Blame our love for reality TV or fondness of espionage dramas but there is a streaming video service that offers nonstop access to strangers’ personal webcams.
According to Narratively, some people don’t know they are being silently watched, “but most simply don’t care”.
The site, Opentopia, offers a ‘fly on the wall’ experience for want-to-be spies, creepers, reality TV addicts, or for people who are just really, really bored.
The webcams offer views of everything, from a look into strangers’ living rooms, public parks, down the hallway of an American school or into a Russian hospital’s operating theatre.
Opentopia automatically aggreagates all of its camera views from publicly available live video streaming feeds, but the webcam owners may not know their feeds are included.
“Webcam aggregation sites touch on the paradox of data availability — we choose to share much of our lives publicly but often feel uneasy at the thought of being watched,” Narratively’s Hannah McBride wrote.
“The reality is that so much of what we do, especially when viewed through the stationary lens of a webcam, is mundane. In fact, the sheer ordinariness of our day-to-day routines can be seen as protection, a way to inoculate against privacy invasion by turning the Big Brother eye on yourself.”
