It's been 10 years since artist recorded candid shots from Apple Store webcams—and got a visit from the Secret Service

[beschizza]

Originally published at: It's been 10 years since artist recorded candid shots from Apple Store webcams—and got a visit from the Secret Service | Boing Boing

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[Melizmatic]

@beschizza

“It’s still unclear why assistant US attorney Judith Philips declined to prosecute me,” McDonald writes,

[Papasan]

I’m writing a love song to my Dear Wife and that there line is going into the song.

firing out legal nastygrams

[CarlMud]

I feel the same way about Google Glass. People got all up in arms about someone having the ability to record what they saw, but we’ve since seen that just about everything can end up on camera anyway.

And Google glass would be really useful now as a body cam when you encounter the police…

[j9c]

All data that can be monetized, will be monetized.
Is being monetized right now.
Here on this bbs too.

All of it.

Everything is harvestable and monetizable: every pic in word in every Captcha and reCaptcha that trains AI; every time a human talks to Alexa, Siri, OkGoogle (all originally coming from this DARPA project; etc.

@beschizza

Apple’s response

and

@beschizza

The Secret Service

etc. just don’t like that we get these IRL instantiations that remind us meat puppets that

@beschizza

we were to find out about mass surveillance by the government and by private entities on an unprecedented scale for profit and power

FTFY.

Where does this all lead to? Hell if I know. Here’s a case for y’all:

What does the Chinese military want with your unborn baby’s genetic data? |...

I subscribed to Cory’s pluralistic newsletter.
Hoping to make some time this summer to read/listen to

How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism: Doctorow, Cory: 9781736205907:...

[generic_name]

@beschizza

Our reasonable expectation of privacy blooms beyond its legal margins. Who wants their slack-jawed mugshot to end up on tumblr? The rage people felt about McDonald’s gallery—at the way new technology and false intimacy and ambiguous intent can denude us—was keenly and honestly felt.

In the years immediately after McDonald’s art project, though, we were to find out about mass surveillance by the government and by private entities on an unprecedented scale

One more piece of the post-internet puzzle we are still grappling with.

One of my old roommates used to take photos (on film) of people in public places, he was discreet about it and got some beautiful B&W portraits of people with their guard down that were artistic and honest, but those people mostly didn’t know or never knew, and so their lives went on unchanged. Even at the time I wondered “is this ethical”, but it was legal. If an Apple store counts as a public place, and McDonald got permission from the store to take photos, then he was in the clear. The offense was doing something that was just annoying or looked suspicious.

Remember Chat Roulette? For a short while I logged on and just saved screenshots of people there, anytime I saw something that had an accidental artistry to it. Somewhere I still have a folder of random images of people’s faces, waiting to be turned into an art project. That too has been done.

[SamSam]

Here’s a video that explores a similar theme:

Surveillance Camera Man 1-8

I could only stomach the first half because of the awkwardness, but that’s exactly the point of it.