Samizdata

Wired reports how 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.

The opposite of surveillance — French for watching from above — sousveillance refers to watching from below, essentially from beneath the eye in the sky. It’s the equivalent of keeping an eye on the eye. With that in mind, Mann conducted his tour with conference participants to see how those conducting surveillance would respond to being monitored.

In the stores, as conference attendees snapped pictures of three smoked domes in the ceiling of a Mont Blanc pen shop, an employee inside waved his arms overhead. The intruders interpreted his gesture as happy excitement at being photographed until a summoned security guard halted the photography.

Mann asked the guard why, if the Mont Blanc cameras were recording him, he couldn’t, in turn, record the cameras. But the philosophical question, asked again at Nordstrom and the Gap, was beyond the comprehension of store managers who were more concerned with the practical issues of prohibiting store photography.

Mann quoted Simon Davies of Privacy International, a London-based nonprofit that monitors civil liberties issues:

The totalitarian regime is the regime that would like to know everything about everyone but reveal nothing about itself.

He considered such a government an “inequiveillant regime” and likened it to signing a contract with another party without being allowed to keep a copy of the contract.

What I argue is that if I’m going to be held accountable for my actions that I should be allowed to record … my actions. Especially if somebody else is keeping a record of my actions.

The Daily Texan reports that State Rep. Larry Phillips, R-Sherman, isn’t happy that one-quarter to one-third of all Texans drive without automotive insurance, according to his research. He aims to change that with his proposed House Bill 2893, which includes a subsection that some find disturbing: the addition of an electronic tracking and identification system onto each vehicle.

The RFID tag would transmit a unique frequency that would show the vehicle’s make, model, identification number, the title as registered with the Department of Transportation and whether or not the driver has insurance coverage. The proposed law also makes clear that the state will create a database of insurance provider and coverage information, keeping track of who has what insurance policy and whether it is paid or not. Scott Henson, a Texas American Civil Liberties Union police accountability and homeland security specialist warns:

The language opens up the whole tracking system for any conceivable law enforcement use,” Henson said. “Once that happens, Texans’ cars might one day appear as electronic dots on law enforcement’s computer mapping screens.

The transponder lets the government track you wherever you go, whether to visit your grandmother, secretly visit a gay bar or drive to a medical supplies office, whatever.

Philip Doty, associate director of the Telecommunications and Information Policy Institute at UT-Austin goes to the heart of the matter:

In post-Patriot Act America, people have lost awareness of the little changes that lead to a chain of effects that restrict us politically and individually.