The MIT Professors Bedazzling Security Cameras to Highlight Campus Surveillance [ Hyperallergic ]

The flava:

Tenured faculty members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are decorating the university’s surveillance cameras with googly eyes, rhinestones, and glitzy decorations to protest its investment in what they call “Big Brother technology.”

Faculty members Catherine D’Ignazio, Marah Gubar, Tanalís Padilla, Dwai Banerjee, and Karrie Karahalios began decorating the cameras in August, four months after the student newspaper, The Tech, reported that MIT would be spending over $3 million on more than 500 surveillance cameras from 2025 to 2026. According to the report, the cameras can be activated to identify faces and objects with AI, and are stationed in exterior locations and academic facilities, among other high-traffic areas around campus.

“We have these little buckets of gems and tinsel, and create these little Gumby-type creatures with googly eyes,” D’Ignazio told Hyperallergic in a phone interview. None of the adornments interfere with the camera function, but are intended to remind passersby that they are under surveillance.

In a faculty newsletter announcing the deliberately unwieldy project name, “The Initiative to Beautify the AI-capable Surveillance Benevolently Installed by our Administrator Overseers and the MIT Corporation In Collaboration with Big Brother Tech Companies,” the faculty members said that the campus had been transformed into an “AI-capable Panopticon” . . . .       

The article:

https://hyperallergic.com/the-mit-professors-bedazzling-security-cameras-to-highlight-campus-surveillance/