MIT Faculty Bedazzle Surveillance Cameras in Satirical Protest
How we learned to stop worrying and love campus surveillance
MIT installed hundreds of AI-capable surveillance cameras across campus, some pointing at faculty offices and bathrooms. In a satirical newsletter, faculty co-authors mock the administration's secrecy and ties to Ambient.ai by bedazzling the cameras with colorful gems, calling it the IBAISBIAOMITCORPICBBTC initiative. They highlight concerns about privacy, bias, and chilling effects while sarcastically praising the surveillance as a loving gift from Big Brother Tech.
Each gem that we place on an AI-capable surveillance camera is an indicator of our admiring appreciation for Big Brother technology.
- jcomp
There is an effectively unlimited supply of people willing to take sums of money to work on anti-human endeavors, so long as they and theirs are not the humans involved.
- musicale
> Thankfully, the Sauronic array of electronic eyeballs can suppress that kind of rowdiness,
I don't think I've seen this descriptive adjective before, but it is brilliant.
MIT may need to establish an endowed chair for its department of Sauronical Engineering.
- fouc
If you fail to read the article you might not realize it's being sarcastic.
- tarpitt
I can't help but notice that the cameras emerged on campus around the same time that our generation gained an israel-concious politic and israel-gaza protests started.
Edit: I realize this sounds very conspiratorial and hand-wavey but this is my just my personal anecdote from University of Florida, that the cameras showed up with the protests. There is probably more to university poltics than I am aware of, but my impression is that there is signifigant corruption and adminstrative bloat. A major aspect of college protests was funding wrt Israel. Not that all of my experiences with college have been negative, but I leave with the impression there is something strange in the university system at large.
- skyberrys
They must really love their security cameras to have decided to start decorating them. The bedazzled cameras are lovely to see. My inner 90's child can't wait to apply sparkly plastic rhinestone to their naked exteriors. What's next? Some fake braids and perhaps a troll doll or two?
Also have to commend whoever is in charge of acronyms for this project. I thought I was the most excessive acronym user, but now having read this article, I'm not!
- readenough
Somehow this reminds me to think of Aaron Schwartz.
- conartist6
- neilv
As context for this article presumably written for an audience of faculty, a few bits of historical MIT culture:
1. MIT prided itself on having minimal rules. Historically, they think rules are barriers to MIT people doing smart things.
2. MIT valued an open campus. Typical example was that at any time of night students could walk into an empty classroom to work on a problem or something.
3. There is a joke that it stands for "Military-Industrial Technology". There have been very close ties to US govt., more than most than most universities. Whatever goes on at a small set of partifcular universities will be seen by some to affect national security. This is in addition to, like other US research universities, suddenly feeling at the mercy of whatever US administration is controlling the purse strings.
4. Overall strong libertarian bent, of the student body and much of the faculty. This affects how you make non-engineering/science/financial/prestige arguments to this audience. (Excepted are administrative staff, more typically having the background of solid liberal arts educations.)
5. (This one is my own observation) MIT student body overall were less aware of societal and world issues, compared to students overall at the university I was at before. If you see demonstrations on certain issues, that might be originating with international students arriving on campus with concerns felt widely in their home countries, rather than the stereotypical general idealism of you […]