The new crisis of connected cameras: Pics or it didn’t happen

Right now, almost every major news story turns on a single set of unresolved ethical questions: What should we do about the new proliferation of cameras? What should we do when the images they capture wind up on the Internet? It is a debate about a distinctly new technological phenomenon, and we can see aspects of it everywhere: from the imminent war against Islamic State (also known as ISIL and ISIS) to the leaked nude images of female celebrities; from the proposal of police body-cams to the U.S. National Football League’s treatment of domestic abuser Ray Rice. This debate is the product of a world in which 1.5 billion more people have access to cell phones than have access to toilets. It’s a set of questions with implications both intimate and existential: Its eventual resolution will inform how we communicate with our loved ones and how we go to war.

Who gains power: the people holding the camera or the people being filmed?

Robinson Meyer, writing in The Atlantic magazine

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