Spy on Thy Neighbor

You parked in a bike lane. You tossed that wrapper out your car window. You didn't smile. Websites and TV shows dedicated to exposing transgressions -- minor and major -- are turning '15 minutes of fame' into '15 minutes of shame.' And they're part of a trend that shows that, in many cases, it's ordinary camera-toting netizens prying away our privacy -- not some Orwellian government.

In 'The Snoop Next Door' (subscription required), The Wall Street Journal's Jennifer Saranow profiles sites like PlateWire.com, where drivers can post the license numbers of reckless drivers, and Flickr.com, the popular photo-sharing website where photos accompanied by comments like 'TalksTooLoud' expose poor cell phone etiquette. Some sites let women warn each other: as Ms.magazine reported last summer, HollaBackNYC encourages women to post photos of men who make unwanted advances. There's also Don'tDateHimGirl, where women lambaste their bad dates with photos and comments such as 'Isnt honest about cheating!' (A defamation suit is pending against the site.)

Vigilante websites are the online, grassroots extension of the televised hidden-camera exposes that have thrilled viewers for years. Making headlines on that front of late is the Dateline NBC segment 'To Catch a Predator.' Writing for Radar, John Cook argues that the program -- in which would-be internet predators are lured by child actors (and adults posing as children online) to a location where they're caught on camera, interviewed, and arrested -- addresses a real concern about online child predators among the public. 'But,' writes Cook, 'they can be stopped -- and are stopped all the time by local police stings -- without parading them across our television screens for titillated and enraged audiences to gawk at between commercial breaks.'