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Mark Lizar, Identity & Information Researcher, has been looking at mapping CCTVs in the UK. In a pilot study of 10 London? councils, six have provided information on their CCTV operations, two have provided misleading information and one has refused to provide detauks. Four of the six who obliging councils have since included details about their CCTV operations on their websites. For aggregating info, a database of CCTV locations could be used to support itself and develop a social protocol for Freedom of Information Act requests and Subject Access Requests. Out of this discussion came Marcus Povey and Sylwia Presley's setting up of a wiki for a Transparency Camp , something the consultants agreed the UK badly needed.

Mark laid out the needs for this,

1) Register, aggregate, map and  make accessible.
2) National Register for Commercial CCTV

The lack of enabling use of information that we have at present is grounded in a less advanced model of post-industrial society, and Mark added that he sees potential in Opern Source software development.

Promoting Information equality

This concerns the states of being without access to information, a loss of information, and issues of information equality. Where the local council that refused to release information, they cited Section 21 of Law Enforcement Act as the reason for this. It was reflected that this is alarmingly disciplinary, though you can't see why they're doing this.

Sousveillance is defined as "people looking at". Its a term coined by Steve Mann. "Secrecy, not privacy, may be the true cause of terrorism" is a 2002 article by him, which sums up some of the general reasoning. Its worth a search for more information on Steve Mann and sousveillance.

It was said IBM's global information base by next year will be doubling every eleven hours.  Here, increasing transparency over whats going on should be agenda-ised. Another person commented on police access to DNA databases, asking "why don't we have access to that information about us? This is about self-determination."


Technical Concerns

Government laundering of policy decisions, for example, car license plate tracking. If something goes wrong, the government's Home Office can essentially shift the blame as part of a backdoor mechanism to whichever NGO*should* be looking after such things. The Transparency agenda is in need of a seriously required upgrade. Partly, this is to do with the erosion of the original Data Protection Act, now used by the state without acountability or legal recourse.

Ian Brown and other noteable authors have contributed to Database State, which has been published by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. I've hyperlinked the image below to a brief feature were you can download the pdf  



Or, you can read the executive summary here. Its well laid out, and a recommended read.
This is being talked about with great interest at #barcampoxford and I'm not surprised. The findings obviously are in line with concerns about the great mass of money being poured into this, but I didn't expect to come accross the shocking data regarding victimisation of minority groups by the database state. Its a well

• JSA may have access to NHS data.
• These technologies may be used by criminal elements
• Boundary were there is concern is why there are CCTV cameras but for us not to have access to them.

 

Further Discussion

 It was commented on that any company or borough can easily be overloaded with Data Protection Act requests, and that something is seriously wrong with the system. It was suggested that something could be cross-pollinated with Nick Burch and others in the area of geo-tagging - for example, do these cameras show up on Google Streetview?

Theres a lot of interesting issues here relating to Foucauldian thought on Panopticons This same link to Surveillance and Society 1(3) (2003) also features a rather interesting downloadable video by Steve Mann and others on charting CCTV through cities, and the use of cameras as headgear.

Downing Street Petitions were mentioned, with the reasoning that if a certain number is reached in a set amount of time there was some mandatory obligations for the issue to be looked at. Other ideas that the group came up with were Association Principles, Council-helped organisation and local promotion, and the potential for commercial interests and local councils to collaborate. Perhaps streaming CCTV could be made more available, and Location data could be tailored to bring in income for the project. Steve Loughran was mentioned for his analysis of bluetooth devices going past his house in Bristol, were he was able to track all sorts of times to behaviours. You can read more about this on the rather recommend-able pdf, Overthrowing governments using open source techniques


Other links

Barcamp Transparency Wiki
Ben Werdmuller's quick night-of notes on Barcamp Oxford

 

All contents of this and other Barcamp entries by this author are available for re-posting including edits in within fair means. These notes were recorded on a scribblepad from other contributor, though secretarial credit is always welcome!