By now most of us are aware of this story : Mary Bale, a woman living in UK was caught on a CCTV camera dumping a cat in a trash bin. The video was uploaded on Youtube, went viral and made the news worldwide. The response was quick and intense : sheer outrage. Mashable has a good summary of the ways this anger was expressed all over the Internet. Quite a normal reaction, one may think. Yet, something doesn’t add up. How come suddenly nobody seems to be too concerned about the use of CCTV cameras to spy on citizens?

Those are serious topics in our times : the respect of private life, the surveillance of citizens by the Government, the rising specter of Big Brother. It’s one of the recurrent topic on Boing Boing : the rising number of CCTV cameras in big cities, specifically in the UK (try this customized search).

Looks like Big Brother isn’t the problem in this particular scenario : the problem is that we don’t want others to spy on us. But if we happen to find ourselves in a position where we can spy on our neighbors, and maybe catch them doing something we think is wrong, then CCTV cameras are ok, surveillance is good, the system is working just fine.

Previously on Skandalon

The Breakfast Club, John Hughes, 1985: “Hackers Will Be Expelled” [click for hi-res]

About Mark Joseph Deutsch:

I was born on tax day 1980. I am an illustrator and graphic designer. I do most of my work from a little studio in the island of Cebu (About)

Visit Mark Joseph Deutsch official website to see more of his work.

First spotted via This Isn’t Happiness.

Excerpt from the magazine:

The little red book which contains hightlights from The thought of Mao Tse-tung is the most influential volume in the world today. It is also extremely dull and entirely unmemorable. To resolve this paradox, we, a handful of editors in authority who follow the capitalist road, thought useful to illustrate certain key passages in such a way that they are more likely to stick in the mind. The visual aid is Sharon Tate and, to give credit where credit, God knows, is due, she will soon be seen in the Twentieth Century-Fox motion picture, Valley of the Dolls.

The Thought Experiment is a blog run by Elizabeth Lamanna:

This animal is a thought experiment. I will try to keep it upbeat and interesting, but it may occasionally swing through bat country, go off broadway, or veer into vapidity as I attempt to disentangle what feels like the crushing simultaneity of where my choices have lead my life.

I realized about a month from turning thirty that I had spent the past year acting like I was going to be audited, as if, casting my memory back through the past ten years, I panicked. Maybe not without reason. Throughout this last decade, I’ve jumped a few ships, burned a few bridges, worded up, partied down, hung loose, and obeyed my thirst, and been just about rolled under by the waves almost as many times as I deserved. The final countdown of my twenties suddenly woke me up to the fact that somewhere along the way, I’d lost track of myself. (more)

This cartoon is an updated look at my original Facebook dogs, who kicked off Noise to Signal as the first cartoon under that name. And they are, of course, a reference/homage to Peter Steiner‘s iconic New Yorker cartoon. (more)

Noise to Signal is Rob Cottingham‘s take on the social web, online living and all that goes with it. N2S (as it’s known affectionately to, well, me) has appeared on such sites as the Huffington Post, PC World and TreeHugger. (more)

Read the Wikipedia entry about Steiner’s illustration for more info.