People have a strange relationship to surveillance.

Many of them will freak out when they see another person point a camera at them, but they don't seem to care that dozens if not hundreds of surveillance cameras film them every day when they walk around a city.

Out of sight, out of mind.

It's because perception of intent matters.

Someone actively pointing a camera at you is perceived as an aggressive, hostile thing. People get immediately defensive.

A static CCTV camera wasn't installed to video you in particular, so therefore people are more accepting.

Depends on the location of the camera. Three went up on the street near me, since its by a high school and I guess they monitor traffic or something. But it can clearly see into private yards and it does offend me. If I lived nearer to the cameras and was impacted I would try to ensure my bits and tackle were visible to the cameras from my bathroom window every day.

It's pretty obvious why that is, don't you think? Surveillance cameras are targeting everyone in the space equally. A person pointing a camera at you is targeting you specifically. Of course that causes a different reaction.

many years ago, there used to be a dude who went by Mr. surveillance man. He’d walk around with a camera just recording random people on the street and it caused a big sensation.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X9sVqKFkjiY

I would even endorse personal recording as an act of SOUSveillance. A subversive reverse surveillance. We have to become the ones who watch the watchers.

It's not sousveillance if you're recording people who are not surveilling you. That's just surveillance.

Regardless, I'm always thought that sousveillance was a terrible idea. All it does is to normalize the idea of ubiquitous surveillance without providing much, if any, actual benefit in terms of coping with ubiquitous surveillance.

Fair. But what alternative path do you propose to oppose ubiquitous surveillance?

I'm not sure there is a realistic path to that, at least in the short term. It requires the majority of people to strenuously oppose it. If history is any guide, that will only happen after the amount of harm from it becomes intolerable for a sizable percentage of the population.

All I can do, personally, is to support organizations that fight this stuff, and to refuse to participate to the greatest degree I can. By this I mean avoiding going to areas where surveillance is used to the greatest degree possible, expressing my concerns about surveillance, and teasing/shaming friends and family who buy into the whole thing by using things like Ring doorbells, etc.

None of which will change anything overall, really, but you do what you can.

I would be ok with video recording doorbells if only the homeowner had access to the recording.

Ring is just evil.

Yes, I agree om both counts.

I don't understand why would a person have a right to see something and remember it, but not record it.

(Using this recording for various purposes is a while different issue though).

There's an objective asymmetry to it. The person who has a flawless recording of what happened has options that the person who has a lossy recording of what happened (i.e. the one in their head) does not have. If everyone is on the same playing field (as in, neither have a recording or both have it) then it seems to me the objection is greatly lessened—it's when one party records and the other party doesn't have access to it that there's some sense of unfairness.

Great. Let's break this asymmetry by making AR devices ubiquitous and giving most people those recordings. Would also help with police problems in many countries.

That definitely seems like a way to address at least this one part of what seems to bother people about omnipresent technological observation of everyone everywhere all the time, yes. :)

Surveillance has already made being in public spaces unpleasant enough to prevent me from taking part in many things that I would otherwise enjoy taking part in.

More of it just makes my world smaller and smaller.

I've kind of given up on expecting most people to be rational on emotionally charged subjects. Most people don't think things through, and the more intense the emotion involved the less likely there's any chance of reasoning with them.

Highly emotionally charged attitudes commonly held in society may change, but it'll probably take generations to do so.

People have kind of figured out that an appearance of calm, rationalism may also conceal extremely strong feelings.

One has to have an open mind. It's not inherently more rational to calmly accept all social changes brought on by technology.

If everyone could just calmly discuss divisive topics instead of freaking out or resorting to violence, the world would be a much better place.

"You can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into." -- (who knows? This quote is attributed to lots of people)

If there was a way to be sure it would stay only ever being viewed by that person, sure. For now, I think people shouldn't have the risk that it gets seen by others forced upon them.

i suppose for the same reason you cannot prohibit breathing, it is a biological fact to be considered when drafting regulations. rules without being able to enforce them would show the governing body as weak and clueless, undermining its authority. a rather big no-no for most "powers". rest assured when more people wear AR-type glasses they sure as hell will inject "rules" in the software to control/limit what you see. to protect of course

Your parenthetical point IS the point. I can see people in a washroom at the urinals but there's obvious reasons I can't record it.

>I don't understand why would a person have a right to see something and remember it, but not record it

Perhaps because you miss the notion of quantitative and qualitative difference.

My concern isn’t that I’ll be seen by one person, but that the recording will be shared with innumerable others.

Even better. French Senate has recently approved a bill authorising remote activation of smartphones’ real-time geolocation, cameras, and microphones [1].

Obviously without informing owners.

And while it is, obviously, only to be used to fight against terrorism, organised crime and delinquency, well… let’s just say that France has a history of such powers getting extrajudicially abused, by governments and individuals alike.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36240885

While this is really bad, I wonder if they have the technical capabilities to do this. Doubtful...

Among other things, France called "terrorism" people fighting (including peacefully) to free their countries from being its colonies. Which they still maintain a fair number of.

Now they prosecute people demonstrating against a hugely unpopular government.

Today one doesn’t even need to even intend to do something to be accused of such things [1].

> Following the pattern of the so-called Tarnac affair, their arrest was accompanied by timely leaks in the media, and even political manipulations condemning the "far-left". And this, on the grounds that they were "suspected of planning violent actions targeting police officers, without a specific plan of action being identified," as reported by Le Monde nonetheless.

[1] (French): https://www.nextinpact.com/article/71826/accuses-terrorisme-...

A few centuries ago the French gov would say it was fighting heresy. Today they are supposedly fighting terrorism. A few centuries later they'll be fighting oldthinkers.

> “Wearing it in public has, however, often brought me grief—usually from people objecting to what they think is a head-mounted video recorder.”

Yes, I remember that guy getting mugged by Mc Donald security in France, at the Champs Elysée, which doesn't surprise me given how dumb and ignorant these people are, since they are recruited among gangs... an absolutely shame for France.

I recall a French law restricting photographing people in public without permission. I saw it on a photography forum, not sure if it was accurate.

This [1] claims that street photography in general is allowed. As with some other jurisdictions in Europe, you're often not allowed to publish the photos anywhere. Obviously in today's world, that's a law that is pretty much broken continuously.

[1] https://law.photography/law/street-photography-laws-in-franc...

And his way of getting back at them is to publish an entire theory framework of surveillance asymmetry, gets widely cited, purely so that he could use McDonalds as the punchline[0]

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/McVeillance

Sorry, I'm with them on this...

I don't want some guy recording me when I eat in a restaurant. In France, they want that even less.

I'd prefer McDonalds itself didn't have cameras either. But at least those are for anti-theft purposes.

Sure, I understand 100%, but they didn't have to beat the guy and break his gear, security tried to remove his gear by force...

I can’t find anything recent but it’s a topic he’s thought a lot about over the years: http://eyetap.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-sousveillance-scenari...