Table Of ContentRoutes of Least Surveillance By Erik Baard
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,48664,00.html
02:00 AM Nov. 28, 2001 PT
Or so goes the thinking behind a new mapping utility created by civil
libertarians to guide New Yorkers through Manhattan along routes with the
fewest surveillance cameras.
It's like Mapquest for dissidents and paranoiacs, or for those simply creeped
out by the feeling of being watched, constantly, by countless mechanical
eyes.
The service, called iSee, was created by the Institute for Applied Autonomy,
a group of technologists, and the New York Surveillance Camera Project, an
offshoot of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
The interactive, Web-based map catalogs most of the 2,400 cameras filming
public space in the city, including cameras on buildings, ATMs and traffic
lights.
Users log on to the iSee website, select a point of departure and a
destination, and a dotted line sketches a route around closed-circuit cameras
marked as red boxes. Camera coverage is so dense that the island of
Manhattan looks like a red chili pepper.
"We've designed iSee to be useful to a wide range of ordinary people," said
an IAA operative who declined to be identified. "The demonstrated tendency
of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) operators to single out ethnic
minorities for observation and to voyeuristically focus on women's breasts
and buttocks provides the majority of the population ample legitimate
reasons to avoid public surveillance cameras."
The IAA operative also noted the proliferation of spy-cam websites, and
increasing commercial incentives for distributing CCTV footage to reality-
based media shows like Cops and America's Funniest Home Videos.
IAA plans to expand iSee to cover Seattle, Chicago and perhaps London,
which, after years of being plagued by terrorism, is one of the most camera-
saturated cities in the world.
But like water's path of least resistance, a travelers' "path of least
surveillance" can be so circuitous it transforms a walk of several blocks into
an odyssey of miles. It's doubtful iSee will replace the morning traffic
reports. So who is it for?
Obviously, political activists who'd like to post flyers, paint graffiti
messages or commit other acts of covert civil disobedience are likely to log
onto iSee. Although the iSee icon features a man with a bomb for a head (an
unfortunate joke predating Sept. 11), the IAA doesn't think terrorists will see
much value in iSee. Most of them will be long gone before the feeds from
cameras can be used against them.
"CCTV isn't much of a threat to terrorists," the IAA operative said. "While
CCTV systems can help police reconstruct events after an incident, CCTV is
not terribly effective either in preventing attacks or in identifying suspects.
As a result, terrorists spend remarkably little time worrying about the
locations of surveillance cameras."
In other words, it's everyday employees and spouses, not the Mohammed
Attas of the world, who fear the cameras.
But Alex Mathieson, marketing manager for video systems at Sensormatic
Electronics, a fire and security company, said iSee is "inappropriate."
Mathieson said in the wake of Sept. 11, CCTV coverage is likely to grow.
"You will have more surveillance than ever before in the United States," he
said.
Even before Sept. 11, CCTV component sales grew from $9 billion
worldwide in 1999 to $12 billion in 2001, according to Mathieson. And it's
likely that more and more cameras will also be linked to face recognition
software like Visionics' FaceIt.
But iSee is not just a tool for stealthy troublemakers. One can also view it as
an art project designed to draw attention to the privacy issues surrounding
ubiquitous cameras. At a time when government is pushing for more
watchfulness and fewer civil-rights safeguards, iSee's creators hope to shock
lawmakers into recognizing that citizens already feel violated.
"A growing number of people are concerned by the lack of legislative
oversight of CCTV operations," said the IAA operative. "The advent of
sophisticated face-recognition technologies are further reasons to use iSee.
They will allow companies, private investigators, and journalists to browse
video databases for footage of spouses, employees, and neighbors engaged
in perfectly legal, but nonetheless private acts like attending job interviews
and psychiatric appointments."
The iSee project has been in development for a year and began construction
in earnest during the summer. Before it was launched, another group, the
Surveillance Camera Players, was giving walking tours to illustrate a similar
point.
However, the Ruckus Society, a Berkeley-based environmental and human
rights organization that helps train activists, among other things, isn't keen
on iSee.
"I'm hard pressed to come up with situation where I would rely on that data,"
said technical organizer Allen Gunn. He said the site could give users a false
sense of security: Hidden and fake cameras aren't accounted for, nor are
camera ranges, resolution, positions or direction. Gunn added that
maintaining an accurate database may prove prohibitively costly and
difficult.
"The Ruckus philosophy is one of direct action, not anonymity," Gunn said.
"We believe in strength in numbers. Putting people on the street has the
value of putting faith in the public. That's why we're not at all into faceless
things like hacktivism. There's a profound eloquence to having thousands of
people in front of the White House that you can never get from a thousand e-
mails or people clicking a website."
Individually, however, Gunn envisions a place for iSee. "It's analogous to
using PGP all the time. I don't know who's bothering to read my e-mail, but
it has symbolic value as a statement of the right to privacy."
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