Live coverage of the police

Live tweeting is definitely nothing new. Nowadays, news organisations cover pretty much anything live, in whatever form they feel is appropriate. Events like protest marches get blanket live blog coverage, football matches get the treatment collated on one site, and even normal news events have reporters tweeting updates.

However, it's still something when big organisations get in on the act, and give the general public an (almost) unrestricted view of what goes on inside an environment many of us will probably never see.

Today (October 28) from 6am for 24 hours, Sussex Police are broadcasting everything they are doing live on the internet. It's open for anyone and everyone to watch, with cameras at a specialist search unit (which at 10:37am appears to be on a boat, getting ready to do a diving exercise), Crawley police station and the media suite. It's thought to be the first of its kind in the UK.

Viewers to the site can comment and chat live to the people running the stream. Comments on the media suite one range from Luke H saying "great idea these live streaming, well done", to Shaun commenting "I feel a bit sorry for these guys being paraded like goldfish. This is really the end of privacy." The Crawley police station one has comments about contacting officers, arguments about how much money it costs, and Garry saying "I like your flowery dress!!"

A few of the tweets on the hashtag #spplive are also shown here - be sure to follow it during the day to see what the latest is from Sussex officers on camera.

The stream will not feature moments they can't show, and a static camera at Crawley police station is to have the sound turned off, for legal reasons.

A few teething problems to note - the streaming seems to take a while to load (although that may be my wifi connection), and the chat has had a few issues.

It's reminiscent of the Greater Manchester Police effort about a year ago in what was an attempt to show just how busy a police force of that level can be over 24 hours. In total, they had over 3,000 incidents, and over 300 arrests. They used the hashtag #gmp24 and tweeted pretty much everything.

Is it the future for big public organisations to be as open as this? In my opinion, probably not. The expense of time needed to produce it is enormous. The fact they are being open and showing what goes on is interesting to many people for a short period of time, but that may well wear off. Being open is good, but it shouldn't be on this scale all the time.

The website says this is part of a trial over a year of showing Sussex Police People, and will feature blogs and updates throughout the day and year.

But, what do you think? Is it too far an intrusion into privacy? Or, is it just right and we need more of this from our publicly accountable bodies? Is it even interesting to you? Let us know in the comments below.

This post was written by Andrew Stuart. If you want more, you can follow him on @andrewstuart on Twitter, or his website www.andrewwgstuart.com