DS21S10 - HackMD

## Data Studies 2021 // S10. Surveillance  <a href="https://pigeonsarentreal.co.uk/"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/ZOATdNB.png" width="85%"></a> Pablo Velasco // Information Studies // [pablov.me](https://pablov.me) --- ## Plan for the day: * Surveillance(s) * Digital Surveillance * Surveillance Capitalism ---  # SURVEILLANCE(S) ---- ### Classic approaches to surveillance * Sur-veillance: **watching-over** * **Disciplinary society** Foucault, M. (1978). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison * Panoptic surveillance Elmer, G. (2003). A Diagram of Panoptic Surveillance * few observing many ("**unequal** gaze") * **internalized** regulatory gaze (*governmentality*) * Sousveillance (**inverted** surveillance)  * Panspectric veillance Landa, M. D. (1991). War in the Age of Intelligent Machines * enabled by **sensors and signals**, instead of human senses ---- ### But also surveillance as everyday practice * self-tracking Lupton, D. (2016). The quantified self * *participatory*: watching each other, being viral Social surveillance is the ongoing eavesdropping, investigation, gossip, and inquiry that consitutes information gathering by people about their peers, made salient by the social digitalization normalized by social media (...) the nature of "surveillance" dynamically changes based on the social role played by observer and observant Marwick, A. E. (2012). Social Surveillance in Everyday Life ----  Persistent Surveillance Systems <a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-sky" style="color:white">e.g. Radiolab: Eye in the sky</a> ---- ## 1. Which devices/artifacts are tracking us now? ## 2. Which of them are obviously visible? Which are obfuscated? ## 3. Who is gathering this information? Do you know to what purpose? --- # DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE ----  * Digital Surveillance: * **Bigger** scope of data: CCTV, RFID, biometics... * "Liquid surveillance" Bauman, Z., & Lyon, D. (2012). Liquid Surveillance: A Conversation * fluid, uncontained, **pervasive** monitoring * *Dataveillance* Dijck, J. van. (2014). Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big Data between scientific paradigm and ideology * continous tracking of (meta)data for **unstated** purposes ---- ### Let's look at the exhaust data captured from your browser 1. Go to Panopticlick: https://panopticlick.eff.org/ 3. Is your browser fingerprint unique? What does this mean? ---- | Surveillance model | Capture model | | -------- | -------- | | visual metaphors | linguistic metaphors | | non-disruptive watching | "parsing" of activities for re-organisation | | territorial metaphor (*invasion*) | **assembled from "parts"** | | centralized/bureaucratic | **decentralized and heterogenous** | | identification with the state | **mathematical formalism** | Agre, P. E. (1994). Surveillance and capture: Two models of privacy **NOT** mutually exclusive models! ----  ## Mathematical formalism *Compstats in Brooklyn Nine-Nine (S01E15) ----  ### How do grammars of action happen? 1. Analysis: identification of fundamental units of activity 2. Articulation: formal specifications (grammar) 3. Imposition: normative force (organisation of action under grammar) 4. Instrumentalisation: social and technical means for maintaining the grammar 5. Elaboration: captured activity can be stored, inspected, audited, etc... "The crime rate itself became the boss" "The people who started running CompStat didn't understand it" ### In the original design Data was the means, and eventually Data became the ends ---- ![](https://i.imgur.com/sEPDJrO.png) Agre, P. E. (1994). Surveillance and capture: Two models of privacy. --- # SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM ----  <h2 class="censor fragment">[Surplus (value): earnings minus costs of materials and labor]</h2> <h2 class="censor fragment">[Alienation: from products, but also of our own determination]</h2> ----  ## Behavioural data reinvestment cycle Every action a user performs is considered a signal to be analyzed and fed back into the system (Hal Varian) * "Surveillance Capitalism is not a technology; it is a logic that imbues technology and commands it into action" (15) * "Machine intelligence" -> analysis, Machine Learning, prediction, recognition, modeling... Hmm… Machine intelligence seems to be used quite broadly and I can't quite wrap my head around where the borders are. Google themselves refer to things like language translation, speech recognition and prediction as machine intelligence (Mathilde) ----  Recommendation systems [The Napoleon Dynamite problem](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?pagewanted=all) When we predict a visualization based on a sample of data and then feed more data to test the accuracy of our prediction in the visualization (Laura) ---- <img src="https://i.imgur.com/Sq0wu32.png" width="49%"> <img src="https://i.imgur.com/9JtFJ8l.png" width="49%"> https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-big-tech-makes-their-billions-2020/ ---- ### Google's reinvesment cycle turns from "improving the product" towards "prediction of user behavour"  * Instead of 'fordist' production, Google UPI (user profile information) extraction and analysis tailored to advertisment (*ends*) * Unique mix (*means*): behavioural surplus, data science, material infrastructure, computational power, algorithmic systems, and automated platforms ("machine intelligence") "instrumentarianism" power -> shape human behaviour to other's ends ----  Behavioural knowledge, manipulation, and prediction: microtargeting as a combination of politics and consumer marketing, and the capacity of manipulation of affective states (O'Neil 2017) ---- <img src="https://i.imgur.com/rLfp9iP.png" width="100%"> https://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/trackers-gephi-dmi/ DMI version (in development, but you can export directly to gephi): https://github.com/digitalmethodsinitiative/brightbeam Also, tracker-tracker (exports to gephi): https://tools.digitalmethods.net/beta/trackerTracker/ ---- ### Short activity: *lightbeam* Install *Thunderbeam-Lightbeam* for chrome [here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lightbeamchrome/hjkajeglckopdkbggdiajobpilgccgnj?hl=en-GB) 0. (remember to deactivate your blockers) 1. Navigate for a few minutes as you'll usually do. Try some google searches, news websites, or social media 2. How does your network look? Compare with others: are there trackers that repeat continually? (you may want to pay attention to the *bridges* and/or central nodes for this) Try doing the same with your adblockers on. Is there a substantial difference? You can try different adblockers. <style> .reveal{ font-family:mono; font-size: 25px; } .reveal .censor{ background:#333333; color:white; } .reveal .censorw{ background:white; color:black; } .reveal .pinky{ color:#e5157d; font-style:italic; font-size: .8em; } .reveal section img { border: none; box-shadow: none; } .reveal section left{ width:50%; } .reveal .refs { color: grey; font-size: small; text-align: left; } </style>