Banks have notoriously poor surveillance systems in comparison to other comparable industries – there’s kind of long-winded boring reasons for this, but it comes to a lot of herd mentality, lack of concrete return of investment in an industry where ROI IS the business, and “lowering to meet regulation” tendencies.

“They incorporate many cameras strategically networked for maximum coverage.”

You might be surprised how non-Big Brother surveillance technology really is. In a lab / demo booth at a convention / at a sales pitch a lot of surveillance technology is startling / impressive, but real-world implementation almost always lags far behind.

My pithy little industry quote when I give presentations about the prevalence of surveillance cameras and technology is “Yes, Big Brother exists, but it’s your kind of loser older brother that still lives with your parents and always is cobbling together his next Get Rich Quick scheme.”

In other words, it isn’t the camera, it is the dude.  Everyone would have reacted exactly the same if he didn’t have the camera and just wandered around staring at people.  The camera only makes it stranger and vaguely more threatening.

What I see happening here is that he’s putting people in a situation that removes most options of socially acceptable behavior and reactions. When this happens to people, we see their true self a little more clearly. And in these videos, their true selves are pissed.

I find that when most people – myself included – find themselves in a confused state of mind, they often move quickly to Anger. But is this a conscious act or an underlying pattern we’re quick to fall into as a sort of short-hand for actually being aware and taking action based on the situation?

Any one of these people could just have easily said hello and engaged with this guy in a friendly way. They could have but didn’t – which says a lot about them.

If we see the camera guy as being a jerk, I think it’s because we all make assumptions about other people when we should take the time be aware and observe. People in the video all assume he’s recording for a purpose and if they only knew this purpose they could know how to react. Without a purpose or a reason though, their societal conditioning fails them, leaving a void of confusion. They can’t accept that there’s no reason and without someone telling them how they should react, they are forced to rely on that part of their consciousness that is unknown even to themselves.

If we could only just trust this ability of being aware in any situation and not cling to our expectations when they’re challenged, we can have a great time in these situations. But when we cling to a need for rationality (often missing in emergency situations for example) that isn’t there, it leaves an opening in our personality for everything else to pop out. Who knows what?

It isn’t just “protect the photographer” laws.

(a) Private citizens should be able to take pictures of anything they can see without trespassing without being hassled.

(b) The government shouldn’t.

I’m not arguing a point, really, just trying to wrap my head around the distinction.