I got this from the NY Times this morning. It mentions
David Brin, about 2/3 of the way down.
---David Hobby
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Demanding Roof and Seasons. : )
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>
> Protesting the Big Brother Lens, Little Brother Turns an Eye Blind
>
> October 7, 2002
> By JOHN MARKOFF
>
>
>
> SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 6 - Confronted with the unblinking eyes
> of surveillance cameras, Michael Naimark believes he can
> hide in plain sight with the aid of a $1 laser pointer.
>
> Mr. Naimark, a Silicon Valley artist and technologist,
> decided to try turning the tables on what he saw as the
> potential for Big Brother surveillance after the Sept. 11
> attacks.
>
> His is a Little Brother response: using inexpensive laser
> pointers to temporarily blind those omnipresent electronic
> eyes. He plans to post his 13-page, single-spaced treatise
> on the subject this week on his Web site, www.naimark.net.
>
> "The question `if a camera's aimed at me can I not be in
> the image?' became a haunting obsession," he said. "The
> answer is yes."
>
> But in these security-conscious times, one person's civil
> liberties can be another's shortsighted anarchy.
>
> "It's possible that Harry Potter's invisibility cloak may
> not be viewed as a good thing for the community," said
> Kevin Kelly, an editor at Wired magazine. "We have laws
> prohibiting jamming police radar. It will be interesting to
> see if camera-jamming becomes illegal."
>
> Nonetheless, Mr. Naimark's obsession is emblematic of a
> national debate that is growing as video cameras
> proliferate - a proliferation that results both from
> falling monitoring costs, made possible by the Internet,
> and increasing safety concerns in the face of crime and
> terrorism.
>
> In his research, Mr. Naimark discovered that there was
> already military literature widely available about using
> lasers to blind sensors, and that it was relatively simple
> to become invisible in front the cameras that now watch
> over many public spaces in this country.
>
> "I began by aiming an inexpensive laser pointer directly
> into the lens of a video camera," he writes. "The results
> were striking. The tiny beam neutralized regions of the
> camera sensor far larger than the actual size of the beam.
> Properly aimed, it could block a far-away camera from
> seeing anything inside of a large window."
>
> While Mr. Naimark acknowledged that he had some ethical
> discomfort about his project because his information could
> be useful to terrorists, he decided to go ahead.
>
> "My interest and motivation is to provide the creative
> community with some stimulating and provoking stuff," he
> writes. "These are stimulating and provoking times."
>
> In recent weeks there have been a growing number of
> incidents involving video-surveillance cameras, ranging
> from the mother who recently surrendered after she was
> recorded hitting her 4-year-old daughter in an Indiana
> parking lot to a man who filed a $1.5 million lawsuit
> against the Marriott hotel chain last month after
> discovering a video camera hidden in a bathroom light
> fixture.
>
> The growing reliance on surveillance is giving some of the
> pioneers of the video camera industry second thoughts.
>
> "I have lots of worries about how this technology is being
> used," said John Graham, who is the founder of BroadWare
> Technologies, a Cupertino, Calif., maker of software for
> video-camera networks, and who was one of the first
> researchers to send audio and video over the Internet.
>
> "I've become Big Brother, but I didn't mean to be," Mr.
> Graham said. "It's just that there's no money in education
> or scientific collaboration."
>
> The rush to surveillance in the wake of Sept. 11 is
> revitalizing a growing group of civil liberties activists
> who, like Mr. Naimark, are determined to limit the spread
> of networks of inexpensive video cameras that are appearing
> in virtually all public spaces.
>
> In New York City, the Surveillance Camera Players, a
> guerrilla theatre troupe, is placing hand-drawn maps of
> video camera locations on the Internet and staging brief
> politically inspired performances in front of the cameras.
>
> The group was co-founded by Bill Brown, an American
> literature scholar, who said the troupe was sympathetic to
> Mr. Naimark's opposition to the ubiquitous video eyes but
> took a different tack, highlighting the emerging
> surveillance world through a series of street parodies.
>
> "His methods are quite different from ours," Mr. Brown
> said. "We're philosophical anarchists. We never engage in
> illegal activity, but we believe the greatest weakness of
> those who operate the surveillance systems is that they
> require secrecy."
>
> One person who said he occasionally sees Mr. Brown's group
> perform is Brian Curry, the chief executive and founder of
> EarthCam, based in New York City, which makes surveillance
> camera systems and operates a network of seven cameras
> aimed at Times Square that constantly beam video images
> over the Internet.
>
> His Web site, www.earthcam.com, attracts 50,000 to 75,000
> visitors each day, Mr. Curry said, and he frequently sees
> people standing in Times Square waving at his cameras while
> they talk on their cellphones.
>
> "We're offering a window on the world that is very much
> like sitting in a restaurant and looking out on the
> street," he said. "To try to inhibit this by saying it
> represents a brave new society where people are losing
> their privacy is far-fetched."
>
> EarthCam's business changed after Sept. 11, he said,
> because there was an increased reluctance to travel and
> more interest in using video cameras rather than personal
> visits.
>
> He also argued that the Internet video camera fills a
> social role in a changing society where people no longer
> know their neighbors, taking the place of the neighbor who
> would keep an vigilant eye on a neighborhood.
>
> "People move a lot, and they're not home a lot," he said.
> "Internet cameras have helped fill the gap."
>
> Indeed for some, the Internet camera is a step toward a
> global village. Gregory P. Galanos of Mobius Venture
> Capital in Silicon Valley now keeps a remote eye on his
> second home on a Greek island, where he has installed four
> cameras that send pictures over the Internet each hour. He
> can see ships passing and watch workers remodeling his
> home. "It gives me peace of mind," he said.
>
> That is not the view of a group of privacy advocates in
> Washington, who are suing the Metropolitan Police
> Department under the Freedom of Information Act to force
> disclosure of technical information about a network of
> video cameras that has been established in the city.
>
> The value of video cameras to improve safety and detect
> terrorists has been greatly overrated, according to Marc
> Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy
> Information Center, a nonprofit advocacy group based in
> Washington.
>
> Like the Surveillance Camera Players, Mr. Rotenberg said he
> worries that while Internet-viewable cameras might offer
> entertainment, there are other networks of private and law
> enforcement cameras that collect information secretly on
> behalf of the government.
>
> "There has been a reduction in privacy and there has been
> an expansion in government secrecy," he said. "We give up
> our privacy, but we don't gain openness in exchange."
>
> That view contrasts sharply with that of David Brin, a
> physicist and author who has argued that universally
> accessible cameras will increase transparency in modern
> society without encroaching on traditional civil liberties.
>
> "My metaphor is that databases are expansions of human
> memory and the cameras are the extension of human vision,"
> he said, adding that the challenge is to make certain that
> new laws have provisions for "watching the watchers."
>
> Such a viewpoint upsets other civil libertarians, who see
> the growing encroachment of video cameras as simply
> deepening the power of law enforcement and society's
> elites.
>
> "I sometimes wonder if I'm living on the same planet as
> David Brin," said Philip E. Agre, an associate professor of
> information studies at the University of California at Los
> Angeles. "Everyone can watch the common people, but that
> has nothing to do with the political question of who can
> watch the powerful."
>
> Mr. Naimark, the artist who believes he can disable
> security monitors, said he would be satisfied if he stirred
> debate on surveillance.
>
> "One role of the artist in the contemporary world is to
> hold a mirror up to society," he said. "The artist is a
> social critic, and the artistic angle is in exposing and
> revealing and provoking things."
>
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/07/technology/07ZZAP.html?ex=1034995009&ei=1&en=dbd1e2416fa8a2e8
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