Since the summer of 2001, The Institute for Applied Autonomy has produced iSee, an inverse surveillance system that helps people track and avoid CCTV cameras. Visitors to the iSee website are presented with a map of New York City, Amsterdam or Ljubljana, highlighting surveillance camera locations. Predictably enough, the majority are in areas of great financial value, even though street crime is more prevalent in low-income neighborhoods.

Users click the map to indicate a current location and a desired destination and iSee’s route planning algorithm provides a path of least surveillance, avoiding as many cameras as possible. This map may be printed out for later use. Since its launch in October of 2001, iSee has produced over one million unique maps and has been extended to Manhattan, Amsterdam and Ljubljana.

In addition, iSee has provoked public debate over CCTV use in such publications as Wired magazine and the London Financial Times, and on websites including Slashdot and FoxNews. iSee is also featured on Yahoo’s travel and transportation guide to New York City.

In August 2002 the IAA released an updated iSee client optimized for mobile and wireless devices. This version allows iSee to also function as a data collection tool, enabling groups of users to quickly and easily create and share maps of their city’s surveillance infrastructure.