Surveillance of Surveillances

Surveillance of Surveillances (SOS)

Our Surveillance of Surveillances effort is a group of projects aimed at tracking the availability and uses of person-specific information for the purpose of determining who could be (or is) tracking what about whom. How much information is there available about a person? How many details in daily life are being captured? Are there alternative approaches possible? These are the kinds of questions we seek to answer.

Background. This effort builds on Latanya Sweeney's prior work on characterizing and assessing the information explosion experienced in the recording and sharing of field-structured data on individuals. This effort goes beyond the earlier initiative by also examining other forms of captured information (e.g., video, sound, biometrics) and additional kinds of emerging technologies given today's concern over saftey and terrorism.

New! Our effort is just beginning, so you may want to check back with us in a few weeks. As more projects come on-line, links to them will appear below.

  • Camera Watch
    In the Camera Watch project, we are constructing a repository of links to publicly available on-line webcams, where the webcams of interest are those that observe the public in public spaces. At present, we estimate there are about 10,000 such cameras displaying public places in the United States. Our goals are to assess the number and nature of such cameras, explore potential uses, and analyze and propose related policies and best practices. Search our on-line database of links to cameras.

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Fall 2003 Data Privacy Lab [SOS]