Cameras are recording increasingly large amounts of what goes on in public life. For better or for worse, anything you do is likely to be recorded on film somewhere – perhaps several times.
Last summer, New York City police arrested nearly two thousand people during the Republican National Convention. ... arrestees began emerging from the the city's detention center at Pier 57, on the far west side of Manhattan, often denying that they'd done anything confrontational--some saying they were not protesting at all, and only guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. <snip> Thanks to citizen video efforts, often organized by free speech activists such as I Witness Video [PDF of an organizing flyer], visual records are proving that people were swept up without cause and didn't resist, that police officers have misrepresented the events at trial, and that prosecutors have selectively edited the video record to prove their cases.
Camcorders (and cell phones) run by people specifically documenting events will record a lot. Street cameras, ATM and other security cameras, and an increasing number of "incidental video recording devices" (IVRDs) will doubtless cover more and more of the public space. Chances are, before too long, anything you do outside of private property (and inside a fair amount of it) will be recorded.
The anonymous face in the crowd may be a thing of the past.
Technology's potential to enhance and protect our rights rises and falls on the intent of the person--or government department--using it. At this moment, in these cases, at least, the rights of individuals seem to be winning.
And this is mainly because the technology is cheap enough to be widely owned by the private citizen.
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