

Ask HN: Please help me to review the viability of this idea - alexitosrv

Guys,<p>This is my idea, please help to define better as I plan on to work it until reaches a viable state.<p>First, in many houses, commerces, farms, many places they have cameras with a DVR system publishing to the internet.<p>Bear with me as we live in a Latin American city called Bogotá where the local government and the police has been uncooperative together in the period of our latest Mayor, so in many levels we are in our own when talking about personal security. They don&#x27;t give a shit most of the time, but they respond timely when called directly to their mobile numbers of local sub groups called &quot;cuadrantes&quot;.<p>What I want to create is a software where the output of the videos is centralized and then being watched by another set of people trained to watch for anomalies and ready to call the police, and to offer this vigilance service to the interested houses. If this works then start to develop a more automated operation where the software could anticipate the bad guys,although a the moment I rely better at trained people instead.<p>I have identified gray areas on terms of privacy concerns and trust to us, I don&#x27;t know what to do in this regard.<p>What are your thoughts and where you come from, as it&#x27;s important to me when assessing the advice as maybe you don&#x27;t have as many robberies, muggers, homicides as we unfortunately do have and could not see is worth and instead see more potential for a huge stalker network, but indeed there have been robberies where if the cameras were used for real time vigilance then better actions could been done. Currently are only used, most of the time, as a for the record element, in future police and judge &quot;deep investigations to the last consequences&quot; and nothing happens as after.<p>Thanks for any input.
======
rlgod
It sounds like a good idea to me. I'm from Australia and we have something
here called 'Neighbourhood Watch' which isn't dissimilar to what you're
suggesting. Detailed information on how it works can be found here:
[http://www.nhw.com.au/faq](http://www.nhw.com.au/faq).

We also have a crime hotline called Crime Stoppers
([https://crimestoppers.com.au/](https://crimestoppers.com.au/)) which anybody
can call to report a suspicious person or crime that they may have witnessed.
These are both in addition to our normal emergency services hotline.

So I would suggest that your idea is sound in its intent and I hope you have
not too difficult a time trying to put forward an implementation in your
community.

~~~
alexitosrv
Thanks for the comments, those services are free of charge (tax subsidied?)

What I'm planning is more of private service and to charge those using our
service a small amount, think 10 USD monthly (2 Big Macs price and 20,000
Colombian pesos)

~~~
rlgod
I'm not sure how they're funded but I imagine it'd be part tax funded and
mostly a volunteer effort within communities.

------
alexitosrv
I was also wondering of using some drones with cameras and looking in certain
patterns and with them continuously communicating through the center of
operations. What do you say on this?

