Armed with a stepladder, sheets of adhesive rhinestones and googly eyes, a group of MIT professors made their way through campus Tuesday evening hunting for surveillance cameras. The eye-catching decorations do not block the cameras or interfere with their operation. That’s the point. The professors want people to notice the cameras watching them.
The professors are members of the “Initiative to Beautify the AI-capable Surveillance Benevolently Installed by our Administrator Overseers and the MIT Corporation In Collaboration with Big Brother Tech Companies,” or IBAISBIAOMITCORPICBBTC.
The deliberately unwieldy name accompanies an equally unconventional form of protest against MIT’s more than $3 million expansion of its surveillance network, under which more than 500 new cameras have been installed across academic buildings, residence halls and outdoor areas since November 2025. The additions bring MIT’s campus network to about 4,600 cameras. The installation finished in September, according to contracts previously reported in April by The Tech, MIT’s student newspaper.
The new cameras come equipped with artificial intelligence capabilities that, if enabled, can identify and classify people and objects in real time, assessing things like loitering, crowds, people wearing face masks, clothing color, gender and age. MIT is also considering adding a layer of artificial intelligence to automatically analyze footage from its sprawling camera network, prompting concerns about tracking and profiling among some faculty and students.
“For many women, people of color, trans and nonbinary people, international students and undocumented people, surveillance cameras are not an assurance of safety,” said Catherine D’Ignazio, an associate professor of urban science and planning at MIT. “You could say to the AI interface, ‘Show me all the people wearing a hijab who are moving around campus on this particular day.’ Boom, searchable video footage.”
MIT says it does not currently use AI to monitor or analyze surveillance footage and is not considering facial recognition. It is exploring more limited uses of AI, including reviewing footage more efficiently during investigations and identifying serious safety events in real time. The new cameras are intended to close gaps in the existing network.
“This type of surveillance is going to have a chilling effect on a campus culture of creativity, of silliness, of hacking,” said Tanalís Padilla, a professor of history at MIT, referring to the Institute’s tradition of elaborate, often technically challenging practical jokes.
Faculty have pressed administrators for more information for months. MIT subsequently convened an advisory group of faculty, staff, students and postdocs, which began meeting at the start of the academic year, to consider whether and how AI should be used with the cameras. D’Ignazio said she and several other concerned faculty members sought seats on the group but were not selected. She also criticized its limited mandate: The group can advise MIT on the potential use of AI but does not have decision-making authority or the ability to reconsider the camera expansion itself.
The group’s discussions will be informed partly by a recently completed pilot with Ambient.ai, according to MIT. The pilot used staged scenarios to explore how real-time alerts could identify specific safety events. MIT says the pilot has concluded and all data from it have been purged from Ambient.ai’s portal.
The concerns over surveillance come amid recently heightened restrictions and enforcement surrounding protests at MIT. After the 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment on Kresge Oval, where students faced suspension and disciplinary proceedings for refusing orders to leave, MIT formalized more detailed rules governing demonstrations, including restrictions on where protests can occur and a ban on unauthorized space takeovers. D’Ignazio also pointed to the 2025 detention of Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, who co-authored an op-ed about the war in Gaza, as an example of the potential consequences students may now associate with political expression.
Other students and employees joined the professors Tuesday but declined to be identified or speak on the record, which organizers attributed to fears of increased disciplinary consequences. “We know junior faculty who would like to participate but feel too nervous to do it, and same with students, staff, postdocs, because they’re not as protected from these new disciplinary rules,” said Marah Gubar, an associate professor of Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT. “I think in the past it would have been students doing this hack, not tenured faculty.”
Throughout the hour-long endeavor, the three tenured professors, joined by a handful of staff and students who helped carry supplies, decorated eight surveillance cameras inside MIT buildings, including several along the Infinite Corridor in the heart of campus. Tuesday marked the group’s fifth bedazzling session. On one outing, MIT Police told the group to stop, and they they complied. Organizers said MIT has also repeatedly removed the decorations, only for the professors to bedazzle the same cameras again. On Tuesday, they received numerous smiles, thumbs-up and verbal expressions of support, with no pushback from passersby.
The group also encountered one MIT community member who said they had begun independently bedazzling cameras in their building after reading about the organizers’ effort. The community member, who asked not to be identified, said “We know we’re already being surveilled, and now you’re bringing artificial intelligence to evaluate our work and evaluate us and track us in ways we can’t really control or have no say in. Bedazzling the cameras is a way where you’re making it obvious there’s this surveillance, and you have a choice, you have a say in how you’re being surveilled.”
A stronger
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