Mood:
mischieviousI am studying sound here at Concordia. One of the things that the profs recommend we do is take Soundwalks. This involves walking through a neighborhood (usually one you know well) with the purpose of identifying signature sounds. I decided to adopt this practice for the purposes of this project and do a Surveillance Walk. The walk I took was in my neighbourhood, NDG. The following are some interesting things I uncovered on my journey.
About a block away from my house there was a speed trap set up. The sign was obvious to drivers, what was less obvious was the cop sitting about a block away. I started to photograph the speed monitor, thinking that this is an interesting surveillance issue. For one thing, drivers always slow down when they realize they are being monitored, just as I act differently when I am aware of the presence of a camera. It is also an interesting issue considering that the Quebec government is reassessing the possibility of installing traffic cameras that would automatically issue tickets to cars running red lights. I was thinking about all this when the cop got out of his car and started gesturing for me to put the camera down and go away. I complied; I don't think my constitution would fare well in prison (not even in a holding cell). I am still not clear on why I was not allowed to take these photos but I can think of three possible reasons:
1. I was photographing evidence of cars speeding (including their license plates).
2. I might have been bringing too much attention to the speed trap. Perhaps the cop felt that I was giving cars a heads up that something was going on, thus hindering the ticketing process.
3. The cop, like me, does not like to have his picture taken.
I continued on my journey.
My next point of interest was a treehouse. Now I know that this is not a conventional point of surveillance, but I was struck by the fact that anyone who uses this treehouse has a sheltered, bird's eye view of all that goes on below.
The entire walk so far was along Terrebonne. One of the things that struck me the most was how few surveillance points I could find. Hard as a looked I didn't find any closed circuit cameras, not even at the old peoples' home, the churches, or the schools. I did find several homes protected by ADT (though whether these systems were real or the signs were simply symbolic I had no way to find out), and these were mostly clustered in the Walkley area (NDG's only notoriously dangerous street).
Down on Sherbrooke I had more fun!
This is my favorite find! Considering the photo was taken on a highly lit portion of the street I doubt that this telescope is used for star gazing. I was surprised to find such a blatant display of surveillance, especially in such an antiquated form.
Next I went to the Provigo on the corner of Cavendish. I took a couple of photos of the eye-in-the-sky. I was being discrete thus I was more than a little surprised when less than two minutes after the first photo I was approached by an employee and asked to stop. Honestly, I only thought those systems were monitored in Vegas. I expected that these cameras were only connected to VCRs, and perhaps they are, I don't know if it was someone from upstairs or an employee on the floor who noticed me. In any case I was asked to stop. The double standard always shocks me – the business can monitor the consumer, but the consumer can not monitor the business. I promptly left, but not before snapping a couple of shots of the stickers that are used to gauge height in the instance of a robbery.
My last stop was Bell Enterprises on Monkland. Here I did find an obviously placed camera. A company as evil as Bell should have security – and lots of it! But to my surprise (and I waited around a while), no one came out to ask me to stop photographing the equipment.
I was taken aback by my experience on this walk. There was much less surveillance equipment than I expected. Now that I think of it, I’ve worked in many service industry jobs and the only kind of surveillance at any of them has been the alarm system that goes on at night and dye tags/magnetic sensors that beep if something has been stolen. Surveillance, in these instances is synonymous with security. Moreover it is democratic – affecting each of us in the same way. Now I admit that NDG isn’t the most dangerous neighborhood and thus most surveillance equipment is hidden for propriety’s sake. The more dangerous the area the more in-your-face the security. Surveillance in our everyday lives (in my humble opinion) seems more prevalent in the home, such as computer spy-ware, cell phone GPS, and even TiVo (which miraculously knows what we want to watch). These are the issues that concern me because they attack me as an individual.
