Monday, August 11, 2008

Seattle Surveillance Society?


Jarmick, in blue on the left, talks with a photographer at the Camerahead Project
demonstration in Cal Anderson Park July 26. On the right, KOMO 4 interviews a volunteer.


Some call the media the fourth arm of the government because of its ability to check the government with investigative reporting. In
"You're On Camera," Martin Jarmick captures Seattleite reactions to the emerging policy of anonymous public surveillance with his own video camera. The five-minute video features a representative from the ACLU, artist Paul Strong Jr, and Seattle residents.

Jarmick is part of a growing trend in journalism towards internet publishing. He films for SeattleIAM.com, a site devoted to news and feature stories produced by independent photojournalists in Seattle. He also contributed to the Camerahead story that ran here a few weeks ago.

1 comment:

G. Angus said...

Being old enough to have experienced some of what others had lived through in Europe during Soviet occupation, having become intimate with some escaped Poles, knowing not just survivors of Nazi concentration camps but also a few who'd escaped East Germany, I see all too many parallels happening in this country now.

Surveillance of innocents, the tracking of law-abiding individuals, the State deciding what we can or cannot do at any given time, the erosion of civil liberties; these are all precursors to the bleakest of futures. And it doesn't help that it is all producing an intended level of fear, a manipulation on a scale we don't want to believe is possible.

Historically, there appears to be only one act which will, eventually, turn the tide of corporate & governmental corruption -- considering those who hold the power have twisted our own laws to suit themselves, but do we have it within ourselves, as a people, to take the necessary steps?

I'm not convinced. And I quite literally fear for the future.