What can one do about all the surveillance of public places? Watch the watchers. Or make sure that they're not bored.
[...] Today's experienced surveiller is anything but helpless. In the USA, thousands of public places are surveilled by webcams. The Data Privacy Lab at Carnegie-Mellon University has created a databank of them at SOS Camera Watch. The NYC Surveillance Camera Project has assembled a disturbingly long list of surveillance cameras. On this website there are others found by the Surveillance Camera Players. This group, founded by Bill Brown, performs in front of surveillance cameras short plays, such as Orwell's 1984 and Beckett's Waiting for Godot -- in complete silence, because the cameras aren't equipped to pick up sound. In the case of the Beckett, the silence is absolutely ironic. Little Brother shows Big Brother what ingenuity and elegance mean [...]
(Written by Gabriel Perlenstein, who credits Video Activism as his source of information. Published in the 19 November 2003 issue of Die Stuttgarter Zeitung, and translated from the German by Bill Brown.)
Contact the NY Surveillance Camera Players
By e-mail SCP@notbored.org
By snail mail: SCP c/o NOT BORED! POB 1115, Stuyvesant Station, New York City 10009-9998