The author of a new article on surveillance in The Walrus thinks you do. Hal Niedzviecki says that while the thought of being monitored used to disturb us (think George Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four), cameras and other surveillance techniques are so prevalent today that we’ve stopped noticing them. And, he says, when we do notice we don’t really care (case in point: when it was announced that 10,000 cameras would be installed in Toronto’s subways, streetcars and buses, he asserts that citizens “shrugged and went about their business”).
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Several Canadian universities, including Queen’s and the University of Victoria, recently launched a multi-disciplinary study on the sociological and cultural impacts of surveillance. “The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting” received $2.5 million from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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They are, according to one of London’s top police officers. In an interview with The Guardian, Mick Neville, head of New Scotland Yard’s Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office, says that even though Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe, CCTV cameras have, so far, helped solve just three per cent of street robberies in London.
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Last week, Al Kamen of the Washington Post published an ironic article lightly criticizing his Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff about his statement that fingerprints aren’t personal information.
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Last week, the Seattle Times reported on an experiment the University of Washington is conducting with radio frequency identification, or RFID. The university, responsible for one of the largest experiments using wireless tags in a social setting, has effectively created a futuristic atmosphere where RFID is everywhere. With this in place, they hope to uncover problems before the technology becomes widely adopted.
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Last month, a correspondent with Popular Science conducted his own privacy experiment — to be as anonymous as possible while still living a normal life. His conclusion? That it’s nearly impossible.
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Day to day, our actions are being captured, and increasingly, it’s being done by surveillance cameras. This technology – like RFID tags – is being used by more organizations everyday to improve security and deter thieves. And while that’s a perfectly legitimate reason to employ cameras, organizations should also be ensuring their surveillance activities minimize the impact on people’s privacy.
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While there are certainly some novel uses for RFID technology out there (like studying the secret life of bees), RFID systems are increasingly being used for the more practical purposes of improving productivity and enhancing security.
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BBC Radio 4 has a series of radio documentaries on Britain’s control rooms and surveillance systems…with a twist. In “Invisible People”, urban historian Joe Kerr interviews the people who work in these control centres about their jobs, tapping into the human side of Britain’s surveillance society.
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