share2shine » Internet Studies

Record the Lens That Records You

Xiaoge — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 06:17:17 +0000

Ronald Deibert, a University of Toronto associate professor of political science, wants people to grab their cameras and hit the shopping malls Dec. 24 and participate in World Sousveillance Day.

Surveillance means “to view from above.” Sousveillance means “to view from below.”

On the day before Christmas, at noon, local time, all over the world, Deibert wants citizens to “shoot back” at surveillance cameras — not with guns, but with cameras of their own. Participants are to head out, in disguise, to their favorite malls and public spaces, and photograph all the security cameras they find.

Deibert warns that photographing security cameras will quickly cause large men wearing navy blue blazers and two-way radios to place their hands over your camera lens. Photographers may even be escorted off the premises.

Which is exactly the point. Deibert hopes World Sousveillance Day will “raise awareness about the increasing pervasiveness of all forms of surveillance in today’s hypermedia society.”

“A lot of people probably aren’t aware of the extent to which they’re being monitored,” he says.

Deibert chose Christmas Eve because it’s one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

Pointing a camera at a surveillance camera is the brainchild of Steve Mann, an MIT Media Lab graduate who pioneered the wearable networked computer/camera. When he was netcasting his life from a helmet mounted webcam, he got into a number of situations in which the people who controlled the security cameras didn’t like having his camera turned on them.

Mann’s suggestion for World Sousveillance Day? Affix a dark acrylic rectangle to the front of asweatshirt, with the following words clearly visible: “For your protection, a video record of you and your establishment may be transmitted and recorded at remote locations. ALL CRIMINAL ACTS PROSECUTED.” Mann likens this device, which he calls a MaybeCam, to Schrodinger’s Cat: maybe it is a camera, maybe it isn’t, but its very existence changes the behavior of the people nearby.

full article at Record the Lens That Records You.

Posted in Internet Studies

Surveillance Works Both Ways

Xiaoge — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 06:14:54 +0000

SEATTLE — Surveilling the surveillers. It’s an idea that Number 6, the nameless hero of the classic British TV show The Prisoner, would have loved.

In an attempt to establish equity in the world of surveillance, participants at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Seattle this week took to the streets to ferret out surveillance cameras and turn the tables on offensive eyes taking their picture.

Following wearable computing guru Steve Mann into a downtown Seattle shopping mall, about two dozen conference attendees, some of them armed with handheld cameras, snapped photos of smoked-glass ceiling domes in Nordstrom and Gap stores, which may or may not have contained cameras.

Companies have been known to install empty camera domes to save money while giving the impression of surveillance.

The idea of surveillance that’s powerful even if it’s not actually present was in line with the theme of this year’s CFP conference — the Panopticon. The Panopticon, a model prison envisioned by philosopher Jeremy Bentham, would feature guard towers using mirrors that allowed the guards to see the prisoners without being seen themselves. This would leave the inmates uncertain as to when they were actually being watched.

But the mere possibility that someone might be watching would be enough to alter their behavior, ensuring, in the words of French philosopher Michel Foucault, that the effect of surveillance would be ongoing even if the surveillance itself wasn’t. The mere perception of power would “render its actual exercise unnecessary.”

Full article at Surveillance Works Both Ways.

Posted in Internet Studies

Survey on Intranet Filtering in Universities

Xiaoge — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:48:00 +0000

The primary objective of the survey is to determine the level of access to the Internet in selected universities in Asia and the kind of monitoring they do to track the use of their computers and Internet facilities.

Results of this survey will be used for academic studies only.

Click the following link to take the survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ZUmCqwxSHxV6CSNGf6ef_2bA_3d_3d

Click Here to take survey

Posted in Internet Studies

Intranet Filtering

Xiaoge — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:00:33 +0000

Summary

Most research on internet censorship has focused on national-level activities of governments. However, filtering also occurs at the organisational level, practiced by the administrators of various intranets. In countries with little or no national-level censorship (such as Singapore and Malaysia), filtering within intranets may be the most significant infringement on online freedom. Furthermore, as much of this filtering is undertaken by private sector organisations, there may be less accountability and transparency than is the case at the national and official level. As a high proportion of citizens’ online activity is conducted at the workplace, the relevance of organisational level censorship should not be underestimated.

What is the extent and patterns of intranet censorship in Malaysia, Singapore, especially within research institutions and organisations? What is the level of accountability and transparency in the exercise of these organisational-level controls?

To highlight the impact of organisational-level intranet controls on people’s freedoms to participate online.

The ONI instrument will be used to quantify intranet-level filtering within selected organisations in Singapore, Malaysia and one other selected country. The initial research will focus on universities, with a target of three institutions per country and requiring one lead researcher and three research assistants per country.

Interviews will be conducted with intranet administrators to ascertain their policies.

A one-day workshop will be convened for researchers to compare findings and to begin work on final reports.

Wikileaks overloaded by global interest

Singapore

Singapore Internet Research Centre (SIRC)

Assistant Professor Cherian George Assistant Professor Xu Xiaoge

Resources:

OpenNet Initiative HerdicWeb: The Verdict of the Herd

Follow ONI on Twitter

Internet Censorship in Singapore

Internet Censorship (Wikipedia)

Internet Censorship Country Profiles

About Filtering (from ONI)

Issue Crawler Tool

Scalable Vector Graphics

Content-Control Software (Wikipedia)

IssueCrawler

Posted in Internet Studies