World Sousveillance Day 189
Sousveillance Cyborg writes: "Sousveillance is inverse surveillance, and a worldwide community of cyborgs is promoting sousveillance as a way toward more privacy and less secrecy.
Today is World Sousveillance Day (WSD).
See http://wearcam.org/wsd.htm. Transmitting live from around the world at noon (moving with time zone)."
Given Recent Events.. (Score:3, Insightful)
For that matter, shooting photographs of security stuff in general may be a bad idea. You could easily get arrested for such stuff, even if it is an invasion of privacy.
But, as always there's an alternate.. there's the middle finger.
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Bad Date (Score:5, Insightful)
Just about anybody that celebrates Christmas is busy on Christmas Eve. Mom's gotta clean the house, Dad's gotta find a Turboman actionfigure for Young Jimmy, Highly Paid IT Businessman is busy partying, Joe Homeless is busy begging.
The only people that are going to have no problem doing this on Dec. 24 are people that don't celebrate Christmas at all. Typically these would include various racial groups which the US has declared war on right now....
So, would it be a great idea to have lots of people that (dumb) Yankees would consider to look like terrorists running around, taking pictures of things and getting security all riled up?
I think this WSD should be on a more relaxed time of year. Maybe some time in April or something.
New definition of the elite (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's a bit late to announce this (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't understand... (Score:4, Insightful)
What I can imagine, though, is a scenario where once the system is in place, the scope of its use is gradually increased until it is being used not only in ways that are unacceptable, but also in ways we were specifically told it wouldn't be in the beginning.
An example of this would be the "anti-terrorist" cameras installed all over London. These are now being used to detect and prosecute all sorts of lesser crimes. Of course, many people don't have a problem with that, but you have to be extremely careful where the lower bound gets set. Is that a nudie magazine in your pocket, visible in frames 237-512 when you crossed Market Street?
Maybe you can't imagine any activites/liberties you presently indulge in which the government might eventually decide are nonsat, but my paranoia meter jumps a couple of clicks every time this stuff makes the news.
Warning: Clicking on story leads to typicality (Score:2, Insightful)
Give me a break, this type of paranoia is so vogue it's disgusting. There are real threats to civil liberties, but "sousveillance" isn't going to counteract them. Though the group claims they're turning the wheels of democracy, they would be more appropriately observed to be a factional group.
Even if they're right, nobody in the paranoid realm has ever given me a good answer to the question, "Why should the government even care what you're doing?" If you pay your taxes, walk the dog, and tune into Must-See-TV on Thursdays, you're in line with the rest of society, and the government could really care less what you're doing. Even if you *gasp* use Linux or program computers, the government really isn't interested at all in what brand of toothpaste you buy from the grocery store.
In related thoughts, there needs to be a Godwin's Law for 1984 references, such that a reference to "Big Brother" or other Orwellian terminology immediately invalidates what you're saying.
document police brutality, sexual harassment (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're gathering evidence that relies on tone of voice to document wrongdoing there's nothing like a tape recorder. And if you're gathering evidence that relies on gesture and facial expression to document wrongdoing there's nothing like a pinhole camera.
In fact, digital video cameras is how the human rights abuses of the Taliban were first documented by RAWA [rawa.org].
But pick your battles, carefully, kids. This isn't a contest to see who can be the most annoying to security people who are doing their jobs honorably.
Re:Given Recent Events.. (Score:2, Insightful)
and monitored, surely the govt. or whomever is doing the monitoring should have
no problem with the people responding in kind. I remember when the greatest
thing about America was that we the people were the ones who held the power.
SealBeater
As a followup... (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on, guys. It's simple economics. If a store wants to reduce losses due to theft, they install cameras. Or they install domes that look like cameras. If you're going to be insulted about that, why aren't you insulted that you can't leave without going through the registers, or that they lock the door after hours, or that the "Employees Only" areas are only for employees? Why not require retailers to move their entire stock outside under a large awning, and turn their backs to us to show how much they trust their customers?
Come on, dude, you're living in a paranoiac techno-Robin-Hood fantasy that would have been only moderately tolerated even before 9/11. Now, your implication that the security guys in Wal-Mart are worse than the terrorists who blew up WTC, makes your opinion worth less than sludge.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2, Insightful)
Last I checked, it wasn't a crime.
If you're so paranoid about it being found out, put it in a bag first, but don't blame the cameras, as any Joe Schmoe can see you too.
You cannot expect privacy in the street:
If a camera can see you, so can a human eye.
The only reason to fear being filmed by cameras is if you're planning on lying in your side of the story, hoping to have a word-against-word case, rather than a word-against-video. And then - what are you lying to protect?
Re:Bad Date (Score:2, Insightful)
Like us Atheists. Or those who celebrate Chanukah. Or those who celebrate Ukrainian Christmas. Or....
"I think this WSD should be on a more relaxed time of year. Maybe some time in April or something."
From the site:
"Q. Why was Christmas Eve chosen ? The shops will be rather busy.
A. that's exactly why. 12:00 noon dec.24th will be the busiest day, and the best expression of corporate culture, and the best time to shoot. It's a human element.. crowds of people herded like cattle, overseen by the surveillance. Also the lineups will be long, so it was felt that folks could entertain themselves while waiting in line by shooting. When you get bored waiting in line, liven it up with some camerafire. Shoot when you're bored. Shoot when you're frustrated. Shoot when you're being shot!!! "
Give you a nickle if you read the article in question before posting.
Re: 2-way peepholes vs. 2-way mirrors (Score:3, Insightful)
In a similar manner, you can see through a one-way mirror by reducing ambient light as much as possible and placing a high-powered light flush against the surface of the mirror. See, if the guy at wearcam.org had constructed such a setup, with a rubber-gasketed camera and flash which he used to take pictures of the folk watching us in department-store dressing rooms, and filled a website with those photos (preferably alongside statements, denials, and changes of policy from the stores in question), then he'd be performing what would arguably be a public service.
As it is, he's filming camera domes as if they were UFO's and salespeople as if they were MIB's. For all his bravado, he isn't coming close to anything like a controversy.
Is this how I'm supposed to burn karma?
Re:As a followup... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's good, because he's just harassing salespeople from the looks of things.
1) Why exactly don't they want me videotaping them, but they can videotape me?
Because it's their store, and they're responsible to the owner to make sure that, though anyone can come in and freely handle millions of dollars' worth of goods that doesn't (yet) belong to them, the employees won't let too much of it walk out unpaid for. Just because someone works in a place that uses video security doesn't mean they want, or deserve, to see themselves on a 'gotcha!' website.
And conversely, if this fellow posts his videotape of Sears employees [wearcam.org], does that make it okay for Sears employees to post whatever tape they have of him, or of any of us?
2) In what other ways am I being watched/monitored/tracked? Should I care? (GPS enabled cell phones, anyone? M$Passport anyone?)
He could make a better case for this by attacking these issues directly, rather than claiming that storecams are akin to terrorism. Now more than ever, that sort of rhetoric will lose credibility for his 'cause' quicker than anything.
3) How much is enough rights to give up for the sake of security?
Store cameras aren't about giving up rights, any more than my home security system limits your freedom of movement. If you don't want to go in, just don't go in. Our society is free to bankrupt companies with unpopular business practices simply by denying them our trade. Simple, isn't it? But before you ask how we get everyone to boycott Wal-Mart, let me suggest that nobody really cares that they're videotaping. In December 2001, it's just not that big an issue.
Someday we may have to accept the fact that if nobody else seems concerned about our cause, it may indicate that our cause is only important to us, and not that everyone else is an idiot.
Re:Being connected means losing privacy (Score:2, Insightful)
How much surveilence is too much? How much privacy is too little? Is there a real benefit to this surveilence or am I "subject #23"
I have a name and I have a history, you can learn these things from me by asking. If I choose to invite you into that level of closeness/community with me, I will share these things. My objection is simply that I want to have some say/control over how much data is gathered and how it is used.
One of the big issues here is when is surveilence de-humanizing. In a small town, folks can know each others business and though there are busibodies, they are usually ignored by the population at large. Now we are dealing with semi-legal entities which want to know our business. A corporation is a piece of paper which is recognized by the courts as having standing as a 'person' humans in service of this 'person' want to watch us suspiciously.
I will live with people and I will submit to a certain ammount of friendly inquiry into my life. I'm not all that interested in being suspected of $NefariousThings and watched like the criminal I am suspected of being.
Re:I know I'll get modded down here. (Score:3, Insightful)