Community Security By Widely Available Information Technology

We contend that a community will have a strong ability to prevent crime only if some residents keep watch on what happens around their houses with the aid of their own home computers, commercially available cheap cameras, and free-software. Under this scheme, residents would view their surroundings using cheap cameras as their own eyes and home computers as their own brains. Community safety would thus be realized by the voluntarily cooperation and altruism of ordinary citizens using widespread modern technology.