A neighborhood in Leicester, England had an entire YouTube channel dedicated to neighborhood issues, including catching "litter louts". As BoingBoing point out, this is a fine example of citizen surveillance. This case study also fits very nicely into our discussion of soft enforcement and sousveillence for conservation (it might also spawn a discussion about rights to privacy). The neighborhood has provided an email, and if someone knows the litterers in the videos they can email to alert the neighborhood management board.
Guilty Planet
Seeking reason amidst the irrational madness of destroying one's only home.
The Guilty Planet Blog
Jennifer Jacquet is a postdoctoral research fellow working with Dr. Daniel Pauly and the Sea Around Us Project at the UBC Fisheries Centre. As a kid, she read 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth and would come to discover that while those 50 things were indeed simple, saving the Earth was not.
Search
Recent Posts
- I Understand This Cup Not at All
- Using Reputation to Save the Oceans
- Weird Oceans: Coral Eating Jelly, Blobfish, and Lumpsuckers
- Use the Force against the Dark Side of Food
- Levitt and Dubner Visit Seattle
- Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King (for a Time)
- Loose Tentacles Sink Ships
- A Memorial for Vanishing Species
- Frogs in Boiling but Confusing Water: A Review of Climate Cover-Up
- Morton on Arts vs. Science
Recent Comments
- Romeo Vitelli on I Understand This Cup Not at All
- knwd on I Understand This Cup Not at All
- jd on Using Reputation to Save the Oceans
- mike stahl on Use the Force against the Dark Side of Food
- Coturnix on Using Reputation to Save the Oceans
- Jack on No New MPAs? Obama: Don't Do Us Like That
- Olan on Pumpkin Seeding the Way to Sustainability?
- Koruk on Will This Trash Can Reduce Waste?
- tony on Use the Force against the Dark Side of Food
- Rob Jase on Weird Oceans: Coral Eating Jelly, Blobfish, and Lumpsuckers
Archives
Online Resources & Blogs
Projects & Publications
August 14, 2009: Dan Ax at Avukado Productions makes the following short video for Guilty Planet:
July 30, 2009: Successfully defended Ph.D. dissertation: Fish as Food in an Age of Globalization at the University of British Columbia.
June 2009: In press at Oryx: "Conserving Wild Fish in a Sea of Market-Based Efforts"
June 2009: Published at Conservation Biology: What Can Conservationists Learn from Investor Behavior?
May 27, 2009: Talk titled "Historical Renaming and Mislabeling of Fish" given the Oceans Past II conference in Vancouver, B.C.
May 24, 2009: Talk at the International Marine Conservation Congress in Washington, D.C.
March 24, 2009: Dave Beck and I showcase our jellyfish burger in Scientific American's photo gallery:
March 24, 2009: Talk at the Student Conference for Conservation Science at Cambridge University, UK.
March 14, 2009: Talk at the Kettle's Yard Problemathon for Cambridge's Science Festival.
March 3, 2009: Talk titled "Guilt v. Shame in Market Based Efforts to Save Our Fish" at the Max Planck Institute in Ploen, Germany.
February 27, 2009: Talk at Fauna & Flora International.
November 2008: A new study In hot soup: sharks captured in Ecuador's waters published in Environmental Sciences.
November 2008:
« What Can an Emoticon Do for Energy Use? | Main | Jellyfish and Vermin: The Future of Food? »
UK Neighborhood Captures Litterbugs on Film
Category: Cooperation • Psychology of Conservation • Shame • Solutions
Posted on: July 1, 2009 2:54 PM, by Jennifer L. Jacquet
Find more posts in: 
Environment
Technology
Share this: Facebook Twitter Stumbleupon Reddit Email + More
TrackBacks
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/113934
Comments
This is neat. Where'd you hear about it?
Science is cool.
Posted by: KitKat | July 1, 2009 3:31 PM
Back in the early days of the internet, a bunch of geeks in Silicon Valley started something similar for bad and aggressive drivers.
Ultimately, in the US, this kind of thing is usually shot down because of privacy issues.
What is needed is a pack of rabid litterer attack dogs.
Posted by: Greg Laden | July 1, 2009 5:34 PM
There is no right to privacy on public land (except for what's hidden under your clothes). Streets are public land. Therefore, people who break the law by littering and then whine about being filmed can shut up, or at least whine in the actual privacy of their home while paying their fines.
Good for these people for taking the initiative to keep their streets clean.
Posted by: Uncephalized | July 1, 2009 5:51 PM
This is basically Big Brother. Good intentions, but further down a neurotic pathway to a very boring and repressed world, to the point where people are terrified to appear out in public places because they know they are being studied. It's getting out of control in the U.K. I don't want to be part of a world where you can't even spit on the ground without somebody recording it on video and showing it to the public.
Posted by: Randy Olson | July 1, 2009 8:29 PM
Randy: I don't want to be part of a world where you think it is your right to spit on the ground.
There's nothing wrong with the recording of actual crime, the problem lies when people are in trouble for other people assuming they are thinking about crime, or for expressing discontent with the current government or what-have-you.
Posted by: Katherine | July 1, 2009 8:44 PM
If you're doing it in public, it's a bit late to be worrying about that, isn't it?
Posted by: Dunc | July 2, 2009 5:48 AM
Spitting in public is not a crime, but it could very easily be some day if enough people stare at enough video footage of it and work themselves into a rage over the public health risks of it and the fact that it's just plain disgusting. This is the very thing that the right wing fears about the environmental movement -- that well-intentioned people will lose control of themselves and create a nice, clean and tidy world of total repression. Human nature involves a certain amount of ugliness and bad behavior. It's called natural variation. If you think you can totally suppress that, well ... good luck!
Posted by: Randy Olson | July 2, 2009 8:20 AM
Its an interesting idea. I would be rather nervous to employ this as an option until all other means had been explored or until the issue was extremely problematic. In the case of this video it appears that it is not a passive system recording images but rather a person controlling the camera. If this is the case why not form a neighborhood patrol of sorts with people who actually interact with people, etc. It is my understanding that such human presence is a much better form of prevention (instead of enforcement in this case). But I guess that begs the question if guilt is employable as a preventative measure or simply after an undesirable behavior is exposed.
Ironically, I believe this very issue is mocked in Simon Peg's "Hot Fuzz" movie from a few years back. Never thought is was a real issue, but I guess satire doesn't work so well without real life experiences.
I am agree with the overall sentiments of Randy. Fine line between lawful and repressive at moments. Makes me wonder how far I should go in pushing people to create the world I want versus the world I need?
Posted by: Phillip | July 2, 2009 12:17 PM
Internet socialization behavior mitigation.
Welcome to our ‘NEW’ and very complex world:
A parent slaps their four year old child across the face while on a public sidewalk to mitigate the child’s unruly antisocial behavior. The child then screams in pain at being slapped, and becomes even more unruly while the parent becomes angrier and more frustrated at not being able to control their child...
This parent and child interface is captured on a mobile phone video camera by a nearby passing observer and the content is then posted on the Internet and becomes a lightening rod for divergent camps on the rights of parents and or children in the context of the complex issues of raising children properly or not.
Is this a private or public issue?
This parent believes it is their right, and personal will to introduce physical conditional socializing punishment upon their offspring. So, do people (Internet viewers) not personally involved in raising this child have a social, and or legal right to participate in this situation?
Some people believe that corporal punishment should be illegal. Should this child be turned over to the Department of Human Services, after video evidence is forwarded to them?
Some people believe that certain levels corporal punishment of children is perfectly normal and is essential in raising children. Should this parent sue the video poster for invasion of privacy, even though this event happened upon public domain?
Does the Internet social body have a right in judging this situation? Should the Internet social mind intervene? Will the Internet mind become a factor in the implementation new laws and the enforcement of these new laws?
Do we users of the Internet comprehend the massive implications involved in the potential altering of boundaries of social privacy, transparency and rights or wrongs through Internet policing?
Yes, this is definitely juicy and I mean this in a way that does not mean casual contemplation! Our precepts of how our socializing process has functioned is in for a radical overhaul.
I wonder if this is how the Borg civilization came into being as a civilization social structure that was completely connected by technology, and all behavior was integrated and mitigated through technological computer connectivity? Sometimes referred to as the ‘Hive Mind’ or the ‘Unity Mind’ theories of human potential evolution, or will our social evolutionary connectivity be purely biological, and our socializing happen in different ways.
This is a highly provocative, and essential potential social evolutionary adaptation discussion. The mindful idea of right or wrong, private versus public behavior is a social construct, and it is about to change in a radical massive transformation. This idea of private versus public behavior has been changing at light speed for the last twenty years since the introduction of the WWW. I like to call it the WWM, the World Wide Mind. The transparent world, and personally I am watching and questioning closely as our new world views develop...
I also have to say, the thought brain storming arriving to this place is mind blowing.
Thank you!
Posted by: Chris | July 2, 2009 4:57 PM
This does seem like an abuse of state power to fight a pretty trivial problem. Not every little issue deserves to add to the growth of a police state.
Posted by: Milan | July 7, 2009 11:24 AM
They are British... thats why they are doing it. Won't happen in America, thats why we had a revolution.
Posted by: jimbo | July 7, 2009 11:46 AM
Except that it's got nothing to do with the state. It's just local people filming stuff and putting it on YouTube. The only way to stop that would be to use the power of the state to ban people from using video cameras in public, which would be an abuse of state power.
Posted by: Dunc | July 17, 2009 10:22 AM