The other night, some friends went and disabled a few of those pesky facial recognition cameras that the MTA has been putting up in subway stations around town. It was very easy, very quick, and very fun! These cameras are connected using Cat6 cables (which are low voltage and safe for anyone to cut). The cabling is encased in electrical conduit which is often connected together with connecting joints that can be opened with a screwdriver, so you don’t have to stand anywhere near the camera to disable it, just open up one of the connectors and cut. Yay!
This is just one way to mess with these cameras. We hope people try out others. A downside of this one is that the cameras are still intact and appear to be functional to passersby, which will still cause people to regulate their behavior. We believe that surveillance has a deadening psychological effect even on people who would never do anything illegal. Disable the cameras, clean up the city, keep everyone free – it’s a public service.
We’re not sure what the timeline is like for servicing the cams. They seem to be installed by an external contractor and the work has to be scheduled, so it’s conceivable that it could take a while or that surveillance mitigation efforts could keep pace with repair work in some locations.
It’s worth noting that we’re living through a historically specific surveillance boom. Of course authorities have always installed infrastructure to surveil and control people, but cameras weren’t always so ubiquitous and they don’t have to be ubiquitous forever. A few years ago, the MTA was a system that “supposedly” or ostensibly had security cameras installed in various locations, but it was so infrequent that it wasn’t really a thing people thought about, and many of them apparently didn’t work. We could get to that again! Sadly, we rarely see authorities willingly dismantle their own infrastructure, but it does fall into disrepair all the time – on its own or with help. <3
Submitted anonymously.