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The Return of Surveillance Camera Man
theodp writes "Remember Surveillance Camera Man, the anonymous guy who walked up to random people around Seattle and creeped them out by taking video of them without explanation? GeekWire reports that he's back with a new video compilation of his adventures in pushing people's privacy buttons, the latest installment in an apparent ongoing commentary on the pervasiveness of public surveillance, which has taken on a whole new twist with increased fretting over the recording capabilities of Google Glass and heightened concern over privacy in general, thanks to the NSA data surveillance controversy."
Annoyingly filming other people. The subjects are obviously annoyed and almost go hit him. I hope you see why Google Glass is a ridiculously bad idea.
The guy's an idiot, then. If anything saves us from 1984 it will be everybody having this stuff on all the time. It's the politicians misusing it that's the problem, and if everything they do is recorded (to say nothing of common criminality)...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
He's still injecting people's aversion to being physically stalked into the equation. Whether through ignorance or deliberate slight of hand, he makes the assumption that peoples' reactions to being unwillingly made the sole object of attention in public is the same reaction of of those people if put under surveillance.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
This guy is an idiot and I'm surprised he doesn't get his ass kicked more often.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
He's recording a conversation. In Washington State. Without the prior consent of both parties.
Generally, it is legal to record a conversation in public as a third party. The people engaged in that conversation do not have an expectation of privacy if they continue in that third's presence. But if two people are alone and one asks the other , "Why are you recording me?" That conversation's privacy is protected and may not be recorded.
Why has he not been arrested?
Have gnu, will travel.
A lot of the retaliation by his, er, subjects is physical and likely an illegal escalation. I think a simpler response is to produce a mirror or better yet a camera-disabling laser pointer. But then, he holds the power of edit, so any truly effective responses won't make it into the videos. There's a lot of creative people in Seattle, and I'd like to see those "outtakes" which didn't produce the effect he was going for.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
*Sarcasm*
For every recording he used in his video how many did he have of people who didn't care in the slightest he was recording?
Selective editing can pretty much twist any story.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
I think this is a strong right that we should all be defending. Why should only the police/FBI/NSA/corrupt politicians in charge of security companies have the ability to film the public at will any time they want to? We should defend our right to see and film anything that is public. We shouldn't be beating these people up - be it Google Glass, a Go Pro cam, or your cell phone. We should be thanking them. This is the only way that the general public will wake up and realize that pervasive surveillance is a good thing that everyone should have access to so as to help defend ourselves from unscrupulous authorities. It should not be concentrated in the hands of a few with strong incentives to abuse it.
The only people who get actual personal surveillance and monitoring are people who do bad things.
Wow, you're naive. People who do something the government doesn't like (which isn't necessarily bad) might be put under surveillance, too. Rules and attitudes change, and so too can the criteria that determines who should be put under surveillance. "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" is an absolutely idiotic mindset to have.
What has happened in society and culture that makes people angry, offended, upset and aggressive when being filmed? There was a video buzzing on the Internet recently taken about 20-25 years ago in a 7-Eleven store, and people where smiling, joking, excited and happy to be on camera. WHAT HAPPENED???
Signature intentionally left blank.
That is just plain unbelievable. Ten years?! I'd say that North Ameria in general is on a bad, bad path.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
There are anti-mask laws in some places in the US too. It's not because of hostility towards protestors. It's because of a little organization you might have heard of, called the KKK, whose members would attack people while wearing masks.
Okay, maybe i'm not stoned enough yet (working on it), but what I found amusing was people used dude with a camera as an excuse to be violent. Almost everyone was violent, or at least passive aggressive towards the guy. Even though we know we are being recorded by stores and other things, when a person with a camera gets in our face, people tend to try to do something about it. Why? I'm leaning that there is actually a face associated with this camera. You do into a store, there's a camera or 6 on the wall, but you can't get to them, you can't do anything about them. But the moment a camera appears in your face, with a person holding it, suddenly you have a target to put your frustrations on. And on top of it, people are being violent on a guy recording them being violent. WTF? Not only are you suddenly breaking the law but you are being recorded doing it.
Here's the best part. I bet the person gets people not reacting. They don't make it on to his youtube clips, do they? In other words, if you want to be sure you are seen in youtube if this guy appears, start acting like a twat.
Be seeing you...
flash back 250 years.
If anything saves us from the Tyranny of the King, it will surely be having regulars quartered in our houses.
If those soldiers abuse and harm us, that's the problem
They're using their grammar skills there.
can't wear hats or sunglasses in a bank.
They're using their grammar skills there.
So, because some people might abuse the ability to wear masks, doing so should be severely restricted? I thought we were supposed to the land of the free and the home of the brave, not the home of the sniveling cowards. I don't want the government dictating what clothing or accessories I can wear on my own body.
...that Steve Mann had to pay the price for this sort of 'performance art'.
The wider issue, though, is not so much that arbitrary Google-Glass-enabled people are invading privacy, bad though that might be. The problem comes if your Google account is hacked (likely a common problem) or some other method of stealing or diverting the video stream takes place. We've already had some evidence of the 'flip side' of this technology with schools sneakily enabling laptop cameras and mics "to check whether students are doing their homework" -- a bit like all those smoke detectors they put in at Princeton in the '70s -- which didn't save Whig Hall from burning down, but certainly gave notice when students were smoking that wacky tobaccy...
And now that we have a government that helps with something like Stuxnet, that Snowden has described as desirous of exploiting private 'social' information, and at least probably interested in using law and policy to harass what it perceives as its opponents. I would not be happy about the prospects if widespread pervasive 'video streaming' were to become common...
Your missing his point. It's a matter of him being a rude ass hole, and having an agenda of deliberately pissing people off. And it seems to be working. There are other ways of pissing people off that are not illegal and do not require a camera. But in this case the camera is his shield, and his weapon.
Your missing his point.
No, I'm not; read what I quoted. He quite explicitly stated that only 'bad' people are put under surveillance, and that's the part I chose to reply to.
You're already being leashed into a surveillance state and lapping it up, what difference does it make if some hipster is doing the same thing with a camera in hand?
He's not even bring particularly rude or snide about it, maybe a bit of a smartass, but that's it really (walking into what appears to be a private home notwithstanding).
If you're so pissy about some doofus filming in public, why aren't you pushing back against the increasing surveillance by your own government?
Hey, lady on the cell phone, you realize that acting like a prissy bitch is just going to cement it's publication on YouTube, right? Call it a Streisand effect on a smaller scale. Why not just say, hi, how ya doin', nice day ain't it? Oh, and that "private" conversation your having on your cell phone has already been traced, recorded and parsed for keywords by the NSA ... and you're worried about some dipshit with a camera filming you having lunch?
I'm really surprised that people don't whip out their camera phones and film him. He's obviously trying to hide his identity.
Especially after watching his videos, If some idiot got in my face in a public place and didn't go away, I'd just pull out my own phone & film him, telling him I plan to expose his identity "Oh.. you must be the 'surveillance camera guy'.. This is going to be an awesome YouTube post. A lot of people have been wondering what you look like so that they can kick your ass.."
Picture this...instead of the stationary cameras on the wall/ceiling at the drug store, there are employees following people with cameras. I'm betting customers would react the same way as surveillance guy. Funny how the visible attachment of a person to the camera makes all the difference for some reason. Why is that?
What I find odd is that people seem fine with the paparazzi doing this to someone else that isn't them.
What would be your reaction facing the same harassment ?
- Do as if he does not exist, or as if he were transparent.
- Film him with a phone camera, but for how long ?
- Run away, faster than him.
- Freeze, but for how long ?
- Make a fake call, calling for an imaginary team of tough guys to get him and beat him bad.
- Start talking a lot, as if it were an interview, a VIP interview for something big, and answer imaginary questions.
- Hold a mirror, big enough, toward the camera.
- Do the same thing as Cowboy Neal.
There are several reasons why this guy is different from a camera in a store. 1) People assume that store security feeds are not actually being watched by anybody. 2) People think of it as "the store" taking pictures. Not the employees. Same reason why people take "I'm sorry, it's company policy" as an OK answer most of the time. 3) Individuals are held to the golden rule, but companies generally are not. If a person throws a coke can out the window of a moving car you think, "what an asshole!" But if employees of a company do some illegal dumping, you don't assume the individuals doing the dumping are assholes. No raindrop is responsible for the flood. 4) If you don't like having your video taken in a store, you can choose not to be in that store. 5) A store will normally clearly state that it is taking video for security purposes.
I could go on but it doesn't really matter. To people who think this guy is right, none of these differences are valid. To people who think he's wrong, they seem obvious.
I happen to think this guy is wrong for a completely different reason. What does it hurt to have everybody with Google Glass? Who cares if pathetic people want to take videos of me. If I pull some Dunkin Donuts crazy-bitch rant, I deserve to be posted to YouTube. If I do something good, that should get posted too. It's like we can all be each other's Elf on a Shelf. But instead of reporting to Santa, we just post to YouTube or FB or whatever.
Take perverts on a beach, taking zoomed in photos of hotties in bikinis. Why not take pictures of them taking pictures? The cure for a bad guy with a camera is a good guy with a camera, right?!
Jesus... I'm really rambling here. I should just shut the hell up now.
"This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube's policy prohibiting content designed to harass, bully or threaten"
Sweet! Now YouTube gets to catch shit for censoring someone merely recording in public, while there are a jillion videos on their site with far more harassment, bullying, and threats.
*gets his popcorn*
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