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I hate to be a consequentialist, but I think their uses outweigh the potential harm in some people's liberties.

On what evidence to you make such a conclusion? Given that London's pervasive use of CCTV cameras has failed to make people there safer and that other cities have also found them ineffective in preventing violent crime, why do you think that putting a CCTV camera in a drone has positive benefits that outweigh the chilling effects of their certain use to spy on political dissidents? If you want to know how something like this will really be used, check out the recent Frontline report on domestic surveillance.

CCTV funding was initiated by the previous Conservative government. http://www.notbored.org/england-history.html

1994: central government (the Home Office) publishes CCTV: Looking Out for You. Prime Minister John Major states: "I have no doubt we will hear some protest about a threat to civil liberties. Well, I have no sympathy whatsoever for so-called liberties of that kind." Between 1994 and 1997, the Home Office spends a total of 38 million pounds of CCTV schemes.
1996: government spending on CCTV accounts for more than three-quarters of total crime prevention budget.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes the Conservative Party to slide back to their old ways.

It is illegal to see things, in some situations. E.g., if you trespass or climb up a ladder and look in someone's window, you're invading privacy. This is why people can, and have, sued google for taking photos of their private property.

At least where I live, people have a right to a certain level of, and expectation of privacy in some situations. I'd argue, as most reasonable people would, that it applies to wifi.

A better civil disobedience act, more in the vein of The Chaser's War on Everything would be for a team to swan around the city posing as a CCTV camera cleaning crew, albeit using a can of black spray paint instead of proper cleaning equipment.

I kind of like the Surveillance Camera Players's idea.

Bah... didnt preview... here is the URL: for the New York Surveillance Camera Players

There already is a network of surveillance cameras in New York, it's just not city-wide. But the whole West Village has these things; they're mounted on light posts and monitored by cops. It was part of Giuliani's unsuccessful ploy to drive marijuana out of Washington Square Park.

Here's a link to a reprint of a Village Voice article; there have been others.

The police in the US already use IR cameras to catch marijuana farmers, even though it has been ruled unconstitutional. As recently as 2003 there have been reports of feds using the technique in drug busts. My guess is they get around the ruling by not using the imaging as evidence. As for members of the public photographing other members of the public, it is normally legal. The exception is if the subject has "a reasonable expectation of privacy," according to this handout. A good example would be people in their own homes, but I'll bet that private investigators frequently bend that rule. I heard once that there are two states that don't have laws against bathroom security cameras, and two others where it is legal for hotels to install cameras inside their rooms. There are plenty of examples of obvious abuses, too.

The distinction you're drawing is as silly and absurd as that old saw about the tree that falls with nobody around. When you are "in a public place," other people have a right to "look at what you're doing."

Well, first, there's nothing silly or absurd about the question of the nature of "objective" reality versus the nature of observable reality, it's a problem that vexes Zen masters and quantum physicists alike.

But that's beside the point. When you are in a place, public or private, other people who are there have a right to look at what you're doing. It is an exchange, an equality: you seem them and they see you.

That does not in any way inform the question of whether people who are not there should have any right to look at what you're doing. That is not an exchange, it is a taking; it is not an equal relationship, it is lord and serf, jailor and prisoner.

Law enforcement cameras are entitled to be anywhere an officer of the law is entitled to be.

If we want a society that respects and promotes liberty, law enforcement cameras are entitled to be only where officers of the law are present - wearables and copcar-cams are fine, provided that civilians can also wear or dashboard-mount cameras. That would be an equal relationship. (See Steve Mann's thoughts on wearable webcams, interesting precursor to contempory camera phones.)

But your approach to surveillance cameras in every space that's not privately owned turns every public place into a panopticon jail, sacrificing liberty for little if any reduction in crime. (Besides depriving people of their liberty, prisons are actually not very safe places, tending to harden both inmates and guards.)

In 2001, there was an estimated amount of 1 camera for every 50 people in England.
Read about the Surveillance Camera Players' tour here.

You can't stop crime with ordinary surveillance cameras, you can just move it somewhere else. (Oh but won't somebody think of the children?)

The main problem with surveillance cameras is they are so easily abused. That seems less likely with this $30,000 dollar drone--they aren't going to waste it looking at a sunbather's tits when they can use it to spy on drug dealers and whatnot.

This thing seems like a good idea overall--it replaces a helicopter in some law-enforcement roles, but it can get to places a helicopter can't get to and it doesn't risk a human pilot in dangerous urban flying, and its cheaper than a helicopter+pilot anyways. All-around good deal.

You can't stop crime with ordinary surveillance cameras, you can just move it somewhere else. (Oh but won't somebody think of the children?)

The main problem with surveillance cameras is they are so easily abused. That seems less likely with this $30,000 dollar drone--they aren't going to waste it looking at a sunbather's tits when they can use it to spy on drug dealers and whatnot.

This thing seems like a good idea overall--it replaces a helicopter in some law-enforcement roles, but it can get to places a helicopter can't get to and it doesn't risk a human pilot in dangerous urban flying, and its cheaper than a helicopter+pilot anyways. All-around good deal.

You can't stop crime with ordinary surveillance cameras, you can just move it somewhere else. (Oh but won't somebody think of the children?)

The main problem with surveillance cameras is they are so easily abused. That seems less likely with this $30,000 dollar drone--they aren't going to waste it looking at a sunbather's tits when they can use it to spy on drug dealers and whatnot.

This thing seems like a good idea overall--it replaces a helicopter in some law-enforcement roles, but it can get to places a helicopter can't get to and it doesn't risk a human pilot in dangerous urban flying, and its cheaper than a helicopter+pilot anyways. All-around good deal.

You can't stop crime with ordinary surveillance cameras, you can just move it somewhere else. (Oh but won't somebody think of the children?)

The main problem with surveillance cameras is they are so easily abused. That seems less likely with this $30,000 dollar drone--they aren't going to waste it looking at a sunbather's tits when they can use it to spy on drug dealers and whatnot.

This thing seems like a good idea overall--it replaces a helicopter in some law-enforcement roles, but it can get to places a helicopter can't get to and it doesn't risk a human pilot in dangerous urban flying, and its cheaper than a helicopter+pilot anyways. All-around good deal.

http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html Only someone completely distrustful of all government would be opposed to what we are doing with surveillance cameras. -- NYC Police Commissioner Howard Safir, 27 July 1999. the Surveillance Camera Players: completely distrustful of all government.

There are 2 military networks. Niprnet and Siprnet. Niprnet is the unclassified network, while siprnet is obviously classified. Anything that is determined to be confidential or higher is supposed to be on the siprnet. The siprnet is also supposed to have absolutely no connectivity to the niprnet. This doesn't mean that people don't use niprnet email for stuff they shouldn't, but it is clearly outlined and military members are constantly reminded to be discrete in any email or what not. Just like Tom Clancy books, you can put together a lot of information from unclassified material.

As far as unsecured systems, this isn't a surprise at all. When I was stationed in Germany (98-01), I was only authorized to run win95 on my 486dx machine. Even though NT and then 2000 were both authorized by the US Army, it than had to be certified for us by USAEUR (US Army Europe). After that, it had to be approved by V Corps for usage. Once that was available, it would than be possible to run NT or 2000 on the desktop machines. When I left in June 2001, it still wasn't authorized for usage. Even though many officers were running 2000 on their shinny new laptops and "Toughbooks". The network admin's were purposely too lazy to downgrade to an authorized OS. The domain servers were NT4 however.

The sad reality is that most systems within the military are unsecured because of time constraints. It is foolish to think that a organization that is understaffed and has a primary focus of defense and offense, is going to spend much time worrying about things like computers. Unfortunately, most of the people I worked with in the Division's Automation shop weren't experienced with computers at all, and their first experience with a virus/worm was the ILOVEYOU virus.

Just thought you guys might like to see an alternative way to draw attention to surveillence cameras, the NY camera surveillence players.

i worked on a project sort of like this with a collective in chicago. we mapped and documented surveillance camera's in chicago's loop (downtown) area. our site is up at http://open-loop.org/.

we had some issues with security guards asking us not to tape, but mostly restricted our documentation to public areas (cameras monitoring public space), so it wasn't as much of an issue.
the surveillance camera players have some more camera maps on their site

and probably my favorite application of this idea is the institute for applied autonomy's i-see , which allows users to map a "path of least surveillance" through nyc.

http://www.notbored.org/privacy.html

I remember reading a story about some skateboarders travelling to Beiruit and not getting in trouble for skating, but getting in trouble for filming (the Hizbollah would confiscate their cameras but not their boards). No, public filming for private use is here to stay as I doubt any of our governments (as in Westernized governments, I'm assuming of /.'ers) would do something so Orwellian.

Privacy is and shall be no more! (I guess that's my point?)

Parallel to this will be an increase in interest in retaining privacy in private areas (think jammers, scramblers, encryption, and all the counters and counter-counters to that). Why, I even read what you wrote before you posted it with my VanEck-phreaking-unmanned-aircraft. You should invest in a TEMPEST helmet before someone sells your deepest sexual fantasies on DVD on a NYC streetcorner with Mandarin AND Cantonese subtitles...

Using civil airliners may even "work" better.

Italians experienced a terrorism series of very much the same goals and in the same ways (albeit of very smaller scale). Here is an excerpt from one of their philosophical reasoning behind the scenes. Not for the faint of heart, I suppose, but reading it gave me a strong deja-vu concerning 9-11, especially since this text was written more than 20 years ago in 1980.

Just because you never heard about it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

The local news from Birmingham, AL, USA have been all over an story about a CCTV monitor who was using his traffic cameras at the University of Alabama (in Tuscaloosa, AL) to keep tabs on the coeds instead of the mopeds.

Even without news and anecdotal evidence of surveillance camera abuse, the watched can't be sure the watchers are following the rules unless the feeds are publicly available. It seems like this would be a fine use of unused channels on local cable systems.

Regardless, it's truly not the economic time to test your job security by scoping the market while on the clock.

There are currently three kinds of cameras in Chicago. The ones they installed after 9/11 (there's a random rant here), and the ones used by the CPD in high-crime neighborhoods. (google cache: here. There's also red-light cameras, which they say haven't been used for speeding, which has caused far more controversy here than the previous two mentioned above.

I would be more concerned about the use of cameras for "presumed safety" (this is the most basic privacy issue), "only low-income people need to be watched 24/7" (that's a dangerous precedent), and "misuse and abuse of police powers" (even though accidents have dropped close to 50% where cameras have been installed) in that order.

Anyways, so far the city has done a decent job informing people where these cameras are, but I stumbled into this website that lets you know what cameras are in the loop -- there's a few dozen private cameras out there, which I found interesting.

I'm no constitutional scholar, but shouldn't the issue of whether participants have a right of privacy in this case be dependent on whether they have a reasonable expectation of privacy? It seems at least arguable that they don't.

At an airport or traveling by bus or train, you no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy, but you did a few decates back. What was once an unreasoble search is now reasonable thanks to the public and government knee-jerk reactions to sky-jacking, bombings, and terrorist activities. When talking through unencrypted e-mail or elsewhere, you no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy. In fact... The expectation of privacy is not reasonable at such public places as automobile thoroughfares (United States v. Knotts [1983] 460 US 276, 281), and national forests (United States v. McIver [9 th Cir. 1999] 186 F.3d 1119, 1125, but is reasonable at public phone booths (Katz v. the United States, 389 U.S. 347 [1967]), rock concerts (Jacobsen v. Seattle, 658 P. 2d 653 [Wash. 1983]), and sports arenas (Collier v. Miller, 414 F. Supp. 1357 [S.D. Tex. 1976])."

It would seem that covert audio and video 'bugs' and interception requires a court order for police to do. Those are the same laws that are being called into play here. The person's communication was recorded.

Is this more in line with overhearing your speaking in public, or with dealing drugs with a narcotics officer, or with having an illigal wiretap? It seems the courts are saying it's like the wire-tap.

But that's away from the original post.

-sigh-. Why can't people just behave to begin with? All this controversy over the person's right be a pedophile. Did he have a right to privacy? Perhaps; privacy is an important, but not absolute, right. Did he have a right to solicit sex from (who he thought was) a child? No; child sex is illegal in just about every nation of the world, one of the very few 'global crimes'.

It's important that rights not be trampled on, it's also important that police have the ability to find and prevent preditors. Balancing them... that's the hard part.

frob

Observingsurveillance.org
The Surveillance Camera Players

my home (thus the name)

geek angle:

pay homage to the great diode gods of commerce

bonus geek angle: get caught on 20 different cameras, wind up in 20 different govt databases lol ;-)

here's one

A group called the Surveillance Camera Players has been mapping cameras in New York City, and has instructions for making your own such maps. They found that the number of surveillance cameras in Times Square grew from 75 in 1998 to 258 in 2002.

A group called the Surveillance Camera Players has been mapping cameras in New York City, and has instructions for making your own such maps. They found that the number of surveillance cameras in Times Square grew from 75 in 1998 to 258 in 2002.

A group called the Surveillance Camera Players has been mapping cameras in New York City, and has instructions for making your own such maps. They found that the number of surveillance cameras in Times Square grew from 75 in 1998 to 258 in 2002.

In addition to the laser pointer discussion, the NYT article went on to discuss the Surveillance Camera Players, who began performing theatrical productions for surveillance cameras in 1996. They have mapped surveillance cameras they have noticed in several areas of Manhattan.

It would be interesting to compare the critiques offered by the Surveillance Camera Players with the ideas of Steve Mann, whom the article does not mention, but who has called for "sousveillance" to counter the dark side of surveillance.

In addition to the laser pointer discussion, the NYT article went on to discuss the Surveillance Camera Players, who began performing theatrical productions for surveillance cameras in 1996. They have mapped surveillance cameras they have noticed in several areas of Manhattan.

It would be interesting to compare the critiques offered by the Surveillance Camera Players with the ideas of Steve Mann, whom the article does not mention, but who has called for "sousveillance" to counter the dark side of surveillance.

On 3 October 1992, the Irish rock singer Sinead O'Connor was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. For her first song, Sinead performed the title track from her most recent album, Am I Not Your Girl? with a full backing band. For her second, she went with "War," a song by Bob Marley that had once been banned for its apparent advocacy of violence. In a very risky move, musically speaking, Sinead performed the song a capella. Dressed all in white, surrounded by candles and (as usual) shaven-headed, she was a riveting sight. With NBC-TV's cameras focused in-tight on her, Sinead ended her "War" by crying for another one to begin. "Fight the real enemy!" she called, and, out of nowhere, produced a copy of a photograph of Pope John Paul II, which she ripped into pieces. There was stunned silence, and then the station went to a commercial.

NBC-TV was inundated by complaints (supposedly 4,484 in all) called in by outraged viewers. The producers of Saturday Night Live said that they didn't think Sinead would be invited back to perform on the show. In the meantime, Sinead herself said nothing about what she'd done or why she'd done it. (Simply changing one of Marley's lines so that it referred to "sexual abuse" instead of "racial injustice," as Sinead had done in mid-song, hadn't been sufficient explanation and so the press was filled with lurid denunciations of her.) When she returned to the United States on 16 October 1992 to perform at a birthday concert for Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden in New York, Sinead was greeted by a weird mixture of cheers and boos. Despite the severely divided response to her presence, she once again sang an a cappella version of "War." Once she was done, she staggered offstage, where she was comforted by Kris Kristofferson. Shortly thereafter, Sinead O'Connor permanently retired from the "pop" entertainment industry.

Eventually, Sinead O'Connor made her peace with the Pope. On 22 September 1997, in an interview with the Italian weekly newspaper Vita, she asked the Holy Father to forgive her. She claimed that her attack on the photo had been "a ridiculous act, the gesture of a girl rebel," which she did "because I was in rebellion against the faith, but I was still within the faith." Quoting St. Augustine, she went on to add, "Anger is the first step towards courage." Another courageous step Sinead took in the late 1990s was to join the congregation of the controversial Irish Bishop Michael Cox, who eventually ordained Sinead as a priest. Lacking a sense of humor, the Vatican has refused to recognize Sinead's membership in the priesthood, which the Pope considers "bizarre." This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but the Pope is right: Sinead's story is a bizarre one.

And NBC? In the informative and relatively even-handed biography of the singer that airs on VH1 as part of the cable TV station's on-going "Behind the Music" series, it's said that, "even to this day," NBC refuses to allow the photo-ripping scene to be re-broadcast by anyone. VH1 itself had to settle with a blurry shot of Sinead in mid-rip that was published by one of New York's tabloid newspapers. You can catch a glimpse, but you can't actually see what Sinead did that night in 1992: you can only hear about it, thanks to the Vatican's clout and NBC's cowardice.

This would seem a good point to talk about censorship. But it isn't -- not yet.

The Comedy Channel shows back episodes of Saturday Night Live several times a day. In early August 2001, I happened to see the episode in which Sinead O'Connor is the musical guest. Everything goes as it should -- dressed all in white, Sinead performs "War" a capella as her second number -- until the end of the song. There is no war cry, no identification of "the real enemy." Sinead doesn't hold up a picture of the Pope, but a picture of a cute little black boy, instead. And then the song is over, and Sinead stands, smiling, holding the picture behind her back, as the crowd applauds and cheers.

It took a while for it to sink in that NBC hadn't simply blacked out or removed the photo-ripping scene. Instead, NBC had gone beyond mere censorship and either had replaced the Pope-ripping sequence with another one (the song as it was performed in rehearsal?) or had digitally altered the broadcast so that there was apparently nothing in "the original" to black out or remove in the first place. Why would anyone want to block or cut out Sinead's impassioned plea for the children? In times of war, don't we tend to forget about the children, especially the cute little black ones? Nice bullshit, but it wasn't Sinead's.

Like the authors of textbooks on Soviet history, who had to keep changing the past so that it would conform with Stalin's latest purges, NBC has created its own Sinead O'Connor and is now passing her off as the original.

Pasted fromNotBored

Have you caught any terrorists? I asked. ''No, not using this technology, no,'' he replied.

INCREASES in fighting and abusive behaviour in an East Lothian town have cast doubt on the effectiveness of closed circuit television.

.... done little to reduce incidents of drug dealing and abuse in the area.

People who are opposed to such cameras should be aware of the Surveillance Camera project which seeks to make people aware of these cameras. I wish the NYT article had referenced some of these other bits of information.
Does anyone remember what the "thought monitors" were called in "Agent of Chaos" by Norman Spinrad. They watched for any sign of deviant behavior, and destroyed the miscreant. In reality, they just vaporized random people -- it worked just as well.

I agree with Brad Templeton's email essay on why this type of surveillance is dangerous:

"...Mr. Barrett is not alone in wondering why some people are so concerned about their privacy. While many are aware of the tremendous prices that some have paid in oppressive (and even non-oppresive) states due to lack of privacy and surveilance, most people pragmatically feel that these oppressive regimes are either in the past, or not an issue for those in the free world, not when compared to safety from crime.

"There is a great hidden cost to surveilance, however, and it is a cost paid by everyone. When we feel we are being watched we, feel less free. We censor ourselves, and refrain from otherwise perfectly legal activities, when we feel that our activities might be being watched, or worse, recorded either for the government or for the general public, or worst of all, our mothers.

"I include our mothers because I expect all of us understand the freedom one feels away from even our own families. Not that we're doing anything wrong. Just that when we're watched we want to meet other's expectations.

"In other words, we're all a bit shy.

"Cameras everywhere make us feel our public lives are being documented. We've never minded the random strangers who might see us on the urban street. We do mind the idea that goverments and companies and others might be making systematic recordings. When we are watched we are not free to be ourselves.

"That doesn't shut down what everybody approves of, but it does chill the counterculture, and those ready to explore. These explorers are vital to a healthy society.

"Oddly, this happens even if the cameras aren't on, or if what they see is only available to "trusted" officials.

I agree with Brad Templeton's email essay on why this type of surveillance is dangerous:

"...Mr. Barrett is not alone in wondering why some people are so concerned about their privacy. While many are aware of the tremendous prices that some have paid in oppressive (and even non-oppresive) states due to lack of privacy and surveilance, most people pragmatically feel that these oppressive regimes are either in the past, or not an issue for those in the free world, not when compared to safety from crime.

"There is a great hidden cost to surveilance, however, and it is a cost paid by everyone. When we feel we are being watched we, feel less free. We censor ourselves, and refrain from otherwise perfectly legal activities, when we feel that our activities might be being watched, or worse, recorded either for the government or for the general public, or worst of all, our mothers.

"I include our mothers because I expect all of us understand the freedom one feels away from even our own families. Not that we're doing anything wrong. Just that when we're watched we want to meet other's expectations.

"In other words, we're all a bit shy.

"Cameras everywhere make us feel our public lives are being documented. We've never minded the random strangers who might see us on the urban street. We do mind the idea that goverments and companies and others might be making systematic recordings. When we are watched we are not free to be ourselves.

"That doesn't shut down what everybody approves of, but it does chill the counterculture, and those ready to explore. These explorers are vital to a healthy society.

"Oddly, this happens even if the cameras aren't on, or if what they see is only available to "trusted" officials.

I agree with Brad Templeton's email essay on why this type of surveillance is dangerous:

"...Mr. Barrett is not alone in wondering why some people are so concerned about their privacy. While many are aware of the tremendous prices that some have paid in oppressive (and even non-oppresive) states due to lack of privacy and surveilance, most people pragmatically feel that these oppressive regimes are either in the past, or not an issue for those in the free world, not when compared to safety from crime.

"There is a great hidden cost to surveilance, however, and it is a cost paid by everyone. When we feel we are being watched we, feel less free. We censor ourselves, and refrain from otherwise perfectly legal activities, when we feel that our activities might be being watched, or worse, recorded either for the government or for the general public, or worst of all, our mothers.

"I include our mothers because I expect all of us understand the freedom one feels away from even our own families. Not that we're doing anything wrong. Just that when we're watched we want to meet other's expectations.

"In other words, we're all a bit shy.

"Cameras everywhere make us feel our public lives are being documented. We've never minded the random strangers who might see us on the urban street. We do mind the idea that goverments and companies and others might be making systematic recordings. When we are watched we are not free to be ourselves.

"That doesn't shut down what everybody approves of, but it does chill the counterculture, and those ready to explore. These explorers are vital to a healthy society.

"Oddly, this happens even if the cameras aren't on, or if what they see is only available to "trusted" officials.

I agree with Brad Templeton's email essay on why this type of surveillance is dangerous:

"...Mr. Barrett is not alone in wondering why some people are so concerned about their privacy. While many are aware of the tremendous prices that some have paid in oppressive (and even non-oppresive) states due to lack of privacy and surveilance, most people pragmatically feel that these oppressive regimes are either in the past, or not an issue for those in the free world, not when compared to safety from crime.

"There is a great hidden cost to surveilance, however, and it is a cost paid by everyone. When we feel we are being watched we, feel less free. We censor ourselves, and refrain from otherwise perfectly legal activities, when we feel that our activities might be being watched, or worse, recorded either for the government or for the general public, or worst of all, our mothers.

"I include our mothers because I expect all of us understand the freedom one feels away from even our own families. Not that we're doing anything wrong. Just that when we're watched we want to meet other's expectations.

"In other words, we're all a bit shy.

"Cameras everywhere make us feel our public lives are being documented. We've never minded the random strangers who might see us on the urban street. We do mind the idea that goverments and companies and others might be making systematic recordings. When we are watched we are not free to be ourselves.

"That doesn't shut down what everybody approves of, but it does chill the counterculture, and those ready to explore. These explorers are vital to a healthy society.

"Oddly, this happens even if the cameras aren't on, or if what they see is only available to "trusted" officials.

I agree with Brad Templeton's email essay on why this type of surveillance is dangerous:

"...Mr. Barrett is not alone in wondering why some people are so concerned about their privacy. While many are aware of the tremendous prices that some have paid in oppressive (and even non-oppresive) states due to lack of privacy and surveilance, most people pragmatically feel that these oppressive regimes are either in the past, or not an issue for those in the free world, not when compared to safety from crime.

"There is a great hidden cost to surveilance, however, and it is a cost paid by everyone. When we feel we are being watched we, feel less free. We censor ourselves, and refrain from otherwise perfectly legal activities, when we feel that our activities might be being watched, or worse, recorded either for the government or for the general public, or worst of all, our mothers.

"I include our mothers because I expect all of us understand the freedom one feels away from even our own families. Not that we're doing anything wrong. Just that when we're watched we want to meet other's expectations.

"In other words, we're all a bit shy.

"Cameras everywhere make us feel our public lives are being documented. We've never minded the random strangers who might see us on the urban street. We do mind the idea that goverments and companies and others might be making systematic recordings. When we are watched we are not free to be ourselves.

"That doesn't shut down what everybody approves of, but it does chill the counterculture, and those ready to explore. These explorers are vital to a healthy society.

"Oddly, this happens even if the cameras aren't on, or if what they see is only available to "trusted" officials.

I agree with Brad Templeton's email essay on why this type of surveillance is dangerous:

"...Mr. Barrett is not alone in wondering why some people are so concerned about their privacy. While many are aware of the tremendous prices that some have paid in oppressive (and even non-oppresive) states due to lack of privacy and surveilance, most people pragmatically feel that these oppressive regimes are either in the past, or not an issue for those in the free world, not when compared to safety from crime.

"There is a great hidden cost to surveilance, however, and it is a cost paid by everyone. When we feel we are being watched we, feel less free. We censor ourselves, and refrain from otherwise perfectly legal activities, when we feel that our activities might be being watched, or worse, recorded either for the government or for the general public, or worst of all, our mothers.

"I include our mothers because I expect all of us understand the freedom one feels away from even our own families. Not that we're doing anything wrong. Just that when we're watched we want to meet other's expectations.

"In other words, we're all a bit shy.

"Cameras everywhere make us feel our public lives are being documented. We've never minded the random strangers who might see us on the urban street. We do mind the idea that goverments and companies and others might be making systematic recordings. When we are watched we are not free to be ourselves.

"That doesn't shut down what everybody approves of, but it does chill the counterculture, and those ready to explore. These explorers are vital to a healthy society.

"Oddly, this happens even if the cameras aren't on, or if what they see is only available to "trusted" officials.

I agree with Brad Templeton's email essay on why this type of surveillance is dangerous:

"...Mr. Barrett is not alone in wondering why some people are so concerned about their privacy. While many are aware of the tremendous prices that some have paid in oppressive (and even non-oppresive) states due to lack of privacy and surveilance, most people pragmatically feel that these oppressive regimes are either in the past, or not an issue for those in the free world, not when compared to safety from crime.

"There is a great hidden cost to surveilance, however, and it is a cost paid by everyone. When we feel we are being watched we, feel less free. We censor ourselves, and refrain from otherwise perfectly legal activities, when we feel that our activities might be being watched, or worse, recorded either for the government or for the general public, or worst of all, our mothers.

"I include our mothers because I expect all of us understand the freedom one feels away from even our own families. Not that we're doing anything wrong. Just that when we're watched we want to meet other's expectations.

"In other words, we're all a bit shy.

"Cameras everywhere make us feel our public lives are being documented. We've never minded the random strangers who might see us on the urban street. We do mind the idea that goverments and companies and others might be making systematic recordings. When we are watched we are not free to be ourselves.

"That doesn't shut down what everybody approves of, but it does chill the counterculture, and those ready to explore. These explorers are vital to a healthy society.

"Oddly, this happens even if the cameras aren't on, or if what they see is only available to "trusted" officials.

Survelliance Camera Players. Others are in the UK: mtp2001, in Belgium here or in Germany - Chaos Curcuit Club.

If you want to think about all of pros and cons of camera systems, read Public Surveillance System Privacy Guidelines.

They will be in London Friday 8th-18th June !

Also these guys , the surveillance camera players.