Kitchener: Parking Lot

When we think about surveillance, we generally only think of CCTV (closed circuit television) security cameras, recording our image. Yet there are all sorts of technologies and means for you to be watched today. Consider your credit card and something as simple as this parking lot.

Every time you use your credit card, a record is kept, both by who is being paid and by your credit card company itself. Each of these transactions tells a story about you. In this case, it tells a number of things. By paying with your credit card here, a record is kept of when you entered this space, on which date and for how long (as back-calculated from the cost of the transaction). One could make a general estimate about your activity once leaving this place. Assuming you remain on foot, as most people who have parked their car temporarily do, it would be possible to guess the maximum distance you could have gone before returning. This would allow for a general grid of where you went during the time to be created. As soon as this information was cross-referenced with other forms of surveillance (other credit card transactions in the area, security cameras, questioning local store owners) a much fuller picture of your time spent in downtown Kitchener could be created.

Of course, if you are not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't have any worry about surveillance, right? Yet the story remains all the same. And for how long is that story stored for? 10 years? 20? Over the course of a day, a week, a life, we offer up so many pieces of surveillance data. Each piece seems insignificant. Maybe each piece is stored in different databases. But as they add up, as they are stored and potentially cross-referenced for whatever reason, a surprisingly full picture of your life is presented for whoever has access to it. What would you do with all that power?