Subject: Int'l Workshop on Inverse Surveillance: Camphones, 'glogs, and eyetaps

Call for Participation:

International Workshop on Inverse Surveillance:

Cameraphones, Cyborglogs, and Computational seeing aids;

exploring and defining a research agenda

Date: 2004 April 12th.
Time: 12:00noon to 4pm (a working lunch will be served)
Location: Bahen Centre for Information Technology,
          7th Floor, 
          University of Toronto,
          40 St George St. Toronto

TOPICS:

TO PARTICIPATE:

IWIS 2004 will be a small intimate discussion group, limited to 25 participants.

Email your name, the name of your organization, and what you might add to the meeting, as part of a one page extended abstract, outlining your position on, and proposed contribution to the theme of inverse surveillance. Submissions should be sent by email to hilab [at] eyetap.org. Alternatively, authors may email up to four pages, in IEEE two column camera-ready format that address the theme of inverse surveillance. Prospective participants wishing to submit a full paper may also contact the workshop facilitators prior to submission.

All participants (accepted papers or extended abstracts) will have the opportunity to contribute to the published proceedings.

There is no workshop registration fee. There is no submission deadline; reviews will continue until there are sufficient numbers of high quality theme-relevant contributors.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:


ORGANIZERS: S. Mann; S. Martin (smartin@ecf.utoronto.ca); and J. Nolan.
IWIS 2004 arises from planning over, the past 2 years, at Deconference 2002/2003.

ADMINISTRATION: PDC, 416-978-3481 or toll free 1-888-233-8638

PUBLICITY LIAISON: Daniel Chen (dan [at] eyetap.org), and Jacqueline MacNeil (jacq [at] ecf.toronto.edu).


This April 2004 Workshop, IWIS, will also serve as a planning forum for next year's Symposium: ISIS. Here's a summary of surveillance versus inverse surveillance, to lay the groundwork for the technologies and issues we hope to discuss:

Surveillance                           Sousveillance
------------                           -------------

God's eye view from above.             Human's eye view.
(Authority watching from on-high.)     ("Down-to-earth.")

Cameras usually mounted on high        Cameras down-to-earth (at
poles, up on ceiling, etc..            (ground level), e.g. at human
                                       eye-level.

Sur-veiller is French for "to          Sous-veiller is French for "to
watch from above".                     watch from below".

Architecture-centered                  Human-centered
(e.g. cameras usually mounted on       (e.g. cameras carried or worn
or in structures).                     by, or on, people).

Recordings made by authorities,        Recordings of an activity
remote security staff, etc..           made by a participant in the
                                       activity.

Note that in most states it's          In most states it's legal to
illegal to record a phone              record a phone conversation of
conversation of which you are          which you are a party.  Perhaps
not a party.  Perhaps the same         the same would apply to an
would apply to an audiovisual          audiovisual recording of your own
recording of somebody else's           conversations, i.e. conversations
conversation.                          in which you are a party.

Recordings are usually kept in         Recordings are often made public
secret.                                e.g., on the World Wide Web.

Process usually shrouded in            Process, technology, etc., are
secrecy.                               usually public, open source, etc..

Panoptic origins, as described         Community-based origins, e.g.
by Foucault, originally in the         a personal electronic diary,
context of a prison in which           made public on the World Wide Web.
prisoners were isolated from           Sousveillance tends to bring 
each other but visible at all          together individuals, e.g. it
times by guards.  Surveillance         tends to make a large city
tends to isolate individuals           function more like a small town,
from one another while setting         with the pitfalls of gossip, but
forth a one-way visibility to          also the benefits of a sense of
authority figures.                     community participation. 

Privacy violation may go               Privacy violation is usually
un-noticed, or un-checked.             immediately evident.  Tends
Tends to not be self-correcting.       to be self-correcting.

It's hard to have a heart-to-heart     At least there's a chance you can
conversation with a lamp post,         talk to the person behind the
on top of which is mounted a           sousveillance camera.
surveillance camera.

When combined with computers, we       When combined with computers, we
get ubiquitous computing               get wearable computing.
("ubiqcomp") or pervasive              ("wearcomp").  Wearcomp usually
computing ("pervcomp").                doesn't require the cooperation
Ubiq./perv. comp. tend to rely on      of any infrastructure in the
cooperation of the infrastructure      environments around us.
in the environments around us.

With surveillant-computing, the        With sousveillant-computing, it
locus of control tends to be with      is possible for the locus of
the authorities.                       control to be more distributed.
See also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance