{"id":613,"date":"2013-07-10T10:39:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-10T14:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/?p=613"},"modified":"2013-07-10T10:39:24","modified_gmt":"2013-07-10T14:39:24","slug":"surveillance-camera-man-draws-ire-provokes-questions-about-recording-in-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/2013\/07\/10\/surveillance-camera-man-draws-ire-provokes-questions-about-recording-in-public\/","title":{"rendered":"“Surveillance Camera Man” Draws Ire, Provokes Questions About Recording in Public"},"content":{"rendered":"
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David Berkowitz\/Flickr, CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Imagine walking down the street. Above, you see a surveillance camera mounted on a pole. Would you worry? What if a person walked over and filmed you, no questions asked?<\/p>\n

An anonymous man in his late 20s has\u00a0posted<\/a>\u00a0five \u201cSurveillance Camera Man\u201d videos in which he films people on\u00a0Seattle\u00a0streets<\/a> and inside cars, stores, and classrooms, to the ire of those on camera. The videos raise questions about expectations of privacy in an age where institutions and individuals can easily and legally record others. Removal of the videos on various sites also highlights free speech and copyright concerns.<\/p>\n

The cameraman and a friend began filming others as a social experiment, but he went solo after his friend couldn\u2019t keep a straight face, according to an email interview<\/a> posted on the blog Photography Is Not a Crime<\/em>. His first video<\/a> included forays into classrooms at the University of Washington. He posted the video on Vimeo, but the site took it down after a complaint from the university, the cameraman said. He expressed nonchalance at people calling the police on him, saying he doesn\u2019t care about the legality of his actions. (He appears to care about copyright, as video embeds on GeekWire<\/a>, BoingBoing<\/a>, and Laughing Squid<\/a> are\u00a0unavailable\u00a0due to copyright claims.)<\/p>\n

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Brett Farmiloe\/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

When people in the videos asked what he was doing, the cameraman often remained quiet or said, \u201cI’m just taking a video.\u201d When they asked why, he occasionally responded, \u201cWhy not?\u201d His casual tone and terse responses quickly frustrated and angered people, some of whom hurled expletives or tried to cover the camera. Several threatened to call the police; the cameraman left only when some began dialing. He also left if people became aggressive, often telling them to calm down as he backed away.<\/p>\n

Some articulated their feelings without resorting to profanity. \u201cI may be in a public space, but I feel threatened by you,\u201d said<\/a> one man wearing what resembled a guard or law enforcement uniform. And while the cameraman appeared to do nothing more than hold the camera and occasionally speak, GeekWire reported<\/a> that YouTube took down one video based on a policy that prohibits material meant to \u201charass, threaten, or bully.\u201d YouTube appeared to reverse the decision, as the video is now accessible<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Gavin Steward\/Flickr, CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Some people mentioned they did not consent to the taping. \u201cYou didn\u2019t ask me if you could take a picture of me sir,\u201d one woman said<\/a>. \u201cYou still have me on camera, and that\u2019s not OK with me. That\u2019s an invasion of my privacy and my time.\u201d The cameraman occasionally referenced the prevalence of surveillance cameras, but he didn\u2019t belabor the point, which was, \u201cblurred by the fact that he sometimes invades his subjects’ personal space, making it unclear whether the discomfort they exhibit comes from having a person standing right by them, or whether it’s the camera they object to,\u201d wrote<\/a> Cory Doctorow.<\/p>\n

The cameraman\u2019s actions appear to be legal. People can typically record in public areas such as sidewalks and parks without consent since no general expectation of privacy exists in public, according to the Digital Media Law Project<\/a>. The same usually holds for recording activity that occurs on private property but can be observed from public space. Washington’s Supreme Court has ruled<\/a> that someone can visibly record conversations in public that others can hear.<\/p>\n

While the law may not protect people from recordings in public, people clearly distinguish between who\u2019s doing the recording. Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence, who has a bionic eye with a camera, told<\/a> Reuters in 2009, \u201cIn Toronto there are 12,000 cameras. But the strange thing I discovered was that people don’t care about the surveillance cameras, they were more concerned about me and my secret camera eye because they feel that is a worse invasion of their privacy.”<\/p>\n

This comment from Spence, who calls himself the Eyeborg<\/a>, brings to mind Google Glass, which has already captured an arrest<\/a> on camera. But since Glass doesn\u2019t explicitly alert<\/a> people when it shoots video, perhaps Surveillance Camera Man is inciting a much-needed conversation by forcing people to face the uncomfortable feeling they\u2019re being recorded.<\/p>\n

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Ted Eytan\/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Videos of a man filming people in public draw the ire of those on camera but raise questions about expectations of privacy in an age where institutions and individuals can easily and legally record others. Removal of the videos on various sites also highlights free speech and copyright concerns. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5507,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3619,1860],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-surveillance","category-united-states"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4L9BV-9T","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":891,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions\/891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}