With so many cameras around, we're probably all in pictures

07/06/99

By Doug Bedell / The Dallas Morning News

Webcams weren't even a dream in 1961 when media wise man Marshall McLuhan coined the term "narcissus narcosis," a syndrome in which man finds himself unaware of new technologies that invade every aspect of his life.

With today's cheap, tiny video cameras and the connectivity of the Internet, it is possible that someone - or everyone - may be watching at moments you consider private.

Live video feeds are streaming across the World Wide Web from atop highway light poles and outside restaurants, from the bedrooms of voyeurs and the cribs of babies, from uninhabited corners of the Earth and the most crowded urban subways.

As video camera and computer prices have dropped in the last five years, applications have burgeoned. Cameras in stealthy positions, for instance, have arguably made people safer by helping to nail criminals.

Meanwhile, experts worried about the widespread, unregulated and secret use of such cameras are raising fundamental questions about privacy.

"Insofar as it is a technology that people can own and direct themselves, it appears to be enabling and liberating; insofar as it is a technology that others can use to watch us, it is threatening," says researcher and Webcams In Society magazine publisher Dr. Jim Cross of England's College of the University of Leeds (www.webcamworld.com).

No one seems to know how many Webcams are out there, but "Web rings" - Internet groupings of active live, worldwide feeds - now number in the thousands. Dr. Cross says best estimates are that about 60 percent of all such cameras are trained on people or things inside homes.

At Spy Supply in Plano, Blake Phagan will sell you a miniature camera hidden in a necktie, mantel clock or teddy bear. Hooked to a computer, these devices can transmit their images to the world.

And it's all legal.

"With video, there's not a whole lot of restrictions," says Mr. Phagan. "You can do it anywhere except where someone can reasonably expect privacy."

Wiretapping and eavesdropping laws are much more restrictive, he says.

"But I can basically follow you around all day, as long as I don't follow you into your home or a public restroom or something."

Some of Mr. Phagan's customers are buying the newest quarter-sized cameras to mount in remote control cars. Others, he says, are asking about how to spy on child-care professionals, baby-sitters and their own teens. And, of course, private detectives are wearing cameras in ball caps and hiding them in boomboxes to catch images of unfaithful spouses, Mr. Phagan says.

With software packages such as Webcam32, novice computer users are finding new ways to keep an eye on other things. Neil Kolban, the North Richland Hills software developer who wrote that award-winning program, says traffic at his Web site (www.kolban.com) has been increasing steadily. "I am seeing many new users taking up the challenge," Mr. Kolban says.

Dr. Cross says people are still playing with ideas.

"What we have here is a new technology without a settled use. We don't yet know why most people use it, either to transmit or view. And, if we did, we don't know whether a settled pattern of use will emerge to supersede whatever is going on now."

Imaginative uses

What is "going on now" is as varied as the human beings using the technology.

Internet sites such as Webcam Resources (www.webcamresource.com) and Dr. Cross's Webcam World give a hint of the wide-ranging uses so far. Many Webcams provide pedestrian shots of people working at desks. Others are more intriguing:

* The Loch Ness Monster Cam (www.lochness.scotland.net). Scottish researchers have mounted a live camera on the shores of the lake where the creature of legend reportedly was first sighted. On June 5, a Galveston couple said they spotted the monster while watching on their home computer.

"We saw a head and neck appear in front of the castle and it was traveling fairly fast, with a v-shaped wake behind it," reported Nora Jones, who watched the live image with husband Mike. "We watched until she swam off screen. ...I saw what I saw with my own two eyes, and it is real."

* Traffic cams. Sites like Citycams (www.citycams.com) and Gates96 (www.gates96.com) offer travelers live views of the mess on our highways. Savvy Net surfers have taken to their computers to check traffic before venturing out.

* Kid cams. With services such as KinderCam from ParentNet (www.kindercam.com), companies are setting up surveillance cameras inside nurseries and day-care centers, beaming encrypted images privately to parents' desktops.

"You get a sense of security seeing what they're up to," says Robert L. Whitaker, assistant director for budgets for Georgia's university system and father of 2-year-old Taylor. "It gives you peace of mind."

* Neighborhood security. Honolulu, for example, has 18 federally funded cameras aimed at the streets in high-crime areas. A 24-hour Webcam mounted on a street light in a Georgia neighborhood recorded a break-in.

* Live tourism. Numerous cities around the globe now offer continuous Webcam shots of their skylines, street activity and prominent attractions.

A new version of tourism has evolved as a result, says Dr. Cross.

"There does seem to be a qualitative difference between seeing 'recorded highlights,' or what the tourist board wants you to see, and actually seeing what is occurring in 'real time," he says.

"The next step is for the technology to expand that a little bit further so that 'streaming video' full-screen is widely available."

As bandwidth increases, Dr. Cross predicts, "the uptake on Webcams will increase enormously."

* Interactivity. Robotically controlled cameras are also swelling in popularity. With them, Internet users can have some control over what they're viewing. The camera becomes another set of eyes, allowing them to look around or interact.

PumaPaint (yugo.mme.wilkes. edu/~villanov/), for instance, is a longtime project of the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Wilkes University in northeastern Pennsylvania. It lets visitors apply paint to an ongoing piece of art.

"This takes on a whole new dimension if one is talking about Webcams connected to astronomical telescopes," says Dr. Cross. "Speaking of which, think of the possibilities of what Webcams can deliver when we have the solar eclipse this August. There are some sites where you can use even use a Webcam to view a garden and decide to water those parts of it that are looking dry."

Sex and the future of Webcams

Web sites have long used supposedly secret cameras as a lure for visitors looking for pornography. Now, there are plenty of sites charging for password access to what they purport to be surreptitious video feeds of people in dressing rooms and hotel bedrooms.

Whether the video is of unsuspecting victims or merely porn pros pretending to be so, Dr. Cross says, "I'm sure that amateurs will explore the possibilities of the cheap Webcam, just as they did the possibilities of the Polaroid camera and video technology as these came along.

"Here, as elsewhere where technology outstrips regulation, there will be some stomach-turning excesses. But I doubt they will predominate, unless we assume that that sort of thing is what most of us have always craved."

As a broader issue, high-quality digital cameras that tilt, pan and zoom from unseen locations may well spawn a whole new world of litigation. As these devices become linked to the Internet, experts say, the potential damage becomes more heinous, the privacy questions more serious.

"Just because you're walking down a public street doesn't mean that the government or any other person should have the right to follow you around wherever you go and take notes of who you see and what you do," says Dave Banisar of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

On that point, even Webcam proponents such as Dr. Cross agree. "It is a civil liberties issue that has, as yet, not become the major controversy it deserves to be."