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The Entertainment Surveillance Complex
by Sky Tallone
To prevent crime, Oakland (its City Hall shown here) is playing with fire—Total Citizen Surveillance. photo: S. TalloneTHERE'S A STUNNING DOCUMENTARY,
“We Live in Public” about Josh Harris, one of the original “dot com kids” from the '90s.
It concerned his social experiment to see what the Internet and social networking might ultimately mean for our privacy and sanity. To do this, he sequestered over one hundred volunteers in an underground bunker, in a building in downtown Manhattan.
Given their own "sleeping pods," and free food, they were filmed constantly by multiple cameras, with Harris retaining the rights to all imagery. And there were cameras absolutely everywhere, including toilets and showers.
Indeed, every person’s pod had a camera looking in on it, and a monitor on which they could watch any other camera. Everyone was watching everyone else.
After just a week or two, people no longer cared about their privacy and—surprise, surprise—Harris started developing a god complex, viewing these people as his puppets.
For the most part, everyone seemed to love the attention and were willing to go to humiliating extremes so more people would tune into their channel. Perhaps surveiling each other is just part of human nature.
But by the end of the month, however, they started unraveling. They were losing their identities, and unable to get close to anyone because everyone was so concerned about how they were being viewed by the public.
With the direction Facebook and reality television have taken over the last few years, it seems Harris is an avatar ("We Live in Public" is from 2009). With uncanny accuracy, his experiment foreshadows this strange reality we’re living in today.
Everyone wants to be a celebrity, everyone has a blog, and everyone gladly exposes all their personal information on the Internet. Meanwhile, it’s no secret that the federal government loves how convenient social networks are for surveillance.
For entertainment, people check on other people via Facebook or the Kardashians on YouTube. Are entertainment and surveillance becoming the same thing?
Could this be why most people don’t seem too concerned when whistleblowers like Edward Snowden tell them their privacy rights are being violated?
The future of mass surveillance depicted in Orwell's "1984" (1949) and Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" (1953) has become more of a reality over the past few years as a number of cities, including LA and New York, have been subjected to mass surveillance programs. It was only a matter of time before it reached the Bay Area.
The Oakland City Council meeting to discuss the new surveillance, replete with lots of yelling, placards—including one in neon—and defensive caveats. photo: S. TalloneBut here a whole new name and excuse was provided for why the entire city of Oakland and environs needed a completely integrated 24/7 surveillance hub: DAC, or Domain Awareness Center.
What a lovely and vague title, suggesting a yoga retreat. Oakland officials told the public it was to help deal with the violent crime problem—an easy pill to swallow for most people who watch the news.
But the disingenuousness starts at the top. If the DAC is supposed to protect the port of Oakland, why does it need to be city-wide?
Aside from the fact that the people’s tax dollars will be going towards this program instead of what Oakland really needs, like better education and more jobs, there are a number of troubling questions about the DAC, especially considering the liberal Mayor Jean Quan is supposedly in charge.
When asked at a city council meeting how much this program would cost to run per year, a council member answered, “That depends on the return on investment.” Hunh?
At several meetings since, concerned Oakland citizens have asked, “Where will this return on investment come from?” So far, an upbeat and dumbfounded “I don’t know” is the only answer we’ve gotten.
Since every other similar surveillance hub in the country has made its money on seized assets, we can safely assume that this return in investment will be in the form of money and property taken from the people of Oakland.
Isn’t city council supposed to represent the people of Oakland? Although hundreds of Oaklanders have poured into the meetings, begging for this program to be killed in its tracks, city council has moved ahead, acting like overbearing parents who think they know what’s best for their helpless children.
The poster which called citizens to Oakland City Council meeting to discuss the new measures. Illo: courtesy Oakland PrivacyWhy wasn’t this issue put up to a vote? Who decided we need cameras, facial recognition software, license plate readers and a centralized surveillance hub to be watching our every move?
The federal government, evidently, given this absurd if word-for-word transcription from a May 22nd city council meeting:
“Brian Geiser addressed the committee noting that although the City and Port are concerned about losing specific grant funding for this project due to federal funding guidelines, the federal government is very interested in localities building these systems so there will always be money available.”
Holy fuck!! This is just one of a number of blatantly scary statements made both in the meetings and in the hilariously vague “privacy policy” they have been drafting for the DAC. Not surprisingly, they didn’t have that privacy policy finished before voting on the next stage of the center.
That conversation went like this:
People of Oakland: “We don’t think this should be voted on until the privacy concerns are addressed.”
City Council: “They will be addressed in the privacy policy.”
People of Oakland: “When will the privacy policy be finished?”
City Council: “...After the vote.”
(It’s important to mention that not all of the city council members are for the DAC. A few like Rebecca Kaplan have sided with the people.)
The most concerning unanswered question, however, is who will have access to the information collected by the DAC. The privacy policy, in its own cryptic way, tries to offer some comfort with the claim this information can’t be accessed by just anyone and that it will only be used in the event of an actual crime or emergency.
However, that sneaky Patriot Act (sections 215 and 216) allows the government to request all information on just about whomever they want, wherever they want, and nobody is even allowed to know.
So if the federal government was requesting information about your day-to-day activities from the DAC, you couldn’t even find out about it. When City Council was asked how these privacy guarantees are effected by the Patriot Act, we got another toothy smile, followed by an “I don’t know.”
The privacy policy also offers guarantees like, “There is no facial or gait recognition software installed and/or planned for Phase 2” and “No Social Media feed is either currently linked to DAC or planned for Phase 2.”
However, when we ask about what happens in Phase 3—you guessed it—another “I don’t know,” following a pattern at the similar surveillance hubs in the country.
Once the surveillance was in place, it was only a matter of time before it oozed its way into everything until “predictive policing” and monitoring of completely innocent people became a norm. How are we supposed to believe that once the DAC is in place, they won’t overstep these boundaries in future phases like other surveillance centers have?
Ironically, the Obama administration has persecuted more whistle blowers than any other in American history. With people like Snowden coming forth with information about data being collected from our phones and computers without our permission, how are we supposed to trust they will keep private data collected by the DAC?
You may be thinking to yourself, “So what? Who cares? It’s for our own protection, and I have nothing to hide.” I wonder how many people, who didn’t think they had anything to hide, were burned as witches in Salem or persecuted as communists in the '50s.
You never know what could be used against you until it’s too late. With the mass amounts of information available on everyone via social networks and surveillance, it wouldn’t be too hard to arrange certain pieces on information in a way that could make just about anyone look like a terrorist.
I obviously have a strong anti-DAC opinion, but do your own research. Take the time to look into both sides of the argument and draw your own conclusion, and if you don’t like what you find out, do something about it (go here).
In my opinion, the only thing that can stop this monster is enough people actually giving a shit and remembering their Benjamin Franklin: “He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.”
Although it seems like it might be time to do what Josh Harris does, at the end of "We Live in Public”, flee the urban setting, but we interested in media, culture and communications can't go native so easily.
Perhaps we should just embrace the information flood, and as Edward Snowden and Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning proved, make sure it includes enough dirty laundry so that we can blackmail the bad actors into better performances.
Sky Tallone is a writer, director, filmmaker and blogger, and can be reached .
Posted on Jun 23, 2014 - 06:28 PM
by Sky Tallone
To prevent crime, Oakland (its City Hall shown here) is playing with fire—Total Citizen Surveillance. photo: S. Tallone“We Live in Public” about Josh Harris, one of the original “dot com kids” from the '90s.
It concerned his social experiment to see what the Internet and social networking might ultimately mean for our privacy and sanity. To do this, he sequestered over one hundred volunteers in an underground bunker, in a building in downtown Manhattan.
Given their own "sleeping pods," and free food, they were filmed constantly by multiple cameras, with Harris retaining the rights to all imagery. And there were cameras absolutely everywhere, including toilets and showers.
Indeed, every person’s pod had a camera looking in on it, and a monitor on which they could watch any other camera. Everyone was watching everyone else.
After just a week or two, people no longer cared about their privacy and—surprise, surprise—Harris started developing a god complex, viewing these people as his puppets.
For the most part, everyone seemed to love the attention and were willing to go to humiliating extremes so more people would tune into their channel. Perhaps surveiling each other is just part of human nature.
But by the end of the month, however, they started unraveling. They were losing their identities, and unable to get close to anyone because everyone was so concerned about how they were being viewed by the public.
With the direction Facebook and reality television have taken over the last few years, it seems Harris is an avatar ("We Live in Public" is from 2009). With uncanny accuracy, his experiment foreshadows this strange reality we’re living in today.
Everyone wants to be a celebrity, everyone has a blog, and everyone gladly exposes all their personal information on the Internet. Meanwhile, it’s no secret that the federal government loves how convenient social networks are for surveillance.
For entertainment, people check on other people via Facebook or the Kardashians on YouTube. Are entertainment and surveillance becoming the same thing?
Could this be why most people don’t seem too concerned when whistleblowers like Edward Snowden tell them their privacy rights are being violated?
The future of mass surveillance depicted in Orwell's "1984" (1949) and Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" (1953) has become more of a reality over the past few years as a number of cities, including LA and New York, have been subjected to mass surveillance programs. It was only a matter of time before it reached the Bay Area.
The Oakland City Council meeting to discuss the new surveillance, replete with lots of yelling, placards—including one in neon—and defensive caveats. photo: S. TalloneWhat a lovely and vague title, suggesting a yoga retreat. Oakland officials told the public it was to help deal with the violent crime problem—an easy pill to swallow for most people who watch the news.
But the disingenuousness starts at the top. If the DAC is supposed to protect the port of Oakland, why does it need to be city-wide?
Aside from the fact that the people’s tax dollars will be going towards this program instead of what Oakland really needs, like better education and more jobs, there are a number of troubling questions about the DAC, especially considering the liberal Mayor Jean Quan is supposedly in charge.
When asked at a city council meeting how much this program would cost to run per year, a council member answered, “That depends on the return on investment.” Hunh?
At several meetings since, concerned Oakland citizens have asked, “Where will this return on investment come from?” So far, an upbeat and dumbfounded “I don’t know” is the only answer we’ve gotten.
Since every other similar surveillance hub in the country has made its money on seized assets, we can safely assume that this return in investment will be in the form of money and property taken from the people of Oakland.
Isn’t city council supposed to represent the people of Oakland? Although hundreds of Oaklanders have poured into the meetings, begging for this program to be killed in its tracks, city council has moved ahead, acting like overbearing parents who think they know what’s best for their helpless children.
The poster which called citizens to Oakland City Council meeting to discuss the new measures. Illo: courtesy Oakland PrivacyThe federal government, evidently, given this absurd if word-for-word transcription from a May 22nd city council meeting:
“Brian Geiser addressed the committee noting that although the City and Port are concerned about losing specific grant funding for this project due to federal funding guidelines, the federal government is very interested in localities building these systems so there will always be money available.”
Holy fuck!! This is just one of a number of blatantly scary statements made both in the meetings and in the hilariously vague “privacy policy” they have been drafting for the DAC. Not surprisingly, they didn’t have that privacy policy finished before voting on the next stage of the center.
That conversation went like this:
People of Oakland: “We don’t think this should be voted on until the privacy concerns are addressed.”
City Council: “They will be addressed in the privacy policy.”
People of Oakland: “When will the privacy policy be finished?”
City Council: “...After the vote.”
(It’s important to mention that not all of the city council members are for the DAC. A few like Rebecca Kaplan have sided with the people.)
The most concerning unanswered question, however, is who will have access to the information collected by the DAC. The privacy policy, in its own cryptic way, tries to offer some comfort with the claim this information can’t be accessed by just anyone and that it will only be used in the event of an actual crime or emergency.
However, that sneaky Patriot Act (sections 215 and 216) allows the government to request all information on just about whomever they want, wherever they want, and nobody is even allowed to know.
So if the federal government was requesting information about your day-to-day activities from the DAC, you couldn’t even find out about it. When City Council was asked how these privacy guarantees are effected by the Patriot Act, we got another toothy smile, followed by an “I don’t know.”
The privacy policy also offers guarantees like, “There is no facial or gait recognition software installed and/or planned for Phase 2” and “No Social Media feed is either currently linked to DAC or planned for Phase 2.”
However, when we ask about what happens in Phase 3—you guessed it—another “I don’t know,” following a pattern at the similar surveillance hubs in the country.
Once the surveillance was in place, it was only a matter of time before it oozed its way into everything until “predictive policing” and monitoring of completely innocent people became a norm. How are we supposed to believe that once the DAC is in place, they won’t overstep these boundaries in future phases like other surveillance centers have?
Ironically, the Obama administration has persecuted more whistle blowers than any other in American history. With people like Snowden coming forth with information about data being collected from our phones and computers without our permission, how are we supposed to trust they will keep private data collected by the DAC?
You may be thinking to yourself, “So what? Who cares? It’s for our own protection, and I have nothing to hide.” I wonder how many people, who didn’t think they had anything to hide, were burned as witches in Salem or persecuted as communists in the '50s.
You never know what could be used against you until it’s too late. With the mass amounts of information available on everyone via social networks and surveillance, it wouldn’t be too hard to arrange certain pieces on information in a way that could make just about anyone look like a terrorist.
I obviously have a strong anti-DAC opinion, but do your own research. Take the time to look into both sides of the argument and draw your own conclusion, and if you don’t like what you find out, do something about it (go here).
In my opinion, the only thing that can stop this monster is enough people actually giving a shit and remembering their Benjamin Franklin: “He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.”
Although it seems like it might be time to do what Josh Harris does, at the end of "We Live in Public”, flee the urban setting, but we interested in media, culture and communications can't go native so easily.
Perhaps we should just embrace the information flood, and as Edward Snowden and Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning proved, make sure it includes enough dirty laundry so that we can blackmail the bad actors into better performances.
Sky Tallone is a writer, director, filmmaker and blogger, and can be reached .
Posted on Jun 23, 2014 - 06:28 PM
