London - Spy Capital of the World

Westminster's CCTV cameras are seen as evidence of UK's Surveillance society says the Guardian.

Here are a few snippets from article:

1. The cameras rotate 360 degrees, 365 days a year.
2. This provides a hi-tech version of the Panopticon. This was originally conceived by Jeremy Bentham as a form of surveillance for prisoners in the 18th century. The theory behind this was that if prisoners knew they could be caught doing something wrong at any time, they would have to always maintain correct behavior, as they can never know when they are being monitored.
3. 6000 officials from 30 countries have come to learn lessons from the centre - Brazil, US, China, South Africa, Japan and Mexico among them.
4. behind code-protected entrance reached through tunnels deep in the underground beneath Picadilly Circus are 49 CCTV monitors appear with snippets of all of London Life.

Read full article here, and follow the debate on the erosion of civil liberties here. Read the response to the Omand report about intellifence gathering here, also today's Guardian.

Gadgets which collect information

Surveillance

Surveillance, Sousveillance, self-surveillance. All three types of watchdog behaviour are at an all time high. This is to be expected with the ever-increasing proliferation of surveillance type technologies.

If citizen journalism is really just the cutting out of the middle man, then surveillance technologies are exactly the tool to do the cutting. Mapping, CCTV, and our very own mobile phones are tools with which we are able to gather information and share it with others without a journalist or reporter to collate and synthesize this information. Surveillance technologies are also used to simply gather information in its most traditional and army-related sense, such as these RSI technologies in this Washington Post article.

"ISR" has become the new silver bullet in counterinsurgency. It stands for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, but it really means a series of new sensors and other electronic collection and analytic gadgets. It also includes the manned and unmanned airborne platforms from which they primarily operate.

Last July, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates approved shifting more than $1 billion to ISR programs from other fiscal 2008 Pentagon budget accounts. In detailing the reprogramming request to congressional committees, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England wrote, "These funds are being made available for ISR based on the view of the Secretary of Defense that the ISR effort is a higher priority and needs to be addressed at this time."

Surveillance technologies are so deeply ingrained in the technology of everyday life that we self-surveill to share it with friends - see this article on Fitbit, a company which has created surveillance technology in the form of a pedometer.

"The simple pedometer has been given a makeover. Fitbit, a startup based in San Francisco, has built a small, unobtrusive sensor that tracks a person's movement 24 hours a day to produce a record of her steps taken, her calories burned, and even the quality of her sleep. Data is wirelessly uploaded to the web so that users can monitor their activity and compare it with that of their friends.

James Park, cofounder of Fitbit, says that one of the main goals was to make the sensor so small that it will go unnoticed no matter what a person is wearing. The device can be put in a pocket, attached discretely to a bra, or slipped into a special wristband during sleep. It is meant to be worn 24-7, and each device can run for 10 days on a single battery charge. Park demonstrated the Fitbit device in San Francisco on Tuesday at the Techcrunch50 conference, a popular launch pad for new technology companies.

Self-surveillance in the form of wirelessly uploading your activity is not citizen journalism, and neither is more traditional defense surveillance in the form of ISR technologies. However, particularly with fitbit, it is the usability of complicated surveillance technology for everyday purposes that is particularly interesting. In the same way that surveillance has moved from 50 years ago cameras recording movements were used only in military or high security areas to everyday 24/7 CCTV use, these just-for-fun surveillance technologies such as fitbit indicate just how ingrained surveillance and self-surveillance have become into everyday life.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11424_3-10002829-90.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=News.comDailyPodcast

Talking about LAPD, the Zapruder film and the developments of citizen journalism to fly past the gatekeepers.

YouTube as a platform for justice.

Distributed acts of journalism and journalistic acts of distribution

He goes on a bit, but its very interesting and relevant points about the transfer of power through networked distribution and the swift swing of power from gatekeepers - i.e. mainstream media - print and television editors, producers, programmers, writers - to the people who publish information directly onto a website as a part of an overall conversation being had.

Citizen film-making

Spike Lee and Nokia have teamed up to create a film using User Generated Content produced by Nokia users on their cell phones. The project is fascinating - but note that Citizen Journalism is not mentioned once. The same technologies which allow for citizen journalism are also allowing for 21st century (or is that post-post modern) film -making. This is trend developing as we saw with Cloverfield. On this project, Spike says he likes working with people who have talent but are not in film school, a similarity with 'Citizen Journalists' who have talent but are not classically trained journalists.

Lights. Camera. Cellphone Action.

By LAURA M. HOLSON

Published: April 24, 2008

Who says cellphones are good only for talking? Today they are bringing together two unlikely brand names: Nokia and Spike Lee.

Spike Lee will assess the video, music, photos and text material created by consumers with their cellphones, then help assemble the various snippets into a three-part film.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

The director is teaming up with Nokia to make a film using videos created with cellphones.

Mr. Lee, the director, is teaming up with Nokia, the cellphone maker, to direct a short film comprising YouTube-style videos created by teenagers and adults using their mobile phones.

By hiring Mr. Lee for the project, Nokia is seeking to combine the populist appeal of user-generated content with the power of a famous director’s pedigree. The film will have three acts, each three to five minutes long, with the theme loosely based on the concept of humanity.

“I’m interested because it’s a great collaborative effort,” Mr. Lee said. “Within five years, new movies will be made with devices like these.”

He added: “I like working with people who have talent but aren’t in film school.”

The project is an experiment for Mr. Lee, but it is also a way for Nokia to promote its wares. Cellphone companies are all trying to position their products not just as devices for talking, but as multimedia devices that can play music, search the Web and capture video.

Many companies are also preparing for a new wave of mobile entertainment, as social networking on sites like MySpace and Facebook migrates from the Web to cellphones.

Nokia in particular is trying to turn itself into an entertainment-friendly company, much the way Steven P. Jobs has changed Apple’s image with the iPod and iPhone.

Nokia, based in Finland, said it surveyed 9,000 consumers last year and concluded that by 2012 one out of every four consumers will create, edit or share entertainment with friends, instead of getting it from traditional media outlets like television or movie studios.

And that, Nokia executives said, led them to seek out a movie director willing to dabble in mobile video.

“This is not a marketing gimmick,” said Craig Coffey, Nokia’s vice president for North American marketing and a former PepsiCo executive. “The notion of social networking and entertainment is real.”

There have been several other efforts in the realm of films that were shot with or meant to be viewed on phones. Most have involved independent filmmakers or young Steven Spielbergs in training. In 2006 Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute announced a partnership with the largest wireless association in Europe to sponsor five short films for mobile viewers. They were created by, among others, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who directed the Academy Award winner “Little Miss Sunshine.”

Early last year, Paris held its own mobile film festival for novice filmmakers, sponsored by the French mobile operator SFR. Similar festivals have been held in Hong Kong and Yokohama, Japan.

John Stratton, the chief marketing officer of Verizon Communications who works closely with media companies to offer content to customers, said he did not expect films shot on phones to become their own genre. “But the notion of shared media is powerful,” he said.

That is one reason Nokia chose to exploit the social networking possibilities of mobile phones. Contributors can upload material created with their phones — video, music, photos and text — to www.nokiaproductions.com for review by Mr. Lee and assistant directors who will help revise entries. Mr. Coffey said other site visitors will be able to peruse these and combine them with their own material to make something new.

Mr. Lee, who in recent years directed “Inside Man” and the documentary series “When the Levees Broke,” conceded that he will be in unfamiliar technological terrain.

“Me, I’m personally a dinosaur,” he said. “My children have to help me turn on the television.”

During an interview Mr. Lee corrected himself twice, remembering that he was supposed to call the cellphone a “mobile device.”

Mr. Lee said he would assess the submissions to the site and even write a blog giving young filmmakers advice. “We want people to send sounds, music, maybe a baby crying in the park,” he said.

And if thousands of aspiring Spike Lees show up seeking feedback on their work? “I can only do so much; I have a full-time job,” he said. Then he added: “We’ll manage.”

During the months-long project, visitors to the site will be asked to vote for their favorite videos for each of the film’s three acts. After that Mr. Lee will pick a winner for each act and edit them into the final film, which will have its premiere next fall in Los Angeles.

The film will also be available for viewing online, but Nokia has yet to work out one important detail: which carriers will distribute it to viewers on mobile phones. Nokia hasn’t found anyone yet. Sounding like a hopeful Hollywood producer, Mr. Coffey said, “I’m optimistic.”

Surveilling the Surveillers Part II

Set within a wider context, Citizen Journalism is one of the more positive symptoms of a surveillance society. While the Chicken or the Egg controversy of whether citizens have adopted the new technology because they feel the need to surveill (social determinism) or if the new technology has caused the adoption of this further shift toward a surveillance society (technologial determinism) are essentially two sides of the same 2-pound coin of a surveillance society. The article below, a simple story of bikers getting revenge on London's cycle-unfriendly drivers by choosing to purchase helmet-cams, indicates the extent of the saturation of surveillance, and just how deeply ingrained society's belief in the power of surveillance is. New recording/surveillance technology allows for the video documentation of injustice. The citizens have adopted this technology not to create a citizen journalist expose on cycle-unfriendly streets of the nation's capital (which would be pretty groundbreaking and cool). The helmet cams were intially used to record trips down the hill for extreme skiing/snowboarding footage, and the usage has 'crept' over to recording injustice against those of us who, quite rightly, should have at least the right to a safe trip to work. Livingstone's super-cycle highways to come in 2010 might well render these helmets for bikers obsolete. But society's belief in recorded evidence has caused us all to take part in the surveillance of others, who themselves are also probably surveillers as well.

Surveilling the Surveillers

Here is a headline and an article in the Evening Standard from 20 February 2008 that has caught my eye...explanation to come later...

Cycle-cam shames drivers on YouTube

Mark Prigg, Science Correspondent
20.02.08

London cyclists are investing in helmet-mounted cameras to record their daily commute, so they have video evidence against careless drivers if they are knocked off and hurt.

A website selling the cameras, which cost between £80 and £500, said sales had tripled in the last year.

Increasing numbers of angry cyclists have uploaded clips to video sharing sites such as YouTube in a bid to shame offending drivers.

"We originally started selling these to snowboarders and mountain bikers," said Sab Jhooti of www.actioncameras.co.uk. "However, we found people have been using them to record their ride into work, and cyclists now account for the bulk of our sales."

The small cameras clip onto a rider's helmet. To view the footage cyclists put a memory card into a PC or connect the camera via a cable.

Andy Barrett, 36, a software engineer who commutes from Heathrow to Staines every day, has worn a helmet camera for almost two years. "It gives me a sense of security. I've uploaded almost 60 videos of my incidents to YouTube," he said.

Click here for article and the clips from the biker's helmet.