The future world government builds an observatory at the geographic north pole called Scopespoint. Its attendants are genetically engineered with an extended dendritic nerve-cable that hangs from the side of their skull. Colloquially it's known as a Scopesman's braid. The attendants are called Scopesmen.
There are four Scopesmen, one for each cardinal direction. There are four observatory discs at Scopespoint at the north pole, one for each direction. The Scopesmen attach their braids to their respective disks, which actually function exactly like enormous eyeballs. They are in reality large hollow dishes filled with tele-ocular fluid. Once a Scopesman is "plugged in," they are able to see a swath of the northern hemisphere 90 degrees in longitude and 90 degrees in latitude. When all four are observing, no event that occurs in the northern hemisphere escapes their notice. If one of the Scopesmen observes all events occurring between dawn and noon, then the Scopesman to his right will watch all events occurring between noon and dusk, his neighbor recording all happening from dusk to midnight, and so on, simultaneously.
The Scopesmen are chosen from a pool of hopeful neophytes. Their parents modified their DNA during their gestation to grant them the necessary physical capabilities to be a Scopesman. Three layers of interchangeable eyelids, one for shielding from radiation, another which expands the visual range into the ultraviolets, a third which shifts the range into infrared. Blinking muscles are atrophied and tear ducts are given greater capability. And of course, the aforementioned dendritic extension is engineered for.
The selection process is different for each of the four Scopesmen.
North is chosen through popular election; every man, woman and child on Earth is given a vote.
East is simply the neophyte with the greatest wealth.
South is not chosen by anyone. The applicant for South must preserve his title from usurpers through his own ingenuity.
West is chosen from the applicant pool by a supercomputer, one which processes an algorithm more complex than any human could decipher. The algorithm is terabytes long and gathers data from sources as varied as quasar pulsation cycles and spin orientations of quarks in Jupiter's Red Spot.
