A BRIEF HISTORY OF SURVEILLANCE

Before the pervasiveness of video cameras, it was difficult for the authorities to follow an individual walking around in a city like New York. To do so required multiple individuals, some on foot and some in cars, each armed with a communications device.

This NPR story explains how surveillance teams used to operate. The detail team would take turns following the target. First, they’d have to find something the target was holding or wearing to identify him. Next they would take turns following the target through the city to avoid being detected or arouse suspicion. Because they were never sure where the target might go, team members had to carry with them a variety of outfits and disguises to better blend in to whatever environment they found themselves.

These techniques are probably still employed in some situations, but for the most part, the grunt work has been replaced with long lens cameras, CCTVs and other surveillance technology. We all understand to some degree that there are cameras all around us. But the mere presence of cameras doesn’t indicate sophistication. In fact the majority of these cameras are stupid, meaning they either are placed prominently for show but aren’t recording, the resolution of the recording is too low to be useful or they lack the ability to pan, title and/or zoom. The thinking is that the mere presence of the cameras is adequate to induce a certain behavior, which is a 200 year-old idea proposed by Jeremy Bentham called the panopticon. That’s the point, though.

The more I read about identity, the less concerned I am with any one aspect of being tracked. At this point, surveillance video mostly represents the body. It means that my physical presence has been detected and recorded in a certain location. For a larger understanding of the implications of my presence in a given place, one would have to cross reference this information with my voice, credit card purchases, loyalty cards, social checkins and other data that I “give off” throughout the day.

I can’t get my web calendar to sync to my phone and computer without downloading one or two additional “bridge” programs, so the idea that one organization synthesizing any of this data in time to affect my experience (i.e. marketing/advertising) doesn’t yet concern me. But I won’t get too comfortable, because the landscape is changing fast. This is the type of technology that I bet is between five and ten years out:

A team composed of Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute and the Sarnoff Corporation were chosen to lead the technical efforts by developing an end-to-end testbed system demonstrating a wide range of advanced surveillance techniques: real-time moving object detection and tracking from stationary and moving camera platforms, recognition of generic object classes (e.g. human, sedan, truck) and specific object types (e.g. campus police car, FedEx van), object pose estimation with respect to a geospatial site model, active camera control and multi-camera cooperative tracking, human gait analysis, recognition of simple multi-agent activities, real-time data dissemination, data logging and dynamic scene visualization.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~vsam/

Whoa! Nothing makes me want to add three locks to my door and only accept deliveries from Fresh Direct more than this type of research funding.

SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS AND ART

There’s no shortage of artists claiming to work with surveillance footage. The artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has some interesting projects. Among my favorites are his “Blow Up” and “Close-up” pieces, which are part of his Shadow Box series. Although Lozano-Hemmer uses the word surveillance to describe the method by which he appropriates video, I’m not sure I would agree. I don’t think people approaching a video in an art gallery have much of an expectation of privacy. Knowing there was a camera embedded in the shadowbox in front of them would not alter their behavior. Like with my example above, it merely indicates their presence.

Many artists like to talk about how they are turning surveillance on its head or turning it back on those that are surveilling, but I’ve yet to see any projects that actually do that. I don’t think a hidden camera is the same as surveillance. Furthermore, to turn it on its head would be to publicly show the people that are monitoring the screens displaying the surveillance camera feeds, and I haven’t seen that yet.

A more fun use of surveillance cameras is the Tango Panopticon, an organized event which instructs people to stand together in front of certain surveillance cameras all around the world and then at the same time…tango!

Another project I really like of late is this WiFi light painting video. I liked this surveillance technique for uncovering what’s all around us but what we don’t often think about or see. In some way, the video makes me think that the filmmakers are spying on these signals being sent all around us and the devices that originate them.

Image credit: Will Varner