Vienna Transportation Notes

March 28th, 2006, 11:00.

I’ve been trying to learn more about Vienna and bloggers that live and work from here. I found the Metroblogging Viena, and their interesting posts about life here. Anyway, here’s a link to an article I found particularly interesting. It talks about automatic monitoring in the U-Bahn trains.

Metroblogging Vienna: Transportation Notes

Personally, I don’t think that automated monitoring of public spaces should be allowed.

I feel okay about security guards, police and such. However, I feel that automated monitoring is privacy invasive beyond need.

If a public area has about ten or fifteen cameras installed, then they need at least one person who will monitor those cameras. Most of the time, this is not the case even in installations which have hundreds of cameras installed. At best, the cameras will be able to alert someone that something untoward is going on. At worst, they will record whatever takes place and enable easier identification of criminals.

The best option could really be considered to improve security. The worst one is really of no help in prevention of crime.

Besides, there’s something about being recorded during my normal daily activities that bothers me. I do not like the idea of living in a big brother kind of society.

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