[extropy-chat] Many eyes

[Dan Clemmensen]

The Linux community has an aphorism:
"Many eyes make all bugs shallow."

We can extend this concept to anti-terrorism. The London police are 
currently asking the public for any video records they may have of the 
time surrounding the London bombings. We need to train the public to 
immediately begin taking pictures whenever something bad happens in 
public. The basic rule should be: If you cannot think of something more 
useful to do, take pictures. When taking pictures, if you do not have 
and obviously important subject, then take a multi-shot panorama.

If every Londoner with a cell-phone camera had taken a 10-shot panorama 
at the time of the bombing, we would almost certainly have a picture of 
at least one of the bombers.

To speed the analysis, we should also add a volunteer analytic 
infrastructure. If every relevant Londoner made panoramic pictures, 
there would be far more pictures than police analysts could process 
quickly. But each photographer could add the pictures to a distributed 
database, and each photographer (plus innumerable volunteers) could do a 
preliminary analysis.

Similarly, pictures from all the security cameras in London could be 
made public. This would permit volunteers to assist the police in the 
analysis.

To increase pre-explosion coverage, the public should be encouraged to 
make random pictures in public places, more or less continuously. If 
nothing  interesting happens, most of these digital pictures will never 
even be stored. If something bad happens, the pictures from prior to the 
event would become available for analysis.

Privacy? Sorry, These are pictures taken by individuals, in public 
places. There is no right to privacy in this venue.

I live in the Washington DC area. I thought of this  concept during the 
ugly "sniper attack" situation last year.