But while some privacy activists advocate donning Richard Nixon masks to befuddle camera operators, and others suggest blinding the electronic eye with a paintball gun, Brown protests the cameras by drawing attention to them. He formed the SPC troupe in 1996 as a kind of in-joke among friends. In the beginning, the group acted out two-minute versions of George Orwell's 1984 or Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. These days, they play directly to the camera, walking slowly by the monitors with hand-printed messages. Bystanders who stop and gawk at the motley crew are sometimes convinced to join in the performance by flipping off the camera.
Security guards tend to be less than amused.
We've actually earned a measure of respect from them and they have learned to leave us alone. When the police show up, Brown whips out a pocket-size edition of the U.S. Constitution and reads them the Fourth Amendment. If they ask him for a permit, he cites the First Amendment. But if they tell him to move on, he concedes. The cops aren't the enemy, he insists, it's the people who run the cops.