surveillance

Check me out

Check-In? I’m out. The new ‘Check-In’ service installed by the university starting at the beginning of the 2018/19 academic service is ultimately, a waste of everyone’s time and phone battery. Not only is it a waste of time, but it opens up a conversation about mental health, our technology-obsessed generation, and even classism.

Let’s take it one step at a time. The reason that it is a waste of time is that it doesn’t add anything new to the registration process, as all seminars I’ve been to this term has also had paper registers, aka the old system that we’ve always had and had always worked. Not only that, but it is also faulty. I’ve heard from a number of students that their check-in system on their iExeter app doesn’t even work, meaning they are expected to go to their department faculty every single time they attend their contact hours to say ‘Yes, I was actually there but your app doesn’t work.’ So, bearing in mind students who study sciences that can have 20 contact hours a week, surely it is completely unreasonable to make them do this every time? Surely a paper register would save the student time, the tutor time, and the poor people at the faculty reception?

when the looming notification arrives of ‘remember to check in’, and I can’t for whatever reason, it’s more like a notification of failure

Furthermore, this expectation to attend every single one of your hours without fail can be detrimental to your mental health. Of course, that should be expected most of the time, but we are all human and things happen. Sometimes you do just need that extra sleep or time to catch up on other things. In the first year, before this system, I was under the understanding that lectures could be watched at home or in the library at another time if necessary, hence them being online at our disposal. So when the looming notification arrives of ‘remember to check in’, and I can’t for whatever reason, it’s more like a notification of failure. My attendance at a lecture does not affect anyone but myself, so why must I register my attendance?

Another important fallback of this new system is the tools needed to use the system. It requires students to be in possession of a smartphone, or a laptop with Bluetooth. It amazes me that, a university already under scrutiny and stereotype of mainly having middle-class students would fail to see the clearly classist mentality of the check-in system. It essentially says, if you are not privileged enough to have a smartphone or laptop, you must go to the walk of shame to your faculty, queue up for how long every single day and explain that you do not have this luxury item. ‘You are making everyone’s day more difficult because you cannot afford an iPhone. Thanks a lot poorer student.’, screams the system.

In addition, is it such a crime if I don’t feel like bringing my phone to university with me one day? Our generation is so obsessed with technology as it is, and it is dangerous and unproductive of the university to push us to constantly have our phones as an extension of our hands just to save our tutors five minutes typing up a register. This culture of needing our phones to survive every second of the day is unnatural and 100% can affect our mental health, which is fragile enough as students with all the pressure we can face.

Overall, this system is pointless but not only is it silly, and lazy, it is exclusionary and encourages a classist, student-turned-robot mentality, and literally helps no one.

CIRCLES: The Biker Caught by his own Helmet Cam (and other stories)

At 9:20am on the fifteenth of February 2013 an asteroid falls from the sky. 19 metres wide and entering the atmosphere with an energy estimated to be equivalent to 500,000 tonnes of TNT, it explodes over Chelyabinsk, Russia, resulting in over a thousand injuries. For months to come, researchers and scientists alike are quoted time and time again – ‘the risks posed by asteroids of this scale is seriously underestimated’ – in scare articles. The moment is captured and shared by a dozen motorists across the city thanks to one device in particular: the cameras installed on their dashboards.

Had it happened five years before, the astronomical event would never have been shared in such a way. Every day we carry cameras and microphones in our pockets; they grant us twenty-four hour access to such a largest source of information; every moment of your day, significant or otherwise, could be documented and shared. With that in mind, where do we find ourselves in the eyes of the law?

Dashboard cameras (or dashcams) are hugely popular in Europe. The Chelyabinsk motorists likely had them installed to protect themselves in court against false insurance claims and dangerous drivers, a common occurrence in many parts of Russia. In the years since the Chelyabinsk meteor, we have seen footage used as evidence in all manner of cases like this in the UK: insurance fraud, speeding violations, irresponsible driving, for example.

This kind of documentation has its obvious benefits, but it is not without its consequences

This kind of documentation has its obvious benefits, but it is not without its consequences. What is caught on camera can be used as evidence.

It is not uncommon to see videos uploaded of a GoPro attached to a BMX, and it’s difficult to forget the notoriety of the happy splashing fad that we seem to have (thankfully) moved on from. The dashcam seems to exist for two separate purposes: for use by hobbyists and for legal protection. It is in this distinction that that responsibility can be forgotten.

Last July, Devon saw a classic case of irresponsible driving caught on camera. Racing at speeds of up to 100mph in a 40mph zone, motorcyclist Nicholas Pannell lost control of his vehicle and launched over a hedge, crash landing in a field near Halwell. Footage of the crash was found on the camera installed in his helmet and, in an unfortunate twist, Pannell unintentionally provided evidence against himself. He was disqualified from driving for a year and given 180 hours of community service.

It seems odd that such a seemingly insignificant gadget, like a camera to record a drive, should prove to condemn Pannell, a man who prior to the race may not have had any intention of speeding. It is scary to think about, despite how ridiculously comical Pannell’s situation seems. The dashcam really did appear harmless. Perhaps this is an indication towards the way we document and store information in the UK. With the publicity offered by social media, it is too familiar a sight to see a politician or a celebrity caught out by contradictory information they thought was private. Could the dashcam be an indication, a tangible reminder, of the dangers posed by the publicising private life?

Across the pond, these lines between hobbyist and the law are less of an issue, as the laws surrounding the installation of a dashboard camera are somewhat of a deterrent.

When a motorist in Santa Ana, California collided with a highway divider last month –lifting the vehicle into the air, the car crashing into the second floor of a dentist’s office – the incident was caught on video by a bus driver’s dashcam, narrowly avoiding the accident.

In the US, installing a device in your vehicle is not necessarily illegal in of itself, so long as it cannot be claimed that it obscures the driver’s vision. And yet, even if the device is adequately installed, they are not totally in the clear.

In the eyes of the US law, the right to a dashcam is a matter of free speech

In the eyes of the US law, the right to a dashcam is a matter of free speech. Thanks to the First Amendment, the video taping of public events is protected against Congressional intervention; in other words, the driver cannot be tried on a Federal level for taping public events. But they very well could be tried by the State Government. Each state has its own rules regarding the dashcam, and each driver would need to be well informed of them. Capturing the Great American Road Trip would likely see a driver researching the legality of their gadget in at least five states: most will decide the effort isn’t worth it. Had the Chelyabinsk meteor instead exploded over the US, we likely never would have seen it shared so widely.

The more we document, the further we pull our private lives into the public eye

The more we document, the further we pull our private lives into the public eye. For most, this is harmless – owning a dashcam is unlikely to backfire in such bizarre ways – but it hits close to home. We might watch the Chelyabinsk meteor in awe, or stare in confusion at the car launched into a dentist’s office, but the very fact we can is only a matter of time and place.

Album Review: ANOHNI – HOPELESSNESS

Hopelessness_(Front_Cover) — ANOHNI – HOPELESSNESS: Image – wikipedia.

NOHNI’s HOPELESSNESS is blistering and elemental. In eleven tracks Anohni, formerly Antony Hegarty (of Antony & the Johnsons), wrestles with some of the most pressing issues facing the planet today. The album takes on drone warfare, ecocide and surveillance. This is Anohni at her most angry; HOPELESSNESS heaves in the same way I Am A Bird and Cut the World do, testament to Anohni’s stunningly affective vocals, but with a bite.

The choice to enlist Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never for production seems tactical. Both pretty hot right now in electronica, their beats serve as bid to extend Anohni’s scope beyond the esoteric and into the mainstream. HOPELESSNESS is conscious pop. Behind it there is the kind of pressing energy disco had, an obvious, or direct, yoking of polemics with dance music. Speaking of a kind of indebtedness to what disco was doing, Anohni told Pitchfork her enlisting of Hud Mo and Oneohtrix served to invigorate; “there was something in the rest of my catalogue that almost seemed too passive and morose, especially in a conversation about global realities today.”

HOPELESSNESS is conscious pop

There are moments where the lyrics smack as too obvious- but then you realise – who else is talking about this stuff, really? And with such uninterrupted, unwavering focus? It isn’t coded in metaphor. Instead Anohni opts for clear bare fact and raw, emotive truism. This is where it rises so triumphantly. Anohni surprises too, with arresting conceits. The opening track ‘Drone Bomb Me’, and one of the lead singles, imagines an orphaned Afghan girl pleading for death. ‘Watch Me’ darkly twist’s a child’s insistent pleas to an indifferent parent into a song about the oppressively paternal surveillance policies that trace both our movements, virtual and real, until even our private spaces are policed. That ‘Execution’ follows significantly takes surveillance to its violent ends, resonating with cases like Chelsea Manning, unabashedly decrying the state-sanctioned murder and also the woeful lack of protection for whistleblowers.

The repeated refrain of ‘4 DEGREES’ becomes mantra-like attack on “justified” inaction towards climate change. The brass feels almost Horn of Helm Hammerhand with its reverberating bass. HOPELESSNESS, in fact, is full to the brim with filmic inflections, the ‘more familiar’ patterning of production lifting Anohni’s emblematic, heart-rendering voice in both its higher and lower registers to rallying heights. Perhaps the most e/affective tracks are ‘Marrow’ and ‘Why Did You Separate Me From The Earth’. Both melodically beautiful, they play with their political content with the tension between aesthetic satisfaction and, again, the starkly simple revocations of essentially the insatiable ideology of greed. ‘Violent Men’ is wonderfully warpy and dark with satisfying crackling feedback. ‘Crisis’ has such a satisfying ending that again possesses a kind of filmic capacity to serve an aural gut-punch, which remarkably doesn’t come across as obvious nor as a cheap shot.

the album sustains its protest calls by pointing figures at something, Someone to rally Against

‘Obama’ is the most jarring, and sits uneasily in its mid-album place. Other tracks reference events, policy and crises but less specifically. Anohni’s damning address to Obama pinpoints her hurt, and it is understandable why she perhaps felt the need to consolidate her bleak HOPELESSNESS onto a tangible figure. So while being an indictment of everyone’s complicity, the album sustains its protest calls by pointing figures at something, someone to rally against. I’m not suggesting that Anonhi wants us to march on Obama, rather what he figurally represents (and as interviews attest, Anonhi’s got a complex idea of what this means). If “We are all Americans now,” Obama is wielding power to (directly or indirectly) placate us.

It is not a perfect album (few are), but it is an important album. It is an unrelenting protest album, taking society to task for our complicity and inaction. What Anonhi is doing is spectacular and vital, she offers up a genuinely, explicitly and accessibly politically-conscious album that cannot, should not, be ignored. Let’s hope this paves the way, a galvanizing cry to use what voices we have, what platforms we stand on, and what talents we have at our disposal, to challenge aggressive self-serving corruption; musician’s take note, so too, humanity.