Watching Big Brother Watching You

After being ticketed by a Police Community Support Officer - essentially a low level officer with oridinary citizen arrest powers - for riding his bicycle across the width of a sidewalk in order to lock it to a bike stand, the aptly named Rob O’Copp decided that the PCSOs in his hometown of Nottingham, UK needed some monitoring of their own. As a result, he formed the PCSO Watch Project and opened The Office of Community Sousveillance, declaring “We Are All Police Now.”

The goals of the organization are to turn members of the community into “Sousveillance Officers” and send them out across the city to gather information and stories about the activities of the PCSOs that will be placed into a report to be delivered publicly during the Radiator Festival - an event exploring new definitions of public and private space in an increasingly digital world – taking place January 13th – 24th.

Though there are socially conscious undertones to this enterprise, the overt message is one of playfulness and pranksterism.  Made evident by a message on the website proclaiming the mission a “serious-piece-of-research-completely-unmotivated-by-revenge,” down to the costumes of the ”Sousveillance Officers”, created to intentionally resemble those worn PCSOs, and the fact that those wanting to go anonymous often don fake “camera masks” to record the proceedings. You can watch video footage and follow all the progress on the project blog.   

[via We Make Money Not Art]