Here's something for libertarians and privacy lovers to chew on.

A guy living in San Francisco's sleazy Tenderloin District got so fed up with the crime outside his apartment window that he installed a live webcam with a dedicated web site. Now that the entire world can witness crimes in his 'hood, they're calling the SFPD:

Jackson, 22, moved to the city in June from a small beach town in Florida and quickly discovered the realities of San Francisco real estate. Prices were so high that he said he "jumped on the first place I found."

It turned out to be on Taylor Street, just across from Glide Memorial Church. It's an ideal location - for watching crack deals, late-night violence and random crazy behavior.

"By the third night I was basically fed up with the crime and noise," Jackson said. "I didn't really have a plan. I just put the Webcam up, my girlfriend made a little Web page to display it, and here we are."

If you haven't checked out adamsblock.com, you are missing one of the greatest at-work time-killers ever to pop up on your monitor. There are two cameras, both on 24 hours a day, and a real-time chat room that crackles with activity. And no wonder - there is always something to talk about.

Jackson's camera has caught a man throwing himself into the side of a bus, apparently hoping to work an injury scam. It didn't work. The bus didn't stop. Viewers have also watched fights, car chases and break-ins.

If it sounds like an idea that might attract a crowd, you're right. After clips were posted on YouTube, the original group of 50 viewers grew to more than 500,000.

A dot-com company gave Jackson a high-resolution camera and Lefty O'Doul's, the nearby restaurant, chipped in for a microphone. Jackson got the new camera Monday and started the improved site Tuesday.

The results have been pretty dramatic. In three days, adamsblock.com has had 80,000 views and 25,000 visitors, a remarkable 40 percent of whom live outside the United States. On Friday, a woman from the United Kingdom joined the regulars in competing to see who could be first to identify the number stamped on the trunk of taxis that drive by.

"At any given time," Jackson said, "there is an average of over 100 people in the chat room."

...With people watching at all hours of the day and night, some of them have watched crimes taking place. Viewers picked up the phone and called 911, and the police arrived in no time flat.

Jackson knows how effective the private cameras can be. Late one night when three characters stood on his sidewalk yelling, "We're going to shoot you," Jackson knew he was on to something.

Now Jackson, who said his day job is as a social media consultant, is eager to take this to the next level. He says if interested people in high-crime areas e-mail him ( adam@dailytechtalk.com), he will help set up a camera. He only asks that the new sites split any advertising revenue with him. Jackson envisions a network of cameras, tied together through a single Web site, so viewers can keep an eye on the streets at all hours.

Of course, that was the original idea behind the city's cameras. The problem is that they've become so entangled in red tape that they are rarely effective. Private operators, like Jackson, may be a real alternative.

The downside is that technology leads inexorably to a loss of privacy everywhere, and basically universal surveillance. (As Arianna Huffington and Don Fowler learned, someone is always watching.)

Whether that's a downside would depend on who's doing what while who's watching.

And whether more people care about the watchers, or about the watched.