The 35-year-old French teacher loves to travel. After the Pandemic forced him to offer his language lessons virtually, he relocated from Brazil to Europe, where he could hop on trains to new cities, all of which he documented on social media.
A photo he took in Ireland for his thousands of followers on social media went viral. He didn't realize it until a friend messaged him, pointing him to a news article about " The Follower", a digital art project that showed how much can be captured by cameras in public spaces.
The process of taking the photos was shown in the video. The artist didn't include the users' names or handles but his friends did.
The effort that went into a seemingly casual photo of Mr. Rodrigues leaning against the bright red entryway of the Temple Bar in Dublin was caught on camera by a company called EarthCam. He tried a few different angles and poses, did a minor outfit change, and then added a beer from the pub. The subjects of the piece, including Mr. Rodrigues, were overstated in the articles. Most of them were just social media users.
He said in the interview that he was completely shocked. I didn't expect someone to record me.
The artist behind "The Follower" said his project demonstrates the dangers of images on social media.
What can a government do if one person is able to do this? Mr. Depoorter spoke.
While researching privately installed cameras in public places that he might use for a different art project Mr. Depoorter came up with the idea for "The Follower." He watched a live online feed from Times Square and saw a woman take pictures of herself. He thought she might be aninfluencer and tried to find the product of her photo shoot.
He thought after coming up empty.
Mr. Depoorter watched a live broadcast from New York City. In order to transport people to interesting and unique locations around the world that may be difficult or impossible to experience in person, Earth cam built its network of livestreaming webcams. The cameras are monetized through advertising and licensing
Mr. Depoorter came up with an automated way to combine the publicly available cameras with the photos that people had posted on the photo sharing site. Over the course of two weeks, he collected footage from Times Square in New York, Wrigley Field in Chicago and the Temple Bar in Dublin.
The project showed how easy it is for people to be filmed by cameras, and how often people are unaware they are being filmed.
A lot of people don't realize that it's a real thing.
The broadcasts of people's activity in public spaces without their knowledge was the most troubling thing that Ms. Hammoud was worried about. Ms. Hammoud said that the risks of livestreaming should be reconsidered.
The purpose of the cameras used to be that they were used for. people can be tracked
Questions about the cameras and the risks they pose to the privacy of the individuals who are filmed by them were not answered. Simon Kerr, the company's marketing director, said that Mr. Depoorter had violated the company's copyrighted material.
The project is not about the companies that enabled it. He said it was not only EarthCAM. There are many cameras that are not protected.
Mr. Depoorter downloaded public photos from the photo sharing website and tagged the locations.
Photos are not collected from its platform. A violation of the company's terms of use can lead to a ban.
Thomas Richards, a spokesman for Meta, said that they reached out to the artist to learn more about his work. Privacy and protection of people's information are top priorities for us.
Finding the right people to needle in the digital haystack was a difficult task after the data collection from EarthCAM.
Mr. Depoorter used to do art projects on public cameras that required him to write software to sort through the footage. Belgian politicians were tagged on social media when they looked down at their phones during parliamentary sessions that were broadcast live. He used open cameras to spot jaywalkers who ignored red lights and sold the pictures online for the cost of fines.
Mr. Depoorter used open-sourced facial recognition software to find faces in the footage from EarthCAM.
He said it wasn't perfect. He had to do a manual review of the suggested matches to make sure they were correct. He wanted a diverse group of people, including a couple taking a photo kissing in Dublin, two friends walking through Times Square and a woman with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. Mr. Depoorter didn't reach out to them in advance and didn't hear from any of them.
A former White House tech adviser and professor at Brown University found the project to be "subversive." He said the deployment of the surveille on random people was unnerving.
Mr. Venkatasubramanian said that breaking into someone's house was not a good idea. Unless they ask you to, you shouldn't do it.
Mr. Depoorter's video attracted over 100,000 views before it was taken down by the video sharing website.
Privacy intrusion was not the cause. The company claimed it owned the footage from its cameras.
The man is trying to get the video back up. Lawyers have advised him that his transformation of the surveillance footage, putting bounding boxes around people in the short clips and showing the footage in juxtaposition with theinstagram portraits is a fair use that is legal.
The General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union protects citizens' personal data, including their photos and fingerprints. There are exemptions in the law for artistic expression, but artists need to be aware of how their work will affect their subjects.
Mr. Maldoff thinks that art doesn't give you a free pass.
He did not include the names of the people he included in his project because he did not want them to get a lot of messages.
He did not want The New York Times to write about the Brazilian teacher without his consent.
He said he didn't mind being looked at. I like to take pictures. I like to record video. He said he was not low profile.
Mr. Rodrigues has an account on the photo sharing site. He uses it to show potential customers the experiences that a new language might offer. He said he didn't mind being included in Mr. Depoorter's project and that he was happy for the increased exposure.
He was worried about being spied on, but said there could be benefits to showing what posts can hide.
You can lie if you want. The point is that. You show that you're happy, even though you're not.
He didn't think that was the case. He went to the Temple Bar in Dublin with his friends and then went to other pubs in the city.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
