Britain, already one of the most snooped-upon nations on Earth, is about to become a nation of snoopers.

A network of citizen crimewatchers will be given the chance of winning up to £1,000 by monitoring CCTV security cameras over the internet.

The cameras’ owners will pay a fee to have users watch the footage. The scheme, Internet Eyes, is being promoted as a game and is expected to go “live” next month with a test run in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Subscribers will be able to register free and will be given up to four cameras to monitor.

Eventually the consortium behind the idea hopes to have internet users around the world focused on Britain’s 4.2 million security cameras, waiting to see and report a crime in return for cash prizes.

The project has already attracted criticism from civil liberties groups, which claim it could turn Britain into a “snoopers’ paradise”.

They fear nosey neighbours could spy on homeowners putting the wrong rubbish in their bins and report motorists for the most minor misdemeanours.

In addition to camera footage, the Internet Eyes website will also feature a rogues’ gallery of criminals along with a list of their offences and which internet user helped to catch them.

Tony Morgan, who set up the site, said: “This could turn out to be the best crime prevention weapon there’s ever been. I wanted to combine the serious business of stopping crime with the incentive of winning money.

“There are over four million CCTV cameras and only one in a thousand is watched. This way cameras will be watched 24 hours a day.”

Subscribers will try to collect points by monitoring cameras in real time. If they see anything suspicious, they will click a button to send a still picture and text message to the camera’s owner.

The owner will then send a feedback e-mail to the person reporting the incident, indicating whether there has been a crime or suspected crime.

Users will be awarded one point for spotting a suspected crime and three if they see an actual crime. They can also lose points if the camera operator decides that the alert was not a crime.

Charles Farrier, the director of the pressure group No CCTV, said: “It is an appalling idea for a game and will create a snoopers’ paradise.

"It is something which should be nipped in the bud. It will not only encourage a dangerous spying mentality, but also could lead to dangerous civil rights abuses.

“What if a group of racists decide to send alerts every time a black person is seen on screen, and what’s stopping criminals using the cameras to scope out where to commit crimes?”

James Woodward, head of the technical team of Internet Eyes, said that safeguards, including a ban on players who sent three incorrect alerts, would prevent the game being abused.

For privacy reasons, users will not know the location of cameras.

“Whoever has a CCTV camera, be it the police, local authorities or business or homeowners, can sign up to have their cameras watched. We hope to include police cameras very soon,” Woodward said.

The scheme will initially use CCTV cameras in shops and businesses in Stratford-upon-Avon but hopes to include cameras across the country by the end of the year, before going worldwide next year.

Britain is one of the world’s most monitored societies, with one camera per fourteen people. It has 20 per cent of the world’s CCTV cameras, but only one per cent of the global population.

In August, an internal report by the Metropolitan Police disclosed that just one crime was being solved for every thousand of London’s estimated one million surveillance cameras.

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