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Comment by gizmo | Hacker News Reader

Everybody who enters an Apple store is already being recorded by hidden video cameras without their consent. Loss prevention. Unless you think being photographed in addition to being unknowingly video recorded is a grave privacy violation, I don't get your point.

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Those security cameras aren’t hidden and always have a sign somewhere in the store noting their presence. The difference is security cameras announce their presence by being visible and obvious. Installing spyware on an Apple Store laptop to capture people’s images and upload them for your own amusement is not obvious, was never announced and most people would find gross and abusive. At the very least the security cameras come with liability if abused and cause harm to the customer.

> Those security cameras aren’t hidden and always have a sign somewhere in the store noting their presence.

My understanding is that this is not a legal requirement and is rather something stores do solely to scare away potential burglars.

Apple don’t post video montages of their security footage online and ask people to look at the faces of the shoppers and see if they can read some meaning into the lack of emotion on their faces.

When you enter an Apple store you are trusting Apple implicitly with your safety and security during your visit. That they might take security video as part of that is a reasonable component of that trust relationship. Being forced to participate as a model in an art exhibit by a random third party with no relationship to Apple violates that trust. It’s no wonder Apple would have a concern.

It’s not remotely comparable to security surveillance, and the artist doesn’t even seem particularly to be trying to draw that comparison, so I’m not sure why people are seeing this as about ‘always being on camera’.

Because that's the point. The art is about telling people that they are being recorded. Just that apple won't brodcast there faces doesn't mean no one will see them. Or they are not being recorded

That wasn’t how I read the article. The artist seems fascinated by the way people look emotionless when interacting with computers, not with drawing attention to surveillance mechanisms. He wanted to create a moment of connection between the people in the store and commented mainly on how people ignored one another and kept looking at the computer. I really don’t know where people get the idea the artist’s intent was particularly focused on corporate surveillance.

Of course, death of the artist and all that - if people read it as a piece about surveillance capitalism then that’s what the art is about regardless of what the artist thinks it’s about.

> Unless you think being photographed in addition

Author also emphasises that visitors are making photographs of the shop, and other visitors in that shop. Without consent.

I'm trying to understand where the line lies. As I don't see it, but gauging by the heated reactions in the threads here, many apparently see a clear and obvious line.

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