Who is watching who?

After reading Steve Mann's articles I began to think about surveillance systems that I encounter everyday. It is perfectly 'okay' and legal for a store to install cameras that track your every move, but when you try and turn the camera on them, it is not okay. I experienced this myself, while I was making a documentary for a high school media class. Some friends and I were filming at a large mall by our house, where we normally hangout. We were just filming ourselves doing what we regularly do at the mall; eat, buy a CD and goof around. Then, two mall security guards stopped me and asked me to stop recording. I told them that it was perfectly legal for me to record a video in the mall, but then they pointed to the bank down the hall and said that I was a possible threat to the bank because I could be staking out the scene. I explained to them that if I was trying to rob a bank, I wouldn't walk around in front of it with a large camera that everyone can see. But regardless, they made me feel like a criminal and that what I was doing was wrong, when what I was doing was perfectly legal. They can record us, but we can't record them...doesn't seem fair to me. I wondering if I had used Mann's 'maybe camera' could they still have made their case? Because, I wasn't sure and they weren't sure that I was recording. There is no way for them to prove that I had a camera, and even if they did prove it, there is no way they could prove that I was recording. Mann says that "existential technology serves to empower the individual by disempowering the individual of responsibility" (19). Knowing this now, If I were to do this documentary again, I would tell the security guard that this camera is here for my own protection, so that I cannot be wrongfully accuses of any criminal acts. I wonder what they would say? If they still told me take the camera off, then I would tell them to take their camera's off. By this time, I think they would have escorted me out, but I would still have proven a valid case.


I ran into a good example of what Mann calls 'sousveillance', while I was watching an episode of MTV Cribs featuring Busta Rhymes, a hip hop superstar (I looked everywhere for clip of this episode and nobody had it, not even YouTube). There is a section where he shows off all of his vehicles and he comes to this one truck that has cameras in the front and the back that record while he drives around. Busta says these cameras are to insure that when he is stopped by police, that they follow proper protocol and that he is not wrongfully accused and/or a victim of police brutality. I thought this was genius, and have being a victim of police brutality (although it was not severe) and seeing others mistreated by police, I wish I had some sort of sousveillance system on me or my car. That way, my complaint to the police department would be taken seriously, as I would posses video proof. Once Steve Mann's sousveillance systems become more practical, I think they will become more accepted in society. What better way for a celebrity to get even with the paparazzi, then to take pictures and videos of them. The surveillance society of corporations and governments, currently have us surrounded by cameras and the only way we can fight back is with Mann's sousveillance.