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World Sousveillance Day
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)."
I certainly would not be doing this in an airport.
:)
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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We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
-In your car, in case of an accident or traffic stop.
-Hidden in your cellphone, to record in all those forbidden places. What do casinos and department stores have to hide?
I think Dec. 24 is one of the worst days they could have chosen to do this. Why?
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.
What's your point? Did you even read the article? no? That's what I thought. Why don't you go read the article and come back later.
I did however read it and there are a few scary points brought out. What do I think? I think I want a "Federal Government Comment Card".
Here's a link to some interesting things about the governemt that most people don't know.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Maybe I have a limited imagination, but I have trouble seeing how exactly the average citizen can "use" these cameras. It is likely that if we did find a way to use cameras which don't belong to us that we would be prosecuted for it.
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.
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 .
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.
I think wearcam.org should send someone down the street knocking on people's doors, asking why their peepholes only work one way.
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.
Willson's essays on depleted uranium and "alternative" medicine are barking mad, and put a huge question mark above all his other essays.
The essays may be "interesting", but that doesn't mean there is any more truth to them than the X-Files.
You post the question "Where's the accountability?" — anonymously?
Did you see the Sousveillance video? He's not doing exposés of concealed cameras in dressing rooms; he's strolling through department stores, asking employees idiotic questions about the "mysterious dark domes" in the ceiling as if they were part some massive coverup, and none of the poor idiots (non-University of Toronto CE students) around him were totally unaware that they were being watched in a department store. It inspires no social change (except perhaps more stores banning video cameras), and has no effect outside of feeding his overinflated ego. This is nothing more than stupid camera tricks posing as citizen activism.
While we're on the subject, let's throw it out to the group—how would you like this guy to walk into your employer's business and start following you around with a camcorder? "Why do I have to have a password to use one of these computers? What are those weird white boxes with red lights in the corners of the ceiling? Why is the server room locked? Why did you call the police?" Seems pretty juvenile when you think about it.
Yes, you can get a limited view (10 or so) of a room through the distal end of a peephole, but it is essentially a one-way device.
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?
Does he have a valid concern? Yes, I think he does. I'm not thrilled with the pervasiveness of cameras either. But how does harrasing the clerk at the register change anything?
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
Yeah, we should wait until Big Brother *exists* before we start doing something about it. Because raising the issues of freedom and rights only makes sense *after* you have been oppressed.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!