Ethan Zuckerman just posted another amazing “alpha geek” data point supporting the emergence of the transparent society, David Brin’s idea that the proper response to the inevitable surveillance society is to embrace it, making sure that surveillance is evenly distributed, rather than just in the hands of a few.
Ethan describes the work of Hasan Elahi, “a conceptual artist whose life is an ongoing work about surveillance.” A few years back, Hasan was detained at Detroit Airport after the owners of a storage locker he rented in Florida reported (incorrectly) that an arab man (Hasan) had fled on September 12, 2001, leaving explosives in his locker. Hasan used online records to demonstrate his whereabouts, and the falsity of the claim. But that got him started…
He explains that the power dynamic of an FBI interview leads to a very human response – the desire for survival. Elahi says that he could have questioned the legality of the experience, hiring a lawyer… but he realized that there was the possibility that any act of resistance could have gotten him sent to Guantanamo.
For the next few months, every trip Elahi took, he’d call his FBI agent and give the routing, so he didn’t get detained along the way. He realized, after a point – why just tell the FBI – why not tell everyone?
So he hacked his cellphone into a tracking bracelet which he wears on his ankle, reporting his movements on a map – log onto his site and you can see that he’s in Camden. But he’s gone further, trying to document his life in a series of photos: the airports he passes through, the meals he eats, the bathrooms he uses. The result is a photographic record of his daily life which would be very hard to falsify. We all know photos can be digitally altered… but altering as many photos as Elahi puts online would require a whole team trying to build this alternative path through the world.
Whether or not Elahi’s story is overstated (as Ethan says some people claim), his approach is still thought-provoking. We’re all focused on the idea of hiding from surveillance. Hasan has instead embraced it, saying that documenting everything about his life is the best way of saying he has nothing to hide. Conceptual art indeed.
(For some other radar posts on the future of the surveillance society, see radar.oreilly.com/tag/surveillance.)