Wildlife monitoring technologies used to intimidate and spy on women
cam.ac.uk
cam.ac.uk
Most women could have predicted that spycams in a park, run by a government in a country with known issues around women’s rights, would lead to issues.
Even governments with incredibly strict rules and indelible audit trails struggle with men in government using their access to data to stalk women. India is not a country known for these things.
While AG, he put in place, a monitoring regimen, that caught him, as Guv, using state funds to buy hookers and whatnot.
For all I know, he might have gotten away with it, if he hadn’t been using state funds.
It kinda ripped the lid off a bunch of fairly misogynistic attitudes, though. He didn’t last long, after that.
Just a view I see lacking and underrepresented in tech spaces
But if there are other things you’re referring to with that governor then definitely mention those, separately
Something very much up for debate amongst leading scholars. I - personally - think buying sex is bad, and degrading to both parties.
Who are those "leading scholars" and what gives them authority to be the judge what consenting adults do with their body for a living or for entertainment?
It comes down to consensus in practice.
I'm not saying I have the right answer to all of this either, I'm just pointing out that your "morally neutral" stance isn't as neutral as you'd like to think.
Only in mental gymnastics. Staying out of other people's private lives is not a question of my own morality but also the law in most western democracies. I am free to do whatever I want as long as my freedom doesn't negatively affect anyone else. If you're not affected by what I'm doing in private, why are you trying to involve yourself in it and act as a judge?
You're allowed to do that, and we're allowed to point out that this doesn't work in practice and that the failure in practice is itself why we're not surprised or even upset about the hypocrisy.
Telling people to respect the privacy you're awarded by law is nto telling them what to do.
The laws themselves were written to tell people what to do. That's why they come with actual punishments if you break them, not merely arguements like on the internet. And some of those laws do actually ban various acts associated with prostitution, though the stated reasons for such laws are also often out of sync with the consequences given what is easiest to prosecute.
Can you name a specific religion? I can't think of any, but maybe that's because I misunderstand the religions.
People can be weirdly selective about such things, which is why I've not seen any suggestion by current christians that sacrificing a bird and dipping another bird in it's blood and then then shaking the blood soaked bird on the patient is a valid cure for leprosy. (Chapter 14:1-7)
Just realised that the text in Leveticus if taken literally says women are not allowed to have straight sex, only gay sex:
"""You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination""" - Leviticus 18:22
That said, translations are more of an art than a science, that's why there are so many of them.
It might instead be interpreted as a statement against being bisexual like me, where either gay or straight is fine but doing both is what the writer (from the Watsonian perspective, god) doesn't like.
It's transactional and commercial, someone is using money to get access to another's body, at least as exploitative as work generally is. It's something that wouldn't happen without the money, hence it obviously exerts some power in the relation.
People never have sex, hook up or send nude pics of themselves without exchanging money?
You should spend some time with sex workers. Pretty much the first lesson in this line of work is that you act well and submit to the whims and wishes of your clients, and the second lesson is to put some hard limits on what you'll do or you'll be abused.
It's generally an act, one person faking attraction or friendship or whatever and another person paying for it. Sometimes sex workers get to know clients personally, but outside porn where the 'client', i.e. the producer or whoever is paying, isn't the one you're fucking I've never heard about a sex worker initiating a non-paying relationship with a client.
To answer your actual question, no, this is not a common type of behaviour.
Unemployment is low in the developed west, there are tens of thousands of other legal careers you can choose if you want to support yourself.
There's no manufactured imbalance of power here since nobody's forcing you into sex work. You choosing to strip to gooners online for money is your voluntary choice as an adult so take responsibility for it and don't outsource it by blaming those paying for your life choices.
And you should really, really spend some time with some sex workers and listen to them instead of some grifter dipshit that calls himself a fan of Mises or whatever.
Its mostly an information asymmetry if they choose to sell their labor that way and dont want to, or do want to and believe it is the most lucrative choice for them
part of the whole sex worker activist movement is the observation that other kinds of workers dont have to be representatives of their entire occupation based on their mood that day
There are obviously people who are exploited. So those instances should be treated with the full severity of the law.
However there are genuinely others who enjoy the work and find it more empowering than degrading. So it’s not just an industry full of stereotypical sleaze bags exploiting vulnerable women.
I’m not making an argument for nor against sex work here by the way. Just saying that you cannot treat this kind of topic with Boolean arguments like you have done. It’s a hell of a lot more complex than that.
In my opinion what we really should be doing is spending more time making this industry safer for those that choose it, rather than pretending it can be eradicated and thus pushing it into dark corners where vulnerable individuals cannot be kept safe.
Some have truly horrific stories, like being gang-raped at age 12, and forced into a lifetime of prostitution.
Others, actually chose the work, and did well.
Then, there’s trafficking, which is often a nightmare situation.
Not all the victims (or volunteers) are women, either.
I think that the fact the profession is often illegal, makes things considerably worse, all around. It pretty much guarantees that bad guys/gals will be running things, and there will be no oversight.
All of them also acknowledged it is a dangerous trade with plenty of horror stories.
The Feds started poking around, and voilà. The Southern District of NY US Attorney was a big game hunter for politicians, so his goose was cooked.
Ironically, the lieutenant governor who replaced him came out swinging, disclosing that he did inhale, regularly had sex outside of his marriage, did cocaine and various other things. Lol.
Hah, how did he do?
succeeded as governor by David Paterson, a blind man... nothing says a blind governor can't embezzle funds to spend on prostitutes, but perhaps it's less common? wikip: Paterson launched a campaign for a full term as governor in the 2010 New York gubernatorial election, but he announced on February 26, 2010, that he would bow out of the race. During the final year of his administration, Paterson faced allegations of soliciting improper gifts and making false statements; he was eventually fined in excess of $62,000 for accepting free New York Yankees tickets. He was not charged with perjury.
He was succeeded as governor by
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cuomo_sexual_harassment...
And I wonder in what cases it is an issue for those, because we have cameras everywhere and people are fine with it.
> Camera traps and drones deployed by government authorities to monitor a forest in India are infringing on the privacy and rights of local women.
Why women specifically? Would it not affect me?!
> The women, who previously found sanctuary in the forest away from their male-dominated villages, told Simlai they feel watched and inhibited by camera traps, so talk and sing much more quietly.
This does not explain it. Men and women both do this. My Indian friend just went to visit a "retreat place" or whatever it is called for a week, there are both men an women.
I would not want to be recorded in the forest either, nor anywhere else, but it is a "fact of life" I cannot do against. :|
John, you should ask this to men, why do men get obsessed over women and stalk them much more often?
> Why women specifically? Would it not affect me?!
do you have a history of being stalked by women? I don’t believe
So... in my entire life I have been stalked by women only, 2 women in total (as far I can recall).
The whole thing is not limited to stalking anyways.
https://www.humboldt.edu/supporting-survivors/educational-re...
Until there are proofs of this happening, we should refrain to assume by default that the workers from the park, or the Cambridge scientists participating in the project, are rapists that hate women
Nothing in the article proofs that this is a case of bad men stalking women for sexual purposes. This accusations in any western country would be followed by a trial by damages against the right to honour.
Do we know if the drones were chasing off women from areas where tigers had been videotaped recently, for example?
forest rangers in the national park deliberately fly drones over local women to frighten them out of the forest, and stop them collecting natural resources despite it being their legal right to do so.
later on it says:
The women living near India’s Corbett Tiger Reserve use the forest daily in ways that are central to their lives: from gathering firewood and herbs to sharing life’s difficulties through traditional songs.
For unspecified reasons, women are responsible for collecting those natural resources. If I put down a guess, that the wood is used for cooking and cleaning (with the men doing the typical gender role activities that India apply towards men).
We could create a similar article saying that men are more affected by road cameras than women, since men are more likely than women to be driving (especially truck drivers).
Presumably, women are not putting up the spy cameras, weren't asked their opinions beforehand, weren't informed whether audio, video, or both were being captured, and don't have access to the footage to verify. If your company started putting trail cams in the break rooms or your neighbor installed one pointing at your back porch, you probably wouldn't think "this is fair for everyone, I trust they won't check it without telling me unless there's a good reason or share this with anyone I wouldn't want them to, like my bosses or my abusive spouse".
"Predated" can mean too much things. Both, women and men are perfectly capable to destroy other's lives in many ways.
But do we really?
> Nobody seems to care.
Might it not also be the case that eventually people will simply assume that they are always under surveillance and that therefore they may as well do whatever they wish wherever they wish with the result that the behaviour that the surveillance sought to suppress actually becomes not merely more prevalent but also more public. See Clarke and Baxter's Light of Other Days for a fictional exploration of the subject.
I don't think Hanlon's razor applies here. If there's no penalty to the people who establish a system for its foreseeable abuses, then their not foreseeing those abuses isn't inability, it's strategy.
That's a really long/specific way of saying: wildlife cameras spying on Indian women is an instance of a more general problem.
I feel like plausible deniability (e.g. security/monitoring) is so easy that discovering and alleging wrong-doing would be met with little more than shrugging of shoulders.
it was not met with shrugs
FTA: Young men appointed as temporary forest workers shared the photo on local Whatsapp and Facebook groups to "shame the woman," Simlai said. "We broke and set fire to every camera trap we could find after the daughter of our village was humiliated in such a brazen way," one local told the researchers.
That's good news in this instance but not in the case of cameras in gyms and many other cases, unfortunately.
Aside from that, camera necessity isn't real, affordable cameras for mass deployment are perhaps not recent, but there certainly were other ways in the past to handle crime.
Cameras are an incredibly good way to handle crime. Modern cameras have excellent object detection, can notify on unexpected movements in zones, and often come with backup batteries and offline storage. Many can read numberplates in the dark, and many crimes are solved by a neighbours camera catching a car driving off from the crime scene.
The context here is around a boss potentiall watching their employee via camera (with lewd inference). Directing cameras internal to the business wouldn't change this issue.
Worst case in the former: A business fails.
Bad case in the later: The business succeeds and perpetuates it's abusive practices
Worst case in the later: mass genocide and the total extinction of the human race.
What about the most likely case - people use the cameras for their intended purpose and life continues on as normal?
Unless it was a one-off error, that is the reddest of red flags.
I don’t think this problem can be fixed with stricter laws. Not that we shouldn’t try, but I wonder how effective it would be.
We should raise boys to be better men. Across the world, right wingers are coming to power, this is not good for women. Then there are shitheads like Andrew Tate who have a big following among boys and young men. This whole thing is just depressing.
seems like they developed a set of principles a while back https://wildlabs.net/sites/default/files/principles_for_the_...
But my guess is without strict enforcement of the rules with consequences this will carry on.
For US readers "fly tipping" is illegal dumping of household waste, not giving money to insects.
Sadly, in addition to men, there are also a lot of women, who abuse women. (And even children.)
But yeah, there isn’t any easy solution to this
Is a "think on the children", but with women.
The fact is that people in public areas can and should expect to be filmed or appear in the background of a selfie. First because is legal, and second because is unavoidable.
Without the current "male panic", women shouldn't have a problem with appearing in the background of a low quality photo (that in most cases will show a blurred face). Men don't care about it either, and people don't wander around naked in forests typically.
Cameras can have benefits for women also. Will detect presence of wild animals in the area that could be dangerous to women; or criminal activity, like poachers, arsonists or violators. I assume that this is the real problem with the presence of cameras here. That poachers are being filmed
They aren't neither bad or good. Is just a tool. The huge majority of zoologists are normal responsible people that would delete any photo with sensitive personal information and never would filter it to internet.
The fix is to put banners on the area, but then the cameras will be stolen. Or we could also stop to study nature and let everything go to hell.
in germany i can expect the opposite because surveillance cameras in public spaces are illegal.
this is not a "think of the women" argument, but "think of the people".
[1]: https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/507980/bf8a67c2440522...
But the real problem in this particular case can be spotted from a mile. Crime against nature was so rampant, that the India government must spend money and use cameras, drones and anything to stop it in the protected area. This is really "think of the criminals".
The alleged psychological damage done to women because a natural protected area is being surveilled, is clearly an excuse from poachers, unable now to continue their previous activity freely.
I will not try to pretend that I know the role of women on Indian culture and how much fragile mentally they are, but I assume that people can understand that scientific work is necessary; and that behind each camera there is not necessarily a rapist (Cambridge has also women doing science also). If this women are so stressed, the most probable reason is that they are poachers also.
Either you protect it, or you lose it. My sympathy for the "victims" of protecting nature is low and decreasing.
> "We broke and set fire to every camera trap we could find"
I wonder what reasons could have the park staff to watch the activities of such good and nice people
Says who? I certainly don't agree with this. It's a societal decision whether or not we want or need video surveillance, which is very different from some random dude filming me with his smartphone. Evidence on whether or not video surveillance is _effective_ is also, at the very least, inconclusive [1] and highly depends on location.
So no, I don't think people should expect to be filmed by their government or its contractors at all, _especially_ not in public places :)
[1]: https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/surv...
Not that I disagree, but to fix it you need to make it different in a way that you can write down in a law -- something better than "I know it when I see it" -- and you need to keep the negative externalities limited [0].
A law like that seems like it basically wants to codify the level of privacy a typical citizen in 1910 (or 1850 or even 1970) might have enjoyed. Before we had our current level of networking, storage, and computing power, we didn't have to worry about things like "some random dude filmed me with his smartphone" (almost always not a problem) transforming into "every video is automatically uploaded to an AI surveillance tool" (a potential problem -- even if the video itself is "legal", an aggregation of those videos paints a picture of whether you're pregnant, your food preferences, whether you should be afraid of being seal-team-sixed by God-Emperor Trump, ...).
The ability to take more invasive measurements throws another wrench in things. Laws regulating videos and security feeds haven't kept up with the technology improving to capture more sensitive data than before. It's fine if my security cameras accidentally capture some of your house and activities 24/7. Assume I'm not automatically uploading those to a central service *cough* ring doorbell *cough* .... It's not great if I intentionally aim more cameras at you (often legal). It's worse if I make them public (often legal). Is thermal imaging to get an idea of which rooms you're in okay (often legal, less so if you're the police)? What about using wifi for imaging [1] to get a fuzzy view of you in a bath (similarly, often legal)? Can I hover a drone outside all your windows at an angle to try to peek through gaps in the blinds (mostly illegal, though the police still try -- FAA isn't the only governing entity here even though their rules mostly allow things like that)? What if I'm not violating your airspace and use an ultra-zoom lens (mostly legal)?
[0] Anti-recording laws tend to make it harder to record things you ought to be able to. That can be direct (police using their power to physically block you from recording their abuse, using the existence of anti-recording laws as enough of an excuse that qualified immunity will protect them regardless of how badly those laws are interpreted), indirect (your phone physically not letting you record debt collectors breaking the law in CA, even with consent from the collector, just because your phone knows that CA is 2-party consent), chilling (especially if the law is a bit vague, it gives well-funded actors yet another way to bankrupt you when they're caught breaking the law by your recording -- first trying to sue you for the illegal video), ....
[1] I've seen better articles and better performance, but this seems fine: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wi-fi-routers-used-to-dete...
That it is legal can obviously be changed, and it being "unavoidable" is a matter of culture.
You could view stealing as "unavoidable" (ultimately, someone much bigger/stronger/with a weapon/etc _could_ just take your stuff on the street, right?). It's primarily through culture and cultural instruments that we reduce its prevalence.
Whether we choose to prioritise a given issue or not is, of course, up for debate, but we should acknowledge that it is, in fact, a choice.
Speak for yourself brother, I care quite a lot.
Requisites:
- battery operated
- IP protection
- fast shutter (example: moving objects)
- wifi?
- night mode not important (using it in optimal conditions)
Thanks
I need them to count cars more than animals anyway
Why would you stop singing loudly because of cameras?
Even if their singing is bad, they're just inflicting it on someone who they don't like?
Hence the violent display of destroying cameras on sight and becoming the savior of women from themselves and the lowly men who seek to take advantage of them. It's a fun narrative, but it's quickly becoming boring and antiquated as the years draw on.
If this seems stressing, maybe we need to remind that on Africa the directors of some national parks need constant protection from the army to avoid being assassinated by poachers. In some places intruders found on protected sanctuaries are not recorded with drones, after many rangers killed, they are directly shoot until they quit the area.