Culture

Culture

by Mike Masnick




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.

1 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments

(Flattened / Threaded)

    May 3rd, 2004 @ 8:28am
  • No Subject Given

    by acb

    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.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now.
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML
Save me a cookie
  • Plain Text: A CRLF will be replaced by break <br> tag, all other allowable HTML is intact
  • HTML: No formatting of any kind is done without explicitly being written in
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <p> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>
Close
Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now.
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie

Search Techdirt
And now, a word from our Sponsors..



Subscribe to Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Related Stories
Close
E-mail It