Complicit surveillance and social networking
We’ve all spent so much time and effort being worried about formal surveillance – all those street and lobby cameras – that we’re in danger of forgetting how much we cooperate in surveilling and being surveilled online
by Miyase Christensen
New research suggests that 25% of people in the UK suffer from some form of paranoia (1), probably because of a combination of urbanisation, globalisation, migration, wealth disparity and the media. So would it be right to assume that paranoia will worsen as we move towards complex personal surveillance, the result of the heavy use of social networking sites such as Facebook? While these sites are collecting data on their users, as my own research in Sweden illustrates, many of us are taking part in this on a seemingly voluntary basis, often unaware of its extent.
Formal surveillance means one CCTV camera per 14 citizens in the UK, or 200,000 such cameras in the city of Shenzhen in China. But parallel to the traditional forms of surveillance, there is a new voyeurism, rooted in an appetite for peer-to-peer surveillance. Watching friends, neighbours and colleagues for security purposes – and sometimes just for fun – seems to be getting common.
Take Adam’s Block. This was an open-access site webcasting a live video feed from the intersection of Ellis Street and Taylor Street in San Francisco for entertainment purposes. But some in the neighbourhood did not approve and the owner of the camera and site were threatened. “Adam” had to shut down the service for his own safety. In solidarity, others from the neighbourhood installed their own cameras, meaning eventually to network the cameras and live-cast at www.adamsblock.com under the name OurBlock.tv, as an example of citizen surveillance. The site, which says, it is “empowering citizens to fight crime and save lives” and called itself the “a global network of webcams” intended “to make a difference in your community”, aimed to have thousands of people and homes around the globe visually accessible via the web – voluntarily. This is not a unique example.