Surveillance in Bengaluru – Updates
I have been mapping Surveillance in Bengaluru for couple of months now. We have made some good progress. I thought it's good time to share those updates and ask for help.
Surveillance in Bengaluru central business district.
Mapping
We have mapped 340 Public and Outdoors CCTV cameras. I think we have made good progress. But to cover the entire city we need a bigger network of volunteers. I am planning to organise mapathons towards the end of this year. That should help us to cover the area which we have not been able to cover organically. So look for mapathon announcements here and participate. Of course you don't have to wait till then. In my previous post we have an how-to, its quite simple to follow and map cameras. You can start now.
RTIs
I am planning to do some RTIs with the help of friends to get to know more about the policy around the setup, running and maintenance of public CCTV cameras. I am also interested in knowing the policy and process around data retention, sharing, privacy and security of cameras and data ( and metadata) captured. At some point I will share the RTI questions and responses so you can do similar RTIs for your city.
Public CCTV Camera at Cubbon Park, By Yashodhara Udupa
Pictures, Installations etc
I am also capturing some pictures of public cameras. I am planning to use it as part of awareness campaign. A picture is worth thousand words, literally in this case. I would love to do some public installations for people to explore the concept of CCTV surveillance and privacy implications of it. I have couple of ideas. One involves building a statue/setup using broken CCTV cameras. I still don't know what form or shape it will take. I will blog about it once I have better idea. In the meantime if you are interested in sharing your pictures of CCTV cameras, please install KoboCollect app from play store. To submit pictures you need an KoboToolbox account. That you can get one here. It's free. Once you register, email me your username. I will add you to the project.
