Six remote-controlled surveillance cameras have been set up to transmit live video images of crowd and traffic conditions to handheld and laptop computers carried by cops.

This has privacy advocates around here worried. I’m thinking it’s a tempest in a teacup, but reading a quote like this is a bit unfortunate:

“We can zoom in tight enough to read someone’s watch,” said Jonathan Hollander, chief technology officer for GigaTrans, which designed the system for the use of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department and local police departments along the route.

It also doesn’t help that a Federal investigation into the Detroit Police found that they were “the most troubled force they have seen in 10 years of scrutinizing police nationwide“. But, as a futurist geek, what I really want to know, having read David Brin’s The Transparent Society , is when I get to look for traffic jams up ahead using my own wireless communicator.

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