Existing comment:
Cable Landing Sites and Underwater Cables
We are not moving toward a surveillance state; we live in the heart of one.
-- Trevor Paglen, 2013
Following the 2013 leak of classified files by National Security Agency (NSA) consultant Edward Snowden, Paglen created two bodies of work that examine the terrain of large-scale intelligence gathering. The photographs in Cable Landing Sites and Undersea Cables show the physical infrastructure of the Internet -- undersea cables, cable landing sites, switching facilities, and data centers. "The Internet was supposed to be the greatest tool of global communications and means of sharing knowledge in human history," Paglen said. "But it has also become the most effective instrument of mass surveillance and potentially one of the greatest instruments of totalitarianism in the history of the world."
In the Cable Landing Sites series, Paglen poses the question, "What does the Internet look like?" Each work is a diptych composed of one photograph and a nautical chart. The photographs show shorelines where undersea communications cables land and may be easily tapped. The charts, produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for marine navigation, indicate the locations of the cables. Paglen has affixed documents from Snowden and other sources. For Undersea Cables, Paglen located and photographed submarine Internet pipes using GPS and nautical charts. These photographs verify Snowden's evidence to the extent legally possible by showing what was hidden in the Cable Landing Sites diptychs. |