Please submit all proposals and questions to:

unblinking@law.berkeley.edu

The Unblinking Symposium will explore visual privacy issues in a single track format. Paper topics may include, but are not limited to:

In this constantly changing environment of unblinking eyes, technologically perfected recollections, and permanent records, what will it mean to have privacy?

How we will experience and behave in public spaces?

What degree of visual scrutiny are we willing to undergo in public spaces?

What degree of privacy – absence from watching, fading of memory, anonymity – does a civil society require?

What barriers does the law erect to surveillance and sousveillance in public places?

What is the effect of pervasive watching on speech, conflict, and relations between the governed and the government?

How does pervasive watching entrench or alter experiences based on gender, class and race?

Can pervasively watched spaces fulfill their role as “public spaces?”

How are current developments in and uses of technology challenging our norms and laws and how have policymakers responded?

To ground the discussions, each submitted paper should be paired with at least one specific image selected from our web site or of the authors choosing.  Presenting authors will initiate each presentation in the context of this image, and the images will appear with each article in a published volume. Images can be drawn from a wide range of contexts: Rodney King news photographs, Abu Ghraib, Hitchcock's Rear Window, video, webcams, paintings, Bentham’s diagrams, Cinema Verité, reality television, home security, etc.  Each presenter will be responsible for securing copyright permission for the image(s) they choose, other than those provided at the web site. Participants are expected to attend the full day and a half symposium.