Craning sentinels

There's a lot of concern these days about individual privacy and particularly the threat to it posed by media intrusion, big-brother government, and so on.

But I still haven't heard anyone mention the threat to it posed by men in cranes. And yet this is a growing problem in our towns and cities. In fact, thanks to the building boom, chances are your home is being overlooked by a man in a crane at this very moment (they work half-day, Saturdays). Mine certainly is.

Yes, a man in a crane has been overlooking our house for the best part of a year now. He's there, outside the window, even as I write this. Not so close that I can tell whether it's the Star or the Daily Mirror he has beside him (though I notice that he has a horse circled in the 5.10 at Cheltenham - I can't quite make out which one), but close enough for him to see right into my room if he chooses.

He's busy at the moment, lifting girders around the new apartment block that's rising below him. But there are quiet periods when he seems to have nothing to do except look around. And when his jib is pointing in your direction at such times, you can't help feeling exposed.

My wife has long been concerned with questions of privacy (such as: "What are you writing about this week? If you mention the ants again, I'm leaving") and would probably welcome stronger laws in this area. At first she was concerned about the crane too, until I assured her that crane operators were far too busy watching what was happening below them on the building site to have time for peering in anybody's window.

But then one day the crane driver waved at her - luckily she was decent at the time - which put paid to that theory. I'm not criticising him for waving. He was only being friendly, I'm sure, and nobody likes a grumpy crane driver, especially if he's going to be spending a lot of time in the neighbourhood. But she's been wondering ever since what he might have seen on other occasions.

Of course, crane men themselves lead very exposed lives. After all, while our man can probably see into hundreds of homes, the occupants can see him too. He's sitting there all day in his glass box, with a bigger viewership than some TV3 programmes, and every time he as much as scratches himself it's going out live to a large area of Dublin.

At least we can close the curtains. And even if he did spend all day looking into houses - which, being a hard-working and responsible crane operator who, if he isn't careful, could drop a clanger, literally and metaphorically, on his fellow site-workers - most of the time it would be like watching television in America. Hundreds of channels to choose from, and nothing on any of them.

Still, there's a million stories in the naked city and crane drivers must know at least some. It's a very prosaic example, I know, but take the subject of traffic.

Traffic news is a hot commodity in our cities, as shown by the success of AA Roadwatch. But the network of cranes in Dublin is so extensive that, if the information was pooled and broadcast, crane drivers could put the eye-in-the-sky helicopters out of business. They could offer constantly-updated information about traffic jams; suggest alternative routes; and throw in value-added extras, such as the correct pronunciation of "roundabout".

If they could do this with traffic, think of the possibilities in the area of crime. Even as it is, the crane drivers surely observe more criminal activity than the Neighbourhood Watch scheme. I imagine undercover detectives must be regular visitors to the pubs where the crane men drink; although there may be a crane-drivers' code of ethics to prevent them disclosing things they learn on the job.

But they may also have a deterrent effect on crime, and this could be the big advantage of having a crane operator in your neighbourhood. After all, if you think the driver is watching you, it must work on the criminal population too. Certainly, I haven't heard of any local burglaries between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. recently.

On the other hand, there's a lot of car theft in the area, usually at night when the cranes are unmanned, and this is where I believe the network is a wasted resource in the fight against crime. There's a precedent for its use in the joint venture to locate ESAT communications masts at police stations. But the way I see it, the Force could post people in the cranes overnight.

Imagine: they'd be on to everything before it happened! Officers could even operate the arms, maybe with big magnets attached to the end of them. A stolen car goes by and "Whirr, whirr, whirr - Clunk!", the thief is winched to justice!

Maybe I'm getting carried away. Anyway, as I say, the crane man has been out there for the best part of a year now: almost half my daughter's life, it struck me the other day. What must she think, I wondered.

She's still too young to grasp religious concepts, but it also occurred to me that she'll have a head start whenever it comes to learning about traditional beliefs. Already I can hear her telling the teacher: "Yes, I know there's a man in the sky who looks down on us all and sees everything we do. One day he waved at Mammy".

Frank McNally can be contacted at: fmcnally@irish-times.ie