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0 pointsbredren6y ago0 comments

I played with this idea some with a startup called Perch, which intended to turn old smartphones into security cameras or modern webcams.

While some users were interested in deterring crime, others just like to watch webcams. Sometimes weird and noteworthy stuff happens, though I found not nearly often enough. Also low-cost application specific cameras like wyze emerged that were easier to setup than old phones.

Anyhow, Petty crimes are currently very interesting to people to catch in this sort of age of online shaming. This is evidenced by the stolen package bomb videos.

Importantly, adding more surveillance does not mean you can go out now and not assume you're being recorded or that your actions in public might turn up on a social network. We passed this as an assumption years ago.

However, it is still possible to do terrible things in broad daylight and get away with it. We had, I believe two unsolved daytime pedestrian hit and runs in inner Portland in December! Hard to imagine but there is still relatively low or even no useful video coverage in some areas. And it isn't always a great thing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/e5kr7q/woman_and_...

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blackbrokkoli6y ago· 1 in thread

> I played with this idea some with a startup called Perch, which intended to turn old smartphones into security cameras or modern webcams.

> Petty crimes are currently very interesting to people to catch in this sort of age of online shaming. This is evidenced by the stolen package bomb videos.

I hope you do not take this as a personal attack, but I consider this line of thinking...well, fucked up. Just because an idea is remotely viable in an economic sense it seems to be instantly within the Overton window of serious consideration.

> However, it is still possible to do terrible things in broad daylight and get away with it.

Like manipulating the self-assigned greatest democracy in the world as a foreign actor via, you guessed it, mass surveillance and analysis. I would rather prevent that instead of pleasing some digital mop and peoples craving for "vengeance" on criminals, but oh well.

bredrenOP6y ago

I don't have a single one of the 26M views of Porch Pirate vs. Glitter Bomb Trap 2.0 on youtube. To take your comment personally would be the equivalent of being mad people like Marvel movies.

As for ideas remotely viable in economic sense, that's the only way black swans are born. That's startups. They're remotely viable until they're entirely new engines of economic activity.

I'm not really sure what the rest of your comment is driving at.

I've worked both sides of privacy of both consumer and enterprise products and realized sometimes "good" products made by good people protect and help "bad" guys too. Things are not all one way or another.

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