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Little Brother and the Boston Video Militia
My daughter Hannah and I have a nickname
for the camera-phone: ‘Little Brother’. The portable camera-phone implies mass
‘sousveillance’; surveillance from beneath. We have seen, in Egypt and with
Occupy, that Little Brother can be Big Brother’s revolutionary foe.
But Little Brother is not all rebel; in fact Little Brother can be a patriot, helping the authorities defend the nation. We have seen this in Boston, in the crowd-sourced identification of the Tsarnaev brothers. For details, see:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/04/boston-data-manhunt/
Tamerlan the would-be conquerer, and Dzhokhar the joker, thought themselves invisible in that crowd, but Little Brother was there, and Little Brother is the Eyes of the Web, which never forgets. The Tsarnaev naifs thought their target was unarmed; but they were fatally wrong; for the crowd had hundreds of camera-phones, each one a weapon against their cowardice.
The camera-phone is a kind of weapon; and those hundreds of videographers were a kind of militia. With the Boston Video Militia’s help, the cops got their men before the week was done. Justice is best when swift and sure.
But Little Brother is not all rebel; in fact Little Brother can be a patriot, helping the authorities defend the nation. We have seen this in Boston, in the crowd-sourced identification of the Tsarnaev brothers. For details, see:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/04/boston-data-manhunt/
Tamerlan the would-be conquerer, and Dzhokhar the joker, thought themselves invisible in that crowd, but Little Brother was there, and Little Brother is the Eyes of the Web, which never forgets. The Tsarnaev naifs thought their target was unarmed; but they were fatally wrong; for the crowd had hundreds of camera-phones, each one a weapon against their cowardice.
The camera-phone is a kind of weapon; and those hundreds of videographers were a kind of militia. With the Boston Video Militia’s help, the cops got their men before the week was done. Justice is best when swift and sure.
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