Media, Surveillance and Privacy

1. Media, Surveillance and Privacy

2. What are some of the issues? • Electronic surveillance (issues arising from the “architecture” of the medium • Personal privacy • Freedom • National sovereignty and state control • Cyber-terrorism • Audience control and surveillance IN A NEW MEDIA ENVIRONMENT • The case of TiVo • Big Brother

3. Media, Surveillance and Privacy

4. What is surveillance • Pervasive monitoring of daily life • Surveillance emerges as a problematic issue because of its relationship to privacy and social power

5. What is privacy • …

6. What is private? Can we say?.. • Our name? • Home address, home telephone number? • School grades (exams)? • Choice of TV programs, films, books • Bank accounts? Salary? • Who you e-mailed and what you said? • Who you called? • Religious choice? • Who you voted for? • Medical history? • …and? Are these universal or contextual?

7. The idea of surveillance, privacy and control • As concepts in academic literature, surveillance and control if often linked to Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish) • Foucault uses “Panopticon” (all+seeing) as a metaphor to explain state/institutional power and control over the public • And this idea goes back to the architect Jeremy Bentham and his blueprint of a prison design in the 1700s.

8. Bentham’s Blueprint

9. PANOPTICON

10. Panoptical/ panopticon are used as metaphors in media studies to explain the role of media technologies in surveillance

11. The idea of panoptic society involves • Society controlled through fear of ‘Big Brother’ • The idea/belief that we are monitored • Watching each other and the self (self-policing)

13. Surveillance in Public Spaces • Typical UK resident in urban areas filmed about 300 times a day • Estimated 200,000 cameras in the city of Shenzhen in China • Getting widespread in other countries as well • Other instances of surveillance we can think of?

14. Privacy, Surveillance and New Media/Cyberspace • New technologies, particularly new media tech. are changing the dynamics between surveillance and privacy • With ICTs, much more than just physical space and public action can be monitored • Data is digital, so almost everything we do leaves a mark • information society = panoptic society?

15. For example, what does your web browser say about you? • standard HTTP headers: • Your email address • Your browser software • Your “referer”: The page you came from by following a link • Your user name and password • Your client-IP: Client’s IP address • And Cookies: Server-generated ID label

16. Privacy and surveillance at home? • Most people consider “home” to be a private space • But, with ICTs and new media, the notion of “home as private space” is becoming very contested • Our Internet use • TV consumption • Electricity use (with smart metering) • Even food consumption Can be traced

17. Who is surveilling us in a new media environment? • Government (Carnivore, wiretapping) • Crackers/Hackers (Theft) • Private businesses/companies • And others can • Google-stalk us • Trace other electronic data

18. So our privacy is protected and invaded…through • Satellites, airwaves, wires, networks, databases and search engines • And ICTs and new media change/alter what is private and what is public space

19. Again, we can think of these as • Technologies of freedom • Technologies of invasion Our reaction depends on whether we care, how much we care and what we do about it There is constant contestation on issues of privacy and surveillance between different interest groups in the society

20. Some people and groups in the society believe… • “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” • Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania

21. Some others believe sacrificing a little privacy is worth the security we get from being surveilled. • In Britain, for example, a 2002 survey shows that…

23. Online Social Networking: The Ubiquitous Gaze • Highlights from my research project: • peer-to-peer surveillance: • Watching friends, neighbours and colleagues for security purposes in the wake of terrorist attacks – and sometimes for nothing more than pleasure – appears to be more and more common.

24. Take Adam’s Block as an example. • This was an openly-accessible site webcasting a live video feed from the intersection of Ellis Street and Taylor Street in San Francisco, essentially for benign, entertainment purposes. • As it turned out, some in the neighbourhood did not approve, and, after revealing his identity, the owner of the camera and the site started receiving threats.

25. “Adam” had to shut down the service in order to secure his own safety. • In solidarity, others from the neighbourhood installed their own cameras with the intention of eventually networking the cameras and live-casting at www.adamsblock.com under the name OurBlock.tv, making this a recent example of bottom-up, citizen surveillance. • The site is described as the “future site of a global networks of webcams”, to “make a difference in the world”

26. On the net, surveillance often comes with a commercial tinge • “It’s not ‘us’ that are surveilled, it is the information we ‘leak’” David Lyon. • With about 175 million users, a value of roughly $15 billion and with advertisers eavesdropping on every move members make, Facebook is one site that deserves special

27. Personal data often outlive the Facebook persona. • According to their updated terms of use, even if one chooses to leave the site, the Facebook terms state that “you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.”

28. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) announced in February 2009 that they would file a formal complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission regarding Facebook’s updated licenses. • Backed up by 40.000 Facebook users and bloggers

29. Facebook announced that it would back down and restore the original terms of use. • Currently, the terms include the clause: “Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available to members of Facebook.”

30. In 2007 the company launched Facebook Beacon, an application which enabled members to see the net activities (even online purchases) of their friends. • MoveOn.org launched a campaign against Facebook, leading the site to switch the application to an “opt-in” program along with issuing an apology to users.

31. According to their privacy policy, Facebook retains the right to collect information about their members from other sources such as newspapers, instant messaging services and blogs “in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.” • By using Facebook, the users also consent to have their personal data transferred to, and processed in, the United States. Users are not notified when and how their data are used. • In 2008, The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, a privacy group based in Canada, filed a complaint against Facebook for violating 22 counts of Canadian privacy laws.

32. The group also addressed the question of vulnerability as a great portion of the site’s users in Canada are between 14 and 25 years of age. • Most users, of course, accept Facebook’s “default settings” without considering what these settings will actually mean in terms of privacy and data storage.

33. Facebook rejected the validity of concerns raised by the report on the grounds that the sharing of user information is on a consensual basis, • But the report suggests that even if the user selects the strongest privacy settings available on Facebook, their information may still be shared more widely if their Facebook friends have lower privacy settings. • 22% of employers admit to checking the Facebook profiles of prospective employees, suggesting that the actual number (including those unwilling to admit to the practice) is significantly higher.

34. How much of social networking online is actual social networking? And to what degree do you consider it to be surveillance (or do you)? Why/why not?