When Art, Apple and the Secret Service Collide

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.'"

Comments

Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!

[Flector]

...amongst their weapons are fear, surprise, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope.

Re:Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!

[maxwell demon]

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.

Re:Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!

[Bing Tsher E]

The Young Steve Jobs went on a pilgrimage to India in his 20's. People act like they are being ironic when they refer to the cultlike nature of the Apple organization. Jobs knew exactly what he was doing.

The way Apple crassly and commercially manipulate this stuff, it's surprising more spiritually minded people don't call out Apple for it. Then again, Jobs studied under Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi who was the same huckster cult operator who hooked in on the Beatles.

Jobs set up Apple to be sort of a Moonie outfit. Quite literally cultilike.

Re:Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!

[Sarten-X]

...so it's like any other company? For a while I worked at a large corporation covering many roles, and I noticed the same air of secrecy, but upon asking, I was given reasons for it.

All training is confidential, because certain statements are easier to convey in an informal setting, but the public would get agitated by them. One training video I watched was incredibly sexist. All the food service jobs were depicted by women, and the operations were handled by men. The video was made in 1970, so it's pretty easy, in an internal setting, to just not care. Another training session included the statement of "don't do X, because it is offensive to group Y". Someone could take offense that group Y was being singled out as being troublesome. Rather than scour every piece of training material, and remake it whenever yet another term is deemed offensive, the training is just declared confidential, and (good) managers start each training session with the phrase "This stuff is really old and a little politically incorrect. Sorry about that."

During the shadowing experience, you're still considered as being in training. You don't know everything, and even if you do know something, there's a good chance you'll screw up the protocol the company wants you to follow. Maybe there's an easy fix for a broken Apple product, but it only works for certain models. A helpful eager newbie might tell the customer the fix, which could void their warranty and make things worse, while an experienced staff member knows to just escalate such issues to someone who can find the appropriate solution for the model.

Once your sales training is complete, you're a salesman. You're in the sales department, not PR. You might hear rumors of a product the company doesn't want to announce yet, so you're not allowed to talk about it. If someone has a major injury on your sales floor, you aren't allowed to speak to the press about it, because you aren't likely to say just the right thing to align with the company image, and you probably don't have all the facts of the situation, anyway.

The first rule of being a corporate minion is that you do not talk about being a corporate minion. You assume you aren't the all-seeing all-knowing god of the world, and you say only what the manager tells you to say, which has been decided by the various committees that are higher up than you are, who are working with a big-picture view of what the company as a whole wants to say to the world.

Re:Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!

[fredprado]

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

Moron

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

it's an overreaction, for sure

[circletimessquare]

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

The guy essentially installed malware/spyware

[aristotle-dude]

He basically installed malware/spyware onto Apple store computer and he calls that "art". Are botnets just another form of "expression"? Give me a break. There was not permission from the store owners and no informed consent from the subjects. The guy is creepy as hell.

Re:Expectation of privacy also during business hou

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:He was surprised?!

[UnknowingFool]

He asked the Apple employee if he could film so filing was clearly OK. That was all the permission he needed. Besides that he even states in the piece that lots of people film/take pictures in the Apple store.

Asking to take pictures inside a store is not the same as asking an Apple employee to install secret software to take pictures of customers.

Apple clearly made no effort to claim copyright to any extent that would prohibit the taking of picture/video. If they had they should have made employees aware and posted signs.

This is not about copyright. This was about malware and invasion of privacy.

He didn't exceed his authorization as the system was clearly on display for use. There were no passwords, the system had no lock downs which he exceeded, and he never disabled any piece of software such as the “freezer” program.

No where was there permission to install. My neighbor leaves his garage door open sometimes. That doesn't mean I can borrow his tools without asking him first.

There also was no reasonable expectation of privacy. This was a public place even though it was private owned. Any place which the public generally has access to is a public place. This includes movie theaters, theme parks, and other locations which one can be banned from. A home is not a public place because the general public is not welcomed. A private club might not be a public place because it is exclusive to the members of said club.

And where are the rights of owners of the private place? You can take a picture inside a movie theater. I think they would mind it if you set up a web cam without their permission.

The right to publicity generally would not apply here either. These pictures were of the general public and there was no intent to use (even in practice) any person picture publicly whom could claim such a right. Right of publicity applies to celebrities, actors, models, and so on. Not random people that nobody could name. If you brought a lawsuit the accuser would win exactly $0.

No where was this mentioned about right to publicity. This was about spying and the rights of Apple and individuals.

This is coming from a privacy advocate. I don't think there should be cameras everywhere (government or private). However this person (artist or not) was of no threat to any persons privacy. What is a threat to your privacy is all the store cameras, government cameras, and so forth which are all over the place. Your cellular phone is a privacy threat, your web browsing is a privacy threat, your credit/debit cards are a privacy threat, your drivers license is a privacy threat, your license plate is a privacy threat, your social security number is a privacy threat. This one little project is not a privacy threat.

We do not have omnipotence or precognition. After the fact, this individual poses little risk. When Apple discovered the spyware, they could not have known what the intent was or who did it. Was this targeting the public or a person specifically? The artist also could have said it was for an art project but spies don't generally tell the truth about what they are doing.

Re:He was surprised?!

[Theaetetus]

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'.

Re:Only in America...

[Khyber]

"You can take pictures if you want, but to publish them in any way, be it a magazine, website or artistic display, you need to get permission from the individuals in the pictures to do so. It's called a model release and every ethical photographer knows about them. "

You're not a photographer, then, because in public venues, you have no right.

Yes, I do photography and film. Yes, I attended school for it.

Quit talking if you're not educated on the subject/hold any certification.