Chapter 33 Exercises: Art and Activism Against Surveillance

Exercise 33.1 — Surveillance Art Analysis: Close Reading

Type: Visual/textual analysis | Difficulty: Intermediate | Time: 45 minutes

Instructions: Choose ONE of the following artworks to analyze. Research it using available online images, artist statements, and critical reviews, then write a 600-800 word close analysis.

Option A: Trevor Paglen, "NSA-Tapped Fiber Optic Links, United Kingdom, GHQ Bude" (2015) A photograph of undersea internet cable landfalls that have been identified as NSA/GCHQ tapping points.

Option B: Hito Steyerl, "How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File" (2013) A video piece available on Vimeo and through museum archives; satirizes instructions for evading visual surveillance.

Option C: Adam Harvey, "CV Dazzle" (2010–ongoing) A series of camouflage designs for defeating facial recognition, documented in photographs of people wearing the designs.

Your analysis should address: 1. Description: What do you see? What are the formal elements (composition, color, scale, medium)? 2. Surveillance argument: What specific aspect of surveillance is the work addressing? What claim is it making? 3. Strategies: How does the work make its argument? Does it document, satirize, demonstrate, or something else? 4. Audience: Who is the work's intended audience? How does the gallery/museum/internet context affect the work's political reach? 5. Limits: What can the work do? What can it not do? Is there a gap between the work's aesthetic power and its political effect? 6. Your response: Did the work change how you think about surveillance? How?

Exercise 33.2 — Make Surveillance Visible: Your Own Visual Counter-Surveillance

Type: Creative project | Difficulty: Beginner-Intermediate | Time: 2-3 hours

Assignment: Create a visual or multimedia piece (photograph, video, map, infographic, or mixed media) that makes some aspect of surveillance in your own environment visible.

Options: - Map your surveillance: Document and map the surveillance infrastructure of a specific area (your campus, your neighborhood, your workplace). Mark camera locations, note what they observe, identify who operates them. Create a visual representation of the surveillance geography. - Data portrait: Request your data from one service (Google Takeout, Facebook data download, or another service you use). Create a visual representation of what that data contains — its scope, its categories, what it reveals about you. - Surveillance selfie: Photograph yourself in a public space with visible surveillance infrastructure in the frame. Write a 200-word reflection on what the image says about the relationship between your presence and the observation apparatus. - Shadow project: For one day, document every surveillance system you encounter (cameras, facial recognition, card readers, GPS, etc.) in writing. Create a visual timeline or map of your surveilled day.

Deliverable: The visual artifact plus a 300-word artist statement explaining: (a) what aspect of surveillance you're making visible, (b) what choices you made in how to represent it, and (c) what you want viewers to understand or feel.

Exercise 33.3 — Argument Mapping: The Case for and Against Surveillance Art

Type: Philosophical analysis | Difficulty: Advanced | Time: 45 minutes

Premise: Surveillance art — Paglen's photographs, CV Dazzle, Banksy's CCTV commentary — makes surveillance visible and creates cultural pressure for change.

Critics argue: - Art remains in galleries, appealing to already-sympathetic audiences; it doesn't reach the populations most affected by surveillance - Making surveillance aesthetically interesting or beautiful may aestheticize rather than critique it - Art provides emotional catharsis that substitutes for political action - Individual artistic resistance is meaningless against structural surveillance systems

Defenders argue: - Art changes culture; culture change is the precondition for political change - Art reaches people through affect (emotion, aesthetic experience) where argument alone fails - Documentation (Paglen's photographs) creates the public record that makes accountability possible - Art builds solidarity among people who experience surveillance as isolated individuals

Instructions: 1. Map the argument structure of both sides (premises → inferences → conclusions) 2. Identify the empirical claims each side makes (does art actually change political outcomes? Is there evidence?) 3. Identify the normative claims each side makes (what should art do? What counts as "political effect"?) 4. Write your own 350-word position, engaging with the strongest arguments on both sides

Exercise 33.4 — Know Your Rights: Role Play

Type: Role play / practical | Difficulty: Beginner | Time: 30-40 minutes (pairs)

Setup: Work in pairs. One person plays the role of a person exercising their rights during a police encounter. The other plays a police officer. Switch after each round.

Round 1 — Pedestrian stop: Officer approaches and says: "I need to see some ID. Where are you coming from? What are you doing here?"

Person's challenge: Determine whether this is a consensual encounter (you can walk away) or a detention (you cannot). Ask "Am I free to go?" Invoke the right to remain silent if appropriate. Do not answer questions you're not legally required to answer.

Round 2 — Vehicle stop: Officer pulls over the car and says: "License and registration. Do you know why I stopped you? Do you have anything illegal in the car? Mind if I take a look?"

Person's challenge: Provide required documents (license, registration, insurance). Do not answer incriminating questions. When asked about a search, clearly say "I do not consent to this search."

Round 3 — Protest situation: Police officer approaches and says: "This demonstration is illegal. You need to disperse. If you don't, you'll be arrested."

Person's challenge: Understand the options: comply, ask for clarification ("What is the specific order?"), or face arrest. If facing arrest: remain calm, invoke right to remain silent and right to an attorney, do not physically resist.

Debrief: What felt awkward? What was hard to say clearly? What might make these responses harder in a real encounter? What does practicing these scripts reveal about the relationship between knowing rights and being able to exercise them?

Exercise 33.5 — Citizen Lab and Surveillance Research Methods

Type: Research analysis | Difficulty: Advanced | Time: 60 minutes

Background: Citizen Lab (at the University of Toronto's Munk School) conducts technical investigations of targeted surveillance against civil society. Its method involves: identifying malware samples, analyzing their technical characteristics, tracing command-and-control infrastructure, and identifying likely operators based on target patterns.

Part A — Read a Citizen Lab report: Access citizenlab.ca and find a report on a specific surveillance technology (Pegasus spyware, FinFisher, or similar). Read the executive summary and findings section. Note: these reports are lengthy technical documents; focus on the executive summary, findings, and "who is targeted" sections.

Part B — Analysis questions: 1. What surveillance technology is being investigated? 2. Who is being targeted, and what does the target population tell you about the likely operator? 3. What technical evidence does Citizen Lab use to draw its conclusions? 4. Who is the report's likely audience? What actions might it prompt? 5. How does this research function as counter-surveillance? What are its limits?

Part C — Ethics of surveillance research: Citizen Lab's research sometimes reveals information about ongoing surveillance operations. This may warn targets — but it may also alert surveillance operators to modify their infrastructure and evade detection. Does the public benefit of disclosure outweigh the potential cost of tipping off operators? Write a 250-word response.

Exercise 33.6 — Design a Know-Your-Rights Campaign

Type: Applied design / practical | Difficulty: Intermediate | Time: 60-75 minutes (group)

Scenario: Your organization has been asked to create a know-your-rights resource for students at Hartwell University related to the university's surveillance practices (CCTV in common areas, data collection through learning management systems, monitoring of university-owned devices, etc.).

Working in groups of 3-4, design a know-your-rights resource that includes:

1. A one-page fact sheet covering: what surveillance the university conducts, what rights students have under FERPA and relevant policies, what students can request (data access, policy review), and who to contact with concerns

2. Three key scripts — the specific words a student should say in three situations: - When asking an administrator what data the university holds about them - When reporting a concern about privacy practices to the campus privacy office - When a professor requires use of proctoring software that the student believes is invasive

3. A distribution strategy — how would you get this resource to the students who need it? Consider: where they are, what media they use, what trusted intermediaries (professors, student organizations) might help distribute

Debrief: What did you discover about the gap between knowing rights and exercising them in your institutional context? What structural barriers make this harder?