Ubiquitous Surveillance

lightray writes: "The New York Times is running an article titled A Cautionary Tale for a New Age of Surveillance which gives an alarming view of America's possible future -- and Britain's present." Excellent article, just excellent. (The author has also written a good book on privacy recently.) "And rather than thwarting serious crime, the cameras are being used to enforce social conformity in ways that Americans may prefer to avoid."

Comments

Hah! I will prevail!

[11thangel]

I stay indoors in a dark room while coding so often that the cameras will never find me! What is this outside world you speak of, I know nothing beyond cubeland and break-room.

My favorite story along these lines

[Mdog]

I was watching TV and they were talking about these cameras in Briton and this guy decided he was going to have some fun, so he dressed up as this huge insect-alien and walked around the downtown area of his medium sized town.

And what did the Bobbys do? They asked him for his id :)

cameras in love?

[jesser]

''We have created a biometric network platform that turns every camera into a Web browser submitting images to a database in Washington, querying for matches,''

I hope they didn't mean that literally. I'd hate to think what would happen if the camera saw a pop-under ad for the X10 spycam.

A fun little game we played...

[Bahumat]

Back in my high school about two or three years back, we had a number of students annoyed at the sudden installation of security cameras throughout the hallways. What started as an amusing hobby ended up as an all-out protest.

Eight cameras installed, six inside the school. Get you and 5 of your buddies, and then go stand in front of each of these cameras during your lunch break. And stare. Don't move, don't leave, don't talk. Just stare. Let the traffic in the hallway flow around you.

By the second week of this, we found ourselves in the principal's office, facing an irate school staff, claiming we were 'terrorizing' the secretaries and staff (the monitors were visible in the main offic), and demanding we stop it immediately. We told our principal flat out: We feel like you're always watching us for no good reason, we fail to see why you should be spared that.

In the end, the cameras didn't leave, but we felt we had done our part. From what I've heard, the game has caught on with the students, with at least one person a day manning a camera, staring right back.