SAD mobile is the iPhone companion to the SAD project web page. SAD - Surveillance Awareness Database - is an online participatory social media/art project with a political impact. The project plays with different forms of monitoring - external surveillance via CCTVs, the »sousveillance« potential, and the voluntary self-surveillance/overpublishing via social software.
The SAD mobile app makes it easy to participate by documenting encounters with CCTV cameras, but you will at the same time breach your own privacy by the necessary disclosure of your whereabouts. On the SAD web site, all users can find all documented CCTV cameras on map (or as a list), and add or edit camera information there as well as via the SAD mobile app.
SAD Users embark on a tightrope walk between the deliberate exposure of technologically enabled privacy intrustion and the often inconsiderate neglect of privacy typical for social software. SAD reinforces this by using game mechanics to playfully entice users to contribute more information about encountered cameras - as well as about themselves.
To this end, SAD awards scores, badges and achievements to active users, calculates ratings, and compiles hall-of-fame-lists. Additionally, a corresponding game forum is offered where users can discuss and devleop games that could be played using SAD as an online platform, eg. by defining their own goals and badges.
Other areas on the web site include a blog section, where information about surveillance, surveillance technologies, art projects and resistance movements against surveillance is collected, and seperate sections to post routes (daily pathways of least or of maximum surveillance) and stories (experienced during documenting CCTV surveillance).
It is planned to organize a yearly »Surveillance Awareness Day«, where activists all over the world are asked to document or tag every camera they encounter during that day. Such an initiative would be visible world wide not only via the SAD web page, but also on social networks such as facebook or twitter.