3 May 2012
13 April 2012
“FACELESS was produced under the rules of the ‘Manifesto for CCTV Filmmakers’. The manifesto states, amongst other things, that additional cameras are not permitted at filming locations, as the omnipresent existing video surveillance (CCTV) is already in operation.”
7 April 2012
Surveillance and security: securing whom? And at what cost?
It is common knowledge that surveillance technologies keep us safe. But this common knowledge is based, at best, on shaky evidence. In the face of dangerous situations, emotions tend to trump logical decision making; reasoning goes that if even a single attack is prevented, the technology is worth having. Such reasoning is quite ill founded. Not only does surveillance technology not necessarily keep us safe, in many instances, surveillance technologies decrease our security.
Building surveillance tools into communications networks enables simpler forms of “insider” attack. In Italy, 6,000 judges, politicians and celebrities were illegally wiretapped between 1996 and 2006. During this period, one in every 10,00 Italians was wiretapped; no major political or business deal was ever private. For ten months in 2004-2005, 100 senior members of the Greek government, including the Prime Minister, were spied upon when the wiretapping capabilities of a Greek Vodafone switch were turned on by unknown parties.
The technologies revealed today by Privacy International – the hacking tools that allow an investigator to download spyware onto a target’s computer, the interception tools that allow instant automatic search for “communications of interest” the data mining tools that allow profiling of a user – build a picture of a surveillance industry gone wild – an industry that seeks to provide tools without understanding the huge potential for harm.
4 March 2012
Title: Guerrilla Drone
Category: #roboticenvironments
Author: Lot Amorós
Year: 2012
Url: http://guerrilladrone.feenelcaos.org/
Description: GuerrillaDrone is the design of a drone for audiovisual interventions in the public air using mixed reality. A complete aerial computer with free software and hardware. Drones are autonomous machines with propellers that are able to stay still in space and move through the air. GuerrillaDrone aims to explore new uses of the air as a medium of expression, to anticipate the questions that modern society will face in the decades to come: the presence of robots in public spaces and in the public air space. The citizens’ control is becoming an urgent priority for governments and states, the drone’s qualitative leap in contrast to the conventional surveillance camera is its mobility: you don’t know if you’re being watched. This strategy reaches its peak when using technology for complete control, everywhere and all the time of the civil society. Israel is a pioneer in this field and its technology for the control of Palestinian territories is exported for the the borders between Africa and Europe and between the U.S. and Mexico. Technology transfer between the military and police forces reveals the imbalance of power between citizens and states
23 February 2012
22 February 2012
19 February 2012
23 December 2011
Surveillance & Society
The international, interdisciplinary, open access, peer-reviewed journal of Surveillance Studies.
New Double Issue Out Now
Volume 9, Number 1/2, ‘A Global Surveillance Society?’, is out now!
http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/index
16 December 2011
Dès le milieu des années 90 plusieurs collectifs informels s’attaquent à la question de la vidéosurveillance dans l’espace public, notamment aux États-Unis. Parmi eux, Surveillance Camera Players attire l’attention de leurs concitoyens sur ce sujet en jouant des pièces de théâtre avec des pancartes, comme Ubu Roi ou des passages du livre 1984 d’Orwell sous l’oeil des caméras de la ville de New York. “Les collectifs qui se sont intéressés à ce thème par des actions artistiques de rue viennent également de milieux universitaires comme les membres de l’IAA (Institute of Applied Autonomy) qui avaient distribué des “Routes of least surveillance” c’est-à-dire des cartes de New York qui montraient les zones sans surveillance”, explique Samira Ouardi auteur du livre Artivisme1.