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When Art, Apple and the Secret Service Collide

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-feel-safer-already dept.

theodp writes "Last July, Slashdot reported on Kyle McDonald, the artist who had the Secret Service raid his home at the behest of Apple, who was miffed with Kyle's surreptitious capture of people's expressions as they stared at computers in Apple Stores. A year later, Wired is running McDonald's first-person account of the preparation for and fallout from his People Staring at Computers project. 'I really wasn't expecting the Secret Service,' McDonald begins. 'Maybe an email, or a phone call from Apple. Instead, my first indication that something was "wrong" was a real-life visit from the organization best known for protecting the President of the United States of America.'"

6 of 358 comments (clear)

  1. Moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do you really need a law to know that this is wrong?
    Just because something might be legal, doesn't mean it is right.
    Change out "small Mom & Pop store" for "Apple store" and see how you feel about this guy's art project.
    I don't require a law to say please and thank you, or to know that a business is a business, not a playground for your art project.

  2. it's an overreaction, for sure by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    but you are kind of a dick if you transgress against people by taking unauthorized pictures of them with equipment that isn't yours and then using the pictures without their permission

    so i'm not very sympathetic to the stalkerific "artist"

    but i'm sure we'll see a lot of comments here about the violations of the federal government in this situation, completely ignoring the violations committed by this douchebag

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  3. Re:Expectation of privacy also during business hou by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You would be completely wrong. You have an expectation that there are video cameras all throughout the store for security reasons. They will at least capture video, they might even capture audio. You have no expectation of privacy in a place open to the public.

  4. Re:Nobody expects the spanish inquisition! by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, the most interesting paragraph was this one:

    But there was one point that really stuck with me. He told me that when you start working at one of the stores, you have to sign an agreement that you won’t talk about it. First you go through training, and you can’t talk about what you did for training. Then you go through an initiation where you follow an experienced employee, and you’re not allowed to talk to any customers. Finally, when you are a full-fledged employee, you are absolutely restricted from representing Apple in any way outside the store. If you post an identifiable comment as an employee, you will be fired immediately.

    That really sounds like some religious cult.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  5. Re:He was surprised?! by Theaetetus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He asked permission and they allowed him to do this. RTFA.

    No, RTFA. He asked if it was okay to take photos in the store. He never asked if it was okay to install software on the machines and have those Apple-owned machines take the photos. And certainly, he never asked about taking photos from every computer of every visitor to the store who used a computer and publishing them online. After all, if he really asked permission, would he have had to hide it:

    I looked around to double check that there were no terms of service I was missing. If there were, and if it said anything about “installing applications”, I would have had to go back home and write an HTML5 or Flash version.

    Or:

    The app was maybe two megabytes, and took 15 seconds to download. Sometimes I would open another tab and load Flickr or Open Processing so I had an excuse if someone asked why I was comparing every single computer.

    Or:

    One of them got a little excited and tweeted about the pictures, not realizing the project wasn’t done yet. Fortunately, only a few people noticed, and it didn’t get much attention.

    Or:

    After the one-minute-exhibition ended, we made a staggered exit from the store and met at the Starbucks up the street.

    Or:

    If I were wiser, I may have split “People Staring at Computers” in two... The other piece would have been the in-store intervention. I’d use the same photo app, but they’d be uploaded directly to an anonymous photo host instead of my server. I’d replace the screensaver with an app that downloaded and exhibited these photos. Done properly, there would be no one to point fingers at, and people might be able to focus on questions about privacy and surveillance instead of arguing about art and intentionality. I wouldn’t be able to claim authorship of course, but I would be in a position to actually join the discussion and participate in the criticism.

    None of that is the actions or sentiments of someone who "asked permission" for what he was doing. Rather, as he notes, he asked if he could "take photos in the store" and later if he could "shoot video". It's permission creep: a positive response to 'can I take a picture here' doesn't imply 'I can install hidden networked cameras and publish photos of thousands of pictures taken over the course of weeks'.

  6. Re:Nobody expects the spanish inquisition! by fredprado · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As all Apple customers he has battered wife syndrome...