Transparent Lives

Colin J. Bennett, Kevin D. Haggerty, David Lyon, Valerie Steeves, Colin J. Bennett, Kevin D. Haggerty, David Lyon, Valerie Steeves

• Editorial: AU Press
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781927356791
• Categoría: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Categoría: Sozialpolitik

Although most Canadians are familiar with surveillance cameras and airport security, relatively few are aware of the extent to which the potential for surveillance is now embedded in virtually every aspect of our lives. We cannot walk down a city street, register for a class, pay with a credit card, hop on an airplane, or make a telephone call without data being captured and processed. Where does such information go? Who makes use of it, and for what purpose? Is the loss of control over our personal information merely the price we pay for using social media and other forms of electronic communication, or should we be wary of systems that make us visible—and thus vulnerable—to others as never before?The work of a multidisciplinary research team, Transparent Lives explains why and how surveillance is expanding—mostly unchecked—into every facet of our lives. Through an investigation of the major ways in which both government and private sector organizations gather, monitor, analyze, and share information about ordinary citizens, the volume identifies nine key trends in the processing of personal data that together raise urgent questions of privacy and social justice. Intended not only to inform but to make a difference, the volume is deliberately aimed at a broad audience, including legislators and policymakers, journalists, civil liberties groups, educators, and, above all, the reading public.

TREND 1

Expanding Surveillance

From the Atypical to the Routine

Surveillance is consistently front-page news, and it raises some of the most pressing social, political, and ethical questions of our day. At the same time, surveillance is not new. Interpersonal face-to-face scrutiny is an inherent attribute of human coexistence, and organizations also have a long history of using surveillance for various purposes.¹ However, we are at a historic turning point in terms of the expansion, intensification, and integration of surveillance measures.² There is simply more surveillance occurring today, and the surveillance systems we now use have unprecedented abilities to see more, penetrate deeper, and forge more novel connections than has ever been the case in the past. This expansion and intensification is perhaps the most notable and unsettling development in the dynamics of surveillance and monitoring.

Two examples drawn from different institutional settings help to illustrate the scope of contemporary surveillance. The first comes from the business world and concerns the company Acxiom. An international data aggregator, Acxiom collects personal information about people, including Canadians, from different sources, which it then sells to corporations and political groups that use it for marketing and campaigning. The information that Acxiom collects is extremely diverse, including data as familiar as name, address, and telephone number. The company also amasses and sells more sensitive data, such as marital status, family status, age, ethnicity, the value of your home, what you read, the type of car you drive, what you order over the phone or Internet, where you vacation, your hobbies, any history of mental illness you might have, your patterns of alcohol consumption, and so on. Even before the advent of social media, the quantity of information held by Acxiom was immense—roughly equivalent to a stack of King James Bibles fifty thousand miles high.³ Given the popularity of applications like Facebook, which have revolutionized the amount of personal data available to aggregators and other organizations, that amount now massively underrepresents the volume of data that Acxiom processes.⁴

The second example pertains to the collection and analysis of intelligence information from electronic sources such as cellphones and the Internet for national security purposes. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Canada and the United States have increased the amount of intelligence sharing between our countries. Although the process remains highly secretive, we get occasional glimpses of the almost unimaginable amount of information that is being collected. James Bamford reports that by 2015, the American National Security Agency expects to be processing information at the astounding level of the yottabyte: ten-to-the-power-of-24 bytes.⁵ Translated to the print world, this equals one septillion—that is, one trillion trillion—pages of text. In 2011, the combined space of all computer hard drives in the world did not amount to one yottabyte.

These two illustrations involve surveillance conducted with the aid of computers, often referred to as “dataveillance.” To further round out the surveillance picture, however, one would also have to include technologies such as video cameras, drones, drug testing, automated licence plate readers, smartphones, and biometrics (that is, technologies that identify individuals on the basis of a biological characteristic). The most familiar way to identify someone through biometrics is fingerprinting, but biometric systems can now identify people based on their DNA, facial structure, hand geometry, voice, way of walking, and eye retina or iris patterns. Together, all of these phenomena are producing, and will continue to produce, sweeping transformations in almost every realm of existence, including commerce, warfare, science, international security, health, child care, work, and the formal and informal mechanisms we use to encourage people to conform to societal expectations and follow societal rules (often collectively called “social control”).

Not long ago, we might have believed that surveillance was confined to the world of espionage or directed primarily at criminals. Such assumptions were never particularly accurate given the long-standing use of surveillance in realms such as work and commerce, but today, it is easier to recognize that surveillance has become an inescapable reality for almost everyone. Being monitored is increasingly the trade-off for reduced prices or improved services. It is also not just a visual phenomenon, since monitoring now involves the massive use of electronic data. In fact, many of us provide some of this data willingly because doing so makes our lives more convenient. The following hypothetical vignette provides a glimpse into how surveillance has become a part of the everyday routine for both Canadians and others in industrialized societies.

A Day in the Life of a Nine-year-old: Farah

Farah crushes the bedcovers around her head, postponing her morning march through breakfast and homework. Her eyes snap open as she remembers today’s plans. Today, she will receive what is perhaps a preadolescent’s most desired technology and will find herself winging her way to another country. Were she attuned to such things, she might also recognize that her day will demonstrate how visible her life and the lives of those around her have become.

She slides out of bed forty minutes before her older brother Kay’s alarm clock is set to pound in the adjacent room. Gazing out the window, Farah catches the eye of her elderly neighbour, Mrs. Krupp, who returns her wave. She and Farah became acquainted at the park, where Mrs. Krupp is one of a handful of adults who watch over the kids as they tear around the play structure.

Farah’s family moved to this Mississauga neighbourhood eighteen months ago. They bought this house because it is on a direct bus route to her mom’s job at a small computer software company. Her father, a physics professor at the University of Toronto, has had to resign himself to battling the traffic several times a week to get downtown.

Today, her dad is already at work, but Farah does not want to wake her mom. By habit, she avoids the creaky floorboards that her parents use to note when she climbs out of bed. Recently, though, they have been less vigilant, because two months ago her mom had a new baby, Bruno. Born prematurely, Bruno had to stay in the hospital for several weeks while physicians ran tests for blood gas analysis, took chest X-rays, and conducted regular cardio-respiratory monitoring. During the pregnancy, Farah’s parents became accustomed to a high degree of medical scrutiny, given that her mom is over forty, which made her pregnancy more high risk. Consequently, Farah was often left with Mrs. Krupp while her mom went to the hospital for a raft of tests to ensure that there were no genetic anomalies and that the baby was developing according to standard norms.

Shortly before the birth, her mom had come home with a three-dimensional ultrasound image of Bruno. Farah’s parents had immediately posted the picture on her mom’s Facebook page among hundreds of pictures of Farah and her older brother. Everyone calls it Bruno’s “first picture,” but Farah doesn’t think it looks anything like him—or anyone else. She hasn’t spent a lot of time inspecting it, since she finds it kind of creepy.

That was also around the time that her dad set up the baby things, including a crib, right in Farah’s room. Clipped to the side of the crib is a new baby monitor. It allows her parents to hear Bruno, but it also has a camera connected to the Wi-Fi system, which means they can see him on their computer or smartphone from anywhere in the world. The device has night vision and zoom capability, can measure temperature and humidity, and can detect whether the baby is moving around. It even has a speaker that her parents can use to talk to Bruno remotely. Farah has wondered whether her parents use it to see and hear her as well.

Tiptoeing downstairs, she thinks how nice it is not to stumble over the clothes and computer cables that usually litter the floor. Her dad, although exhausted, has made a special effort to keep the house uncharacteristically tidy. Farah thinks he does this because of the community health nurse who has visited their home on a couple of occasions to ensure that Bruno and her mom are doing well, a visit that includes monitoring for signs of postpartum depression or psychosis. Her parents appreciate the concern but are still uncomfortable with how the nurse scans the front room and kitchen for signs that something might be awry. Hence her dad’s out-of-the-ordinary cleaning efforts.

When Farah’s brother Kay wakes up, he will dash off to an early soccer practice, which means that she can play on the computer undisturbed. She enjoys the free online games and does not linger over the implications of their terms of use, which include giving the manufacturers, among other things, permission to collect information on her physical location and phone number and to view the status of the family’s Wi-Fi. She is completely oblivious to the fact that national security agencies use online games to capture personal information. When she logs onto her favourite game the manufacturer also records the minutiae of her online behaviour, which it uses for product development and target marketing. The company also sells the data to other corporations eager to learn as much as possible about the consumption patterns of children. The games that Farah plays include personality questionnaires and consumer surveys. By completing the surveys, kids earn extra game points or privileges.

Highly desirable targets for corporate data collection: children (Source: © iStockphoto.com/Brzi)

But right now, Farah is hungry. While making breakfast, she notices that the cereal box advertises a contest for tickets to a concert by her favourite boy band. Farah makes a mental note to ask her mom to enter for her. It will require her to go to the company’s website and key in a unique product code from the cereal box. The personal information that she must also provide, when combined with the product code, gives the cereal company precise data about the family’s lifestyle and consumption patterns and contributes to a form of target marketing that is becoming more focused because of the greater ability to connect this information with personal data culled from other aspects of customers’ lives.

Video Games “See” into Players’ Living Rooms

Video game manufacturers are racing to provide ever more realistic gaming experiences that allow players to perform natural physical movements—for example, dancing or jumping to control a character in a game rather than pressing a series of buttons on a video game controller. The trade-off is that while such games are more immersive because they make natural movements part of play, they are also more invasive since these seeing devices are analyzing gamers’ bodies, behaviours, and environments and thus capitalizing on a rich source of personal information.

One video game system that has used this novel technology is Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Microsoft’s Internet-connected video game system, released in 2005, uses a service known as Xbox LIVE to let users play games with others online, purchase games from a digital marketplace, and keep track of their gaming statistics using digital trophies known as “achievements.”

Although the Xbox 360 has a variety of accessories, including a microphone for voice chat and a webcam for video streaming, its most interesting attachment is the Kinect, a sensor released in 2010 that can “see” a player’s body and distinguish it from furniture and even other people. The Kinect projects infrared light onto the space in front of the device. That light is reflected back by human bodies to an infrared sensitive camera on the Kinect, which tracks movement and translates players’ bodily movements into the game world. The Kinect has proven so vital to Microsoft’s business strategy in video game systems that the device will be included in successor versions of the Xbox.

This seeing capacity of the Kinect is also used to monitor emotional responses to marketing. Should Farah or her brother, or any real-world child, decide to watch a video or television program through the Xbox 360, the Kinect plays an advertisement called a “NUad” prior to the video. During this commercial, the system monitors users’ reactions to see if they are paying attention to the advertisement. Microsoft then sells this data and those from millions of other users—including players’ age, race, and gender gathered by the Kinect and Xbox LIVE, along with information about player behaviour during the commercial—to advertisers for market research. Microsoft has also patented the ability to use the Kinect to prevent people from breaking “terms of use” rules that govern how many people might watch a video or play a video game. For example, if the Kinect senses more people watching a video than are allowed under such rules, it will turn the video off. Does Microsoft have every right to enforce these rules, or is the increasing potential for sensing technologies to enforce digital rights management in physical space blurring the boundaries between Microsoft’s corporate and marketing policies, on the one hand, and the living rooms of its customers, on the other?

After brushing her teeth, Farah checks her Facebook account. She is officially too young to have such an account, but she and most of her friends lied about their age when registering and are now regular users. Every bit of information that Farah reveals about herself on Facebook—every event, song, or show that she “likes,” every status update and every picture—becomes part of the enormous data warehouse that the company sells to third parties. In the event of an emergency, police and security officials would also have access to the information on her page. Today, however, not much is happening, except that her friend Josh is bragging about his new toy car. Because he identifies the toy manufacturer by name, his comments will be automatically culled by firms that conduct online “data scrapes,” invisibly amassing and combining the comments of thousands of users about particular topics, products, or services. These firms then sell these data to companies eager to read citizens’ candid comments about products or policies. These same firms also collect online comments about people’s views on policies and social issues, which they sell to political strategists.

As her best friend, Ariel, is not yet allowed on Facebook, Farah uses Gmail to send Ariel a funny picture of the family’s dog. Again, although the rules for Gmail say that they are too young to have an account, Farah and all of her friends just lied about their age when registering. What she does not know is that when she communicates by email, her correspondence is subjected to different levels of automated scrutiny by global security agencies that monitor the flow of email. Should she contact suspicious people or use specific words or word combinations, her correspondence could be flagged for still greater scrutiny and follow-up by security officials. Her father often observes that, as a nuclear physicist educated in Iran, it is likely that his and all other family members’ messages are routinely read.

Stepping out the door, Farah contemplates how different things look on this warm spring day compared to the image of their street on Google Street View, which was taken in January. She only learned about Street View last week when she saw a car driving downtown with a camera sticking out of its roof. Kay then showed her some of the pictures of their neighbourhood streets available on Google’s mapping system. He was particularly eager to find the image of their friend Lani (with his face blocked out) playing with his dog in his front yard.

When Farah arrives at school, her image is captured by one of the video cameras that monitor each entranceway. The cameras were installed a few months ago by the school principal after a spate of graffiti appeared on the school walls.*

Farah hurries to her classroom because today is standardized-test day and she is anxious to do well. Her brother’s poor test scores have restricted his ability to enrol in his preferred high school courses, and she does not want to end up in Kay’s situation. Farah’s test scores will become part of her official ...

Índice

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: How Canadian Lives Became Transparent to Watching Eyes
• Trend 1 Expanding Surveillance: From the Atypical to the Routine
• Trend 2 Securitization and Surveillance: From Privacy Rights to Security Risks
• Trend 3 The Blurring of Sectors: From Public Versus Private to Public with Private
• Trend 4 The Growing Ambiguity of Personal Information: From Personally Identified to Personally Identifiable
• Trend 5 Expanding Mobile and Location-Based Surveillance: From Who You Are to Where You Are
• Trend 6 Globalizing Surveillance: From the Domestic to the Worldwide
• Trend 7 Embedding Surveillance in Everyday Environments: From the Surveillance of People to the Surveillance of Things
• Trend 8 Going Biometric: From Surveillance of the Body to Surveillance in the Body
• Trend 9 Watching by the People: From Them to Us
• Conclusion: What Can Be Done?
• Appendix 1 Surveillance and Privacy Law: FAQS
• Appendix 2 Surveillance Movies
• Appendix 3 How to Protect Your Privacy Online: FAQS
• Appendix 4 Canadian NGOS Concerned with Surveillance, Privacy, and Civil Liberties
• Appendix 5 Further Reading
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Footnotes