Always in the camera's eye

These days, surveillance cameras aren't just mounted on buildings and satellites, controlled by government and businesses. Now they're carried by a nation obsessed with its own image. USA Today reports.

"Kids snap cellphone pictures at parties and instantly put them on the Web; fans who nab photos of unsuspecting celebrities share them on celebrity-watch sites. The guy in the car next to you is leaning out of his window, taking a video that he later uploads to a video site where it could be seen by dozens or hundreds of people — maybe even millions.

... While many, especially young people, think it's all fun, privacy watchers are eyeing the new trend, trying to gauge just how it will affect us legally and shape us socially.

"We're going to be a society where tons and tons of photographs and information about us are available online without our consent," says Jason Schultz, staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Privacy is sometimes something we don't realize we value except in hindsight."

It's not that most citizen videographers are looking to violate anyone's privacy.

Aside from the legal issues, however, social scientists worry about the way the ever-present lens already is affecting society.

Just the knowledge that cameras are everywhere can "have a chilling effect," says psychologist and sociologist Sherry Turkle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It can give people "a sense of living your life on camera and living your life potentially being watched."

That changes behavior, adds Howard Rheingold, an author and consultant on online communities. "It forms an environment in which the assumption that there's a camera around is more and more part of your daily awareness. This assumption you're being watched internalizes surveillance."

emily | 11:05 AM | Privacy Concerns |
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