1. Z514: Social Aspects of IT
Week 13

2. Privacy & Surveillance
Pizza Surveillance Feature

3. Structuration Theory by Anthony Giddens (Webster, 2006)
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., WalmartLabs is 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:

10. Surveillance or Convenience?
Flickr.com cell phone tags:
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)
Information discovered online:
What has not be found…yet
Full legal name
Date of birth
Social security #
Current property address
Personal phone #
Business phone #
Previous addresses and phone #s dating back to 1975
Property tax record from 2004
Assessed value of home ~1997
Identifying photographs
Digital image of signature
Mortgage documents
Employment history
Sex offender status (negative)
Resume
Names of friends and coworkers
Parents’ names, address, phone
Driver’s license #
Vehicle registrations
Banking records
Medical records
Detailed demographic data from marketing databases
Insurance claims history
Property records for land in Florida
Voter registration record/political affiliation
Mother’s maiden name
City and state of birth

16. Additional Resources
Government Center for Democracy & Technology:
Electronic Frontier Foundation: