In San Francisco, under the eye of a webcam
Jeff Webb does not support the dealers of the district. He films them to make them flee. By Emmanuelle Richard Saturdays 25 and Sunday August 26 2001
" I want to make shame with the town hall and the font of San Francisco and to incite them to clean the district. "
Jeff Webb
The site of Cnil , the national Commission of data processing and freedoms, explains how one can be made track on Internet . And shows it on line, by analyzing the configuration of your computer and by reconstituting your course on the site. To also consult, the heading " links ".
The British site Dataprotection .
Los Angeles correspondence
EFF Webb found a good means to move away the dealers from ace of the lane where it lives, close to Market Street in San Francisco. Instead of calling the police station, it shows in the whole world the intrigues of Stevenson Alley. July 16, this 37 year old dispach rider has installed a cheap webcam with the window of its hotel room Seneca, his modest home for eight years. Shots, brawls to the knife, dealers with the furtive gestures and tramps junkies hastened to light their pipe: the scenes of street appear in real time on the Web page lodged by a free service (1). " I want to make shame with the town hall and to the font of San Francisco and to incite them to clean the district ", explains Jeff Webb, the named good, at the time of a conversation several times stopped by sirens of font. When the residents telephone the police station to complain, affirms it, the police officers is said overflowed and answers that, from here so that they arrive on the spot, the criminals will have already flown away. " With my webcam, the font cannot say any more that it does not have anything considering. " This strange initiative occurs at the time when the vid�osurveillance of public places by the authorities alarms part of the American opinion. As for the private cameras used on the public highway, " they from now on are spread ", brings back Jeff Fryrear, director of the National Crime Institute Prevention in Louisville (Kentucky). These personal cameras, of which one is unaware of the number, are often installed in partnership with the police force to ensure the safety of residential districts. Schools too. In San Francisco, the provocante " Webbcam " causes applause rather: following an article of San Francisco To examine , Jeff Webb known as to have received dozen e-mail of encouragement (2). " It is brilliant, known as one of the messages, me as I have some more as enough problems involved in the homeless people in San Francisco, but I never found a means to tackle the subject in an active way. " Several inhabitants and a school are tried to install their clean webcam to supervise their neighbourhoods. " I saw a dealer recently indicating finger the webcam and to involve its customers some streets lower ", affirms Jeff Webb. Allergic to any form of vid�osurveillance, the collective anarcho-situationnist Surveillance Camera Players (SCP) did not envisage yet to express in front of the " Webbcam ". If many citizens already filmed scenes of crime in bottom from on their premises (the tabassage of Rodney King in 1991 is the most famous example), the gadget of Jeff Webb raises new questions: " On the principle, a webcam directed on a corner of street undermines the private life of the passers by, estimates Dave, alias " Redmist ", the founder of SCP and his representative of San Francisco. But in practice, I do not see how, because Mr. Webb largely lets know that its webcam is directed on its street. If it were not known of the public on the other hand, it would constitute an attack with the private life. People would not know that they are observed, which more is on the Web. " Legal blur. From the legal point of view, the blur reigns. According to Privacy Foundation in Washington, the American laws on the audio recording of private conversations are relatively clear but those on the video recording of passers by on the public place, webcam or not, are quasi non-existent. For " Redmist ", it would be at the same time more ethical and more useful " to take photographs of the offences to be made rather than to film all the lane ". The font of San Francisco itself questions the effectiveness of the webcam of Stevenson Alley. The officer Anna Morales noticed in San Francisco Examiner that the machine does not make it possible to distinguish the details. Faces, in particular. Where Jeff Webb sees a man the eyes rivetted on the pavement with search of residues of ace, a beginner distinguishes only one staggering silhouette. Even the selection of the " best images " (3) is hardly convincing. But Webb is formal: " people who smoke of the ace hold the pipe in a certain way, it is immediately recognizable. " The prospect for multiples " Webbcams " through the United States worries Bill Brown, cofounder of the Monitoring Players Camera: " the day when webcams of better quality will be used with software of facial recognition, the faces will appear then clearly ", notices the gu�rillero antivid�osurveillance. For him, the clandestine webcams present the offences like entertainment, to the detriment of the criminals and their victims. They standardize the use of cameras of monitoring and encourage with voyeurism. (1) www.teveo.com/live/camera.asp?101=1036912732 (2) www.geocities.com/jwebb82015/camcomments.html (3) www.geocities.com/jwebb82015/camgallery.html See also The Monitoring Camera Players ( www.notbored.org/earthcam.html ) and The Privacy Foundation ( www.privacyfoundation.org )
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