Cyberpunk Review » Camerahead Project has its “Eyes” on surveillance

August 28, 2008

Camerahead Project has its “Eyes” on surveillance

Sources: ACLU (WA Chapter), The Camerahead Project site

SMILE! You're on someone's database!

SMILE! You’re on someone’s database!

In a time and place very similar to the here and now, a new surveillance agency has been created to ensure our perceived safety through mass observation. This easily deployed agency has broken the divide between technology and the humans who monitor it. Their mission is to observe and record the public with an unprecedented efficiency.

The Camerahead Project is presented through the eyes of 10 Camerahead agents, and the images they record. The project not only raises the questions of who is watching who, and who is watching the watchers, but also asks questions of why we are being watched at all.

One of the biggest challenges facing us today is how we can protect our personal rights of basic privacy. We are constantly being tracked, monitored, and recorded by any number of government institutions and corporations at any given time. As the use of technology increases the data about our daily habits and even visual images of who we are becomes more and more accessible by more and more people. We have to keep setting limits to protect our personal liberties before it becomes too late, if it hasn’t already.

 

Ever get the feeling you’re being watched? It seems not a day goes by where we are reminded that we are living under a microscope on a prison planet, where the eyes of an insane government and their corrupt corporate masters watch us closely, monitoring and cataloging our every action to make certain we are not a threat to their existence… or profits.

As a protest to Seattle’s recent installation of “security” cameras in some parks, a public art project called “The Camerahead Project” was started by Paul Strong Jr. Its mission: To parody the security-surveillance police-state by deploying their own camera-headed agents, “a highly trained elite group of cybernetically enhanced observers using the latest and greatest in modern surveillance technology. Each Camerahead agent has been hand selected and specially modified for their unique ability to monitor the public with a complete disregard for anyone’s personal privacy.”

Check the photos from the ACLU, or watch this video from SeattleIAM:

“My favorite tunes? Well, there’s ‘I Am A Camera’ by The Buggles, ‘Eye In The Sky’ by the Parsons Project, … Rockwell’s ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’…

 

Camerahead agents wanted. The Project is looking for agents to help the cause in three different ways: Donate some $ to the Project, support your local ACLU chapter (or national equivalent for those outside the UPSA), or by ordering the uber-high tech camerahead system when it becomes available for your own surveillance, although you may be able to glean enough from the Project’s site to construct your own cameraheads.

Camerahead is watching

“What are you lookin’ at?”

Comments

September 2, 2008

Hugo said:

I think we’re all just paranoid. Safety cameras help us do two things: protect the innocent from incidents of violence, murder, rape and theft and help us identify the perpatrators when these acts occur.

Admittedly you can have your telephone calls monitored, your account information stolen or your activities tracked but remember…we could do all this 50 years ago. People have stayed the same, the technology has simply evolved.

Ak!mbo said:

How exactly do surveilance cameras protect us from muggers, murderers and rapists?

September 11, 2008

Thor said:

You can help prove that it happened and prove that it was that person how many murders and rapists go free because of no proof but this is more than enough proof visual proof remember it is in public PUBLIC when you walk out side and go to a PUBLIC park your in PUBLIC challenged people your rights are different in public it keeps crime off the streets and promotes safety.

Thor said:

sorry one more time PUBLIC

October 3, 2008

LuSiD said:

yeah, in public…but still it’s invading your privacy. if a private person makes a photograph of you or films you without your permission (in public), you have the right to delete that data.
i don’t have anything against cameras in government buildings or police stations or shopping malls, but being watched in the open makes me really feel like being in 1984…maybe they’ll someday add some speakers reminding you of behaving like “a good citizen” or so

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