January 17, 2004

The other "Big Brother" headline is "Watching Big Brother/Pulling Back the Curtain on Hidden Surveillance," by Sabrina Tavernise. This one is about a man who
has made it his business to spot and map surveillance cameras in New York City. The goal of his research is to help New Yorkers gain a sense of how much of their lives - from a jog in the park to some secretive hand-holding - is actually being recorded by somebody.
We're told he has six cats, so maybe we aren't supposed to take him seriously. He also runs a "Surveillance Camera Outdoor Walking Tour (Scowt for short)." Somebody should make a documentary about him, but only if he's hilarious, which he probably isn't.

Should we feel some sympathy for the people with the job of watching through all of these cameras?
Watchers quickly tire of staring at empty street corners, the argument goes, and begin peeping at people, such as attractive women. A camera at a foreign consulate was found to have been trained on a nearby apartment, Mr. Brown said.

"The watchers get bored after 20 minutes," he said. "But they are working for seven hours, so they start amusing themselves."
Not quite the fearsome image of Big Brother, but, yeah, that's bad of them. A good angle for people who oppose survellance cameras in public places.

3 comments:

Icepick said...

This one is about a man who

has made it his business to spot and map surveillance cameras in New York City.


Isn't there an app for that now? Doesn't really matter, though, as every cell phone is a de facto surveillance camera, with stuff frequently being posted directly to the internet to be viewed by all.

Not quite the fearsome image of Big Brother, but, yeah, that's bad of them. A good angle for people who oppose survellance cameras in public places.

It's the Rear Window Age. Everyone is survelling everyone else, hoping to find something interesting, like seeing a neighbor murder his wife, or catching the little kid coming back from the dentist drugged out of his mind.

Icepick said...

But mostly we're just seeing the same old boring stuff that usually happens. Until we're in a cast and have Grace Kelly taking care of us, which is exactly when you don't want anything interesting to happen in the outside world.

Icepick said...

Although in the interest of full disclosure, I've never really cared for Grace Kelly all that much. She's beautiful, that's undeniable, but always stuck me as cold and strangely unanimated.