Peter Griffin: Peering webcams bring need for responsibility

It's always interesting when technology hits the mainstream and leaves a wave of paranoia and unease in its wake. Last week it was a webcam positioned in a spot above Mt Maunganui beach.

The Mount Wave Cam camera was labelled a "perverts' playground" where sunbathers could be watched. The internet company providing the service, Enternet Online, was targeted with a death threat.

Mount Wave Cam is still operating and you're likely to see good-quality pictures of surfers heading for the water or sunbathers lounging on the sand.

The issue was blown out of all proportion. After all, if you're out in public you have to assume the world is watching you and act and dress accordingly. And what's to stop a voyeur sitting well back from any beach in the country with a high-powered camera lens?

I hope more webcams offering the quality of the Mount camera spring up nationwide. But they are causing consternation across the globe.

In Cincinnati, Ohio, they are operating to give visitors to www.aroundcincy.com great views of the inner city. But concerned citizens believe the action in Fountain Square is not interesting web voyeurs as much as the action in the hotel rooms surrounding the square.

"When News 5 tried, the webcam showed a clear image of the curtains in about a dozen rooms at the Westin. If those curtains were open, there is no telling what could have been visible," according to one report on the incident.

When I tuned in, an anonymous web user was trying unsuccessfully to focus on a window and there were three other people in the queue waiting to control the camera.

In Pune, near the Indian city of Mumbai, locals are closely following the police investigation resulting from their own webcam scandal.

Three college girls approached police complaining that they believed they were being filmed in their rented bungalow. A camera was found in the light-fitting of one girl's room.

The 55-year-old landlord has been charged under India's Information Technology Act.

The Times of India newspaper has relentlessly followed the case and other similar incidents:

"A top Bollywood actress and her boyfriend are caught tongue-welded on a mobile camera. A surgeon films young girls in the nude in his farmhouse. A secret web camera is found in the ladies changing room of a swimming pool in Pune.

"Voyeurism and technology are coming together as never before, and there's no stopping this tidal wave," the paper said in an article on perversion.

In Thailand, where if you're stupid enough to try to sneak a class A drug through customs you face a short stint on death row, the prison authorities have been faced with their own webcam dilemma.

A scheme was dreamed up to use webcams to broadcast scenes from prison life live over the internet - sort of Big Brother meets Midnight Express. Internet users, it was reported, would even be able to watch prisoners shortly before they were executed.

While broadcasting the grim boredom of prison life for all to see may in some way act as a deterrent to would-be drug-smugglers, Amnesty International rightly kicked up a stink in the name of human rights. The proposal has been ditched.

A gang of computer thieves operating mainly in Manchester was brought down when footage of the thieves peering into a webcam was found on the hard drive of one of their stolen machines.

The impromptu home movie was used by police investigating a string of 27 thefts and enabled them to track down and convict the four crooks.

A burglar in the English city of Milton Keynes was nabbed after a university worker set up a webcam over his desk to keep an eye on things when he wasn't there.

He recorded the video feed and came up with clear images of the burglar rifling through his desk. Pictures were given to police and led to the man's capture.

Webcam antics like these make a little virtual people-watching at Mt Maunganui seem harmless in comparison. Forget the smoking gun - the web camera and the images it produces can't be argued with.

Just a couple of years ago, most publicly placed webcams, and those supplied with PCs, were next to useless for most internet users.

But the technology has come along. The cameras now have impressive digital and optical zoom features and provide good image resolution and refresh rates. Some even detect motion and can automatically follow a person round a room, auto-focusing as they go.

What has really kicked the technology along, however, is the spread of broadband. Internet users surfing on a 128kbit/s connection and faster can pretty much enjoy webcams without the stutter we had to put up with in the past.

The Mt Maunganui and Cincinnati webcams both allow you to "take control" of the camera - rotate left, right, up or down or zoom in and out. It's simple but ingenious IP (internet protocol) networking.

The day is already here when we can affordably place a web camera in our home to keep an eye on things while we are at work. I'm tempted to set one up myself to find out which drunken cretin keeps vomiting in the lobby of my apartment building.

How the click of a mouse button or the press of a key allows you to move a camera in another city or country impresses me.

And I marvel at being able to watch ships pass through the Panama Canal or the sun rise over the Kremlin - in real time. But as webcams open our eyes to an unedited world, the internet providers need to act responsibly. That may mean recording everything that's viewed, restricting views of areas in the private domain and cutting the feed when a user tries with a little too much persistence to get that window into frame.