The Circle

buildings, allowing viewers
     to see inside; it reminded Mae of heat-reading visual displays.
    “It’s based on the neighborhood watch model, where groups of neighbors look out for
     each other, and report any anomalous behavior. With NeighborWatch—that’s my name for
     this, though it could be changed of course—we leverage the power of SeeChange specifically,
     and the Circle generally, to make the committing of a crime, any crime, extremely
     difficult in a fully participating neighborhood.”
    He pushed a button and now the houses were full of figures, two or three or four in
     each building, all of them colored blue. They moved around in their digital kitchens,
     bedrooms, and backyards.
    “Okay, as you can see, here are the residents of the neighborhood, all going about
     their business. They’re rendered blue here, because they’ve all registered with NeighborWatch,
     and their prints, retinas, phones and even body profile have been memorized by the
     system.”
    “This is the view any resident can see?” Stenton asked.
    “Exactly. This is their home display.”
    “Impressive,” Stenton said. “I’m already intrigued.”
    “So as you can see, all is well in the neighborhood. Everyone who’s there is supposed
     to be there. But now we see what happens when an unknown person arrives.”
    A figure, colored red, appeared, and walked up to the door of one of the houses. Gareth
     turned to the audience and raised his eyebrows.
    “The system doesn’t know this man, so he’s red. Any new personentering the neighborhood would automatically trigger the computer. All the neighbors
     would receive a notice on their home and mobile devices that a visitor was in the
     neighborhood. Usually it’s no big deal. Someone’s friend or uncle is dropping by.
     But either way, you can see there’s a new person, and where he is.”
    Stenton was sitting back, as if he knew the rest of the story but wanted to help it
     speed along. “I’m assuming, then, there’s a way to neutralize him.”
    “Yes. The people he’s visiting can send a message to the system saying he’s with them,
     IDing him, vouching for him: ‘That’s Uncle George.’ Or they could do that ahead of
     time. So then he’s tagged blue again.”
    Now Uncle George, the figure on the screen, went from red to blue, and entered the
     house.
    “So all is well in the neighborhood again.”
    “Unless there’s a real intruder,” Stenton prodded.
    “Right. On the rare occasion when it’s truly someone with ill-intent …” Now the screen
     featured a red figure stalking outside the house, peering in the windows. “Well, then
     the whole neighborhood would know it. They’d know where he was, and could either stay
     away, call the police, confront him, whatever it is they want to do.”
    “Very good. Very nice,” Stenton said.
    Gareth beamed. “Thank you. And Belinda made me think that, you know, any ex-cons living
     in the neighborhood would register as red or orange in any display. Or some other
     color, where you’d know they were residents of the neighborhood, but you’d also know
     they were convicts or whatever.”
    Stenton nodded. “It’s your right to know.”
    “Absolutely,” Gareth said.
    “Seems like this solves one of the problems of SeeChange,” Stenton said, “which is
     that even when there are cameras everywhere, not everyone can watch everything. If
     a crime is committed at three a.m., who’s watching camera 982, right?”
    “Right,” Gareth said. “See, this way the cameras are just part of it. The color-tagging
     tells you who’s anomalous, so you only have to pay attention to that particular anomaly.
     Of course, the catch is whether or not this violates any privacy laws.”
    “Well, I don’t think that’s a problem,” Stenton said. “You have a right to know who
     lives on your street. What’s the difference between this and simply introducing yourself
     to everyone on the street? This is just a more advanced and thorough version of ‘good
     fences make good neighbors.’ I would imagine this would eliminate pretty much all
     crime committed by strangers to any given community.”
    Mae glanced at her bracelet. She couldn’t count them all, but hundreds of watchers
     were insisting on Belinda’s and Gareth’s products, now. They asked
Where? When? How much?
    Now Bailey’s voice popped through. “The one unanswered question, though, is, what
     if the crime is committed by someone
inside
the