We often discuss how phones have led to the death of privacy. We are constantly being surveyed, whether it is ring cameras, Facebook’s targeted ads, or Amazon’s Alexa. It feels like you can’t go out in public without worrying if you will be in the back of someone’s Instagram selfie or Snapchat story. This has led to a phenomenon called “Cancel Culture”. Cancel Culture emerged from the constant surveillance of celebrities. While cameras have always followed celebrities, the smart phone has completely changed the amount celebrities can be watched. With the combination of how fast information, or misinformation, can spread on social media and how easy it is to survey people, it is hard for celebrities to exist without their every move being critiqued. While this culture is negative overall, there are some reasons why constant surveillance can bring benefits to our society.
People in power are rarely held accountable for their actions. Money, resources, and social status can be used to get away with illegal and immoral acts. This has been the case with the American government and police force. It is the police’s job to watch us, make sure they protect us, and keep our communities safe. But police have been trained to watch certain people more than others. Predominantly Black neighborhoods have both historically and presently been over-patrolled. This leads to the idea that these neighborhoods, and therefore these people, have higher crime rates. But they are simply being watched more. This begs the question: How can surveillance be used as a tool of power? While historically, cameras were only available to the elite class, phone cameras have made photography widely accessible to the average civilian. Cameras can expose a truth many don’t want to hear. In 1963, Bill Hudson was photographing a Civil Rights protest. He recalls hiding his 35-millimeter camera under a jacket to avoid police scrutiny. Hudson was able to capture 15-year-old Walter Gadsden being shoved toward the aim of a vicious police dog. This became one of the most famous photographs of all time, marking the bloodshed Black Americans dealt simply for fighting for equal rights. The truth of this photo is undeniable: the villain is clear, and the camera is holding the oppressors accountable.
In 1991, Rodney King was brutally assaulted by a Los Angeles police officer. A man named George Holiday turned his camcorder on and recorded the whole thing. While Black communities were too familiar with this reality, this display of police violence had never been seen before by many. The footage aired on KTLA and became international news within days, causing mass rioting in L.A. The mere act of recording a police officer “doing their job” exposed a violent pattern in our justice system. Bobby Seale, the founder of the Black Panther Party, said, “ I tell the youth today, ever since Rodney King, you don’t need guns, let’s use the technology to observe the police”. The average person does not have a camcorder with them on their evening walk to the convenience store, but now they have a cell phone. In July 2014, Ramsey Orta recorded Eric Gardner being choked to death by a police officer in Staten Island. Just a year prior, Black Lives Matter had been founded in response to Trayvon Martin’s killer being acquitted. This was a problem people could no longer ignore, and racists could no longer deny the existence of it.
For many people, seeing George Floyd say, “I can’t breathe,” in the spring of 2020 was a moment of reckoning. You can hear about police brutality, racism, and violence, but it may be hard to grasp the severity of it if it isn’t your reality. As much as it’s tempting to pretend empathy is earned easily, it has to be fought for. Black activists have been in that fight for centuries. The camera might be one of the most powerful tools since the pen to fight racism. While there have been many cases of police brutality before Floyd’s death, this video turned the country upside down.
While the Black Lives Matter protests were more short-lived than many of us wanted, they did work. Legislation in cities like Seattle, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles was implemented to prevent these acts of abuse. The Department of Justice now requires all pre-planned arrests to be recorded on body cameras. Many states now require body cameras for every arrest, including Illinois, New Jersey, and Colorado. There is still a long way to go, but laws like these help keep those who are supposed to protect us, protecting us.
In 1955, 15-year-old Emmit Till was brutally lynched. His mother, Mamie Till, decided to give him an open-casket funeral. She wanted to tell the country, “Look what you did to my son.” This heartbreaking image, which was on the cover of Jet Magazine, catalyzed the Civil Rights Movement. These atrocities have been happening for centuries, but the accessibility and availability of the phone completely changed the way we can use imagery for justice. We shouldn’t have to see Black trauma or death to understand that it is wrong, but these crimes have been hidden for far too long. In Randolph Lewis’s book Under Surveillance, he reminds us of an important point: “What we get from these videos is knowledge, not justice”. While this may be true, who’s to say that knowledge isn’t justice?
