In an effort to prevent passers-by from peering into his workshop — which happens to be located “in an old storefront with a big window facing towards the street” — Niklas Roy installed a curtain. Unfortunately, the curtain was too small to provide a real solution, so he built a motorized surveillance system that repositions the curtain based on the movements of lookie loos.
Ultimately, this proved counterproductive:
[i]n the end, it doesn’t protect my privacy at all. It seems that the existence of my little curtain is leading itself ad absurdum, simply by doing its job very well. My moving curtain attracts the looks of people which usually would never care about my window. It is even the star of the street, now! My curtain is just engaged. And because of that, it fails.