Members of the United States Pirate Party plan to create a list of every security camera in the United States as part of a national walk supporting individual privacy rights.
The walk, which the party has named the National Security Camera Walk, will be a three-day event commencing on September 9 and taking place in communities nationwide where Pirate Party members and supporters are active.
“Surveillance is a fact of our lives online, with advertisements attempting to monopolize our eyes so as to subsequently gain a foothold in our wallets. But surveillance is also a fact of our bodies offline,” the party wrote in a recent public post on its website. “The US had about one security camera for every four people in 2019. This number continues to grow.”
The National Security Camera Walk will serve as a form of protest against laws that the Pirate Party believes are responsible for bringing “spyware” to American cities. It will also stand as a sign of solidarity with those who lost family in the September 11 attacks and those whose “memory is slandered by governmental and corporate misuse of tragedy.”
Participants will survey their local communities and make note of publicly placed security cameras. The organizers of the event aim to then gather the collected information into an open-source list that can be edited by anyone in the general public. Pirate Party organizers say they will release a complete list of locations where members will walk as the event draws closer.
The United States Pirate Party serves as the American branch of Pirate Parties International, a loosely affiliated global consortium of parties that advocate for freedom of expression and “pirate politics.” This international group is based in Belgium. The party puts forward candidates at both local and statewide levels and has successfully elected officials in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
A minor party doing something useful. I like this project!