Picture this: it's a Monday night, you're sitting in front of your laptop eating ramen noodles. Perhaps you're watching a Youtube video, or simply mindlessly scrolling through your Facebook feed. A scene way too familiar, right? At that moment, you are comfortable, at ease - yourself. You know you are alone with a screen and nobody behind it. Who and what's stopping you from chewing with your mouth open? From picking your nose? From getting undressed? Nobody. You are, truly, alone with yourself. Or so you think. Let's add one disturbing detail to this familiar story: someone's watching. And it's right in front of you.
In 2014, news broke that a website had been illegally streaming 73.000 webcams and private security cameras from all over the globe. The locations were seemingly chosen at random, ranging from schools' security cameras to changing rooms in various shops. Many of the streams were directly connected to laptops’ webcams, prompting a mass hysteria and concerns for privacy.
In era truly dominated by technology, any tech gadget we add to our repertoire is simply one more piece of privacy we are willing to give away. But just how much privacy?Think, for instance, of how many people cover their laptop webcam with a sticker, despite using their phone camera every day, and passing through dozens of security camera footages. This paradox speaks volumes on our collective underlying fear of technology masked by our dependence and obsession with it. While the idea of someone hacking and watching through cameras is certainly eery, it must have happened for a reason. There’s no supply without demand, and the demand was, and is, certainly there. Profiting off this type of voyeurism is surely unethical, but who was watching, then? And why?
Since the 2014 case, many others have occurred and still do to this day. Take Hackforums - a forum with 23 million total posts that overtly discusses how to hack into women’s laptops and take over their webcams. They exclusively target women, and call them “slaves”; it is the very fact that they are unaware of being watched that grants these hackers a sense of power, of domination, of monopoly. For instance, this is how one hacker talks about “slaves”: “Poor women think they are alone in their private homes...but they have no idea they are our laughing stock”. In fact, they often exchange pictures or footage of their ‘slaves’ on the public forums, and some of these include naked pictures taken by the hackers themselves, or footage of these women masturbating. Afterall, who could imagine someone’s watching? Some of these hackers (although only a small percentage) blackmail their victims with these pictures in exchange for money, sex, or more naked picturesHowever, the underlying reason for these hackers' "hobby" is the power-trip they obtain by having dominance over thesse defenceless women - like Bergerr's Ways of Seeing discusses, male spectators long for a feeling of monopoly over the female oject of gaze, over their passions, over their powers (Berger, 81).
The fear of someone watching through your webcam is amplified when you’re a woman. Why? Because you know that someone posting your naked pictures online for everyone to see will leave you deprived of your dignity, will put you to shame, will make you feel insubordinate and dominated once again - only this time by an invisible enemy. Your consent is not taken into account because you are no more than a 'slave', an unknowing object of gaze. The truth is, a webcam’s eye is ever present and unforgiving.
Next time you’re eating noodles in front of your laptop, I encourage you to look straight into your webcam - I can assure you, it will start to feel more and more like you're looking into someone else’s gaze. And - who knows - maybe you will be.
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