QotW6: Privacy, Surveillance, Sousveillance

Sleeping is a private affair, which is why I did not appreciate it when a friend of mine wiped out his latest Samsung mobile phone and started to take a video of an old man asleep in the train with his mouth agape. My friend took the short clip off his phone and mass-emailed it to everyone he knew just for the heck of it.

What would you have done if you had been the old man? You were asleep, you were caught unaware and you would probably feel grossly violated if you knew you have been caught on video by an errant youth.

With more advanced mobile gadgets, anybody can record a video of anybody else at any given time and at any given place. There is a danger to that notion but at the same time this can serve a noble purpose.

Take the example of the police officer who used a Taser on a student in the library just because he did not have his identification card on him (Sousveillance.org, 2006). The incident was caught on video by a citizen and put on YouTube.com. According to a blogger at Sousveillance.org, this led to a discussion about the importance sousveillance in college campuses.

When you have ordinary people going around the place with their own handheld cameras, recording moments on the fly, you start to wonder what they are going to use the footage for. So as far as sousveillance go, as long as it serves a purpose for the good of many, I feel it is fine. But if the footage is misused like the Taser gun in the library, then I would not consider that sousveillance. In other words, the video of the sleeping old man in the train does not count as an example of sousveillance.

In an article written by Jeffrey Rosen (2004), it was mentioned that the sociologist Thomas Mathiesen built on Foucault’s Panapticon concept (the few watched the many) and came up with the terms Synopticon –the many watch the few – and Omnipticon –the many are watching the many.

Within the same article, it was discussed that Americans are facing a dilemma of sorts regarding their tendency to ‘expose’ their Self to mere strangers. They are doing it online through self-disclosure on blogs and filling up user profiles on many social networking applications online. Personal data suddenly becomes easier to retrieve in the public domain.

When The Self is becoming more and more exposed and information about The Self becomes easily available where does that leave us with privacy? Rosen’s article seems to insinuate that we brought it upon us, that we feel the need to belong in a society where trust from strangers can only be achieved by disclosing the details of our personal lives.

There are a lot of issues regarding privacy particularly regarding security. I often wonder if the world will really become like the fictitious one penned by George Orwell in his book, 1984. How much does the government need to know or have under surveillance in the name of keeping its citizens safe (Sullivan, 2006)?

There already has been a case of mistaken identity whereby a woman and two teenage girls were charged for murder just because they were caught on a surveillance camera at the time of crime (Sullivan, 2006). It was not until later it was discovered that the camera was not synchronized to the correct timing.

It seems to me that the situation now is indeed a 21st century equivalent of being caught naked (Sullivan, 2006) and we are still unsure how much about ourselves should remain private.

References

Rosen, J. (2004, July 19). The Naked Crowd. Retrieved March 9, 2007, from http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA5FF.htm

Sullivan, B. (2006, October 17). Privacy Lost: Does anybody care? Retrieved March 9, 2007, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/print/1/displaymode/1098/

The Principle of Evidence: Practical Sousveillance 101. (2006, November 18). Retrieved March 9, 2007, from http://www.sousveillance.org/journal/?p=373