Slashdot Mirror
Sousveillance in Seattle - Watching the Watchers
Eh-Wire writes "At the recent ACM Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy, Steve Mann - cyborg numero uno - led a troop of conference attendees on a surveillance camera hunt and digital capture. Their antics confounded rent-a-cops in a downtown Seattle shopping mall who had difficulty with the concept of having their surveillance cameras surveilled."
"What I argue is that if I'm going to be held accountable for my actions that I should be allowed to record ... my actions," Mann said. "Especially if somebody else is keeping a record of my actions."
Does this make sense to anyone?
Taking pictures of cameras taking pictures of you is not keeping a record of your own actions.
Further, unless he's alleging that video will be doctored, the record that is kept of him, privacy issues aside, is just that. How is taking pictures of the devices recording YOU going to prevent them from improperly keeping an accurate photographic record of your own actions. Again, whether they SHOULD be keeping record of your actions is beside the point for this specific question.
All these are - wallets that require someone else to swipe their ID to see your ID, etc. - are just publicity stunts to get people thinking about privacy. Great. People should be thinking about it. But then they jump from the likes of the GAP in a mall to government (???), and apparently liken a lowly employee in the mechanics of either someone who should themselves have to give up personal information for simply asking for identification for whatever purpose (again, the extent that it is appropriate is beside the point).
Seems a little wrongheaded to me.
To say nothing of the fact that almost all malls are private property.
Mann asked the guard why, if the Mont Blanc cameras were recording him, he couldn't, in turn, record the cameras.
Why should a random private mall employee have a philosophical privacy and surveillance discussion with some self-righteous, cynical privacy advocate. Who, by the way, expects exactly what happened, i.e., worthless responses, to happen?
But sure to please and amuse countless slashdotters, I'm sure. (Yeah. Because confusing near-minimum wage mall security is really hard.)
The relationship then of authority to civilian is one of dominance and subordination. The ideas presented at the conference are attempting to redefine that relationship.
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
More then a few of them were quite effective, ex-military and reservists that enjoyed providing protection, whether it was to people, goods or property. They weren't morons incapable of rational or deep philosophical conversations. They just ended up where they ended up and felt comfortable where they were.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
...that give privacy advocates a bad name. He's not a professor, he's a performance artist.
Say what you will about the paranoia of all these sousveillance nuts, but don't pretend that it doesn't serve a valid purpose. For instance, remember all those RNC convention protestors who got arrested last year? And those sworn affidavits from cops saying that those kids had been kicking and screaming, resisting arrest and so forth? Yeah, those cops were making shit up.
I wonder why this hasn't gotten wider play. Are we now entirely unsurprised when cops perjure themselves? Had it not been for some paranoid kids with camcorders, a lot of people would have been unjustly imprisoned. I mean, more than they already were.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I will admit that the ownder of the camers does not WANT them to be photographed. So what? So do criminals, and so do people cheating on their wife, and so do people simply trying to protect their privacy.
The question is not "is there a reason", but instead is "Is the reason you want to stop people taking pictures of your cameras BETTER than the reason you came up with to let you set up the cameras in the first place"?
Why? Because ANY reason that lets you prevent others from taking pictures of your camers can be turned around and used to prevent the store from taking your picture
If you have the right to take my picture to prevent criminal actions by me, I have the right to take YOUR picture to prevent criminal actions by you. Yes, if I were a criminal, I could analyze the pictures I took to plan a crime against you. SO WHAT. If the employees of the store are criminal, they can analyze THERE surveliance tapes to plan crimes against shoppers.
The management clearly wants the power to observe their shoppers and does not want shoppers to have a similar right against them. Shoppers want the power to observe the management and does not want the management to have similar rights against them.
But the law is not a slave to EITHER side, so gives BOTH the rights to observe and record.
I do agree that the management has the right to require the shoppers to hide their cameras, as the store has hidden their own cameras.
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