Sheer paranoia.

Wow Leigh, that was the snidest put down. Makes you wonder why the authors bother publishing here.

I wonder whether
1. any one is watching the web cams
2. any one can react quickly to dangerous situations unfolding on the webcam.

I was walking past an unmanned railway station one morning when I noticed smoke pouring out the station roof. the station was under video surveillance. I walked onto the railway platform and pressed the red panic button to summons help. It took 5 minutes for a voice to respond the the panic button and then they didn't believe the station was on fire so we told the people waiting on the platform for the next train to leave the platform.

Unbelievable. Isn't this parenting by proxy? Being able to watch your child on a webcam is not the same as spending quality time with your child in 'real life'.

As far as safety goes, children would be safer with appropriate numbers of child care workers employed and paid a fair wage rather than the use of surveillance cameras in childcare centres. Is this to be a new version of the mind numbing Big Brother?

Whatever next!!

I would have thought that the bigger invasion of privacy was the child care workers being filmed all day whilst carrying on their jobs. I certainly wouldn't want a camera focused on me 8 hours a day.

I reckon there is some "slow boiled frog" in this situation.
Not the privacy issue, just that it is considered normal these days for it to be unaffordable for parents to raise kids the old way: 1 worker, 1 carer.
Something that used to be called "parenting" is now just another part of the profiteer economy, providing jobs and "economic growth". (the growth is in parenting costs, not real wealth. Accounting does not differentiate!)
Sickness profits, educational profits, housing profits (think investment relying on scarcity, not owner-occupied) and now parenting profits.
Parenting is a "good". It should not be traded away in the name of valueless profiteer economics.
(BTW. Good profits=wealth generation, bad profits=middlemen+maximised unnecessary services+wasteful)
BTW. Insightful as always Leigh! ;-)

Billie,

Don't worry about the authors. I have always wondered why you bother to post here. You seem only to make smart-arse remarks about other posters, and have very little to say yourself.

Unlike you, the authors probably don't expect everyone to agree with them.

Funny how the ones I always have a go at keep on coming back. I believe that very few of them follow up on articles here as they have things to get on with.

Save your sympathy for one-eyed koalas or whatever.