Exposed recorded action

By Yossi Sheriff

Exposed recorded action or ERA (פח"ם) depicts an act of an individual or group of people that is videoed, stored and shared in an uncontrollable manner. ERA is a feature of cultural life in the 21st century. It depicts the outcome of common presence of video and image recording devices in streets, private spaces and on individuals. These devices can be institutionalized for surveillance, or held by individuals for other proposes. The General outcome is the same, all individual and group acts can and will be recorded visually.

The proliferation of recording devices leads to an almost certain documentation of every act done by citizens and security personal alike. This documented visibility should be integrated into fighting, security and self defense as a long time strategic according to the Methodical pyramid. Exposed recorded action is used by Akban instructors to assimilate techniques that use low grade of violence and augment these into a martial syllabus.

The instrumental and statistical possibility of individual and group acts exposed, documented and shared in a non controllable manner raises not only tactical issues but moral and ethical questions.

Main features of recorded visible actions

  1. Institutional surveillance is a minor issue in the visibility of our acts; the main factor is the abundance of individual recording devices and the ability to share with a global community. (Gaza flotilla etc.). It's the Wikipedia against Britannica, wikipedians win by sheer numbers and by low cost of operation.
  2. The visibility and publicity of individual and group acts is a 21st century fact. It cannot be stopped. The contributing factors for it, whether they'll be satellites, CCTV, or iPhones are consequential but not essential.
  3. Visibility, whether by surveillance or by individuals, will change behaviors. It will change the behavior of individuals and the proceedings of security forces, armies and intelligence agencies. If these institutions fail to integrate visibility (we call it ERA) the results will be embarrassing to say the least (Gaza flotilla, Helicopter incidence in Iraq, G20 etc.).
  4. The integration of the ERA factors into our lives already promotes less violent and better techniques of crowd control, police arrests and even individual behavior.
  5. As the intricacy of social feedback mechanisms and the interdependency of media, institutions and individuals fluctuates the paths and time to publicity. But the statistics are clear: more acts are visibly documented and eventually publicized today then yesterday.
  6. Failure or delay to integrate ERA can cause catastrophic results to individuals, security forces and institutions alike. This is already influencing our lives and will continue to do so in the future.


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