Bonus Mission #1: Why Are You Watching Me?

This is a video of a man dancing silently in an MRT train car on the East-West Line taken late in 2006. This video was found on YouTube and not taken by me. I think that it is an excellent example of sousveillance and also relevant to the issue of privacy.

The video shows a man in an MRT carriage that's relatively empty. At first he's only walking up and down a little, bouncing from foot to foot jauntily. This progressively develops into more of a full-out dance. I hypothesize that he sized up the situation, thought that no one was watching, and so felt less inhibited and moved more freely.

However, his behaviour was captured on video by another passenger. This raises the question of privacy in public places: can it exist? Previously, the privacy of a location could be directly linked to the amount of people who have access to it. In that case, the MRT carriage in that video would have been a relatively private place. Firstly, as the train is moving, no passengers can alight or board the train. Secondly, the train itself seems to be almost empty (look down at the row of carriages extending). So we have a location that is almost devoid of other people, and which cannot be accessed for the moment. Seems to be to be a perfect definition of a private place.

With the introduction of technology, however, an element of surveillance is brought in. With just one other person in the train, the man's behaviour can be recorded, and then this disseminated later - which is exactly what has happened. Technology allows us all to be citizen journalists. We can capture, record, and playback everyday life that much easier (Sousveillance, Wikipedia, 2007). In this way the possibility of public privacy is removed. Nowadays true privacy is hard to find, unless you take pains to sequester yourself in a social vacuum.

References
Sousveillance. (2007, February 7). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 08:58, March 10, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sousveillance&oldid=106389703