Kitchener: GRT Depot

If you are reading this post as directed from a QR Code (as part of the Kitchener-oriented version of Waterloo Watchmen, presented at the Artery Gallery as part of the opening of CrimeLab), then you should be able to see Kitchener's Grand River Transit Depot, perhaps the most intensive site of surveillance in the entire city. Why not take your phone over there for a counter-surveillance tour?

If you haven't heard yet, counter-surveillance is the process of performing surveillance of surveillance, whether that be surveillance technology, police or any other form of disciplinary watching.







You will notice these types of cameras all over the exterior of the building. Of course, these are provided with your safety in mind, so why perform counter-surveillance on them? Really, that is up to you.

Counter-surveillance is performed for a number of reasons. One common reason is that many people feel that if the public is going to be subjected to surveillance, they have the right to know about it. By highlighting the presence of surveillance, as in the pictures of cameras offered here, we can map out which spaces are being watched and which are not. This provides advantages both ways. On the one hand, if you need protection, if you feel you need to be in space under observation, then you can get to it. Conversely, if you do not wish to have your image recorded, you can avoid those spaces. While one might think of this as something only criminals desire, it is also something very important to people interested in privacy ethics. Surveillance spaces can blur or define the lines between private and public spaces, and private and public actions.

Probably the most important reason for performing counter-surveillance though is that it can aid in making sure that surveillance is not abused. People often think that engaging in counter-surveillance means you are positioning yourself against surveillance. This is not necessarily true. The safety provided by surveillance gives us all sorts of freedoms. Without it, we would likely not feel safe taking the tour we are now. But if our lives are going to be recorded, especially by people who are in positions of power and authority over us, don't we have the right to record back? To make sure that safety is what is being enforced, not some other motivation, whether personal or political?









You will also find a number of cameras on the building's interior. They are not all documented here yet, but we are working on it. Moreover, Waterloo Watchmen is a collaborative, public project, and so we welcome any counter-surveillance data at: invisibilityisatrap@gmail.com

Why not use the cellphone you are reading this on right now to snap a few counter-surveillance pictures?





Counter-surveillance can also highlight interesting aspects about surveillance that may otherwise seem hidden. For example, in closely observing these cameras, I noticed that the large cases in the middle of each doorway now appear to be empty. If they have been replaced by the smaller cameras on the side, what are they used for?

The answer is implied surveillance. Implied surveillance is a powerful technique, and one of the biggest supposed crime deterrents provided by surveillance technology. The idea is to convince you that you are being watched, whether you are or not. When people internalize surveillance in this way, they are less likely to act in non-desirable ways. Indeed, this is how surveillance cameras deter crime in general - typically they are not being monitored 24/7. Instead it is the threat of being watched and recorded, of being punished later, that provides the deterrent to crime.

Considering that, maybe counter-surveillance can be used to increase the effectiveness of surveillance technology, by highlighting its presence to people who would otherwise have engaged in deviant behaviour.




Get involved in K-W's counter-surveillance movement. Post comments on this blog, submit pictures, discuss it with your friends. We are not trying to end surveillance. That would be a hopeless fight. We are trying to understand surveillance and its many effects. Help us.

Panopticon

For those intrepid QR Code hunters: Welcome to the Waterloo Watchmen surveillance blog! Waterloo Watchmen is dedicated to researching, exposing, and discussing the prevalence of surveillance across UW. Below you will find a brief description of the surveillance technology in your immediate environment as well as a theoretical inquiry to get you thinking! To the right of your screen, you will find an archive menu of previous posts discussing a broad range of campus locations and theoretical perspectives. We invite you to explore this website and join the conversation!





When you think of locations that are subject to surveillance, the bus stops outside the DC do not quickly come to mind. Looking around, you will find no cameras or any other obvious forms of surveillance technology. But what about the literal space you are standing in? Have you thought about why it was specifically designed the way it is? Spatiality and surveillance have a relationship that arguably runs back as far as human beings started forming civilizations. However, such sweeping descriptions are beyond the scope of what a single blog post can address. Instead, let us begin with the spatial technology that Michel Foucault identifies as the ideal realization of modern surveillance society: the Panopticon.


Bentham's Panopticon

What is the Panopticon? In 1785, an English philosopher named Jeremy Bentham designed a prison with an architectural design that provided maximum visibility of all ongoing behaviour. The simplicity of its structure is what gives it its power: prisoner cells arranged in a ring around a central guard tower, each cell’s occupant visible from the ring’s interior, while the guards remain invisible (by a few architectural tricks) to the prisoners. This design was conceived of to address the economic and humanitarian concerns of 18th century reformists. More importantly, it both embodies and envisions the goals and methods of modern disciplinary societies. Foucault informs us that the Panopticon provided two major functions: internalization of the surveillant gaze, so that the prisoner always watches themselves, and normalization, for it allows for the observation, documentation and subsequent adjustment of deviant behaviour.

The Panopticon must not simply be understood as a concrete form though – its technology is philosophical as well as substantial, and as a tool of social control, it can be detached and applied to any institution or locality to generate effects of normalizing power. Moreover, while it provides a fundamental model for our current societal application of surveillance, as technologies of observation evolve and proliferate, the Panoptic society becomes infinitely more complex.

The surprising power of the Panopticon arises from its flexibility – it can operate in discrete, seemingly insignificant situations while also interacting with a larger Panoptic institutional structure, one that continuously acts through every small effect of its power to nudge society towards whatever form of normalization it has most completely embraced. As Foucault says, “the panoptic schema makes any apparatus of power more intense” (Discipline and Punish 206). Consider the bus stop again. Its transparent walls are the first indication that it is a space in which surveillance operates – maximum visibility is its goal, while still requiring some kind of containment. This is not a strict containment, but it is containment nonetheless; being picked up or dropped off by the bus requires interacting with the space delineated by the stop. It also runs on a time table as well, thus regulating the levels of bodies in that space – again, this operation is subtle, and certainly not strict, but it does provide a predictor for the locating and observing bodies. Consider this process of surveillance, which we might seek to reclaim as counter-surveillance: by collecting information on your bus habits and your class schedule (both fairly easily attained from simple questioning and/or observation of the average person), I can predict specific times of the day in which you will be contained in a totally visible space, for at least a small window of time. I can wait and I can plan. My movement will not be so restricted as yours. You might not see me, but I will see you, and I will add another piece of data to the pattern I am developing about you. Visibility is a trap. It assures your inclusion in surveillance society, whether you like it or not.



Counter-Surveillance Resources

GRT Schedules

Routes that use the DC bus stops: 7D, 7E, 9, iXpress.