next generation of vending machines, as first released on Friday, will also include a security camera, an emergency phone and an alarm.

The camera will be a CCTV camera accessed by the police department. When the door to the emergency phone is opened, an alarm on the top of the machine starts going off, alerting those around you that you're in trouble.

With only the first machine being installed a few days ago, there's already been a backlash against it, with someone tearing off the camera and spraypainting "Surveillance Society" on the machine.

Will these machines catch on, slowly replacing the thousands of vending machine already spread across Japan, or will the people there stand up against becoming another country where privacy takes a backseat to security? Time will tell. [JapanProbe]

[OMA via Dezeen]

[BBC]

Luckily the UK has the Data Protection Act (1998) and Freedom of Information Act (2000), which are a little like the US Freedom of Information Act, allowing anyone the right to view the data that an organization holds about them. Usually that's things like personal information, but in this case it was video footage of their performances on surveillance CCTV systems, both privately and publicly owned. Not all of the organizations the band approached using these laws came up with the goods, but many of them did: enough to make the video.

Now, you may be thinking "no, I don't believe it... all that CCTV stuff is just Hollywood, Bourne Identity nonsense," but sadly, you'd be wrong. Sure, there's no central collection office where The Man can choose among millions of camera streams at will, but the cams really are everywhere. Some cameras are black and white, some infrared, some color, some are fixed, some can even be panned and zoomed in real-time by local police, and some are in taxis.

In their final compiled video, The Get Out Clause can be seen performing in shopping malls, on the street, on a type of pedestrian crossing where cars have to wait for you, on a bus and tram and in the back of a Hackney Carriage taxi. Sure, there's a bit of personal camcorder action in there, but mostly the video is CCTV, and for that bit of lateral thinking I applaud you, chaps. Clever. [The Telegraph via Boing Boing]

Plans are also afoot to include biometric testing on the spectators when the games start, in the Summer of 2012—an estimated nine million people. The Chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority, John Armitt, claims that the system will be as easy as travelling on public transport (London-based readers will know, to quote esteemed philosophers Duran Duran, it's about as easy as a nuclear war.) "The gates will be like the Jubilee Line," he has been quoted as saying. "Put your hand down and it will open."

The biometric system is not the only hi-tech addition to the games' security. The policeman in charge of the games has gone on record as saying that London will need an additional half a million CCTV cameras to be put in place before the site opens for business. Yet again, the small matter of civil liberties is being brought into question.

While the head of Britain's main construction union, Ucatt, claims that he is fan-goo with the security system, "providing the ODA guarantee that the biometric data will not be passed on to any third parties and will be wiped once the project is complete," the ODA has not guaranteed that it will not pass on any information to government agencies.

How much of a logistical and planning nightmare this will be remains to be seen but, given the UK's success when it comes to building big things—the Millennium Dome, and Wembley for example—there is a strong possibility that we will be seeing the Olympic flame being lit at an opening ceremony some time in 2019. [Times Online]

OK. I guess zombies don't do the pool thing (see what I did there? see? OK. Never mind. I'll get me coat.) [Daily Mail]

In an attempt to make its people behave better on the streets, the British Government is to roll out a talking CCTV camera scheme. The (not-so-)good citizens of the northern town of Middlesbrough have already been subjected to the idea, which is to stick a loudhailer on top of various CCTV cameras and get control center staff to tick off unsavory members of society who are caught indulging in anti-social behavior. This can be anything from littering the streets, drunk and disorderly behavior, fighting and (probably) doing The Sex with that girl you picked up in your local "niterie" half an hour ago.

With 4.2 million CCTV cameras on its streets, Britain is the surveillance capital of the world. But does the government really think that the scheme will work? Home Secretary John Reid thinks so, and revealed that competitions were being held at local schools for children to become the voice of Big Brother. "By funding and supporting these local schemes, the government is encouraging children to send this clear message to grown-ups: act anti-socially and you will face the shame of being publicly embarrassed."

Not everyone is so fond of the idea, however. "Apart from being absurd, I think it's rather sad that we should have faceless cameras barking at us on orders from high," said Steve Hills, an anti-surveillance campaigner. "Who sets these cameras up?" The man, Steve, the man. – Ad Dugdale

'Talking' CCTV camera scheme expanding [BBC News]