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layout: post
title: Surveillance, people and power
date: 2014-02-12
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I just twitted about “[The Day We Fight
Back](https://thedaywefightback.org/international/)” a movement
sponsored for some organizations like the [Free Software
Foundation](http://www.fsf.org/), the [Electronic Frontier
Foundation](https://www.eff.org/), among other tech-related bodies and
associations. Put aside the time (a decade at least) being known for my
support to the free software and also open source software, which
prompted me to start typing this post is the kind of job I’m doing
nowadays.

Going straight to the point, directly under my control are around 10
cameras installed abroad the city where I currently live. This is not
the first time I do security related development. And for the most part
(thinking as an ex-volunteer firefighter) I really think that the
current project which involves more than cameras is really helpful for
the people in this city. Let’s temporarily forget the goal of the
project.

I think about the cameras as the eyes of first response corps, certainly
these days (almost) everyone carries a mobile phone capable of doing
free calls to the emergency number, a big chunk of this mobile users own
a so called smart-phone capable not only of making the emergency call,
but also most of these gadgets are equipped with sensors and in some
cases software capable of sending geo-location data and media to the
emergency control centres. What this devices can’t provide neither
replace is the training of first responders teams and dispatch
operators.

So, the right mix of technology with trained and highly ethic people in
charge of the cameras I was talking about in the first place, make the
surveillance projects worth. The problem arises from an education and
economics background. I can sleep fine every night, since I do a
professional and transparent (to maximum allowed extent) work, I was
grown educated by certain ethics and in a relatively comfortable
environment. Speaking of my current work, all code I’ve written is being
published with some sort of free or open source licence, so it can be
openly audited. But what about the high rank officers, middle ground
operators and other people with access to the technology and who are
able to exploit it for their own purposes?

Technically, I or any person with the right skill set can create things
that can be twisted into evil tools by other kind of skilled people, how
do you control the later?

I could stop doing what I do, but some one else will do it anyways. The
key is education which is the easiest part, since the other part, the
economics are a bit more complicated to even think about, but easily
controlled by education means though.

EOF