Monitoring the Margins: Street Views of Sex Workers

This article discusses the online circulation of Google Street View photographs that happen to include sex workers. It considers the Google Street View system as part of the contemporary surveillance complex, which is perceived as scrutinizing by potentially vulnerable subjects such as minorities, migrants, and sex workers. While inspired by Mishka Henner's art project No Man's Land the main focus of the article is the Web community Doxyspotting.com, where users hunt and collect Google Street Views of sex workers. Their virtual curb-crawling mirrors the discriminatory effects of everyday monitoring practices, which might be beneficial for the privileged mobile spectator, but which might also contain a real danger for the photographed women on the street. This is underlined by the fact that one of the Doxyspotting.com users has travelled to some of the places captured by Google Street View and picked up sex workers. The same user criticizes Google's breach into his own privacy. Based on these examples, the article argues that the mainstream discourse on surveillance suffers from a blind spot regarding mobility regulation and marginalization of less privileged, monitored subjects.