Imagine a couple having a quiet day in the park.  Out of nowhere, a van full of police and security guards surround them.  They get publically humiliated because the security camera flagged them as ‘high risk for loitering’.

This may sound like a violation of personal privacy, but real life “Minority Report” style CCTV cameras are now being used in Portsmouth, as testing ground for future technology to prevent theft and crime.

Programmed to detect suspicious activity and then alert police, the cameras can essentially pick up on potential crimes and alert authorities in time to possibly stop the crime from taking place.

The cool sounding system uses a 20 video channel system to monitor 100 cameras from Smart CCTV, the company who makes the cameras, at a cost of £25,000.

But civil liberties groups are not happy about the violation of privacy rights by subjecting innocent people to harassment.

The cameras have however been reported to capture actual crimes, so experts believe that the technology could soon be used to prevent fraud and theft effectively.  What do you think?

[Telegraph]