surveillance, participatory journalism and smart mobs

Autobotography Part 2

Surveillance

• Close watch kept over someone or something

• Etymology: French, from surveiller to watch over, from sur- + veiller to watch, from Latin vigilare, from vigil watchful

the panopticon

“One is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without being seen.” Foucault, from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

surveillance & the panoptic

• The panopticon, originally designed by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), is a model of surveillance and a way to understand how people structured institutions as a result of this surveillance.

• With the rise of digital media and decentralized networks, many aspects of the panoptic permeate, particularly the phenomenon of being seen without being able to see, and the paranoia of not knowing when or if someone is watching.

iSee

iSee is a web-based application charting the locations of closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras in urban environments. With iSee, users can find routes that avoid these cameras ("paths of least surveillance") allowing them to walk around their cities without fear of being "caught on tape" by unregulated security monitors.

Hasan Elahi

• After an erroneous tip called into law enforcement authorities in 2002, Elahi was subjected to an intensive post 9-11 investigation by the FBI. After undergoing months of interrogations and nine lie-detector tests, he was cleared of suspicions. After this harrowing experience, Elahi conceived "Tracking Transience," a self-tracking system that constantly and publicly presents his exact location, activities, and other personal data. This self-surveillance project is a critique of contemporary investigative techniques and provides an ongoing "alibi" for Elahi in the event of future accusations.

sousveillance

• Sousveillance (pronounced /suːˈveɪləns/ soo-VAY-ləns, French pronunciation: [suvɛjɑ̃Ls]) and inverse surveillanceare terms coined by Steve Mann to describe the recording of an activity from the perspective of a participant in the activity,[1] typically by way of small portable or wearable recording devices that often stream continuous live video to the Internet.

Rodney King

• On March 2nd 1991 after a high speed chase involving several police cars and a helicopter, Rodney King was trapped and then heavily beaten by police officers.

• He suffered brain damage, broken bones and teeth, kidney damage and emotional and physical trauma.

• Eye witness George Holliday caught the beating on his video camera, and this video was later used in the court trials against the police officers.

• The aquittal of the police officers in 1992 cause the 1992 LA riots (6 days: 53 people killed, 2000 injured;3,600 fires were set, 1,100 bldgs destroyed. widespread looting).

• 2 of the 4 police offices charged ended up being found guilty in a federal trial.

•

Oscar Grant Case, 2009-2010

• numerous cell phone cameras document the fatal shooting of unarmed 22 year-old Oscar Grant by BART Police officer Johannes Mehserle at the Fruitvale Bart station.

• “Several hundred thousand viewed the videos in the first few days after the shooting. One local television station video posted to its website was downloaded more than 500,000 times in four days and one independent media video posted to the internet averaged more than 1,000 views per hour. Widespread dissemination of the direct evidence of the shooting led to public outrage and protests and fueled riots.”

• Protests were mostly conducted by communities based in Oakland.

Iran/ Neda

• Neda Agha-Soltan was killed June 20, 2009 during the Iranian protests. Her death was captured on video and is described as “probably the most widely witnessed death in human history.”

• Neda became a rallying cry for the Iranian election protests and a symbol of the revolutions

• #neda on Twitter became another way Iranians and people the world over rallied for protesters’ cause.

Greater ability to document and distribute....

• Also see:

• The Witness Project

• Palabras

from surveillance to dataveillance from Control and Freedom by Wendy Chun

• there are similarities and differences between the Internet and the Panopticon.

• Computer networks “time shift” the panoptic gaze.

• users are not adequately isolated.

• physically separate, virtually connected.

• digital trails and local memory caching can make prosecution easier.

• in the future, someone could look, but is not looking now...

Participatory Journalism

• Consider new media tools of production/ documentation and distribution as reportage

• and also for coordination.... coordination for protests, emergencies, mass mobilisation.

“Smart Mobs” by Howard Rheingold

• Individual fish and birds (and tight-formation fighter pilots) school and flock simply by paying attention to what their nearest neighbours do.

• The coordinated movement of schools and flocks is a dynamically shifting aggregation of individual decisions.

• Even if there were a central tuna or pigeon who could issue orders, no system of propagating orders from a central source can operate swiftly enough to avoid being eaten by sharks or slamming into trees.

• humans and other organisms from ants to birds can exhibit “swarm systems”

4 characteristics of Swarm Systems according to Kevin Kelly

• the absence of imposed centralised control

• the autonomous nature of sub-units

• the high connectivity between the sub-units

• the webby non-linear causality of peers influencing peers.

• These “low-level” behaviors, when combined, exhibit emergence, or complexity. ==> collective intelligence.

Questions to ask about smart mobs

• What do we know now about the emergent properties of ad hoc mobile computing networks,and what do we need to know in the future?

• What are the central issues for individuals in a world pervaded by surveillance devices – in terms of what we can do about it?

• What are the long-term consequences of near-term political decisions on the way we’ll use and be affected by mobile,pervasive,always-on media?

(image of different kinds of networks)

Screening :: Empire: Social Networks Social Revolution

Fluid Nexus, 2008 by Nick Knouf with Bruno Vianna, Luis Ayuso, and Mónica Sánchez

two versions of Epic, by Robin Sloan....

Screening ::

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