Traffic Cam Photobooth will locate the nearest NYC traffic camera and help you take the perfect selfie. It's fun, of course, but it was designed for a greater purpose: surveillance awareness. From the site's About page:
Traffic Cam Photobooth is a website that allows anybody to locate their nearest publicly available traffic camera and use it to take pictures of themselves. While these cameras are ostensibly intended for traffic, they also serve to acclimate us to the idea that constant monitoring is an everyday part life in the city. No matter the target of this surveillance, it's clear from looking at the map that most New Yorkers get unconsentingly captured by the lens of at least one camera – if not several – every day. TCP offers visitors an engaging and lighthearted way to engage with this very serious topic by drawing attention to these easily ignored cameras. People can use their feeds, which their tax dollars help fund, to take pictures of themselves, spreading the knowledge of this sprawling surveillance apparatus through fun self-portraits designed to be sharable online.
You can choose between photo booth and Polaroid mode and change the background from regular to brat if you can pull off the use of the word "brat," which I cannot. You can also customize the text on the Polaroid. The site only works on mobile because they don't want you walking around in traffic with a laptop, which I would argue is only slightly more dangerous than walking in traffic with a phone.
So, have fun with it and try not to worry about living under constant surveillance.
Previously: A silly parrot photobombs a traffic camera in this cute video
