IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2014 - 58
Code for the Protection of Personal Information following a consensus process with strong industry
involvement. In part reflecting the
subsequent lack of voluntary adoption, the Model Code's 10 principles of fair information practice
were incorporated verbatim in the
Personal Information Protection
and Electronics Documents Act
(PIPEDA), the federal privacy legislation that has regulated personal
information handling in commercial activities since 2000.
Even with the force of law, compliance is weak. Canada's Privacy
Commissioners are charged with
enforcing the law, but because it follows a complaint-based model, it
requires citizens to file a formal complaint against specific alleged violators, which involves a protracted
process that few people know about
and even fewer are willing to pursue
except in exceptional cases. The federal Privacy Commissioner's office
can conduct independent audits, but
regulatory bodies, and an independent media for correcting the
shortcomings of contemporary governance, in the area of video surveillance, these conventional mechanisms are clearly inadequate in the
task of protecting the public interest.
Indeed, this is recognized as a widespread characteristic of the prevailing neoliberal political/economic
order [13]. One form of increasingly
popular response to this perceived
crisis of liberal democratic governance that takes advantage of the
growing ubiquity of digital "social"
media, is citizens individually and in
ad hoc networks, taking on the tasks
of holding powerful organizations to
account [1].
Given the importance of surveillance in the exercise of power,
an appealing accountability tactic
is that of "counter-surveillance,"
which Gary Marx characterizes as
a form of "surveillance neutralization" involving "role reversal as
subjects apply the tactics to agents
Little is done to provide sustained
and systematic coverage of
privacy threats and remedies.
its resources are stretched thin and it
is generally regarded as "toothless."
It can't write binding orders nor
impose fines. Even when companies
are found at fault, they can appeal to
the courts and in any case there are no
financial penalties. The news media,
and investigative journalism in particular, are also regarded as playing
an important role in informing citizens and holding powerful institution accountable. However, beyond
frequent reporting of data breaches
and other scandals du jour, little is
done to provide sustained and systematic coverage of privacy threats
and remedies.
taking advantage of the double
edged potential of tools" [17].
However, this form of surveillance
often eschews the covert aspects
of conventional surveillance that
are seen as especially problematic.
In conducting their surveillance
openly and transparently "...counter-surveillance tacticians seek to
disrupt...trends in the privatization, sanitation, and elimination of
that which is 'public' " [18].
As we will see next, countersurveillance often begins with the
basic act of documenting surveillance operations, thereby drawing
attention to their presence.
Documenting (Non)
Compliance
Other Examples of Public
Accountability Tools
While few argue for abandoning
the legal apparatus, arms-length
Counter-surveillance tactics such
as reversing the photographic gaze,
58
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performance art, and installation
mapping have been used by artists, activists, and academics to
publicly "out" or reveal video surveillance for a number of years.
For his Shooting Back video project, Steve Mann questioned frontline staff about the surveillance
practices of their workplace, and
then confronted them with his own
video camera [16]. The Surveillance Camera Players in New York
City, founded in 1996, stage public
performances directed at surveillance cameras [23]. These performances acknowledge and highlight
the security apparatus and often
engender a very public and physical intervention from security personnel [18]. Also in New York, the
Institute for Applied Autonomy's
iSee project is a web-based application, which allows users to map out
a "path of least surveillance" [11]
based on a database of known surveillance cameras in Manhattan.
Another effort to publicize the
presence of surveillance cameras
occurred in Canada, prior to the 2010
Vancouver Olympics. The Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN)
and Simon Fraser university developed, with a team of volunteers, a
map indicating the location of 1500
surveillance cameras in the city's
downtown area [26].
More recently, the proliferation of
mobile-computing devices and small
personal cameras has made crowdsourcing a viable approach to onthe-spot counter-surveillance, where
members of the public are empowered and encouraged to report on
events and issues that matter to them
as they happen. Some current counter-surveillance resources include
toolkits for documenting environmental concerns [21], monitoring
police behavior [19], and reporting
on the state of public infrastructure
[22]. ushahidi, which emerged as a
tool to track post-election violence
in Kenya in 2008, has evolved into
a platform which allows individuals
and organizations to create their own
crowd-sourcing applications, with
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE
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