As part of my postdoc at U of T’s Faculty of Information, I’m helping organize an international workshop entitled Cyber-surveillance in Everyday Life. It’s part of a series of workshops organized by the New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting. I attended the Surveillance Games, held in Vancouver last year, and Camera [...]

I went to a panel entitled Overdue Update or Big Brother? Lawful Access and Cyber Surveillance at U of T’s Faculty of Law yesterday. It was moderated by Graeme Norton, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s Public Safety Project. The panel included David Murakami-Wood, a member of the New Transparency project (and the only [...]

I attended the opening for Sorting Daemons: Art, Surveillance and Social Control, which is being held in conjunction with the Surveillance Camera workshop I’m attending.
Information-gathering systems increasingly affect our lives, tracking our movement and consumer preferences. Such “sorting daemons” reinforce existing streams of influence and quietly create new ones. The artists in this exhibition take [...]

It’s been awhile since I’ve traveled by train, but yesterday I boarded old faithful VIA bound for Kingston for the SCAN workshop on camera surveillance in Canada. The workshop is part of the New Transparency project (and my new job). I’d forgotten how lovely the train is!
Clive Norris opened the workshop a public lecture on [...]

I’m in session at the Surveillance Games Workshop, part of the New Transparency: Surveillance & Social Project (my new employer), at Simon Fraser University in rainy Vancouver. Lots of good sessions so far about citizen spying and state surveillance around mega-events, such as the Olympics. Neat bunch of folks, lots of talk about democratic interventions [...]

Remember Channel Zero? An oldie but goodie:
Confessions of a Surveillance Society

The open source method used for evil.
CIA invests in software to monitor social media… Bloggers beware!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported on a bogus “secret” subpoena issued by the FBI to Indymedia. The subpoena requested the following: “All IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us” for a particular date, including “IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information.” Writes the EFF senior staff attorney:
“the government was asking for the IP address [...]