Recognition Markets and Visual Privacy

Every year on April 20th, University of Colorado students gather in Farrand Field for an act of civil disobedience and hedonism: the mass consumption of marijuana. In 2006, the University of Colorado Police Department prepared for this event by placing cameras around the field and posting signs notifying visitors that all activity there would be photographed and videotaped. Confident in their numbers, the students ignored the signs, perhaps secure in their belief that though they might be seen, they wouldn't be recognized. The UCPD duly captured images of the ensuing conflagration, and then made a novel move: they posted the images on a public web server, with the explanation that anyone who successfully identified a pot-smoking miscreant would receive fifty dollars (Frauenfelder). Within days a substantial portion of those depicted had been recognized.