Tad Hirsch, from MIT’s Media Lab and TxtMob, has adapted a desktop version of the iSee Project for use in handheld devices with Java.

It means that you can roam Manhattan with information that will allow you to avoid the gaze of surveillance cameras that stream video to monitoring companies in centralized locations.

Privacy advocates have added hundreds of cameras to the Manhattan map using a Web-based interface, developed by the Institute of Applied Autonomy, an activist organization concerned about surveillance.

“The ability of law enforcement and others to access the data from those cameras is still something of a gray area,” said one institute member, who calls himself John Henry. “There are legal and policy questions to be raised around this technology. At present, that really hasn’t happened.”

The institute also has created surveillance camera maps for Amsterdam and Ljubljana (Slovenia), and plans to add Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.

Via GIS Monitor Local6.
Related: Souveillance by the public and the artists.