Instead I'd lilke a close relationship with a specific group of people in some other country who are familiar with my face and with my comings and goings. scrow asks: What possible benefit could outweigh the outrageous abuse potential?

Our privacy would be a null concept....

I would not do this if I thought there was no way to protect my privacy in the process. To begin with, the cameras would be aimed mostly at parked cars, basement windows, and garages. Secondly, they would be rigged in such a way that they would only come on and transmit video when something was moving. Third, it would be possible to shut them off at any time if you wanted some privacy.

Finally, I am exploring ways to encrypt the video signal so that it can only be read by people who are in the sibling neighborhood. kadrey says: That last bit was one of my questions: how do you prevent your signal from being used as a sort of wiretap surrogate? Of course, the point becomes moot if there are only governmment-authorized encryption systems in use.

tom5 asks: What is needed in the Global Neighborhood Watch is the equivalent of

PORCHES: a way of interacting with the observed space.

That's a good idea. The nice thing about porch-based neighborhood surveillance is that you can see the people who are seeing you (as opposed to peeking out through the curtains). kadrey says: Your idea seems as much about community as it does about security. clabberboy asks: Why not just have a community hire out a local security gaurd to watch the cameras? If the gaurd was only a few blocks away (as opposed to a few continents), wouldn't they have a better chance to fix things if something went wrong (like a criminal cutting the wire to the cameras)?

We investigated that idea in our neighborhood. There are some problems. First of all, the people who work for rent-a-cop agencies are not always people you want to have hanging around your neighborhood.