Man in Germany Foils Burglary in Brazil

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ross Stapleton-Gray <[email protected]>
Date: December 14, 2006 8:36:25 AM JST
To: [email protected]
Subject: Man in Germany Foils Burglary in Brazil

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/ 
2006/12/13/financial/f102507S62.DTL

"Businessman Joao Pedro Wettlauser was in Cologne, Germany, on Sunday  
when he received an alert on his phone informing him that someone had  
entered his vacation house in Guaruja, 54 miles south of Sao Paulo,  
police said.
He quickly turned on his laptop and, thanks to security cameras  
connected to the Internet, was able to see a tattooed man stuffing  
goods into trash bags..."

Which is, of course, our future, when the cost of global bandwidth  
drops low enough, and the value of what's to be protected is high  
enough, to make it cost effective to engage eyes anywhere.  In this  
case it was pretty simple, with a traditional alarm piping its alert  
over the phone network; he could have just had the alarm call in the  
police, though having one's own eyes on the situation avoids paying  
for false alarms, etc.  But imagine when cheap bandwidth means that  
anyone with some spare time can be drafted into a "hey, watch my  
stuff, 'k?" network.  Some Kalihari bushman's day job will be  
checking in on Beemers in parking garages in Manhattan.

(Now, I can think of about as many *evil* aspects of high-speed  
global comms, too.  Drug dealers, for example, can hire out the same  
bushmen as lookouts, at the additional cost of sticking a wireless  
camera up to watch things.)

Ross


----
Ross Stapleton-Gray, Ph.D.
Stapleton-Gray & Associates, Inc.
http://www.stapleton-gray.com
http://www.sortingdoor.com