I've wondered about creating a local, software based, "town watch" of sorts. Imagine many houses in the neighborhood running open source software and collating

I've wondered about creating a local, software based, "town watch" of sorts. Imagine many houses in the neighborhood running open source software and collating data about movements within the neighborhood. This could bring surveillance powers to the people, and it seems inevitable that this will eventually happen, but I wonder if it will be made illegal somehow. Unfortunately, it seems more likely that people would use such data for stalking their crush rather than monitoring police or other worthy uses.