Smile! You’re on Hidden Camera

Wow. What sorts of things were caught on tape while you were heading AOL?
Mostly just people acting like people when they don't believe they're being observed. Some would have sex during the day in places they clearly weren't supposed to be having sex. There were people doing drugs. But this stuff is pretty common at large organizations everywhere.

If surveillance is such a breach of privacy, why does the broad public support it?
People see the lens, and I think it creates a sense of security. But I don't believe there's any real understanding of the power of this technology: how it can be archived and searched, and how loose the rules are for who gets to access it.

Give me an example of how that information could be used.
We're moving into a presidential election. I hope none of the candidates have been visiting porn sites, because the fact of the matter is that some kid somewhere at Google or one of those companies could be paid off by an operative and go digging for dirt. I wouldn't be surprised if over the course of the next year we see something like that.

Do people need to be more careful what they do online?
I think young people are seduced by the citizen media notion of the Internet: that everyone can have their minutes of fame. But they're also putting themselves out there—forever.

© 2007