May 11, 2006
Cell Phone Vigilantes
A well written and well rounded article by Bennett Gordon from Understanding the next revolution on cameraphones, citizen journalism, the privacy issues surrounding localisation and the availability (for a fee) of cell phone records. Most interesting, Gordon mentions a souveillance site I had never heard of before:
The Holla Back NYC website encourages women to photograph sexual harassers and post the photos for the world to see.
"The site prominently features people pointing their camera phones at the viewer, glorifying the "Cell Phone Vigilantes" who fight back against their alleged sexual harassers.
But as Kathryn Belgiorno of The Village Voice points out, sites like this put an enormous amount of faith in the photographer. The pictures are free of context, and viewers are led to assume sexual harassment when the situation might not be as it seems. Even if the photos are represented truthfully, anti-surveillance activist Bill Brown says, "You're opening the floodgates to a universal degradation, reinforcing mutual suspicion and paranoia."
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/2006/05/012333.htm