The Connected Camera Fights Back
from the sousveillance dept
Every time someone trashes the idea of camera phones because the camera quality sucks, we try to point out that the amazing thing about a camera phone isn’t in how it compares to a regular camera, but the fact that camera is connected. Howard Rheingold makes the point especially clear in his latest column for TheFeature, pointing out that one way to fight back against the ubiquitous surveillance cameras all around is to do some “inverse surveillance” with camera phones back at official misdeeds. He makes the point that in the past, when an abuse of power was happening by the police or other authorities, one of the first things they would try to do is to confiscate and/or destroy cameras that witnessed the event. However, if the camera is connected and streaming the images onto the internet in real-time, it doesn’t do much good to confiscate the camera. The content has already been published.
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Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan graphic novels explore this; they have ubiquitous networking and members of the public setting themselves up as news feeds, and corrupt authorities using jammers in attempts to prevent evidence of atrocities from getting out.