Z 514 : Social Aspects of IT

1. Z514: Social Aspects of IT Week 13

2. Privacy & Surveillance • Pizza Surveillance Feature

3. Structuration Theory by Anthony Giddens (Webster, 2006) • Anthony Giddens • Structuration Theory • the understanding of the relationship between individuals and social structure around them • there is a social structure - traditions, institutions, moral codes, and established ways of doing things; but it also means that these can be changed when people start to ignore them, replace them, or reproduce them differently • E.g., Facebook Structure Action

4. Organisation, observation and control (Webster, 2006) • The modern life is unprecedentedly socially organized • We need to monitor people in order to arrange social life • E.g., Elensys’s patient education programs (Culnan, 2005) • E.g., WalmartLabsis releasing a FB application called ShopyCat to help you find gifts for friends and families (Grove, 2011) • Strawberry pop-tarts that increase sales 7 times before a hurricane (2004) • Routine surveillance is necessary for effective social organization (e.g., cat catalog)

5. Paradox of Modern Society • People choose their own life style—we live in a Post-traditional society” (Giddens, cited by Webster, 2006, p. 206) • Individuation • A person identified by a singular record, e.g., name, date of birth, residence, employment history, education, & lifestyle preferences • Individuality • the exchange of industrial society ways of life by new ones, in which individuals must 'produce' their biographies themselves—having control over one’s life Serve individual better

6. Paradox of Modern Society What is the paradox of modern society in terms of individuation and individuality discussed in Webster (2006)? • Cf., technologies in hotel rooms

7. The Nation State and Surveillance • Nation States = Information Societies • They must know their own members • Nation states are essential to many people’s identities • Who belongs and who doesn’t belong • Nation states’ are sustained by possession of credible defense • Increased in ferocity—taking more civilian causalities • “industrialization of war”

8. From Industrial to Information Warfare • Advancement of warfare in general • Perception management (starting with Gulf War). • c.f., Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War edited by Bennett, W. Lance and David L. Paletz (1994)

9. Surveillance • Military registration, welfare benefits, and social security = the system of mass surveillance • The panopticon: http://cartome.org/panopticon1.htm

10. Surveillance or Convenience? • Flickr.com cell phone tags: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ogil/298339266/ • Information re: • Where this picture was taken • What camera was used • How many times it was viewed • …. What’s your opinion about Google’s street view (Helft, 2007)?

11. Corporate Surveillance • “the raison d’être of managers is to act as information specialists” (Taylor, 1947) • Market research, e.g., Kroger card • Transactional information, e.g.,???? • Google was fined a record $142,000 by France for privacy violation, but it takes only 2.5 minutes for Google to generate this amount of money • Integration of corporate and government surveillance • E.g., NSA’s telephone surveillance • E.g., SSN (Drlin, 2007) • C.f., Consumer Privacy Guide • “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear”?

12. Facebook & Privacy • http://www.europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html • Facebook to update privacy policy, but adjusting setting is not easier [Sep 5, 2013] • Facebook quietly ditches privacy setting because you probably didn’t know how to use it anyway [Oct 11, 2013]

13. Google Privacy Policy Change • Include your face in Google’s new ads—”categorical seduction” (Lyon, 2001, cited in Webster, 2006)

15. What the Web Knows About You (Mitchell, 2009)

16. Additional Resources • Government Surveillance @ Center for Democracy & Technology: https://www.cdt.org/ • Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/