Privacy News from Wired News - Record the Lens That Records You. Ronald Deibert, a University of Toronto associate professor of political science, wants people to grab their cameras and hit the shopping malls Dec. 24 and participate in World Sousveillance Day.
Surveillance means "to view from above." Sousveillance means "to view from below."
On the day before Christmas, at noon, local time, all over the world, Deibert wants citizens to "shoot back" at surveillance cameras -- not with guns, but with cameras of their own. Participants are to head out, in disguise, to their favorite malls and public spaces, and photograph all the security cameras they find.
Deibert warns that photographing security cameras will quickly cause large men wearing navy blue blazers and two-way radios to place their hands over your camera lens. Photographers may even be escorted off the premises.
Which is exactly the point. Deibert hopes World Sousveillance Day will "raise awareness about the increasing pervasiveness of all forms of surveillance in today's hypermedia society."
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Paula Kelliher, marketing director of the upscale Galleria Mall in White Plains, New York, warns that photography, especially of surveillance cameras, is not permitted on mall property.
"It's not really in the best interests of our customers," she said.
[Privacy Digest]
