"School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home"

"Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins's child was disciplined for "improper behavior in his home" and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence" http://boingboing.net/2010/02/17/school-used-student.html

Full story


I found the section above in an article, when researching surveillance and how our online presence is watched. The above story just highlights how obtrusive surveillance can be.

The trailer above is for the up and coming 'Social Network' film. Definately a film that I like the look of, but also very relevant in terms of subject matter. It's also a great example showing the parallels between social networking and surveillance.

Enemy of the State Title Sequence

This isn't the best title sequence that I have seen, but it does include lots of things within it that infer the idea of surveillance. I like the way that the idea of satellites are introduced and the way that tracking someone is suggested.

Laws against employers looking on Facebook site

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,713240,00.html

Gattaca

This is the trailer for Gattaca:


Although it is about human geno and not surveillance I think that it would be helpful in terms of broadening my investigation. The trailer above looks really interesting so I have ordered it on Love film so hopefully will have watched it by the end of the week.

Deja Vu

I watched this film the other day and loved it! After signing up to Love Film recently we thought that it would be a ideal way to rent a few films that would help with research. This is definitely one! Not just in terms of its title sequence but the way that narrative is explored and the way that a non linear time sequence is used. I will need to write a treatment for the programme that I want to create a sequence for, so by exploring other programme's and films it allows me to get a feel for what I want my sequence to be about.

Parallels to Social Networking

My Summer research has led me to draw connections between surveillance and social networking. Nowadays a lot of information can be found about people online through the platforms of 'FACEBOOK', 'TWITTER' and other networking sites.

A part of my research I started tweeting to over a 1000 followers and lead them to a blog that I set up http://bio-metricks.blogspot.com/ as a way of seeing how stories I was posting would attract/or the opposite, to click on what was being posted.