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DIY Surveillance
From “We Have Mutated Into a Surveillance Society and Must share the Blame” which has been reproduced, somehow, by a spam blog. Is this some kind of underground resistance communicating through spam?
In the last few years, most of us — even instinctive technophobes like me — have become practised in the dark art of surveillance. When I’m going to meet a stranger at dinner, I’ll routinely feed her name to Google and LexisNexis to find out who she is and what she’s been up to lately. If you know the person’s street address, you can spy on her house with Google Earth, and inspect the state of her roof and how she keeps her garden. A slight tilt of camera angle, and you’d be able to see into her sock drawer and monitor the bottles in her liquor cabinet.
- Under surveillance
- An Undifferentiated Stream of Events
- [Proposal] Surveillance Pay-Off Scheme
- Self-Surveillance
- The Home Alone Approach to Surveillance
- Prev: Constructs Will Not Save You
- Next: My Monogamous Heart
September 19th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Towards cradle to grave surveillance, rolled out to you by way of centrally networked products which compile all your data into one government/corporate controlled databank which can and will be used against you in a court of law:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/09/17/dig...emories.ap/index.html?eref=rss_latest
I am not saying “fight it” so much as I am saying there is another better way. Master yourself first, and these problems fall away.
http://timboucher.tumblr.com/post/12328447
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/05/12/your-data-body-and-you/
September 19th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
This is just amazing: http://screencast.com/t/3RqauQPfuMl
You are constantly being observed, positioned and managed.
September 19th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
but what is being surveilled, you or your doppelganger? i think it was the critical art ensemble who pointed out that when the surveillance state monitors you based on your personal data stream, they’re monitoring a false image of you….
September 19th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Yeah, exactly!
That’s a major part of what I was going for with this: only present to “them” the image of yourself which you want to be seen.
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2007...ces-irresistably-attacking-emptiness/
September 19th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
I don’t have the link but several weeks ago I read an article describing how technology made the life of a wife batterer easier. Now they can truly verify who their victim has been talking to, the directions they’ve looked up and basically all of the resources they know how to reach out to for help. My impression was that the control was more complete with increasing levels of education, not less.
September 20th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Yeah I get what you’re saying, but that is such a leading and chosen example. There are just as many “regular” people who could have been the subject of such a study. They just chose that person for drama
Would have been interesting to do a counter-”study” and show how the life of the wife being battered was also made easier by technology.
The problem with stuff like this is always the same: it transmits the hidden takeaway message: *Technology makes life easier* which may or may not be true, but doesn’t address (1) what life really is all about, (2) why you’d want it to be easier, or (3) what you’re really shooting for here when you talk about this: self-mastery. Clearly a wife-beater is not self-mastered and is controlled by the worst kinds of drives - with or without technology (which itself is irrelevant to this man’s problems)
September 20th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
It’s like an arms race. You can donate your old cell phones to womens shelters and they keep the phone on some sort of 911 Only setting and if you need a shelter you can look it up on the internet. They’re hard to find otherwise. It’s also a good source for psychological profiles that you don’t have to wade through a 500 page book to find. My impression was that they wrote the article as an antidote to the assumption that technology would make this kind of thing much more difficult.
Currently you’re being stalked by computer programs but it’s impersonal so you’re not viewing it this way. The stalking is making you smarter and stronger so some part of you is ok with it and is rolling with the punches. Part of your identity is being devalued/rewritten/erased by a computer and that’s sort of the future we all share. It’s ok though. It’s like saying “That street is a little dangerous at night, take another route or go with a friend.”.