Begin forwarded message:
From: d f tweney <dylan@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: August 4, 2006 2:39:00 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] When suburban moms embrace the surveillance society
Reply-To: dylan@xxxxxxxxxx
"Sheepdom" hardly seems apt -- what sheep polices the other sheep,
after all? That's the dog's job, and in this case the dog wasn't
doing it.
This is an inevitable result of ubiquitous surveillance. As YouTube
proves, we are far more adept at watching each other than the
government could possibly be. In the future, it's not "Big Brother"
that will be watching us, but millions of Little Brothers.
Maybe that's a little creepy. On the other hand it can work both
ways. And if the surveillance extends to the halls of government
(and those who work in government) then we will have an
unprecedented level of transparency into the workings of our
democracy. We've already got C-SPAN -- what we need now are a
hundred thousand webcams all over Washington. Especially in our
representatives' offices.
--
Dylan Tweney writer/editor
dylan@xxxxxxxxxx http://dylan.tweney.com
David Farber wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
From: Greg Brooks <gregb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: August 4, 2006 1:36:42 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: When suburban moms embrace the surveillance society
Reply-To: gregb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dave, for IP if you wish.
There's an interesting piece in the Riverside (CA) Press-Enterprise
[1] about
a woman who got her house toilet papered and decided to hunt down the
culprits. She didn't want to involve the police, reasoning that
they had
better things to do, so she took the following steps:
* She canvassed local stores to see which one had a run on toilet
paper.
* She then got the manager of the store to show her surveillance
videos,
allowing her to see the personalized letterman's jacket of one of the
purchasers, as well as the license plate of the vehicle they got
into.
* Finally, she used a high school yearbook (matched to the school
based on
the letterman's jacket) and online databases to get the names,
phone numbers
and addresses of all the teens spotted in the store tapes.
To me, this is a bit more than a "talker" feature. One takeaway,
IMHO, is
that we're pretty far down the road to sheepdom when average
citizens start
thinking "well, everything's monitored all the time anyway - let's
see if I
can make use of that."
Warm Regards,
Greg Brooks
West Third Group
[1] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/toilet_paper_caper
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as dft@xxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/
interesting-people/
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as bdaul@xxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-
people/