The Nation: Insecurity Cameras

article | posted November 16, 2007 (web only)
Insecurity Cameras
William Pentland



On a crisp Sunday afternoon in New York City, a small crowd of mostly international students huddled together at the corner of Warren and Broadway near a gated entrance to City Hall. A few held cameras and one carried a bulky camcorder. But this was no ordinary walking tour. The group had come not to view landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge, Wall Street or the New York Stock Exchange but to discover just how many surveillance cameras government authorities had installed.

"We're ultimately trying to get people to think about what kind of society they want to live in," said 49-year-old privacy activist and tour guide Bill Brown. "There used to be an America that would say 'Mind your own business!' And now that's changed so much that every time you get on the subway you hear: 'If you see something, say something.' " Since 2000, Brown has given an estimated 3,000 people free walking tours of surveillance cameras in neighborhoods around New York City, one of many tools Brown has used to raise awareness about the disappearance of privacy.

"The essence of humanity is opaque," said Brown. "We are mysteries to ourselves. The idea that a camera can look at my face and render my thoughts transparent is both false and dangerous." In the 1990s, Brown helped out as a volunteer at now-defunct Blackout Books, a Lower East Side bookstore and anarchist hangout. After managing the bookstore's website for a while, Brown noticed that several government agencies visited the site frequently. This oddity prompted him to make a Freedom of Information Act request on himself. While waiting for the response, he founded an activist theatrical company, Surveillance Camera Players. In 1997, Brown says, "I was told by the local FBI that there was a file on me, electronic surveillance, and that it was active and so I could not get a copy of it," said Brown. "Mind you, this was the year after the Surveillance Camera Players began, but the SCP didn't become truly committed to its mission until 1999."

Brown conceived the SCP in the mold of the Situationist-inspired groups that flourished in the '60s, utilizing artistic expression as a form of political activism. In its first official statement, the SCP described itself as





Nearly a dozen years later, the SCP has performed more than sixty plays in front of publicly placed surveillance cameras around New York City. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071203/pentland

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