Dataveillance

Lawful Access Provisions

2010-12-01T17:34:00.004-08:00

Michael Geist writes that the government has table a new Lawful Access proposal, which focuses on information disclosure, required surveillance technologies, and new police powers.

In addition to the disclosure of customer information, linked to an identifiable individual, the new laws would also require ISPs to allow deep-packet inspection of internet communications. In addition, the laws provide police with real-time access to communications, as well as preservation of surbscriber information for 90 days.

Geist comments that these laws have been proposed, even though there is limited evidence that current laws stand in the way of police investigations.

Geist, Michael. (2010, November 14). Geist: Lawful access legislation would reshape Canada's Internet. The Toronto Star.

Link to Bills:
C-50 An Act to amend the Criminal Code (interception of private communications and related warrants and orders)
The Minister of Justice, The Hon. Robert Douglas Nicholson
First reading in the House of Commons (October 29, 2010)

C-51 An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Competition Act and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act
(Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act)
The Minister of Justice, The Hon. Robert Douglas Nicholson First Reading in the House of Commons (November 1st, 2010)

C-52 An Act regulating telecommunications facilities to support investigations (Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act)
The Minister of Public Safety, The Hon. Vic Toews
First Reading in the House of Commons (November 1st, 2010)

Bill 20 - surveillance cameras in BC Schools

2010-05-17T08:37:00.003-07:00

The Tyee reports that Bill 20 proposes amendments to the BC Schools Act, that allow surveillance cameras to be installed on school property to ensure individual safety, to protect an individual's belongings, and to protect school property.

The Vancouver Public Space Network points out that the amendments do not specify how the surveillance camera data should be used, who should use it, or how long the data should be kept. Instead, they believe that "[t]he province should either impose stringent standard rules to avoid the possibility of over-use and abuse of surveillance cameras, or require boards to adopt rules that meet or exceed a tough provincial standard".

Surveilling Public Space: Perspectives on Spectacle

2009-11-16T18:10:00.004-08:00

Surveilling Public Space public art installation will be held this week-end at the Interurban Gallery. The event is put together by SFU Communication students and the Vancouver Public Space Network. On Saturday the 21st, the VSPN will unveil their map of surveillance cameras in the downtown core! I am going to be there to take in the art and see the outcome of our summer mapping work.

For more information about the event, see the facebook page.

Surveilling Public Space: Perspectives on Spectacle
18 - 21 November, 2009 (Wed - Sat)
Interurban Gallery (1 E Hastings Street, Vancouver BC)

Opening with Special Presentation: 18 November, 2009 (Wed) 7:00PM
Closing Reception: 21 November, 2009 (Sat) 6:00PM

Presented and Curated by Simon Fraser University Communication and the Vancouver Public Space Network.

Free admission.

Surveilling Public Space: Perspectives on Spectacle

2009-09-30T20:49:00.002-07:00

Call for Artist:

Simon Fraser University and the Vancouver Public Space Network are seeking artists in all mediums for a themed exhibition at the Interurban Art Gallery from November 18-21, 2009.

Title: Surveilling Public Space: Perspectives on Spectacle
Exhibition Period: 18 - 21 November, 2009
Reception and Walking Tour: 21 November, 2009
Location: Interurban Gallery, 1 E Hastings Street, Vancouver

About the Exhibit:

"...our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance."

Despite Foucault’s famous assertion, it is becoming increasingly clear that in contemporary society, it is impossible to separate the notion of surveillance from that of spectacle. Technological advances have allowed the surveillance of our cities to become all but invisible, yet at the same time policing and security have become deliberately spectacular. Particularly, the upcoming securitization of Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics will forge a link between spectacle and
surveillance on an unprecedented scale.

Surveilling Public Space looks to comment on the increasing normalization of surveillance cameras in contemporary society. Surveillance cameras are not merely functional but are also full of social meaning. The show will portray a variety of perspectives on the act of video surveillance in public space and its social, political, and economic implications. Preference will be given to works that
create a visceral or experiential understanding of the meaning of video surveillance in our society.

To submit a proposal:

Proposals may be submitted by email to: Carmen Hung (carmen_hung@sfu.ca).
Emails should be a maximum of 3Mb. The deadline for submission is October 14th (Wed) at 6:00pm. Late submissions will not be considered.

Proposals should include:

• Statement of Intent. A maximum of 500 words describing the idea, medium, title, and dimension of the piece
• Artist Bio. A brief biography of the artist or group. This should be in a separate document from the statement of intent. Please also include contact information (email, phone number)
• Supporting illustrations. This may include sketches, photos, past works, or any material relevant to describing the proposed work.
Please include notes or sketches describing how the piece is to be mounted in the gallery. Floor plan diagrams would be particularly useful, but are not mandatory

Important Dates:

• Proposal due: Oct 14th, 2009
• Notification to selected artists: Oct 21st, 2009
• Install/Setup*: Nov 17th, 2009
• Show: Nov 18-21st, 2009
• Strike/Gallery Restore*: Nov 22-23rd, 2009

Selected artists will receive an Invitation to the Reception to share their thoughts with delegates attending The Surveillance Games: A Research Workshop on Nov 21st, 2009.

*No equipment or resources will be provided. Artists are responsible for transporting, installing, and removing their work as well as restoring the gallery on the listed dates.

Mapping CCTV in Vancouver

2009-08-24T21:05:00.014-07:00

Yesterday, I joined about 40 volunteers to help create a topography of surveillance camera use in public space in Vancouver's downtown and downtown east side. My partner and I spent the entire day gazing upwards to locate those often difficult to spot devices. My neck still hasn't recovered.

See these links for coverage of the event in the local media: The Vancouver Sun, CTV, The Georgia Straight, and 24 hours.

Surprisingly, we found close over 100 cameras in the few streets my partner and I mapped from Victory Square toward Drake Street. The majority of cameras we spotted were privately owned, and likely were installed without considering the impact on public space. Restaurants cleverly installed dome-shaped cameras on patio awnings, and liquor stores sported clusters of dark domes looking squarely into the street.

Bill Brown, of the Surveillance Camera Players, leads a political theatre group that protests against the proliferation of cameras in New York. He notes that the vast majority of cameras installed are private businesses intent both on fulfilling insurance obligations, and on deterring theft.

Publicly owned cameras may be justified on the grounds that they help deter crime and apprehend criminals.

However, in the UK, which is one of the most heavily surveilled nations in the world, a number of studies and reports have found that claim to be in error. This is just one of these reports, demonstrating that each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London solve just one crime per year:

David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: "It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent."
He added: "CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security

Hopefully the UK experience will provide some context for Vancouver decision-makers to consider.

Gathering Resources for Surveillance Camera Mapping

2009-06-22T22:12:00.003-07:00

After attending my first meeting with the Surveillance and Security Group of the Vancouver Public Space Network, I decided to see what The New Transparency research group, centered at Queen's University, had amassed on CCTV cameras in urban spaces.

The Surveillance Camera Awareness Network (SCAN) is a multidisciplinary Canadian research initiative supported in part by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. To date, they have resources, including a bibliography of surveillance studies works. They have also published a report on surveillance camera use in Canada, and provided links to CCTV news stories.

I am going to look over these more closely in the next few weeks to see how these might be used in any anti-surveillance advocacy in Vancouver.

The Privacy Games?

2009-05-27T22:11:00.004-07:00

Researchers Philip J. Boyle and Kevin D. Haggerty have recently published a report on surveillance and privacy at the 2010 Winter Olympics for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. They examine the political economy of security technologies, the history of surveillance at mega events, and the potential for enduring surveillance infrastructures following the games. If recent Olympic events are any indication, surveillance technologies will persist, proliferate and piggy-back their way permanently into Vancouver's urban environment.

"The possibility that CCTV cameras installed specifically for the Olympics will remain in place after the Games are over has been raised a number of times in the Canadian media and by civil rights observers in the Vancouver area. Recent Olympics suggest that this is a distinct possibility; approximately 400 of the 1,500 ‘temporary’ CCTV cameras used during the 2004 Athens Games were retained afterwards over and above the proliferation of cameras implemented elsewhere under the broader rubric of Olympics security at locations such as the new airport, public transportation hubs, and public highways. Our discussion with one security official involved in the 2006 Turin Games confirmed that similar CCTV retention occurred at the conclusion of those Games." - Boyle & Haggerty, 2009

Boyle, P.J. and Haggerty, K.D. (2009 March) Privacy Games: The Vancouver Olympics, Privacy and Surveillance. Report prepared for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada Under the Contributions Program. Available http://www.surveillanceproject.org/files/Privacy%20Games.pdf

Redeploying CCTV after the Olympics

2009-04-21T17:22:00.002-07:00

There are a few conflicting reports regarding the permanence and use of CCTV cameras during and after the Winter 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. CBC recently reported that "security staff and politicians have stressed that any cameras put up for the Games will be temporary".

According to a March 26, 2009 report by Kevin Wallinger, Director of the Office of Emergency Management for the City of Vancouver, funds have been earmarked for increased CCTV operations in Vancouver: over $2.6 million for temporary CCTV camera deployment during the games. The report does make a nod to the Privacy and Information Commissioner's recommendations on CCTV surveillance. They also indicate that a "public engagement process" will take place, in particular with the BCCLA and the Vancouver Public Space Network; however, the extent to which this is broadly public, or if their concerns will impact these decisions remains to be seen.

The Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver Courier suggest the cameras will remain when the games conclude. Instead of being temporary, the BC government will provide $40,000 for the operation of a CCTV control centre (near the PNE) and 10 portable surveillance cameras, to be "redeployed" around the city of Vancouver.

I am a little dismayed, but not surprised, that surveillance technologies used during the 2010 Olympics will simply be incorporated into the existing city structure without extensive review, in particular because the conditions under which they will be used are completely unspecified.

Lessons from the Identity Trail

2009-04-18T09:23:00.003-07:00

I have been meaning to read some of the various available chapters in "Lessons from the Identity Trail" for some weeks now. Yesterday on Part 3 of CBC Radio's "The Current", Anna Maria Tremonti interviewed Ian Kerr about his edited book, which is the outcome of a four year project "On the Identity Trail".

During this interview, I particularly liked the way Kerr delineated people's different senses of privacy. For example, privacy advocates are concerned about the use of social networking sites, and the potential for corporations to collect personal information. However, young people using these sites are often unconcerned about future unknown uses of their personal information by corporations or government. For them, using online tools is a way to avoid the watchful authority of their parents, a much more palpable and immediate privacy demand.

I hope to read some of their book, which is being made available, in stages, for free online. I hope more projects like these will be funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; On the Identity Trail really produced some fantastic work!

CSIS approves information from torture

2009-04-02T07:53:00.004-07:00

Tonda Maccharles reports in Tuesday's edition of The Star that CSIS will use information derived from torture. In the Arar Commission report, Judge O'Connor states that this practice should not be allowed:

"The RCMP should ensure that, whenever it provides information to other departments and agencies, whether foreign and domestic, it does so in accordance with clearly established policies respecting screening for relevance, reliability and accuracy and with relevant laws respecting personal information and human rights." (Recommendation 8, p.334)

"Information received from countries with questionable human rights records should be identified as such and proper steps should be taken to assess its reliability." (Recommendation 15, p.348)

As the testimony from torture victims, such as Maher Arar (as documented in Illusions of Security by Maureen Webb) and Abdul Almalki, demonstrates, people will say just about anything when they are under extreme duress. Torture does not produce reliable information. To the contrary, it seems that many innocent people are hurt and lives are destroyed by this method of information discovery.

Shame.

Call for Papers

2009-04-01T21:04:00.002-07:00

Call For Papers: E-Government Theme

2009 World Congress on Privacy, Security, Trust and the Management of e-Business (Congress 2009)

August 25 27, 2009, Saint John,New Brunswick, Canada

The World Congress on the Management of e-Business conference (McMaster University) and the annual Privacy, Security and Trust conference (PST) (University of New Brunswick) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada Institute for Information Technology (NRC-IIT) are holding a joint event: "The 2009 World Congress on Privacy, Security, Trust and the Management of e-Business". The conference will take place August 25 27, 2009, in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.

E-Government Theme

The roles of E-Government include, among its various definitions, the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) to the operation of government, including, but not limited to, its civil, political, and administrative aspects. Topics include civic intelligence, internet governance, open standards for e-Government, Radio, television, and telecommunications, and Privacy, among others.

Submit papers not under review or previously accepted or published elsewhere.

Important Dates

April 15, 2009 Research Paper Submission Deadline *** New Deadline ***
June 5, 2009 Research Paper Notification of Acceptance
June 15, 2009 Practitioner Paper Submission Deadline
July 3, 2009 Final Research Manuscript Due

For more information, see http://www.unb.ca/pstnet/congress2009

Divorcing Information from Torture

2009-03-14T09:23:00.004-07:00

On March 5, 2009, NDP MP Dawn Black reintroduced "An Act prohibiting the commission, abetting or exploitation of torture by Canadian officials and ensuring freedom from torture for all Canadians at home and abroad", Bill C-334, in parliament.

Previously known as C-551 before parliament was dissolved in 2008, the bill prohibits the use or information derived from torture, and prevents Canada from providing information to countries if it is suspected that it may be used for torture. It also makes any information exchange contingent on its non-use for torture (Sections 7.1-3). It also prevents Canada from deporting individuals to countries known to torture individuals: "6. (1) Notwithstanding any other Act of Parliament, no official shall expel or extradite a person to another country if there are reasonable grounds for believing that the person may be subjected to torture in the other country." These are assurances that Security Certificate detainees desperately need.

Clearly intended to prevent situations such as the ongoing struggle to repatriate Omar Khadr, C-334 obligates Canada to "secure custody of that citizen for return to Canada, regardless of whether that citizen is a person of interest to an investigative agency" or other government black list.

The bill does have some enforcement measures, in the form of a fine of $500,000 to $1,000,000 or imprisonment of three to ten years.

Drafted with the help of the BC Civil Liberties Association, Dawn Black introduced the bill in parliament: "The bill is a comprehensive attempt to address the issue of torture. It makes it a criminal offence to use information known to be obtained using torture. It stops any officials from Canada from transferring prisoners into the hands of those who are suspected or known to use torture. It creates a government watch list of countries that are known to engage in torture. It prevents the use of national security provisions as a measure to withhold information about torture, which happened for months during the Afghan detainees scandal last year. I urge all members of the House to join together to reject torture in all its forms and to support this very important bill."

I concur!

Getting on (and off) Facebook

2009-03-03T22:50:00.003-08:00

Greyson at Social Justice Librarians has a great post on What it would take to get me on Facebook. For another interesting read on what it takes to get off Facebook, read Steve Mansour's account.

Winter Reading List

2009-03-03T22:04:00.005-08:00

I just finished Colin Bennett's 2008 book, The Privacy Advocates, this morning on my way to work. As someone who has only come to information policy and privacy in the last 5 years, Bennett's chronology of the advocacy community's responses to various challenges was illuminating. I was really excited to read this book, because I was working on my MA thesis on a similar topic (but a very different scope) at much the same time. I would definitely recommend this to anyone in the anti-surveillance / privacy community for some reasoned reflection on (and appreciation for) the ongoing work they do.

The next book I re-"read" on my one and a half hour, twice a day commute to work might just be the new LibriVox audio book "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Take on Me - a challenge?

2009-02-27T16:43:00.000-08:00

The Electronic Frontier Foundation posted a note on Warner's use of YouTube's automated Content ID system that flags videos for copyright violation. They point out that this tool does not distinguish between copyrighted work and those videos that should qualify for Fair Use.

Oneexample of works that fall under this is a number of "literal videos" by creator Dust Films. These are great both because they poke fun at my faveorite pop culture icons from the 80s and 90s, but also because they are challenging restrictive copyright law. I thoroughly enjoyed "Take on Me", no longer available at YouTube, but accessible at Funny or Die.

Charkaoui Judgement Lifts Some Restrictions

2009-02-23T22:04:00.004-08:00

In a Federal Court decision, Adil Charkaoui was released from most of the restrictive conditions to his communications and travel that he has lived under for the last four years under a Security Certificate.

A memo from the Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui celebrates the judgment, but cautions that the validity of the certificate itself has not been decided, and Adil is still could face the re-imposition of these conditions or deportation. He also remains subject to some of the surveillance measures, as do three other security certificate detainees, who live under restrictive measures.

Read the decision at www.adilinfo.org or here.

Mainstream media coverage of the decision can be found at:
- Montreal Gazette: www.adilinfo.org/en/node/533

Turtalitarians might be under suspicion...

2009-02-19T21:00:00.006-08:00

I am a big stop motion animation fan, so it was clear that the winner of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner's National Video Competition would make me smile.

Turtalitarians take care!

More Opportunities to Comment

2009-02-15T21:43:00.004-08:00

The CRTC is calling for comments on the Telecommunications Act customer privacy regulations by March 16, 2009. Michael Geist states that the CRTC is essentially asking if the market will provide privacy protections equivalent to the provisions Telecommunications Act.

In the Notice of Consultation they do, however, state that previously, "the Commission considered that market forces were unlikely to sufficiently protect the privacy interests of customers in a forborne environment".

Save Our Net

2009-02-12T21:30:00.007-08:00

It is only the result of gentle prodding that I have decided to submit my only somewhat informed opinion to the CRTC, on their compiling of public submissions on internet "traffic management". The hearing has been pushed back to February 23 in order to give members of the public enough time to respond.

In preparing my comments, I reviewed a paper written by Concordia MA graduate Neil Barratt and my MA advisor, Leslie Regan Shade, "Net Neutrality: Telecom Policy and the Public Interest", published in the Canadian Journal of Communication.

They point out that Canada's telecommunication policy has, until recently, been regulated as a public resource, as enshrined Telecommunications Act (1993, s.27.2):

"No Canadian carrier shall, in relation to the provision of a telecommunications service or the charging of a rate for it, unjustly discriminate or give an undue or unreasonable preference toward any person, including itself, or subject any person to an undue or unreasonable disadvantage."

Instead of a market model, which would allow ISPs to be information gatekeepers, they suggest an Alternative Telecommunications Act that that authorizes and enforces consumer access, and prevents discriminatory shaping of content by treating all data and users equally. They also describe how the internet could be run as a basic, public infrastructure, municipally owned and administered.

I hope the CRTC listens to ideas like these, and to the desires of Canadians.

Helpful links:
SaveOurNet.ca
Michael Geist
What is Net Neutrality?
Take Action on Net Neutrality

Lawful Access Reintroduced

2009-02-10T21:24:00.003-08:00

The Lawful Access proposals have reared their ugly head again in Parliament. On February 4, the Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act was reintroduced in a private member's bill. This bill outlines the obligations of telecommunications providers to CSIS, the RCMP and other law enforcement for subscriber information and communications interception.

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic has posted analysis on previous Lawful Access proposals, and has outlined some civil society concerns.

On a side note, Bill C-285 has been sponsored by Liberal MP Marlene Jennings, who was the MP of my riding, Notre-Dame-de-Grace / Lachine, in Montreal. Even though I had visited and phoned her office a number of times to speak about my concerns about Security Certificates, I had never been successful in speaking with her, and never had any of my calls or emails responded to. However, I am hopeful that her analysis on national security and the human rights implications of the related policy might have changed since that time.

Anti-Olympics Press Conference

2009-02-09T19:51:00.001-08:00

The Olympic Resistance Network is holding a press conference on Tuesday, February 10 at 3:30 pm in the Beatty Street Armoury, located at 620 Beatty at Dunsmuir in Vancouver. Helen Lenskyj, noted author and former professor at the University of Toronto, will speak on the Olympics industry, and growing resistance to the games. She will be joined by by Ange Sterritt of the Gitxsan Nation, as well as Hill, of Kwakwaka'wakw and editor of no2010.com and Mike Krebs, a local Indigenous activist who has been approached by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Call for papers - Communication as a Human Right

2009-02-07T09:36:00.006-08:00

International Association for Media and Communication Research
27th Annual Research Conference, July 21-24, 2009
National Autonomous University Of Mexico, Mexico-City, Mexico
Theme: Human Rights & Communication

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO A ROUND TABLE ON
“Communication as a human right:policy challenges, public interest narratives and visions for the future"

Jointly organized by the Working Group on Global Media Policy and the Emerging Scholars Network

Jean d’Arcy, the father of the right to communicate, said some three decades ago that we need about 100 years until the right to communicate is fully realized and studied globally. In order to contribute to this debate, and adopting an inter-disciplinary as well as inter-generational approach to the study of communication as a human right, the Emerging Scholars Network and the Working Group on Global Media Policy of the IAMCR invite interested scholars and advocates to submit abstracts for a jointly organized round table on: “Communication and human rights: policy challenges, public interest narratives and visions for the future”.

The idea of communication as a human right is intertwined with multiple threads of research and advocacy, such as but not limited to: legal and juridical studies, social work and equality, identity and inter-group communication, globalization and development studies, colonial and post-colonial studies, feminist studies, political sciences, deliberative democracy, and social movement studies. Taking into consideration this rich disciplinary landscape, but with a special focus on the promotion of human rights through communication and the recognition of communication as a fundamental right, we invite contributions that address one (or more) of the following themes:

a) Historical investigations addressing the nexus between
communication and human rights in past and contemporary policy narratives and practices;

b) Comparative analyses of different policy trends towards the
framing, recognition and promotion of communication as a fundamental human right;

c) Case studies and examples proving/refuting the treatment of
communication as a human right in media policies and communication governance;

d) Possible solutions/attempts to reconcile such debates and address contemporary challenges: visionary proposals for carrying forward the one hundred years of debate foreseen by D’Arcy.

The Emerging Scholars Network and the Working Group on Global Media Policy of the IAMCR are particularly interested in fostering theoretical as well as empirical work by emerging scholars on the theme, and intend to do this by establishing ongoing and interactive debates across generations of scholars. For this reason, the roundtable will feature six emerging scholars, each addressing one of the above mentioned topics through short interventions; two senior discussants will respond to these contributions involving the audience.

Interested contributors are invited to submit a proposal of no more than 500-word stating clearly in which way, and on what ground (theoretical and methodological), they intend to tackle the nexus between communication as a human right and policy challenges. **

**Submissions should include your name, affiliation, and email address, and should be sent by February 16, 2009 to Stefania Milan (stefania.milan[AT]eui.eu). The final list of panelists will be announced by the end of April 2009.

Call for Papers - The Surveillance Games

2009-02-07T08:51:00.001-08:00

CALL FOR PAPER PROPOSALS FOR A WORKSHOP ON
"THE SURVEILLANCE GAMES"

Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre, Vancouver BC. November 20-22, 2009

Mega-events such as the Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup, and high profile political summits such as the G8 and World Trade Organization meetings have all been identified as primary targets for terrorist attack and have undergone extensive security and surveillance transformations as a result. Mega-events now serve as focal points for security and surveillance proliferation. They are microcosms of larger trends and processes, through which we can observe the complex ways security and surveillance practices are implicated in unique confluences of technology, institutional motivations, and public-private security arrangements.

In the lead-up to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, and under the auspices of the New Transparency Project, we invite paper proposals for a workshop on the surveillance implications of mega-events, including the following:

Ø security and surveillance and urban and critical infrastructure protection
Ø mega-events as spectacle, public ritual and states of exception
Ø the spatial articulations of security and surveillance
Ø policy implications of security, privacy and mega-events
Ø the role of the private sector and the mega-event security complex
Ø the proliferation of technologies of (in)security
Ø participant experiences of identification and surveillance practices at mega events
Ø the increasing commercialization of security and surveillance
Ø the historical and institutional legacies of mega-events

The objective of the Surveillance Games workshop is to examine these, and other, themes two months before, and on the very site of, the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The questions at the centre of the workshop are relevant not only for academics. The Surveillance Games workshop will also address issues that are critically relevant to policy-makers, law enforcement agencies, non-governmental actors, athletes, spectators, private sector representatives, and media representatives. The workshop will hopefully involve representatives from each of these sectors.

500 word proposals for academic papers on the surveillance implications of Mega-Events should be sent to the co-organizers: Professor Kevin Haggerty, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta (kevin.haggerty@ulberta.ca) and Professor Colin J. Bennett, Department of Political Science, University of Victoria (cjb@uvic.ca). The deadline for paper proposals is March 31st, 2009. Decisions on the program will be made by the end of April. The deadline for the receipt of draft papers is September 30th, 2009. Proposals from all social science, humanities and other relevant disciplines will be considered. Selected papers from the workshop will ultimately be published in an edited collection (publisher to be determined). Some funds are available through the New Transparency Project for those who otherwise cannot obtain support for travel and accommodation through their Universities, or other employers.

Olympics and Surveillance

2009-02-05T21:03:00.004-08:00

In The Tyee, Geoff Dembicki reports on a panel discussion on privacy and the Olympics, which took place at the at the Reboot Communications 10th Annual Privacy and Security Conference, which took place from February 3rd - 4th, 2009.

Speakers Michael Vonn from the BCCLA, David Loukidelis, BC's Information and Privacy Commissioner, and Dr. Colin Bennett from the University of Victoria outlined some of their concerns about privacy and human rights, which may be threatened by the Olympic security apparatus that is quietly (and not so quietly) being installed throughout the lower mainland. Surveillance cameras with scanning capabilities, new capabilities to search individuals, coupled with "anti-graffiti" laws that have the potential to inhibit any organized dissent have the potential to threaten civil rights and freedoms. These measures may not be temporary, as promised, and may become a permanent feature of daily life in Vancouver. I hope communities and individuals will continue to question the utility and validity of surveillance technologies and policies being slid into place.

but they're still calling...

2009-02-04T21:22:00.002-08:00

I should have been more cautious, seeing as it wasn't my own number, but last year, I decided to register my parent's phone number on the Do Not Call List in the hopes that their telemarketing calls would subside. No such luck. As Michael Geist writes in The Tyee, the CRTC's Do Not Call list is clearly not working. With the ability to limit calling only within Canada, the CRTC has not had the jurisdiction or the bite to enforce misuses of the list.

As someone who has been waiting a long time for a program that reliably managed telemarketing calls, I hope the government does begin to work on these issues. At least then, our family can eat dinner without fielding requests to answer opinion surveys and newspaper subscriber lists.

Consent and the Invisibility of Information Collection

2009-02-02T21:27:00.002-08:00

Journalist Don Butler interviews Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart about privacy.

Don Butler
The Ottawa Citizen

Saturday, January 31, 2009

We have scant understanding of the extent to which we're being watched on the Web, says Jennifer Stoddart.

Is Canada a surveillance society?

Certainly we're living in a surveillance society. There's the surveillance of street cameras as we walk to work, the loyalty cards as we buy our coffee. We may be tracked in and out of our office. Exceptionally, employers can do surveillance on their employees. Your kids may be under surveillance cameras at many day cares. In hospitals, there's increasing use of surveillance of patients. So we are in a surveillance society. The issue is not, are we in it or not. It's how well do we control it and how well do we make sure there are very, very stringent rules about who gets what information for what purposes.

Are we controlling it adequately?

Canada has done better than other places. We have avoided the massive data breaches of citizen information as far as we know that we've seen in the UK. France was compiling a major database of all elected officials and people in public life, including their sexual habits, their religious and political affiliations. This is non-existent in Canada and would be totally unacceptable. So on that scale we're doing fairly well. However, we're lagging behind on a lot of security issues. No matter how well-meaning you are, if your technology is not secure, the confidentiality of the personal information will be lost. The trafficking in personal information is now an underground economy that some have said is now as lucrative, or more lucrative, than the drug trade. On that scale, we haven't moved.

Has surveillance gone too far?

We're putting too much faith in surveillance instead of asking the hard questions -- and maybe supplying the hard answers -- to some of these things. It's become an almost knee-jerk reaction to install surveillance because it's technically now possible. There's been a huge growth in the global surveillance business. New firms are starting up all the time and this is being sold as the panacea to a number of not only anxieties but areas where we're morally unsure or don't want to face the consequences of what we see. And so we go to watching each other.

Are we too willing to accept surveillance?

I think we are. As a society we're moving from an ethos of individual responsibility, individual commitment, to the idea that it's not really my responsibility. Surveillance is an easy way out, in many ways.

People often say that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from surveillance. What do you think?

People aren't looking at the many faces of privacy. If you say it doesn't bother me because I have nothing to hide, you forget that at some point, in some other context, you may have something to hide. Perhaps we wouldn't want the government or an employer to know that we have an inherited tendency to some genetic disorder. I encourage people to think not just about how one surveillance initiative affects them personally, but how it affects the whole way our society is operating.

Are we losing the ability to consent to how our private information is collected and used?

Consent is certainly under siege. The issue goes to the invisibility of the information-gathering mechanisms. One of our concerns about things like behavioural advertising or children's online privacy is the fact that for certain groups and in certain circumstances, it's almost impossible to give a meaningful consent.

Safe Social Networking

2008-12-19T11:44:00.000-08:00

The European Network and Information Security Agency recently completed a survey examining use of social networking and internet sites, and awareness of related privacy and security issues in the UK, Germany and Sweden. They also published report related to these findings that look at web 2.0 security more in depth, and make recommendations for policy incentives, technical research, and awareness raising.

One awareness raising campaign in the UK is Get Safe Online, which has advice for non-experts on how to keep their information safe while online. A Safe Social Networking guide is also available.

Privacy Tips for the Season of Consumption

2008-12-16T20:41:00.002-08:00

Canada's federal and provincial privacy commissioners have created a set of privacy tips for holiday shoppers.

Here are there suggestions in 6 steps:
1.Prevent: Carry as little personal information with you as possible
2.Protect: Cover you pin when using debit
3.Pay attention: Be sure there is no double swipe of your card at the till
4.Practice safe shopping: Online shoppers should be sure they are using a secure site (a lock or key at the bottom of the page)
5.Probe: Ask how your information will be used by retailers, in many cases you are allowed to decline!
6.Prudence: Check your bank and credit card statements immediately and report errors

You don't have to give out driver's licence numbers or social insurance numbers to retailers or landlords.

Call for submissions - crime and punishment

2008-12-16T20:38:00.001-08:00

Call for submissions on crime, punishment and miscarriages of justice at Briarpatch Magazine.

Privacy Advocates

2008-11-27T10:13:00.004-08:00

Following Colin Bennett's recent book, which I blogged about here, a companion website has been launched to connect not for profit and non governmental organizations, as well as civil society groups that are working on issues related to privacy and surveillance. The Privacy Advocates website allows groups to post their website and a brief introduction to their work.

This is a great way for groups working on similar issues to gain awareness of each other, but I am interested to see what other kind of functionality they will add to the site. Will groups be able to share updates of the issues they are working on, media they have created, or debates on national and international issues? Will there be a forum for conversation? If these sorts of exchanges are enabled, maybe groups will be able to organize activism on national and international issues and events to put more pressure on governments to make decisions that protect privacy rights and freedoms.

Warning Signs

2008-11-23T12:07:00.003-08:00

Colin Bennett launched his book The Privacy Advocates: Resisting the Spread of Surveillance in a public lecture at the University of Ottawa on November 13, 2008.

I really liked his comparisons between the environmental movement and the privacy network. I am sure that early ecologists encountered many of the same problems that anti-surveillance and privacy activists must deal with now. Early environmentalists must have experienced resistance to their claim that environmental damage was a common problem, and in framing the natural world as a common good. What may seem obvious now as an indicator for environmental damage, such as clear cuts and factory effluent, may not have been readily interpreted as environmental harm in the 1960s, even though the same indicators were likely present.

Anti-surveillance and privacy activists need 'warning signs' and symbols that indicate privacy breaches, and make intrusive surveillance practices more "visible" to us, as melting ice caps signal climate change now. We aren't sensitized to the symptoms of surveillance, nor do we have a sense of the "shared grievance" that these practices engender.

Supreme Court Order

2008-10-14T18:17:00.004-07:00

Mike Larsen, PhD Candidate at York University, writes an interesting post about a recent Supreme Court order in Adil Charkaoui's case. The September 24, 2008 order requires all information on security certificate detainees to be filed to the presiding judges. However, he believes that "[w]ith this order, the Court has essentially set itself up as the arbiter of reasonableness when it comes to the disclosure of sensitive material in designated proceedings", which by no means ensures complete discovery of all documents. He also notes that had the government proceeded with a criminal trial, it would have been much simpler.

A "broad-based and angry network"

2008-09-28T15:26:00.004-07:00

My thesis was accepted! Here is the abstract, and a link to the pdf:

A "broad-based and angry network": Opposing surveillance and security measures post-9/11

Jennifer Parisi

A Thesis in The Department of Communication Studies

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Media Studies) at Concordia University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

August 2008

This thesis examines recent anti-surveillance interventions by organized groups both in Canada and internationally. I look at three activist alliances, the International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance, the Surveillance Camera Players, and the Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui, in order to understand how they oppose surveillance and security initiatives, their positions on privacy and surveillance, and the challenges they face doing this work. I also ask what strategies are used, what avenues are available for dissent, and how these may be developed. In particular, I argue that broad-based, participatory social movements are necessary components in the politics of surveillance, because they are able to challenge existing systems. Based on my research, I consider some ideas and identities that may inspire opposition against the more egregious effects of surveillance. I contend that these concepts and affinities must be grounded in people’s experiences, and provide a means for self-empowerment and community self-reliance. They must also resonate with people’s desires and imagination by providing alternative possibilities to work toward. This thesis, through analysis and observation of these three activist groups, contributes to a vision for a movement against surveillance.

MA Thesis Defence

2008-08-31T20:59:00.002-07:00

After a year of researching, interviews, reading, writing, reading, and more reading, I finally managed to organize my thoughts and findings into something that resembles a cohesive paper.

My thesis is titled "A 'broad-based and angry network': Opposing surveillance and security measures post 9/11", which focuses on groups opposing surveillance technology and policy, the approaches they use, and the ways they might help contribute to a social movement against related actions that clearly threaten human and civil rights and freedoms. I looked at three groups, Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui, the Surveillance Camera Players, and the International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance in my work.

I will be defending my ideas at Concordia University on Friday, September 5, 2008 at the Loyola campus in room CJ 5.219. Anyone in the Montreal area that is interested is welcome to attend!

Tuning in to Radio Frequency IDs

2008-07-13T12:32:00.004-07:00

Stark Raven radio from Co-op Radio in Vancouver aired a program on RFID chips with Richard Rosenberg, the President of the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

Rosenberg discussed the use of RFID chips, also known as smart cards, in commercial, medical, identification applications. He points out that new technologies will continue to decrease in size and price. Right now, RFID chips are as small as a grain of sand, and are embedded in consumer products and national ID documents. They are used to keep track of pets, and have been suggested as a means to monitor both old and young people who may get lost or abducted.

These uses presume that RFID chips will increase administrative efficiency and security while decreasing risk and loss. However, Rosenberg points out that these devices may significantly infringe on privacy rights. They can be read from approximately 20 meters away, detailing information such as who you are, what you wear or use and when they were purchased. Even encrypted information may be hacked.

It sounds like Stark Raven may have other episodes on this issue. If so, I hope they will have time to look more in depth at the social control aspects of RFID cards, and their political implications.

In particular, they might look at they way they can (or are) being used to determine who is more likely to be a 'security risk', and the possibilities for discrimination based on these judgments. Also, they might investigate how commercial transactions and products associated with you might create different categories of subjectivity through the creation of profiles.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada wrote a 2007 report "Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the workplace: Recommendation for good practices", which notes that RFID information is not only at risk for interception by unauthorized users, but may also be used for secondary purposes: as tracking devices, to monitor worker behaviour, and to sort individuals into categories for differential treatment - potentially based on political or religious beliefs, ethnicity, gender, or otherwise.

I am looking forward to what they will cover next!

Big Schäuble is Watching You: Anti-Surveillance Agitation in Germany

2008-07-03T14:57:00.006-07:00

European Digital Rights
EDRi-GRAM July 2008

Big Schäuble is Watching You from Germany.

"On 31 May 2008, privacy activists organized new rallies in more than 30 cities across Germany. Following the November 2007 protests under the motto "Freedom not Fear"("Freiheit statt Angst"), thousands of citizens participated in this year street actions.

Numerous demonstrations, rallies, information events, as well as workshops and art performances sent clear signals to protect constitutional rights and limit the rampant proliferation of surveillance.

The rallies had the goal of demonstrating to the ruling grand coalition, a decisive NO of citizens to the blanket collection and storage of data, as well as to the surveillance of all details of daily life. The activities were therefore supported by a multitude of notable organizations and allowed new alliances to be formed in many cities. This underlined the growing force developing behind the well connected movement, the work group stated.

According to the German Work Group on Data Retention (Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung), the nationwide protests were a full success: "We were able to use the numerous smaller and larger activities to raise awareness in the population and win new supporters. The responses were positive throughout," explained Ricardo Cristof Remmert-Fontes, one of the organizers of the activities.

In Hamburg, Frankfurt (Main), and Munich, peaceful conventional rallies were held which received a large turnout. In Munich, 2500 people additionally demonstrated against the draft of a new law restricting the right of free assembly.

In order to depict the loss of privacy, activists in Nuremberg reacted with an art installation by erecting an entire living room in the city's pedestrian zone. In Bonn, the installation "Transition to surveillance" visualized current developments.

In Jena, over-sized surveillance cameras were set up, while in Berlin, a host of talks, hands-on workshops and a preview of the art piece "Pigeon Project" were presented.

The live-broadcast of events over radio, realized by a network of independent radio broadcasters, also premiered on the day. The recordings will be available for listening on the website of the German Work Group on Data Retention.

In all cities where the work group is present with local dependencies signatures were collected against the planned "BKA law" (Federal Criminal Police Office law). The petition was signed online by more than 10 000 people by 1 July.

The German Work Group on Data Retention is now preparing multiple Europe-wide campaigns which will culminate in mass protests in 11 October across all of Europe. "This is just the beginning - we will continue!" commented Michel Blumenstein during the Berlin activities of the work group."

European Digital Rights. (2008, July 2). German Protests in over 30 cities against surveillance. EDRI-gram, 6.13. Retrieved July 3, 2008 from http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.13/german-protests-surveillance

Contesting Exception

2008-07-01T11:31:00.010-07:00

Rob Aitken just published an analysis of Canada's security certificate program. He shows that Canada's security certificate regime draws a line between 'us' and 'them', where the racialized other is a source of danger to national security. He uses Giorgio Agamben's idea of 'the state of emergency' to explain the security certificate regime as "a deeply violent exception to 'norms' of judicial order authorized in the name of security" (p.382). Aitken notes that security certificates facilitate indefinite detention, and immobilize habeas corpus, which has become a routine exception where law operates without the force of law.

"It is in this language of indefinite detention that the security certificate program certifies and constitutes non-citizens as a racialized threat to national security (effectively securitizing their bodies) and removes from them 'normal' legal and judicial recourse." (p.384)

However, Aitken suggests that Agamben's 'state of emergency' is abstract and totalizing. Instead, he shows that the exception is the result of a concrete and mundane assemblage; a decentralized legal complex that includes decisions, statutes, architectures, dress, individuals, communities, institutions, information codes, among others.

What he concludes is that although "'exception' does seem to have become a permanent, even characteristic, feature of political life in contemporary liberal societies (and in some ways has become the condition which implicates liberty and security in each other) its specific shape and form, the extent to which it expands and contracts, is the result of diverse forms of contestation. The direct form that exceptional spaces take or the methods with which they are constituted are the outcome of political, legal and social contests." (p.394)

The fact of exceptionality cannot be eradicated; however, we can challenge its manifestation.

Aitken, R. (2008). Notes on the Canadian Exception: Security Certificates in Critical Context. Citizenship Studies, 12(4), 381-396.

can we be public without being under suspicion?

2008-05-16T19:28:00.006-07:00

The University of Ottawa held a Tory's Technology Law speaker series in 2007, which was titled "National Security, Surveillance Technology and Human Rights in Canada". Speakers included Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, Director of the Surveillance Project and sociologist David Lyon, human rights lawyer Barbara Jackman who represented Mahmoud Jaballah and Mahmoud Mahjoub, and University of Ottawa Common Law Professor Craig Forcese.

The discussion centered on Canada's No Fly List, and included questions about biometrics, due process, selection criteria, reliability of information, and surveillance creep.

David Lyon called for a new vocabulary for what is being experienced in relation to surveillance and social sorting. He stated that the idea of privacy is unable to allow us to think about ways to attenuate surveillance.

"There are limitations to the concept of privacy when we're looking at what you can do in the face of the sorts of surveillance we've been talking about today."

He notes that although privacy legislation may exist, surveillance with potentially negative consequences persists, as Colin Bennett and Charles Raab have argued.

He cites facebook as an example of this principle. Even though you set your privacy settings high, this is insufficient, as corporations are able to determine you preferences based on the preference of your friends. David Lyon states:

It makes no difference, you can have privacy settings in place. But the question here is really where can you be public? Privacy has many connotations that relate to the private, and frequently they relate to the domestic sphere. We're talking about the ability to live in public spaces, whether they are virtual spaces, like the internet, or they are in the street, like under CCTV cameras, entering buildings with access cards and so on and so forth. We're talking about can we be public without being under suspicion?

If you see them doing it to somebody else...

2008-05-15T20:52:00.002-07:00

... don't think they won't do it to you.

Political scientist and theorist of Science and Technology Studies, Langdon Winner posted his presentation at a democracy teach-in at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He traces the rise of autocratic regimes, and the concurrent repression of dissent. He appeals to scientists and researchers who believe they are outside politics to become engaged in democratic politics, citing Niemöller's well-known poem "First they came...". He summarized this as "The Niemöller Principle: If you see them doing it to somebody else, don't think they won't do it to you."

Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller was a Lutheran pastor who initially supported the Nazis, but soon became critical of the regime. His opposition got him imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, narrowly escaping execution. He spent the rest of his life pursuing peace and nuclear disarmament.

Maureen Webb Speaks at UBC

2008-05-05T10:47:00.008-07:00

Lawyer's Rights Watch Canada and UBC Continuing Studies has put together an interesting lecture series on International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. The series includes Maureen Webb's talk, "Security Integration and Rights Disintegration in the War on Terror".

In her lecture, Webb takes us through the thesis advanced both through her book, Illusions of Security (2007), and the founding report (2005) for the International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance, which she helped found.

Webb walks us through the destruction of democratic and human rights and freedoms by the US led War On Terror. Western democracies have responded to the presumed terrorist threat by instituting a permanent state of emergency. This allows governments to legislate long sought after measures to increase social control, which justifies the incursion of democratic rights and freedoms. One of these measures is the integration of security regimes, such as the one developing between Canada and the U.S.

Webb makes clear the link between electronic surveillance, national security agendas and human rights violations, which are sometimes understood to be somewhat separate.

An infrastructure is being built for mass, globalized, surveillance:

Governments continuously collect information of entire populations, electronically or through interrogation (mobility, communication, financial transactions)

A Gold Standard for Identification is being created (e.g. biometric registration of populations)

Information is 'definitively' linked to a unique individual

Pre-emptive risk assessment model allows individuals to be evaluated for possible (not proven) involvement in terrorist activities, whether through data mining, or through discriminatory policy processes, which in some cases has resulted in the denial of rights to due process, arbitrary detention, and deportation to torture

She ended her discussion with a warning about Canadians' complacency with government policy measures:

"Someone once said, “A country is not only what it does, it is also what it tolerates”. Canadians have a deep belief in the benign designs of government. And in this age of terror, I think that we need, perhaps, to be a little more skeptical, a little more vigilant than that; To keep track of the initiatives that are being put in place in our name; To fight for the kind of country that we really want to live in."

There are some groups actively opposing these measures, in particular against immigration legislation. We absolutely need to be critical of legislative measures, to become more actively engaged in the policy process and in the creation of alternatives.

Webb, M. (2008, March 15). Security Integration and Rights Disintegration in the War on Terror. Lecture series International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. Retrieved May 5, 2008 from http://www.cstudies.ubc.ca/humanrights/

Webb, M. (2007). Illusions of Security: Global surveillance and democracy in the post-9/11 world. San Francisco: City Lights.

International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance. (2005, April). The Emergence of a Global Infrastructure for Mass Registration and Surveillance. Retrieved May 5, 2008 from http://www.i-cams.org/ICAMS1.pdf

No Clear Resolution: Resisting surveillance and security measures

2008-04-06T23:01:00.005-07:00

No Clear Resolution is a radio documentary produced as part of my research on surveillance, privacy, and resistance. In it, I ask how national security and surveillance practices affect targeted communities, and reflect on the damage being inflicted on democratic institutions. The documentary includes interviews with Bill Brown (Surveillance Camera Players), Mary Foster (Coalition Justice pour Adil Charkaoui), Maureen Webb (International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance), and Sameer Zuberi (Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations). Montreal's Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble has kindly allowed me to use one of their songs in the show.

To listen to No Clear Resolution: Resisting surveillance and security measures, go to http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=program-info
&program_id=27151&nav=&

Presumption of Guilt - An Interview with Sameer Zuberi

2008-04-05T19:47:00.001-07:00

Sameer Zuberi is the Communications and Human Rights Coordinator for the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR-CAN. He has been documenting the widespread effects of surveillance on the Muslim community. CAIR-CAN has published a report Presumption of Guilt: A National Survey on Security Visitations of Canadian Muslims in 2005 that surveys the Muslim community in Canada about the number of interrogations by national security agents, and the effects these visitations have on their jobs, their families, and their lives.

The report points out tactics used by security officials, such as intimidation, discouraging legal representation, and improper identification. They also find that visitations have disproportionately targeted young Arab males. Although 54 percent of those contacted are Arab, only 36 percent of total survey respondents are Arab. Eight out of one hundred respondents had been questioned directly by national security agents, 23 percent of these at work places. These figures may under report the overall incidents.

Presumption of Guilt follows a 2002 survey looking at incidents of discrimination against Muslims, including verbal abuse, racial profiling, workplace discrimination, and negative media reporting.

I first heard Sameer speak in Ottawa at a rally against new Security Certificate legislation at the Supreme Court in January 2008. This conversation took place on March 1, 2008, a snowy Saturday at a coffee shop near Concordia University in Montreal. I asked him about the effects of in-person interrogations and electronic surveillance on the Canadian Muslim community.

Jennifer Parisi [JP]: How have the Muslim-Arab community in Canada been affected by the type of interrogation and surveillance that they’ve been under by CSIS [Canadian Security Intelligence Service] and the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police]?

Sameer Zuberi [SZ]: The surveillance is prevalent. It is continuous, ongoing, and almost non-stop. The surveillance is not limited to a handful of individuals, like those named on the security certificates, it’s not limited to simply these people, it’s much more diffuse, much more broad, and it extends to people who are involved in community organizations that are even non-political community organizations. People who are, attending very specific community events, they do not even have to be involved in organizing those events. These people are contacted and they call our office on a weekly basis saying that they have been contacted by a national security agency, saying that this individual, who doesn’t clearly identify themselves wants to have an interview with them, to talk about different issues, to talk about their perspectives on matters, to ask them about certain individuals in the community, etc., etc. Often times, almost always, discouraging the presence of a lawyer there, which is very problematic because the line of questioning people are subject to when a lawyer’s present versus not being present are two very different lines of questioning.

JP: Why is that a strategy that they’re using?

SZ: It’s one where you disempower people, and it’s easy to have questions be answered when you disempower people. And often times, the people who are actually going to these meetings, who are being called by these national security agencies, think that they have to answer every single question. Think that they must provide an answer, even when they haven’t ever thought of one. Often times, questions will be asked to things they never have thought of, but they blurt out something because they feel as if they are under obligation to respond.

JP: Has there been any, in terms of somebody who has been questioned, do you have any knowledge of incidences where that information was used in ways that they didn’t want or hadn’t anticipated that it would be used?

SZ: Yes. Not in terms of a particular individual calling our office saying “they used my information in a way I didn’t authorize”, because that’s very hard to determine. You really have to know every single person that the agency has contacted on a particular issue. However, though, there have been people who I know, who have been contacted and asked about a certain individual. And let’s say a dozen, or two dozen, people were contacted and asked about a certain individual, and this individual, he’s not involved in any dubious activities whatsoever. But the thing though is that they have gone and tried to find out who is this individual. Not that they can’t tap his phone, not that they can’t monitor his internet to find out, but they’ve gone the extra step to ask others around. Also, in interviews, what will happen is that these agencies will contact people, and they’ll ask about another individual, and they’ll get involved in community-type politics, right? Which is a problem, and certainly, this is not desirable thing for a national security agency seeking to protect the country to do.

JP: When you say ‘community-type politics’, do you mean - what do you mean by that?

SZ: What I mean is that every group - it can even be at the workplace - there is politics, right? So, I just mean that sometimes there might be personal differences between two individuals. And those two individuals, when sitting in an interview with a national security agent, will show their personal difference. And so in that way, that there is a dispute between two people that becomes bigger, becomes much more serious because of a national security agency getting involved.

JP: When you’re talking about the kind of surveillance that they’re doing – there’s obviously there’s this kind of physical surveillance, but then, there’s also this electronic surveillance. How are the two working to do this work?

SZ: Well, in terms of electronic surveillance, we live in 2008, the age of computers, it’s very easy for national security agencies to be monitoring everything that someone does on the internet, to be monitoring everything that somebody does on the telephone. So this is certainly not beyond imagination, beyond possibility. The thing though, is that you only get a certain impression by people, obviously, when they’re on the internet, when they’re using their phone – you only get a certain impression of them. So obviously you want to determine what sort of people they are, sometimes interact with them in a covert way. So, it’s possible that national security agencies interact with people in covert ways. I mean, there’s a history of this. We know by reading past, of past individuals who have been involved in various political movements that in the past, national security agents have interacted with them, so there’s no reason to believe that that’s not happening today.

...

JP: When I was reading your report, there were cases where people had been asked to be informants. Is this something that people report to you a lot?

SZ: People report this less often, but then, there have been reports that this has happened. Often times, those who are asked are people who are most vulnerable, people with serious criminal records – they want to get their records clean. People who are refugees, who desperately want to live in this country, are asked to do this sort of work. People who are under severe financial hardship, and really need the money, are asked. This can happen, really, to anybody. I think, though, actually the sad thing is that people who are often going into these type of dishonourable professions, are people who are in a desperate situation. And because of their desperation, the quality of the work that CSIS is getting, or national security agencies, might not be the best quality, might not be the most accurate of reports, the most accurate of findings. And so, I think that there needs to be a re-think about the way in which these sorts of investigations are done. Whether or not people who are vulnerable to not saying the truth on issues will be the ones investigating.

JP: It must introduce a lot of tension into the community. Has it ever made people suspicious of each other? What has it done to how they interact with each other and the larger society?

SZ: Well, it makes people feel as if their rights are second to the rights of others. That somehow they’re subject to more attention, for non positive reasons, than other Canadians would be subject to. So, I think it makes people feel as if they are second class. And there’s no reason why not to come to that feeling, why not to come to that conclusion when a community is being so mistreated, and so maltreated in this way.

JP: What kind of things have people done in response to this?

SZ: One response has been – there are various individuals and organizations that have stepped up and started to highlight these issues, starting to work on these issues, to ensure that these problems of surveillance, of mistreatment, are addressed. But also, to do so in a way that doesn’t compromise the security and safety of our country. The intent is not to stop legitimate police work, legitimate security work. The intent is to ensure that while this work is going on, that it is being done so in an upright manner, that protects the rights of individuals, and that actually will protect our country in a better way by making partners with all Canadians, instead of making a certain population of Canadians feel as if they’re on the defensive, and second class.

...

JP: Do you know of any other way that people have resisted this kind of surveillance? I’m not really sure what people might be doing, but…

SZ: To resist these sorts of forms of surveillance?

JP: Yes.

SZ: I think people need to, when they feel that their rights have been stepped on, when they feel that there is a problem going on in this manner of surveillance, or in other matters, they need to act, to do something about it. To sit down, and to accept mistreatment is not the way to go. And by doing so, will allow for this mistreatment to continue. So people need to act, if they feel that they are not being treated properly, be it on the issue of surveillance, or any issue.

JP: Okay. Also, something I was curious about, because I’ve been studying privacy as well, is that in very few cases of the – in the literature I’ve read, there’s very few incidents where people refer to privacy rights as a way to protect themselves against this surveillance, and I’m wondering why that is.

SZ: Why they refer to privacy rights versus the protection of surveillance? There is emerging, I think that this is emerging issue. And if you look at the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has started to push this issue more, as has SIRC, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which oversees the work of CSIS, albeit, they’re very small and they need to be strengthened, they need more funding so that they do make sure that this national security organization is very important it’s straight in their actions.

JP: Okay.

SZ: The review bodies, the oversight bodies need to be strengthened, they need to have more funding, and they need to have more personnel, so that they can ensure that mistakes that are made, which are normal human error, do not happen, and ah, do not happen to a degree that is unacceptable. And I would argue right now that the degree of human error is probably not acceptable.

Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations. (2005). Presumption of Guilt: A National Survey on Security Visitations of Canadian Muslims. Retrieved April 6, 2008 from http://www.caircan.ca/downloads/POG-08062005.pdf

Zuberi, S. (2007, March 1). Personal Conversation.

Reconsidering Privacy Rights

2008-02-25T15:57:00.005-08:00

Dr. Gordon Gow and I published an article on privacy rights and proposals to register prepaid mobile phones, based on an earlier study done for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. "Pursuing the Anonymous User: Privacy Rights and Mandatory Registration of Prepaid Mobile Phones" was published in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, volume 28 issue 1.

The same issue also had a publication by my advisor, Leslie Regan Shade, based on research we had completed for a project on Communication Rights with Dr. Marc Raboy. Her article, "Reconsidering the Right to Privacy in Canada" suggests that Canadian privacy policy must be assessed in accordance with its ability to protect the human right to privacy: as a social value, in its ability to protect data, and ensure the vitality of our democratic institutions.

The right to privacy has been considered in Canadian policy debates for over forty years, yet there is no explicit constitutional right to privacy. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been used to protect privacy, but legislation such as the Privacy Act (1985), which covers the federal public sector, and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)(2002), which applies to the federally regulated private sector, only provide a patchwork of protections.

Shade looks to expand the current scope of privacy legislation in Canada by looking at Sheila Finestone's Privacy Rights Charter, a bill proposed in 2000, but dropped from the order paper in 2001 after Finestone retired. The Privacy Rights Charter would have protections that went beyond PIPEDA to establish rights of physical privacy, freedom of surveillance, freedom from communications monitoring and interception, as well as rights over the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information.

The Canadian government's failure to pursue the Privacy Rights Charter has made Canadians vulnerable to new technologies, particularly in the post 9/11 environment. Legislation such as the Anti-Terrorism Act, Lawful Access proposals, and harmonization of security policies between Canada and the U.S. exacerbate surveillance capabilities, particularly those that affect particular groups, such as activists, Muslim communities, and others, and lower the threshold for ensuring civil rights and liberties.

Shade's suggestion that we re-imagine privacy as a human right is one that is imperative if we want to ensuring the dignity, autonomy, rights and freedoms of our communities.

Others have also suggested that there is a need to develop the meaning of privacy as a social value, intrinsic to our abilities to maintain democratic institutions (Bennett & Raab, 2006, pp.37-48). The restriction of Canada’s current privacy legislation to individual rights and electronic transactions has left us unable to adequately protect privacy’s collective dimensions.

Bennett, C. & Raab, C. (2006). The Governance of Privacy: Policy instruments in global perspective. London, UK: MIT Press.

Finestone, S. (1997). Privacy: Where do we draw the line. Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada - Publishing. Retrieved February 2, 2007, from http://www.privcom.gc.ca/information/02_06_03d_e.pdf

Shade, L. (2008). Reconsidering the Right to Privacy in Canada. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 28(1): 80-91.

Video Sniffing: Counter-surveillance inquiries

2008-02-18T17:05:00.003-08:00

Last month, I stumbled across 'video sniffing' or 'warspying', a technique used to intercept wireless CCTV surveillance cameras. This allows you to hijack video streams and search out machines surreptitiously recording your image, and, if so desired, to make your own low-budget movie!

The ability to capture wireless CCTV signals was first identified by security researchers at AT&T Labs. However, this practice is not subject to surveillance or privacy policy in the U.S.; wiretap laws there generally applies to audio, not video, interception. The cameras transmit an unscrambled analog radio signal, which are picked up by these wireless receivers. By soldering on a more powerful receiver, the signal can be amplified significantly (Scwartz, 2002). One method of building an auto-switching warspying device has been demonstrated and documented online (Systm, 2005).

U.K. based free-media arts group, MediaShed helped a group of young people create their own film using these video streams (with permission from CCTV owners). They made a couple of amazing videos, one of them from Finland, where students who were immigrants made a film about cultural isolation. The projects seemed to help empower students to speak about their experiences in a way that was economically accessible, and in this case, was used to encourage government support for the students' language and culture (MediaShed, 2006). Although these weren't primary focuses for the project, I wonder how the students' concepts of public space, privacy and dislocation may have been altered through participating - themes that would be interesting to explore.

MediaShed. (2006). Video Sniffin. MediaShed. Retrieved February 18, 2008 from http://www.mongrelx.org/videosniffin

Schwartz, J. (2002, April 14). Nanny-Cam May Leave a Home Exposed. New York Times. Section 1. Retrieved January 17, 2008 from Factiva database.

Systm. (2005, May 23). Episode 1 - Building a War Spying Box. Retrieved Jan.17, 2008 from http://revision3.com/systm/warspyingbox

Anti-War and Peace; Privacy and Anti-Surveillance

2008-02-18T16:58:00.000-08:00

At the mention of the word ‘peace’, I immediately conjure up long hair, civil disobedience, placards stating “Make love, not war”, white sheets and John and Yoko’s singing bed-in to “give peace a chance”. These images are etched over top of faded scenes of the Vietnam jungle, and a vague sense futility in fighting an unwinnable war.

Peace was once a call to compassionate, non-violent protest, but the ultimately utopian discourse of this project has been largely abandoned in recent movements against war. Anti-war movements have supplanted the rhetoric of lasting harmony and love with a call to action for halting aggression. In this reformulation of the project of peace, anti-war seems to acknowledge that suppressing conflict altogether is unachievable. Instead of invoking an unachievable state of perpetually amicable interaction, anti-war seems to insist that conflict is unavoidable, but that violence and oppression must be opposed and obstructed at all costs.

Privacy and anti-surveillance movements take on a similar dialectic. Privacy as a concept was established within liberal, capitalist, democracies, and has been criticized for its evocation of individual, not social, rights, and the concealment of oppressions, such as spousal abuse, in the domestic sphere (Bennett & Raab, 2006). In Canada, privacy is also largely conceived of in law and by the public as a property of information or data, in relationship with corporations or the state. Here a breach of privacy generally is understood as an individual risk to property, or economic standing, and possibly as a violation of “the right to be let alone” (Warren & Brandeis, 1890). Although the concept of privacy is indistinct at best, it seems to suggest an ideal state of knowledge and control over one’s self and information, and how these are perceived. Clearly, these circumstances do not exist, given the proliferating and yet unknown ways that one’s thoughts, actions, physical characteristics, and identities are being observed, judged, and recorded (Lyon, 2003).

Privacy, as it is currently understood in media, popular discourse, and law, is ill-equipped to address the problems of surveillance, discrimination and profiling (ibid). The concept of anti-surveillance may be better able to capture the real sense of urgency and the true focus of opposition – a movement against surveillance - for those working to preserve civil liberties and human rights. Likewise, an anti-surveillance discourse may focus efforts on the unexpected means of surveilling populations that arise from new technologies and techniques, and help organize opposition against them where they threaten due process, human dignity, and social justice.

What we need is an expansion of the idea of privacy in law and public awareness, particularly with regard to the activities of the Privacy Commissioner’s Office in Canada. Currently, the Privacy Commissioner oversees the Privacy Act, which governs government informational use, and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, which oversees corporate breaches of informational privacy. Perhaps if the Commissioner’s scope was expanded to include surveillance as well, it would encourage inquiries into the larger domains of surveillance and security. The Commissioner could be encouraged to take a more proactive standpoint against human and civil rights abuses invoked by the use of surveillance technologies and techniques by law enforcement and corporations, instead of primarily investigating complaints of informational and economic privacy violations. A corresponding shift in public awareness may follow.

I would like to suggest that the Commissioner’s office be renamed “The Commission for Privacy and Anti-Surveillance”. The Commissioner would require powers to investigate and enforce violations of dignity that more accurately invoke the abuses of rights at stake in the post 9/11 environment, which include racial profiling, pre-emptive risk assessment, and systematic discrimination (Webb, 2007). With an ombudsman officially designated to critically assess these issues, a social movement against surveillance would have a focal point from which to rally against government and corporate transgressions of civil liberties and freedoms.

Bennett, C.J. and Raab, C.D. (2006). The Governance of Privacy: Policy instruments in global perspective. London, England: MIT Press.

Lyon, D. (2003). Surveillance as social sorting: computer codes and mobile bodies. In D. Lyon (Ed.), Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, risk and digital discrimination (pp.13-30). London: Routledge.

Warren, S. and Brandeis, L. (1890). The Right to Privacy. Harvard Law Review, 4(5):
193-220.

Webb, M. (2007). Illusions of Security: Global surveillance and democracy in the post-9/11 world. San Francisco: City Lights.

No More Racial Profiling

2008-01-19T17:31:00.003-08:00

Placard from Play: You are being watched for your own safety (SCP, n.d.a)

Some of the most salient concerns about technology and policy in the post 9/11 environment are related to discrimination around issues of race, gender, religion, and dissent.

Surveillance Camera Players. (n.d.a) You are being watched for your own safety.
Retrieved December 12, 2007 from http://www.notbored.org/being-watched.html

Surveillance Camera Players: A Video Primer

2007-11-21T23:01:00.000-08:00

Shot in the summer of 2001 for podcast, this documentary introduction to the Surveillance Camera Players is a good primer for those curious about what they are about.

Resistance or Opposition: The Politics of Surveillance

2007-11-18T15:12:00.000-08:00

Scholars disagree about the politics of surveillance and the best way to conceptualize and act to alter technological and policy measures used in systems of care and control. Thinkers from diverse perspectives are examining both surveillance and privacy in an attempt to work beyond entrenched paradigms, such as the Panopticon and the right to privacy, which have obfuscated experiences, identities and subjectivities of those under surveillance, and have largely failed to protect vulnerable people. One focal point of these attempts to reframe the phenomena of privacy and surveillance are contentions about the differing roles and forms taken up in individual resistance and in collective, oppositional responses.

John Gilliom focuses on “weapons of the weak” (Gilliom, 2006, p.113), and the role of everyday resistance in allowing those under surveillance to obtain immediate advantages. Gilliom believes that “patterns of everyday resistance are important and empirically undeniable elements of political struggle” (Gilliom, 2006, p.120), in particular where contemporary power no longer has its former locus and visibility. He notes, “If it is true that such public and visible interactions played an important part in shaping the sorts of movement politics and uprisings that have marked earlier periods, then it may be that the skirmishes and gestures of everyday resistance will become a more definitive politics in our time” (Gilliom, 2006, pp.121-122).

Gary T. Marx’s article, A Tack in the Shoe: Neutralizing and Resisting the New Surveillance (2003), introduces a framework from which to categorize everyday, individual resistance to surveillance (such as using a tack to skew polygraph test results). He suggests eleven generic behavioural techniques adopted by individuals in their attempts to thwart or evade the collection of information: discovery, avoidance, piggy backing, switching, distorting, blocking, masking, breaking, refusal, cooperation, counter-surveillance. Marx also indicates that “[i]ndividual and collective responses are often linked as when protest movements grow out of or encourage individual resistance and provide models, resources, and legitimation” (Marx, 2003, p.371). He asks how individual responses can accumulate into social change, without formal political interventions, and also queries when individual actions may lead to organized political challenges.

The specific links between individual and collective responses do not appear to have been mapped systematically; however, some scholars have explored collective uses of counter-surveillance as a tool of opposition for raising political awareness and effecting social change (Monahan, 2006; Huey, Walby & Doyle, 2006).

Monahan examines four different counter-surveillance activities, including the Surveillance Camera Players, who perform silent theatrical plays with placards in front of public surveillance cameras. He suggests that these groups are best able to challenge surveillance when focusing on social rather than technical interventions. Monahan believes that social change comes through democratic challenges to institutional structures. He outlines what progressive social change entails “[t]he desired outcomes might take the form of better regulation and oversight of surveillance and/or meaningful democratic participation in the process of setting surveillance politics, for instance” (Monahan, 2006, p.527).

In a case study in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, researchers Huey, Walby and Doyle examine Cop Watch, a loosely affiliated counter-surveillance activist movement that uses video to document police brutality. Through their study, the researchers echo Monahan’s belief in democratic social change. They find that although the group claims to represent residents and reduce police brutality by promoting accountable practices, it is “ultimately antidemocratic and thus as a reproduction of the hegemonic values that Cop Watch members claim to be at odds with” (Huey, Walby & Doyle, 2006, p.150). They conclude that activists should adopt nonhierarchical organizational styles and enlist local community support in order to resist reproducing the forms of power that they purport to oppose.

Counter-surveillance has been framed as an individual form of resistance, which is used to evade surveillance, rather than challenge institutions. However, these studies suggest that counter-surveillance, and possibly other measures of resistance, lend themselves to more collective, oppositional forms. What is the set of relationships that illustrate how individual and collective opposition interact? Which of these strategies are best able to provide a sense of privacy, or a respite from surveillance? It may depend entirely on the specific context.

Haggerty and Ericson take a more holistic view of the politics of surveillance, by examining both stakeholder politics and those of resistance. They note that where collective opposition to specific legal actions may have some success in increasing safeguards, there is a danger that these rules may be repealed or relaxed at a future date. They caution that individual resistance generally leaves the surveillance system intact, and may result in escalating measures against counter measures, evasion and counter evasion continuously increasing surveillance. In the hopes of avoiding both of these outcomes, Haggerty and Ericson conclude that activists must avoid abstractions in order to account for the specificities with which power operates. They suggest that activists and analysts must concentrate “on the individual manifestations of surveillance and their relation to larger governmental projects” (Haggerty & Ericson, 2006, p.22), while maintaining attention to broader connections and transformations.

Gilliom, J. (2006). Struggling with Surveillance: Resistance, Consciousness, and
Identity. In K. Haggerty and R. Ericson (Eds.) The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility (pp.111-129). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Haggerty, K. and Ericson, R. (2006). The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility. In K. Haggerty and R. Ericson (Eds.) The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility (pp.3-25). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Huey, L., Walby, K. and Doyle, A. (2006). Cop Watching in the Downtown Eastside. In
T. Monahan (Ed.) Surveillance and Security: Technological politics and power in everyday life (pp.149-165). New York : Routledge.

Monahan, T. (2006). Counter-Surveillance as Political Intervention. Social Semiotics, 16(4): 515-534.

Marx, G.T. (2003). A Tack in the Shoe: Neutralizing and Resisting the New
Surveillance. Journal of Social Issues, 59(2): 369-390.

Web 2.0 = Consumer Labour

2007-11-10T18:20:00.000-08:00

In the wake of facebook's new advertising scheme, it is painfully clear that online participation in social networking and the semantic web is an exercise in self-disclosed demographic marketing research, with users voluntarily contributing consumption habits and preferences for the benefit of not only their peers, but to the corporate executives who flog their wares and collect consumer data for future profit.

It has been suggested that surveillance in popular culture should not only be considered for its privacy implications, but also as a form of fun and entertainment (Albrechtslund & Dubbeld, 2005). Although interactive games and online networking may be 'fun' and rewarding in their own right, they do have political, cultural and economic implications beyond concerns about privacy.

As Mark Andrejevic states in his article The kinder, gentler gaze of Big Brother (2002), popular entertainment, such as reality tv, have helped to propagate the idea that online self-disclosure democratizes fame, and equates surveillance with self-expression. He states, "This equation is crucial to the rationalization of consumer labor anticipated by the architects of an online economy that relies on upon surveillance, not only as a means for anticipating and customizing consumer demand, but for adding value to products and creating new ones." (Andrejevic, 2002, p.253).

Andrejevic notes that electronic commerce allows for mass customization, where individuals can overcome the homogeneity of mass culture. However, claims that this allows producers to meet consumers' needs and wants, "consumer control boils down to the ability to have preferences monitored in detail" (Andrejevic, 2002, p.256). For sites that rely on user-generated content (Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Blogger, various mash-ups), users provide content, which adds value to the site, and is repackaged by companies collecting user information before being sold back to them.

Those opposed to some of the new ad systems are already working on ways to route around social networking advertising schemes. However, these efforts will have limited effect on the profitability of consumer labour, or the acclimatization of surveillance in western culture.

Albrechtslund, A. and Dubbeld, L. (2005). Surveillance & Society, 3(2/3): 216-221.

Andrejevic, M. (2002). The kinder, gentler gaze of Big Brother. New Media & Society, 4(2): 251-270.

Claburn, T. (2007, November 10). Social Networks Find Ways To Monetize User Data. Information Week. Retrieved November 10, 2007 from http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202804340

Facebook. (2007). Facebook Social Ads. Retrieved November 10, 2007 from http://www.facebook.com/business/?socialads

McCarthy, C. (2007, November 9). Code monkeys set sights on Facebook. CNet. Retrieved November 10, 2007 from http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9814202-36.html?tag=nefd.blgs

Rosmarin, R. (2006). The MySpace Economy. Wired. Retrieved November 10, 2007 from http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70633

Singel, R. (2007, October 30). Google-DoubleClick Privacy Fight Hangs Over Fed's E-Advertising Forum. Wired. Retrieved November 10, 2007 from http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/google-doublecl.html

Tedeschi, B. (2006, January 16). Google's Shadow Payroll Is Not Such a Secret Anymore. Retrieved November 10, 2007 from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/technology/16ecom.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1194743987-wnvbb0TnwM5hQmEMemugLQ&oref=slogin

Thibodeau, S. (2007, September 10). Advertising revenue on social web sites. Signal Versus Noise. Retrieved November 10, 2007 from http://www.signalversusnoise.com/internet-marketing-news-001/VN-4001-090807-03873510848826.shtml

Zonk. (2007, November 9). The New Facebook Ads - Another Privacy Debacle? Slashdot. Retrieved November 10, 2007 from http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/09/1615257

Reducing Vulnerabilities from Social Networking Sites

2007-11-08T09:01:00.000-08:00

The European Network and Information Security Agency recently released a study on social networking sites. They identify threats to privacy and make recommendations for developers and administrators. Some of their recommendations include the following:

1. Awareness and education campaigns around privacy
2. Transparency of data handling practices
3. Social networking site use in schools should be used in a controlled and open way to educate children, teachers and parents
4. Stronger account access controls
5. Encouraging the reporting of abuse
6. Providers should set appropriate default privacy settings
7. Allow users tools to completely remove accounts
8. Encouraging reputation techniques for good online behaviour
9. Users should be have tools to control tagging of their images
10. Develop image-anonymisation tools that limit automatic face recognition software
11. Promote social networks that allow interaction between providers

Some of these are intuitive, and others, such as algorithmic de-identification research, and reputation tools (as used on e-bay for example) are interesting suggestions.

European Network and Information Security Agency. (2007). Security Issues and Recommendations for Online Social Networks. G. Hogben. (Ed.) Retrieved November 10, 2007 from http://www.enisa.europa.eu/doc/pdf/deliverables/enisa_pp_social_networks.pdf

CKUT Radio on Canada's Anti-Terrorist Policies

2007-11-04T09:14:00.000-08:00

CKUT's week-day program "Off the Hour" has an archive of amazing radio documentaries chronicling anti-terrorist policies and practices instituted in Canada and the U.S. after 9/11. Here are some links for stimulating critiques with those on the receiving end:

CKUT. (2002). This guy has been sitting in a maximum security facility since Sept. 11th: Reports on Shakir Baloch (and the Disappeared), US Political Prisoners, and Impact of Anti-Terrorist Laws on Immigrants. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=4208

CKUT. (2002). Canadian Anti-Terrorist Bills & Civil Liberties. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=4170

CKUT. (2002). Solution Solidarity? Canada’s New Anti-Terrorism Bills. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=4169

CKUT. (2002). Fighting Algerian Deportations. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=5589

CKUT. (2002). Canada's Bill C-36 Worthy of a Police State. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=3846

More to come...

The Revealed 'I'

2007-11-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

The Revealed 'I' is the third in a series of conferences related to On the Identity Trail, a SSHRC funded project at the University of Ottawa. This interdisciplinary event (Oct. 25 - 27, 2007) focused on issues of privacy and identity, bringing together scholars from backgrounds in law, sociology, engineering, geography, psychology, communication, fine art, criminology and political studies, as well as privacy commissioners, police and non-governmental organizations. Presentations investigated the impact of information technologies on identity and anonymity.

The impacts of social networking sites, such as facebook, were highlighted during the conference. At the Student 'I' Kayliegh Platz, M.A. candidate from the University of Waterloo, discussed the ethos of facebook. Privacy Commissioners Ann Cavoukian (via webcast), David Louikdelis, and Frank Work discussed their interactions and concerns with facebook. This was followed by a panel of young people, aged approximately 10 - 19, who outlined their use of social networking sites and their awareness of data collection by commercial entities and individuals through these tools. The honest and astute reflections by the panel of young people were instructive and entertaining. Although many of the young panelists believed that adults should not be using facebook, one argued that adults had friends too, and were just as entitled to engage with it as they were!

Another stand-out panel on the second day spoke on issues of visibility and invisibility for marginalized persons who are often subjected to unwanted surveillance or neglect. Researcher Michael Vonn spoke about discriminatory policies that claim to target behaviours such as sleeping on the street, but in effect punish people for their social status, in this case homelessness. Speaking about Vancouver's poverty and homeless issues, she stated that rhetorical changes to the discourse of policing have rebranded these laws as a 'service' to people being displaced, and frames the poor as people that have made bad choices, rather than acknowledging the structural prejudices that maintain their poverty (e.g. no fixed address = no job). Gregor Wolbring offered a view of the world where the 'able' are 'disabled'. He proposed that we imagine an inverse social architecture, constructed for those who are currently considered disabled in our society (such as a library where the books are only available in Braille), and challenged us to imagine the type of world we wished to create. Lillie Coney emphasized discriminatory voting practices in the U.S. that further disenfranchise minority communities. Kim Pate followed up this discussion with examples of the pervasive and dehumanizing surveillance endured female prisoners, who are primarily poor and 'racialized'. She stated that privacy is often used by jailers as an excuse to withhold information that would uncover illegal disciplinary activity undertaken by guards, such as unwarranted beating and abuse.

I came away from the conference thinking about the ambivalent nature of both privacy and surveillance, each of which has been used both to promote and to degrade human rights and dignities. The point on which both concepts appears to pivot is on accountability - if governments, corporations, institutions and individuals were both accountable and transparent about their use of power, perhaps the negative aspects of privacy and surveillance could be mitigated. Both privacy and surveillance describe the operation of power, where information both reveals and conceals variable forms of truth on which we make our decisions and guide our actions through a web of social relations.

BC Civil Liberties Association. (n.d.). Micheal Vonn. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.bccla.org/bios/vonn.html

Coney, L. (2007, March 9). Race & Ethnicity Implications on the Right to Vote in Public Elections. Electronic Privacy and Information Centre. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.epic.org/epic/staff/coney/revealed_i_.pdf

Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta. (2002). About - Commissioner. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.oipc.ab.ca/about/commissioner.cfm

Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia. (2004). David Loukidelis, Information and Privacy Commissioner. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.oipc.bc.ca/commissioner.htm

Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner / Ontario. (2006). About the Commissioner. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.ipc.on.ca/index.asp?navid=34

On the Identity Trail. (2007). Events. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.idtrail.org/content/section/10/89/

Electronic Privacy and Information Center. ( ). Lillie Coney. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.epic.org/epic/staff/coney/

Law Foundation of Ontario. (n.d.). Law Foundation of Ontario - Kim Pate. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.lawfoundation-on.org/English/kim_pate.shtml

University of Ottawa. (2003, December 8). Canadian privacy project underway. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.media.uottawa.ca/mediaroom/news-details_44.html

Wolbring, G. (n.d.). International Centre for Bioethics, Culture and Disability. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.bioethicsanddisability.org/start.html

Anti-Surveillance as a Social Movement

2007-10-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

Is there an emerging social movement around issues of surveillance, privacy, anonymity and identity? With hacktivists, privacy advocates, anonymous blogging servers and anti-surveillance campaigns rallying around information technologies, freedom of speech and expression, and the protection of human rights and dignity, it seems clear that the networked world is a site of struggle, worth defending, and defending against.

How are the crusaders in the digital sphere rallying against corporate, government and individual infringements of our hard-won civil rights, and how are they reconstituting our tattered democratic structures, which have been decayed by amplified fears of foreign insurgents, the concurrence of technology and policing, and the monetization of digital spaces?

Counter-surveillance and Terminal Air

2007-10-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

Calls for surveillance activism to operate outside the privacy paradigm surfaced early in work by Brian Martin, who suggests a number of points at which surveillance programs could be challenged.

Martin believes that one way to resist surveillance is through tactics of disruption, sabotoging organizational data collecting strategies; however, the individualistic nature of these actions, prove to be ineffective for mobilizing a social movement. Another approach, 'counter surveillance', reverses the direction of observation, encouraging activists to surveil those individuals and structures that exert power.

One such campaign has been undertaken by the Institute for Applied Autonomy, through the creation of a number of counter-surveillance technologies that invert the direction of the gaze. Their recent online project, Terminal Air, is a visualization system able to map plane trajectories over time. The map tracks the CIA extraordinary rendition program, where suspected terrorists are kidnapped and transported to untraceable prisons for interrogation and torture, outside the parameters of international law (IAA, 2007). The project includes a gallery installation, a flight viewer program, as well as a map and data browser. The flight viewer depicts a darkened globe tracing aircraft movement from January 1, 2001 to the present. Each airport and craft can be discerned by hovering over the desired object with the mouse pointer. The volume of CIA secret air traffic is dizzying and somewhat mesmerizing. By browsing the map, a plane-by-plane view of flight paths is available. Data browsing allows individuals to search for the destination of planes by Flight ID, time and date, as well as origin and destination (IAA, 2007).

However, Brian Martin believes that although counter-surveillance reverses the direction of observation, and encourages activists to surveil those individuals and structures that exert power, these solutions are only partial, “they interfere with surveillance but do not offer an alternative to the systems that generate and thrive on it” (Martin, 1993). Like other surveillance scholars, such as Felix Stalder (2002), Martin believes that institutional changes to eliminate surveillance can be borne out through a campaign for "‘transparent organizations’, which would maintain the privacy of individuals and small groups, but would render sizable organizations open for inspection in order to provide a check on the accumulation of power” (Martin, 1993).

Institute for Applied Autonomy. (2007, May). Terminal Air. Retrieved October 6, 2007 from http://www.appliedautonomy.com/terminalair/index.html

Martin, B. (1993). Antisurveillance. Anarchist Studies, 1: 111-129. Retrieved October 5, 2007 from http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/93as.html

Stalder, F. (2002). Opinion. Privacy is not the antidote to surveillance. Surveillance & Society, 1(1): 120-124. Retrieved October 8, 2007 from http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles1/opinion.pdf

What Happened To Us?

2007-09-29T06:01:00.000-07:00

Project 85 - What Happened to Us? Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2007 by Dan Perjovschi

Last night, while on the phone with my sister in Vancouver, she reminded me that although the recent Montetbello protests of the Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting drew attention to the corroboration between business and state, she believes that the idea that these entities had ever been separate in Canadian history is illusory at best, where "the contested nature of state-market relations suggests that the boundary between them is highly permeable" (Slater & Tonkiss, 2001, p.147). She also described the reliance of capitalist industries on technological innovation to manage time, labour and process in order to continuously increase efficiencies and remain competitive, where "firms are driven to expand the forces of production in a generally open-ended manner: in their drive to accumulate exchange value, they are constantly innovating production technologies and organization ... intensifying both efficiency and exploitation" (Slater & Tonkiss, 2001, p.70). No wonder, then, that the technological mediation and monitoring of our existence is continually intensified, for purposes of security or marketing. Whether or not we trust machines to execute our desires, it appears as if we have no other option, but to submit to, and sometimes imbue trust in, these systems.

Dan Perjovschi's illustration captures this sense of dependence and containment. The character asks, "You remember my PIN?" to a watchful CCTV camera, while attempting to render funds from a stubborn bank machine. Continuously monitoring instances of daily life, the capacity of machines, largely operated by and for corporate and government purposes, to withhold or make available sensitive personal information is recognized by the character, who cannot rely on his own faculties, and must rely on these systems to negotiate interactions with both state and commerce. The persistent and ubiquitous means for the creation and broadcasting of data, and escalating attempts to safeguard and manage this information has left individuals without the capacity or desire to vigilantly protect it.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership discussions between the governments of U.S., Canada and Mexico have outlined the expansion and international integration of security initiatives and infrastructure, which greatly benefits private industry, particularly those producing surveillance technologies (PSP, 2007). As well, the collusion between AT&T and other US phone companies with the National Security Agency to wiretap citizens make it clear that the data effluent of everyday life is under scrutiny.

Partenariat nord-americain pour la securite et la prosperite. (2007, August). Do you know about the security and prosperity partnership agreement? Retrieved September 29, 2007 from http://www.psp-spp.com/?q=en/node/142

Perjovschi, D. (2007). What Happened to Us? Project 85. Museum of Modern Art.

Slater, D. & F. Tonkiss. (2001). Market Society. UK: Polity.

Cutting the Head off the King

2007-09-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

Although Foucault's description of the Panopticon has had a powerful impact on surveillance scholars, a number of critiques have brought the dominance of this model into question.

In Theorizing Surveillance: The panopticon and beyond, David Lyon has assembled a number of notable scholars who address theoretical limitations of the Panopticon.

Included in this volume is an article by Kevin Haggerty, who states decisively, "Foucault continues to reign supreme in surveillance studies and it is perhaps time to cut off the head of the king." (Haggerty, 2006, p.27).

Haggerty criticizes the Panopticon for ignoring the unanticipated ways in which surveillance may be used, for example in identity formation, play, and in monitoring of non-human forms (pp.28-33). He also points out that Foucault believed surveillance would have uniform effects on its subject, regardless of who was watching. This claim has been unsubstantiated through studies demonstrating race and gender biases of CCTV surveillance agents: "The myriad manifestations of contemporary surveillance make it abundantly clear that it matters enormously who is actually conducting surveillance." (Haggerty, 2006, p.33).

In addition, those who are the targets of surveillance do not passively accept it, as in Foucault's account. "Individuals who are intimately aware that they are under scrutiny often respond through a creative politics of space, demeanor and productive resistance which becomes a part of their day-to-day routine." (Haggerty, 2006, p.34).

This leads Haggerty to suggest that more accurate analysis could be elicited from Foucault's writings on governmentality and governance. He encourages researchers to adopt a normatively ambivalent stance when examining state and non-state projects as part of empirical analyses that emphasizes subjects as active agents (Haggerty, 2006, pp.40-42).

Lyon himself is more reluctant to demolish the Panopticon, and instead calls for a historical appreciation of its influence in the development of surveillance theory. He notes that the Panopticon "can never be looked to paradigmatically for all the theoretical clues, even though some of its features will continue to stimulate and direct research endeavors" (Lyon, 2006, p.18), concluding "surveillance theory for the twenty-first century is obliged to look beyond the panopticon" (Lyon, 2006, p.18).

I am inclined to follow Haggerty's call for a reconsideration of governmentality and a study of real life surveillance experiences. It seems irresponsible to ignore the playful, enjoyable and protective aspects of surveillance, but prudent to remain cautious about the discriminatory, oppressive or normative effects that surveillance may engender. Haggerty and Lyon both agree that strong theory must help to explain
empirical realities, in order to ground the discipline. Together, they are calling for more a more subtle and considered approach that doesn't merely resurrect the spectre of Big Brother and Foucault's Panopticon.

Haggerty, K. D. (2006). Tear down the walls: on demolishing the panopticon. In D.Lyon (Ed.). Theorizing Surveillance: the panopticon and beyond (pp.23-45). UK: Willan Publishing.

Lyon, D. (2006). The search for surveillance theories. In D.Lyon (Ed.). Theorizing surveillance: the panopticon and beyond (pp.3-20). UK: Willan Publishing.

Kevin Haggerty is an Associate Professor Criminology and Sociology at the University of Alberta. Illustration retrieved September 22, 2007 from http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/sociology/haggerty.cfm

David Lyon is a Professor and Killam Research Fellow at Queen's University. Image retrieved September 22, 2007 from http://qnc.queensu.ca/story_loader.php?id=45df1c60243f6

Foucault's Panopticon: A mechanism for the production of docile bodies

2007-09-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

Although I have read many articles that discuss Foucault's analysis of the Panopticon, I had never had the opportunity to read his often cited work. This chapter from his translated book Discipline and Punish continues to inform public imagination and scholarly inquiry into surveillance.

Image retrieved September 22, 2007 from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Panopticon.jpg

Originally, Bentham conceptualized the Panopticon as a prison with a central tower that rendered celled inmates permanently visible to prison guards. This utopian structure engendered a technique which encouraged self-regulation and moral reformation.

Foucault re-imagined the Panopticon as an architectural model, "the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form" (Foucault, 1977, p.205). By segmenting and fixing individuals, the Panopticon assures the automatic functioning of power due to permanent and discontinuous surveillance that makes the exercise of power unnecessary. The individual "assumes responsibility for the constraints of power", making himself "the principle of his own subjection" (Foucault, 1977, pp.202-203).

"Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers." (Foucault, 1977, p.201).

Foucault believed the Panopticon was a generalized mechanism that illustrated the rise of disciplinary society through economic, jurido-political and scientific techniques, which individualize, rationalize, make docile and useful human bodies for the dominant classes. Powerful hierarchies maintained their position in spite of an egalitarian system of rights, through the disciplines, which provide "a guarantee of the submission of forces and bodies" (Foucault, 1977, p.222). Knowledge is generated through scientific inquiry for sovereign truth, amplifying and reproducing power unchecked.

Foucault, Michel. (1977). Discipline and punish : the birth of the prison (pp.195-228). New York : Pantheon Books.

Mes Voisins Surveillent...

2007-07-19T18:24:00.001-07:00

The most basic form of surveillance is through simple observation - and although your neighbours may be pledged to protect your property and property from "troublemakers", as always, there is the possibility that those watching may impose unjust judgements. Can you trust the actions of your neighbours, particularly when communities are corroding and your understanding of those living around you may be limited?

Who said you needed technology to undertake surveillance.

International Cooperation for Privacy Commissioners

2007-07-04T18:50:00.000-07:00

Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart headed the Working Party on Information Security and Privacy (WPISP), an intergovernmental forum within the OECD that is creating policy on cross-border privacy law enforcement co-operation.

The OECD Council adopted the WPISP recommendations on June 12, 2007. The report, "OECD Recommendation on Cross-border Co-operation in the Enforcement of Laws Protecting Privacy" provides an initial framework that intends to foster international co-operation among Privacy Enforcement Authorities in their efforts to protect personal information, even if the individual and the information are located in different nations.

Although it is primarily aimed at laws in the private sector, it also recommends the involvement of the public sector, private organizations and civil society groups in faciltating the enforcement of privacy measures (OECD, 2007).

The document specifies that domestic policy must provide Privacy Enforcement Authorities with the power to act, which has been a significant issue for Canada's privacy commissioner, who believes her lack of jurisdiction internationally has limited her from exercising her full authority in a number of cases of data breach, such as the subpoena of banking data from Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) by the US Department of Treasury during an anti-terrorist investigation (OPC, 2007).

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. (2007). Privacy Commissioner
Concludes Investigation of SWIFT. Retrieved April 9, 2007 from http://www.privcom.gc.ca/media/nr-c/2007/nr-c_070402_e.asp

Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. (2007). OECD Recommendation on Cross-border Co-operation in the Enforcement of Laws Protecting Privacy. Retrieved July 4, 2007 from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/28/38770483.pdf

Montreal Civil Society Workshop

2007-06-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group has organized the Montreal Civil Society Workshop, on September 25, 2007 in Montreal, which is focussed on privacy rights in a world under surveillance. The workshop is held in conjunction with the 29th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners and follows the Conférence des commissaires à la protection des données de la Francophonie.

Day 4 - Computers, Freedom & Privacy - Fear, Security and Identity

2007-06-09T10:27:00.000-07:00

Bruce Schneier was the morning keynote speaker, who spoke about the instinct of fear and the language of risk. He noted that public policy decisions are not made rationally but viscerally. Schneier feels that there is no absolute security, and that a trade-off must always be made. He notes that feelings of security do not always correspond to the reality of security. Schneier illustrated a number of psychological heuristics that help them make every day decisions, and emphasized that social context is absolutely important in forming consensus and behaviour.
A more detailed discussion can be found in his online essay "The Psychology of Security".

The last panel that I caught before catching a plane back to Vancouver was Digital Identity on the Internet: Boon or Nightmare? One speaker, Ralf Bendrath, from the University of Bremen discussed "Identity 2.0" that looked at privacy applications and implications at social networking sites, such as myspace and facebook. I missed the afternoon discussion on this topic, but more can be found on Ralf Bendrath's blog.

I had a great time at the conference - the speakers were interesting and well-versed. I also met some fantastic people that I hope I will meet with again!

Day 3 - Computers, Freedom & Privacy - Uncertain consumer demand for adoption of RFID

2007-05-20T19:08:00.000-07:00

A panel on Ubiquitous Computing in the Retail Store of the Future gave an overview of Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) uses in commercial situations, considering both risks and benefits. They began with a video presentation of the future of shopping, which unfortunately experienced technical difficulties, but overall gave a sense of seamless choice with none of the messy hunting and searching for your favourite brand of mustard or scrambling to extricate the carefully clipped coupons from the bottom of your wallet.

Kevin Fu of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst demonstrated the ease with which his lab demonstrated that RFID equipped credit cards were vulnerable to data theft. The card data was not encrypted, and therefore the card number, name and expiration date could be accessed with a simply constructed device held near someone's wallet. He has posted a video clip of how these vulnerabities may be exploited.

Sarah Spiekermann from Humboldt University in Berlin gave an overview of the benefits of RFID for retail stores, which are able to save money on human resources, reduce theft and decrease the time needed to restock shelves. She also spoke about RFID's ability to increase personalized services on the shop floor, and the immediate response to consumer's desires. Spiekermann noted that alternately, fears about RFID centered on consumer's feelings of loss of control, a desire to not be tracked, and an aversion to the public nature of personally targeted ads.

Elliott Maxwell from Electronic Product Code (EPC) Global spoke very briefly about RFID and surveillance noting that the issues of access and breach were not new. He did suggest that consumers should be allowed to deactivate tags as they choose.

Trevor Pierce, formerly from EPC Global discussed the benefits of RFID and the technical aspects that would increase the security of the technology. He noted that RFID chips using Ultra High Frequency (UHF) to transmit information increases data vulnerability, due to the instability of the electric field, the long range it can travel and the ease with which it can be concealed. He supported the use of a High Frequency (HF) electric field, which is more reliable and is less at risk for eavesdropping, jamming, tracking and cloning.

Audience questions about RFID and autonomy noted that the users of the technology (consumers) are merely the recipients, who do not have access to the data collected, or the ability to help design the technology.

Day 3 - Computers, Freedom & Privacy - Online Advertising Tactics

2007-05-17T19:06:00.000-07:00

At the breakout session, Behavioural Targeting in Online Advertising pitted an industry representative against academics and NGOs.

First, Chris Hoofnagle from Boalt Law School and Kim Howell, Senior Privacy Strategist for Microsoft made presentations. Howell somewhat apprehensively addressed this critical crowd by explaining how Microsoft sees users to advertisers. She emphasized that Microsoft doesn't use personal identification in their advertising schemes, as this information is not useful to advertisers, who are looking for demographic signifiers, as if, somehow, this aggregated data is less harmful because, on the surface, it cannot be traced to an individual. The individualization of risk is very useful for corporations and advertisers, who can use it as a defense against their activities, without acknowledging the effects of advertising and streamlined benefits has on dividing and sorting populations in a discriminatory manner. She also mentioned their use of cookies, web beacons and web forms to help collect the raw data, which is then mapped to the segments that advertisers provide. The entire Microsoft suite is part of data collection, not just specific applications, such as Passport. As well, she notes that their privacy policy is generalized to all their products to enable them to be used across their various platforms, which will enable Microsoft to gather marketing information from one product, for example the X-Box, and use it with another product, such as software.

Next, Jeff Chester from Center for Digital Democracy and Mike Zaneis of the Interactive Advertising Bureau faced off on immersive advertising strategies. Chester was forcefully oppositional in his position against interactive advertising, which was even more polarized due to Zaneis' inability to diverge from the company line to sincerely address audience questions and concerns. Zaneis continued to sidestep criticisms of IAB's advertising practices by reiterating tired arguments for consumer sovereignty (consumer choice IS control), that information is benign, and that e-commerce and information is what runs the 'internet engine'. I think that Zaneis should have demonstrated some respect for his audience by being aware of common critiques of his position and by being prepared to offer considered answers to questions.

Day 3 - Computers, Freedom & Privacy 2007 - Identity management and shadow systems of surveillance

2007-05-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

Day three of the conference featured lots of amazing speakers. The scheduled panel on Wiretapping the Greek Government was moved to the lunch-time breakout sessions, and instead, the audience heard from a panel on identity management, titled Who are You? Principles, Policies and Practicalities of ID Management.

Bruce Schneier spoke first and focused on the entire system that support and emerge from identity cards. Public perception of identity cards is one where the card matches a verified identity to a physical person. However, there are many related systems including the database behind cards, the issuing procedure, the documents used to get card (which may be more or less secure - see Felix Stalder and David Lyon, 2003). He also discusses official uses by a verifier or secondary uses, where unofficial databases emerge that are legal or quasilegal - a shadow system. He emphasized the idea that the perception that being able to positively identify someone does not mean that you are able to track their intentionality.

Caspar Bowden spoke about issues related to the UK identity card. The UK abolished ID cards after World War II and fears surrounding the possibility that ID cards could become compulsory to carry have prevented the UK from re-establishing ID cards. In 2004, the UK government became convinced that biometrics were sufficient to uniquely identify individuals. However, struggles by privacy advocates, in particular Simon Davies, to make politicians aware of the risks and vulnerabilities of creating central identification databases were not initially acknowledged. Forward thinking parliamentarians attempted to introduce some measures of security to the system by consenting to record access events done in secret. This promised amendment to the plan, however, was not kept.

Simon Davies, who was ostracized by the UK government for his suggestions about the system have been repealed, and he is now consulted by UK policy makers to help create an identification system that is able to provide protections for privacy and identity. He emphasizes that the citizen has again been left out in the design of the system, and suggested the Five D's for creating space for citizens in participatory design: Dialogue (in government, to establish ideas); Deliberation (meaningful public consultation); Decision; Design (should be one of the last steps, not the first, as is usually the case); Delivery (the system should be able to be scrapped if it doesn't meet the requirements set out throughout the process). I certainly agree with his idea for citizen involvement in the technopolitical sphere, however, I think that at the Delivery phase, the public would be stuck with the system, no matter what the consequences.

Andrew Clement, information policy researcher at the University of Toronto, iterated that identity and privacy are distinct concepts that should be treated differently. He notes that identity is a relationship between state and citizen, and therefore any successful regime will require public trust. Some of the problems with identity are related to the categorical judgments on personal information, not the accessibility of the information itself. He suggests a framework for Fair Identity Practice Principles that are very closely linked to the Canadian Standard Association's model code that underlines Canada's private sector privacy policy, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

Philippa Lawson, Executive Director at the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic, spoke convincingly about the myriad of risks that centralized identification systems pose to citizen autonomy. She spoke to secondary uses of ID data, data matching and discrimination, mechanized decisions, the intensification of risk. She also mentioned the downloading of responsibility to consumers, an important point that was scarcely mentioned at the conference. She believes that system weaknesses cannot be solved with an ID card.

Day Two: Computers, Freedom & Privacy 2007

2007-05-02T19:04:00.000-07:00

Although I missed the first panel, "Where People and the Surveillance Society Collide", which sounded really great, I caught this afternoon's presentations at the CFP 2007 conference:

La Fracture Numerique (The Digital Divide) was a francophone presentation that focused on issues of accessibility and information technologies. Cherkaoui Ferdous from Solidarite rurale du Quebec pointed out the issue of providing access in rural areas, where profitability drops for telecommunications companies. He suggested that a public commitment (from governments) to fund the 'last kilometre' was needed. Denis Boudreau from WebConforme discussed physical access and the internet, for those whose sensory capabilities are different from the general populace. Pierrot Peladeau from the Centre Bioethique de Montreal, Institut de Recherches Clinique de Montreal gave an interesting look at some flawed attempts to create a health surveillance system for Quebec residents. He pointed to the lack of public input to the creation and implementation of technologies, such as smart cards, that have significant effects on people's privacy rights and life chances. Peladeau pointed out that the public doesn't know that there are technological alternatives, not a linear technological imperative. Other speakers included Christian Vaillant, CLE-Montreal and Michel Dumais who hosts Le Citoyen Numérique on 101.5, CIBL in Montreal.

The Digital Rights Management Technologies and Consumer Privacy talk featured members of the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), which was a really interesting look at the communications that take place between your computer and a home site ("phone home", in speaker David Fewer's terminology), in addition to a number of other sites that are able to collect information about your computer (pirated/cheat software, hardware/firmware) and you (IP address). They have a wiki available for people to participate in their study of these myriad of communications associated with DRM software use and their compliance or non-compliance with PIPEDA. One of the worst offenders of PIPEDA include Intuit tax software (makers of QuickTax), which is an American company, subject to the laws of the US, including the USA PATRIOT Act. For those who used QuickTax's online tax filing system, this highly sensitive, highly personal information is now very vulnerable!

Keynote speaker Kim Cameron from Microsoft presented an identity management tool named "Windows Card Space", allows the user to manage multiple identities online. The system is meant to be interchangeable with other operating systems, browsers and applications. However, he identified the problem as "user experience", not violations of human rights and freedoms. Interestingly, this is the same terminology the representative from Google, Glenn Otis Brown used to describe issues surrounding copyright and user generated content in an afternoon panel on Online Speech and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Ultimately, it seems that aggregating data and identities in one place always increases the risk of abuse, no matter what securities you believe you have built into your system.

The Big Brother Awards by Privacy International were a lot of fun, with Pope Simon Davies presiding over the congregation, holy chalice of malt and hops, and the "mac" of the covenant on hand. Among others, awards went to ChoicePoint, American bureaucrat Stewart Baker, the United Kingdom, the International Civil Aviation industry for closed doors identification deals and the 'common good' as the worst enablers/offenders of privacy through nominations from all over the world.

Day One: Computers, Freedom & Privacy 2007

2007-05-01T15:25:00.000-07:00

Today, I missed the first lecture at the Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference due to the labrynthine Hotel Hilton in downtown Montreal - who knew the lobby was on the second floor! Apparently the hotel was built that way on purpose 30 years ago. At least tomorrow, I will know exactly where to go.

Computers, Freedom & Privacy Conference 2007

2007-04-29T17:46:00.000-07:00

This week, I will be volunteering at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference taking place in Montreal. This is the first conference of this type that I will be attending, and there are so many amazing presentations to see, but there are a number of lectures I have on my list (hopefully I will get to see them in between other voluntary duties):

Tuesday May 1: 9am-12pm Fundamental Freedoms - looking at human rights and freedoms and the growing 'surveillant society'; 1-4pm Data Matters - data mining and privacy (particularly relevant with the NSA/Telecom Wiretap issue in the US)

Wednesday May 2: 9-10:30am Where People and the Surveillance Society Collide - speakers from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, National Center for Transgender Equity and Mohawk Council of Akwasasne - I am always interested in how much fears about surveillance and privacy are theoretical and how people are actually affected by policy and practice! Privacy International's Big Brother Awards will also be held that evening.

Thursday, May 3: 5:30pm Hactivism - Using Technology to improve Human Rights with Oxblood Ruffin from Cult of the Dead Cow and others.

Friday May 4: 12:30pm Identity on Web 2.0

I will update this spot with insights and presentation information as the event proceeds!

Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies

2007-04-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

On March 12, 2007 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization published a report, the Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies. The report looks at the semantic web, biometrics, radio-frequency identification (RFID), location-based services, mesh and ubiquitous networking, and other computing technologies. The report states that "technology in itself is neutral", and that they can either contribute to or suppress human rights. They use the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948) as a guiding document to assess information and communication technologies. They also discuss infoethics in relation to public domains of knowledge, diversity of content on information networks, and unfettered access to information. Case studies of these new technologies help evaluate each one's positive and negative aspects. Based on these considerations, the report makes recommendations:

1. To act as a laboratory of ideas by
Establishing an advisory board
Establishing a community of technologists to protect private information
2. Acting as a standard bearer by
Preparing a code of ethics
Studying network neutrality
Publicizing infoethics concerns
3. Encouraging public education on information ethics

Some of the scholars who assisted with the study include Stefan Brands, Nicholas Negroponte, and Lawrence Lessig, among others.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (2007). Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies: A Survey. Retrieved April 21, 2007 from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001499/149992E.pdf

Interestingly, much of the document sites wikipedia as a source. There has been some discussion about the utility of wikipedia in an academic setting.

"Know it All" an article published by Stacey in the New Yorker July 31, 2006 and "Mundo Encyclopedia" by Rachel Aviv, published in the Village Voice on January 10, 2006 address some issues related to peer-publication. Thanks to Peter van Wyck for the links!

Cross-Border Internet Law

2007-04-10T21:59:00.000-07:00

On April 2, 2007, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada concluded her investigation of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a financial cooperative based in Belgium, which supplies messaging services to financial institutions across the world and in Canada. SWIFT was subpoenaed by the US Department of Treasury for data held in their US operating centre (OPC, 2007a), during an anti-terrorist investigation shortly after September 2001. Information gleaned from the program has helped in numerous terrorist investigations, U.S. officials said (Perkins, 2006).

Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, found that although SWIFT is subject to Canada's private sector privacy laws, the Personal Information protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), it did not contravene the Act by complying with lawful subpoenas served outside Canada, which disclosed personal information about Canadians to foreign authorities (OPC, 2007a).

Although Stoddart explained that PIPEDA allows organizations to abide by the laws of other countries, she noted that US authorities requiring information about Canadian financial transactions should use existing information mechanisms with a degree of transparency and built-in privacy protections, such as the Canadian anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing legislation (OPC, 2007a).

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner applied PIPEDA paragraphs 4(1)(a), Principle 4.3, paragraph 7(3)(c), and subsection 5(3) to determing if SWIFT contravened Canadian privacy law.

Principle 4.3 states that the knowledge and consent of the individual are required for the collection, use, or disclosure of personal information, except where inappropriate.

Paragraph 7(3)(c)states that an organization may disclose personal information without the knowledge or consent of the individual only if the disclosure is required to comply with a subpoena or warrant issued or an order made by a court, person or body with jurisdiction to compel the production of information, or to comply with rules of court relating to the production of records. Stoddart concludes that the US subpoenas were legitimate legal requirements that SWIFT had to obey, or would suffer penalties:

"...to ask the organization to ignore the legitimate laws of other jurisdictions in which they operate is unrealistic and unworkable. Moreover, it has the potential of being interpreted as an infringement by Canada on that nation’s sovereignty..." Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Report of Findings April 2, 2007

Subsection 5(3) states that an organization may collect, use, or disclose personal information only for purposes a reasonable person would consider appropriate under the circumstances. The Commissioner notes that, in consideration of Paragraph 7(3)(c), a reasonable person would expect SWIFT to observe a legitimate subpoena served in a jurisdiction it operates in.

However, she acknowledges that other data protection commissioners around the world have concluded that SWIFT's disclosure of their citizen's personal information to the US Department of Treasury did violate their laws, but states that Canadian law needs to be the focus (OPC, 2007b):

"I should stress, however, that the case before me must be considered in accordance with the application of Canadian law and that we cannot automatically jump to any conclusions based on decisions made under foreign laws." - Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Report of Findings April 2, 2007

Some supported the decision. Kris Klein, litigation counsel for the Privacy Commissioner stated that this was the first time the Office of the Privacy Commissioner had been involved in a cross-border investigation. Klein also believes that the finding acknowledges multinational companies have to abide not only by Canadian laws but also by laws in other countries. A spokesperson for the Canadian Banker's Association said the organization was pleased with the finding (Prashad, 2007).

However, privacy advocates were hoping for a different outcome. Philippa Lawson said the report may be legally accurate, but it fails to deal with the issue of Canadian firms outsourcing the processing of personal data, stating "We are effectively allowing foreign governments to do an end-run around privacy regimes" (Tuck, 2007). Lawson also expressed concern about implications for the national privacy regime: "I'm concerned this interpretation of the act is uncessarily simplistic. It creates, or perhaps confirms, a huge loophole in our data protection regime Canadian companies are allowed to outsource data to foreign entities regardless of the regime under which the outsourced data processing takes place and regardless of the consequent risks to individual privacy." (Prashad, 2007) In June, 2006, Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor who specializes in technology issues, stated that the Privacy Commissioner has not been very aggressive so far in using her office's powers to defend Canadians' privacy outside national borders and was hopeful that she would flex a little privacy muscle (Tuck, 2006).

Although she has not done so in the SWIFT investigation, the Privacy Commissioner has recently initiated talks at APEC and the OECD to seek broader consensus on international data protection and internet privacy:

OECD Cross-Border Privacy Law Enforcement: http://www.oecd.org/document/25/0,2340,en_2649_34255_37571993_1_1_1_1,00.html

APEC Electronic Commerce Steering Group:
http://www.apec.org/apec/apec_groups/som_special_task_groups/electronic_commerce.html#data

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. (2007a, Apr.2). Privacy Commissioner concludes investigation of SWIFT. Retrieved April 9, 2007 from http://www.privcom.gc.ca/media/nr-c/2007/nr-c_070402_e.asp

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. (2007b, Apr.2) Report of Findings. Retrieved April 9, 2007 from http://www.privcom.gc.ca/cf-dc/2007/swift_rep_070402_e.asp#_ftnref4

Tuck, Simon. (2007, Apr. 3). Watchdog OK with U.S. use of data bank. The Globe and Mail. B8. Retrieved April 9, 2007 from ProQuest database.

Prashad, Sharda. (2007, Apr.3). U.S. probe didn't break Canadian law; SWIFT action legal in terrorism investigation, privacy watchdog finds. The Toronto Star. C4. Retrieved April 9, 2007 from ProQuest database.

Perkins, Tara. (2006, Jul.17). Privacy watchdog can't ignore border Activist; Federal Court asked to overturn commissioner's ruling - since data crosses, so should investigations, lawyer argues. The Toronto Star. C1. Retrieved April 9, 2007 from ProQuest

Tuck, Simon. (2006, Aug. 15). Privacy watchdog launches data-release investigation. The Globe and Mail. A2. Retrieved April 9, 2007 from ProQuest

You Revolution: Social Control Masked as Participatory Digital Culture

2007-03-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

Positioned as a means to democratize communication and restore power to the people, the technological tools of digital culture are embraced for self-promotion, social networking and self-expression. Although the customizability and interactivity of technology through YouTube, blogging, and mobile devices appear to challenge bureaucratic mechanisms of control, "[s]uch an approach envisions the potential of networked interactivity to foster not democratic participation but the consolidation of centralized command and control predicated on asymmetrical forms of observation and information gathering." (Andrejevic, 2006 p.395).

Self-disclosure masquerades as self-expression. Instead of inverting power relations through challenges to governance and control, self-publishing encourages the specification of individuals in the marketplace. Even though participatory digital technologies appear to rearrange the panoptic mechanism, it doesn't necessarily reconfigure the relations of power within which these technologies function. Instead, the surveillant gaze is internalized and exhibited by subjects, extending the power of political, social and economic authorities into the everyday as lateral or peer surveillance (Andrejevic, 2006 pp.396-397).

In many ways, the use of surveillance as spectacle and entertainment may normalize social behaviours as well as encourage the view that privacy is not a right to be valued or protected, increasing individuals' tolerance for increasingly invasive inquiries into their personal lives. Lateral and Auto-Surveillance are rewarded through submissions to scrutiny on reality tv or the internet. In the case of 'Justin.tv', Justin Kan wears a web camera in a recent reality tv internet experiment. Initially conceived of as a business venture, Kan states "Mostly it's older people who seem concerned about the privacy issues ... I don't care if people see me going to the bathroom. I'm just not worried about it" (Newitz, 2007 Mar. 23). Through the internalization of surveillant practices and the normalization and self-subjugation to transgressions of privacy, the tolerance for data gathering of individuals by government and corporations increases. The implications for civil liberties are lost in the quest for self-actualization and individuation.

Andrejevic, Mark. (2006). The Discipline of Watchiing: Detection, Risk, and Lateral Surveillance. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 23(5), 391-407

Newitz, Annalee. (2007 Mar.23) Real-Time Reality Feeds Justin.tv. Wired News. Retrieved March 24, 2007 from http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,73061-0.html?tw=rss.index

Dividuals - Ontological collapse of the material and digital

2007-03-16T17:46:00.001-07:00

In their article, "Whose Identity Is It Anyway? Consumer Representation in the Age of Database Marketing", Detlev Zwick and Nihilesh Dholakia suggest that the only way for individuals to successfully negotiate corporate construction of consumer identity through data profiling is to give consumers access to the algorithms that create these identities.

Zwick and Dholakia state that databases are built by reducing consumer information to data, which is cross referenced and used to construct the consumer as a cultural entity that has no reference to the object of representation (real people). Therefore, the consumer is not ontologically distinct from their representation in the electronic marketplace. Individuals are data subjects, where no essential difference remains between the real consumer self and the digital consumer constructed by databases. Because knowledge about customers originates from the database, the success of consumer tactics that aim to retain privacy are null.

However, Zwick and Dholakia's interesting analysis concludes by suggesting that allowing consumers access to algorithms works to assist identity management while creating a stronger link between data subjects and material subjects. They state, "That increase in consumers' ability to take control over their identities goes hand in hand with companies' desire to improve their customer relationships..." (p.40). Although their final analysis appears motivated by a desire to improve corporate data gathering, they suggest the database as an interesting site for technological democratization.

Zwick, D. and Dholakia, N. (2004). "Whose Identity Is It Anyway? Consumer Representation in the Age of Database Marketing." Journal of Macromarketing, 24(31), 31-43.

Getting by with a little help from my friends Part II - Government Cronyism

2006-12-11T07:19:00.000-08:00

Created in 1952 during the Korean War, the National Security Agency has been responsible once before for carrying out warrantless domestic surveillance. When exposed for these activities, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court was created to ensure that this did not occur again. The FISA court issues warrants for investigation of electronic communications that have a foreign component. However, the FISA court was overstepped by the NSA spy program (Cauley, 2006).

Initiated shortly after September 11, 2001, the NSA program was administered by the Defense Department under the name Total Information Awareness (TIA) (Harris, 2006). Admiral John Poindexter was made head of a Pentagon division that would collect information on Americans (Smith, 2002). This program used data mining techniques to predict terrorist activity in the US through the Information Awareness Prototype System. A $19 million contract to build the system was awarded in late 2002 to Hicks & Associates, a consulting firm in Arlington, Va., which is run by former Defense and military officials (Harris, 2006).

Even in 2002, the spy program was suspect of abuse. At that time it was recognized that Poindexter was involved in the Iran-Contra cover up, which took place during the Regan Administration in the 1980s. The Iran-Contra scandal linked the Regan Administration to the sale of arms to Iran through Israel which was used to fund the illegal contra war in Nicaragua. After the fall of the Shah in 1979, the US began to ship arms to Iran through Israel, to the Khomeini regime, establishing links with Iran military that might overthrow the regime and restore arrangements that prevailed under the Shah. The contra war in Nicaragua was fueled by arms from the CIA, supporting the overthrow of a communist government (Chomsky, 1993).

When Admiral Poindexter’s involvement with the Iran-Contra activities were revealed, he was convicted of lying to Congress, but avoided prison on a technicality (Harris, 2006). In 2003, the project funding was terminated and appeared as if it was abandoned. However, the project was taken up again under a new name in a new department. Dubbed ‘Basketball’, the former Information Awareness system continued to be run by Hicks & Associates under the government's Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA), at the NSA Headquarters. Another TIA project that was moved to the NSA was Genoa II, renamed ‘Topsail’. Both Basketball and Topsail were being tested at a research centre by the ARDA and SAIC Corp at a facility owned by Hicks & Associates. SAIC Corp is a defence and intelligence contractor that wholly owns Hicks & Associates (Harris, 2006).

Cauley, L. (2006, May 11). NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls. USA Today. Retrieved September 21, 2006 from http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

Chomsky, N. (1993). The Iran/Contra cover up. In A. Naiman, & S. Niemann (Eds.), What Uncle Sam really wants.Retrieved November 23, 2006, from http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-2-08.html

Harris, S. (2006). TIA lives on. National Journal, 38(8), 66-67.

Smith, M. (2002). Calling all Yahoos. San Francisco Weekly, Retrieved November 23, 2006 from http://www.sfweekly.com/Issues/2002-11-27/news/smith_full.html

Getting by with a little help from my friends Part I - NSA Warrantless Surveillance and AT&T

2006-12-11T07:06:00.000-08:00

By promoting policies that favour business interests, neoliberal governments yields to the belief that the market system is an equalizing force. The revolving door between business and government circulate flows of power between their bureaucracies, and the NSA case is no exception. Locating amicable participants for the surveillance program began in 2002, when AT&T, SBC, MCI and Sprint were approached for assistance. AT&T's CEO at that time was C. Michael Armstrong. Armstrong was also chairman of the Business Roundtable's Security Task Force, which was responsible for creating a secure telecommunications system for chief executives of major US corporations to speak directly to senior members of Bush's cabinet in the case of a national emergency. Randall Stephensen, former SBC Commuunications executive and now AT&T's chief operating officer, is a member of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, who advises the President on telecommunications security issues. MCI and Sprint are also major government contractors, whose top executives have experience in defense and national security. As well, a large number of firms that provide data mining technologies, intelligence analysis and equipment to the NSA employ former intelligence officers. These corporations, which include Booz Allen Hamilton and SI International, obtained government contracts for surveillance initiatives (Shorrock, 2006).

Shorrock, T. (2006). Watching what you say: How big telecom may be helping government spies. The Nation, 282(11), 11-14.

Algorithms and Mathematical Measurement of Norms

2006-11-27T14:21:00.000-08:00

A computerized surveillance system called Tangram is being developed at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Tangram aims to combine a variety of different algorithms used to sort data, in order to mix and match formulas in order to obtain information that a decision maker can act upon. This method of path-finding acts on the basis of guilt by association, that works on a model of 'normal behaviour' in order to discern innocuous activity from criminal. However, the scale of normal behaviour cannot be determined empirically or otherwise. As well, it raises questions about how constant behaviour is and what should be considered normal (Harris, 2006). In addition to creating speculative structures for normal behaviour, data-mining activities may generate categories of suspicion that unfairly target groups of people. Racial profiling has increased since September 11, 2001, resulting in false and damaging accusations for those targeted (ACLU, 2004).

Harris, S. (2006b) Terrorist Profiling: Version 2.0. National Journal, Retrieved November 23, 2006 from Factiva database.

American Civil Liberties Union. (2004). Sanctioned bias: Racial profiling since 9/11. New York: American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved October 21, 2006 from http://www.aclu.org/FilesPDFs/racial%20profiling%20report.pdf

Privacy Rights and Prepaid Communication Services

2006-11-11T16:44:00.000-08:00

"Privacy Rights and Prepaid Communication Services" is a Research Report for the Office of the Privacy Commission of Canada completed by Gordon Gow and myself in March 2006. It was determined that most OECD countries do not require customer information for prepaid services. However, in nations where mobile phone use required registration, efficiency of law enforcement and national security were cited as benefits.

This reflects part of a general trend in North America after September 11, 2001 that increased powers of law enforcement and extended the reach of national security policy into the private lives of citizens. In

Canada

, the Anti-Terrorist Act was brought into force in 2002, creating changes to existing legislation. In the "Annual Report to Parliament 2005", Canada's Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddardt, states that fears of terrorism or impending pandemics provide superficial justification for intrusive surveillance powers that are not proven necessary.

The BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association echoed this idea in their 2005 investigation of the Anti-Terrorist Act, stating that many of the measures introduced by this legislation undermine the basic pillars of a free and democratic society: representative government; rule of law; freedom of expression and association. The report supports the idea that 9/11 was an excuse to implement greater powers for police and law enforcement.

Some of the fallout of policies surrounding the Anti-Terrorist Act, and the implications of transborder information flow are currently receiving media attention. On September 30, 2006 the Ottawa Citizen published a piece on Maher Arar, who was deported to Syria by the US authorities after the RCMP shared false information about him to American law enforcement, leading to his imprisonment and torture in Syria. Arar was falsely labeled a terrorist, and even when RCMP acknowledged their mistakes, they did not intervene on his behalf.

Gow, Gordon. (2006). Privacy Rights and Prepaid Communication Services. Vancouver, BC: Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology. Available http://www.sfu.ca/cprost/prepaid/docs/
Gow-PrivacyRightsAndPrepaidCommunicationServices.pdf

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of

Canada

. (2006a). Annual report to parliament 2005: Report on the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. Retrieved October 7, 2006 from
http://www.privcom.gc.ca/information/ar/
200506/2005_pipeda_e.pdf

BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association. (2005).

Canada

's Anti-Terrorism Act: An unjustified limitation of freedom of information and privacy rights. Vancouver, BC: FIPA. Retrieved September 29, 2006 from http://fipa.bc.ca/home/hot_topics/13

Tibbetts, J. (2006, September 30). Mounties 'who did this to me' must pay, Arar says. Ottawa Citizen, pp. A1-A12.

Art Comments on Daily Invasions of Privacy

2005-08-06T14:15:00.000-07:00

" “The one I think I am...” is a single screen presentation of a confrontational twenty-minute video shot in Edinburgh’s railway station. Nina Toft is an emerging Edinburgh artist who is originally from Norway and in this work she plays the role of a paparazzi, but her dogged pursuit is not of the rich and famous, but rather people waiting for the trains that will take them to work. Their dismay at being photographed in this version of “15 minutes of fame” is a register of the camera’s ability to be an invasive presence in contemporary society. Conversely, her subject’s eventual acceptance of Toft’s invasion of their privacy registers our collective acquiescence to the pervasive presence of video cameras in the public domain, especially in the U.K..

Toft’s subjects are existential actors in the daily Beckettonian drama of getting out of bed and going to work. Their dilemma is our dilemma and their surprise at being the star of Toft’s art is not unlike our own when someone takes a moment to pay attention to us. Toft’s camera is invasive, but “The one I think I am...” is also an extremely gentle video that, in its gentleness, is a critique of the aggressive behaviour of both the paparazzi and documentarians alike. The surprising thing about this work is that its quiet elegance, combined with its apparent filling of a gap in the history of recent video practice, leaves one feeling that we have either been there or seen this before. Yet, so far as I know, no artist has previously made a work that probes the condition of the individual in the social world in just this way. However, similarities with the photographic work of Ian Wallace and video work of Roy Arden will not be lost on Vancouver viewers.

The structure of “The one I think I am...” is partially determined by the behaviour of Toft’s subjects. The pursuit of her lens is relentless while the subject is unaware of her gaze, then, when they engage her lens, she gives them enough video rope to express their pleasure or disdain, but when they turn away one last time, she too turns to the next subject. Not only do her subjects avert their gaze to avoid Toft’s camera, but the artist as well, having approached her prey, having seen what there was to see, then avoids them only in order to repeat the experiment with another “one who thinks they are”. Her approaches are met by a full range of psychological responses, from avoidance, to frustration and rage – a perfect mirror of the daily approaches and avoidances that provide the basic rhythm of humanity’s shuffling through the world. Catalogue."

http://www.presentationhousegall.com/HenryParrToft.html#toft

Control of Labour

2004-12-10T19:12:00.000-08:00

I found an interesting passage that I found during some research for a paper that spoke to worker surveillance and the capitalist system.

Andrew Feenberg writes about Max Weber's theory of rationalization as an argument against industrial society. Rationalization is defined by the increased role of calculation and control in social activities. Herbert Marcuse critiques Weber's theory, indicating that rationalization confuses the control of labour by management as equivalent to the control of nature by technology. Where nature may be controlled in a general sense, workers are managed against the specific social background of the capitalist wage system.

"Workers have no immediate interest in output in this system, unlike earlier forms of farm and craft labour, since their wage is not essentially linked to the income of the firm. Control of human being becomes all-important in this context." (Feenberg, 1995 p.11).

Feenberg also writes that some of the control functions necessitated by this exchange are transferred to machines through mechanization. These machines thus embody a technical rationality that is particular to capitalism. He also states that worker's cooperatives allow discipline to be self-imposed, and perhaps would employ technology in a different way in order to increase productivity. It would be interesting to see how technologies would be adapted to a different system of production, as well as to measure the manner in which worker surveillance would be altered. Have there been comparisons in the way that surveillance technologies are used in different social systems? Or are there too few points for comparison? Would there be significant differences between cooperatives in a capitalist nation versus one that existed in a more socialist environment?

Feenberg, A. (1995). Subversive Rationalization. In A. Feenberg, & A. Hannay (Eds.) , Technology and the Politics of Knowledge. (pp. 3-22). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Japanese Cell phone culture and tracking mobilities

2004-11-20T15:49:00.000-08:00

Interesting look at cell phone culture in Japan, known as keitai. The degree of integration of cell phones into every day life may resonate with future technology in Canada. This is a video from Zed TV:

Japanese Cell phone culture and tracking mobilities

How to Make a Travelogue in the UK

2004-11-20T14:28:00.000-08:00

This tongue in cheek look at video surveillance in the UK gives reccommendations for creating a travel video without bringing a video camera!

Leave Your video camera at home
By Bruce Thorson

Posted on http://zed.cbc.ca

Technological Reproduction of Social Forms

2004-11-18T22:36:00.000-08:00

Lately, I have been thinking about ways to confront and change structures that have and continue to be oppressive forces in peoples' lives. The more I tried to answer how we can change these situations, the more I realized that the problem is systemic, rooted in social structures that underlie the beliefs on which society is built. Many of the technological strategies that deal with risk, crime, bureaucracy and labour, among others, propose to create more efficient ways in which to process information or control people, but end up recreating social forms.

In "Private Security and Surveillance" Marquis comments that private security is concerned with risk, watching, classifying and ordering groups that are historically targeted by the processes of surveillance and ordering. The poor, young, minorities, some types of workers and those with criminal backgrounds are typically under careful scrutiny from different groups (Marquis p.240). Whether they are being surveiled in transport, at work, in the mall, on the street, at their doctor's, through police, security, or using the internet, often it is this same group of people that are consistently under the watchful eye of other investigative bodies. Whether the means are panoptic or synoptic, the result seems to be the same. Those that are under surveillance are most often disadvantaged groups of people that have always been watched and their behaviours monitored and controlled in a way that maintains the overall social structure.

In Ball's article, the people who became disadvantaged amongst the workers were those who might traditionally be less valuable in the workplace, in this case, older women. The reason they were proposed to be less valuable was based on a measure of their familiarity and comfortability with computer technologies. However, it seems from Ball's interviews that the reasons given also corresponded with their non-conformity or inability to fit in with the social structure at their work place (Ball 2003, pp.215-219). Here technological reasons for discrimination neatly fit in with social reasons for discrimination.

Poudrier writes that genetic discrimination may be predicated on categories of race, possibly reinforcing patterns of prejudice with regard to insurance and employment. Here the construction of genetic risk is assessed using white genes to represent the norm, and by focussing on health risks experienced by minorities without asking whether or not those same risks are dependent on low social and economic status (Poudrier 2003, pp.126-127). Scientific technology is seen as being objective, and again technology and historical categories of marginalization align.

Koskela also comments that surveillance is used most often in malls, and in transport, where women, minorities, young and old represent most of the users. Here, surveillance reproduces and reinforces the pre-existing structures of power (Koskela 2003, pp.254-256) through technological means.

These same forces seem to invent more and new ways to justify the current social order. Instead of asking our selves questions about how to navigate to the roots of social problems, we innovate a technological fix that temporarily alleviates the symptoms, and legitimizes reasons for discrimination.

Short of a social revolution, there must be a way to create a more just society - one where we can all thrive.

Ball, Kirstie. "Categorizing the workers." Surveillance as Social Sorting. Ed. David Lyon. London: Routledge, 2003: 215-219.

Koskela, Hille. "'The gaze without eyes': video-surveillance and the changing nature of urban space." Progress in Human Geography. 24.2 (2000): 254-256.

Marquis, Greg. "Private security and surveillance: From the 'dossier society' to database networks." Surveillance as Social Sorting. Ed. David Lyon. London: Routledge, 2003: 226-248.

Poudrier, Jennifer. "'Racial' categories and health risks." Surveillance as Social Sorting. Ed. David Lyon. London: Routledge, 2003: 126-127.

Resisting the Viewer Society

2004-11-17T13:01:00.000-08:00

Mathieson's article, "The Viewer Society" describes the reciprocal function of panopticism (many surveillance activities) and synopticism (mass media). Through the parallel growth of panopticism and synopticism, we live "in a two-way and significant double sense of the word" (Mathiesen 1997, p.219) in a viewer society.

The gaze through the panoptic and synoptic structures have a decidedly different quality and are not equal in reciprocal powers. Synopticism through the mass media is broadcast to viewers that have little control over the content and may be influenced through suggestion. In many cases panoptic and synoptic systems merge, or feed off of the other, making it very difficult to resist these impulses of social control.

Dr. Smith stated that perhaps the best way to resist social control is to create more access to information. I feel this is increasingly important, as most of the information that people in BC and in Canada in general, are derived from a narrowing number of sources. Media ownership in BC has been monopolized for decades. Currently 86% of the newspaper circulation in BC is owned by CanWest Global (CPBF 2004). I am concerned about the implications of this lack of diversity in opinion to democratic processes. Although it is argued that the internet can provide an alternate source of information, I think, for many reasons, that it isn't sufficient to have access only through this source. As someone who owns and uses a computer very frequently, I still look to the newspaper and the tv to learn about political and news events. I think many people are the same. The fear of a monopoly on news sources comes when the opinions expressed in these media are taken by people uncritically at large, and then used when making important decisions about governance, or any other public matter. There are many people in Vancouver who have recognized this problem and are working on some solution to the monopoly of media ownership. Free the Press is a movement in Vancouver that tracks media ownership across Canada and works to free broadcast. Indymedia is another source for information. CJSF, Citr and Co-op radio are working to free the airwaves and tv is being tackled by ictv - independent community tv. Still, breaking through the wall of predigested news and tv sound bites seems incredibly difficult, and reaching a critical mass of awareness, even more so.

Daily Newspaper Tables. The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom. 17 Nov. 2004
http://www.presscampaign.org/circulationdata.html

Mathieson, Thomas. "The Viewer Society". Theoretical Criminology. vol 1.2 (1997)

Worker Surveillance and the rise of Capitalism

2004-11-13T15:25:00.000-08:00

Kirstie Ball's study of surveillance in the workplace uncovered an interesting facet of the workplace experience. Although the company had, to some measures, made a fair transition to a new technological interface, Ball revealed that much of the workplace hierarchy hinged on a technologically justified discrimination against those who did not 'fit in' with the workplace credo, being 'one of the team'.

A lot of surveillance technologies seem to be employed in such a manner that their perceived 'objectivity' can justify exclusion or prejudice on a technological level. There is a common belief that much of science and technology is unbiased, and as such, is able to measure and analyze things in a way that human perception would be subjective. Thus, the science or technology is often believed to represent a truth. But more often than not, the technological measurements seem merely to reflect prevalent stereotypes that exist. In this way these stereotypes are validated and can be used as unarguable reasons to discriminate against those that do not fit in. Workplace surveillance seems to have been used this way in Ball's study, where one manager singles out a group of older women who gripe about having to use the new technology - these are the same women who do not fit into the company's work-in-life sensibility, and as a result they are seen to be resistant and not as beneficial as employees. Genetic surveillance appears to work in a similar manner, where those who are deemed to be predisposed to a particular expression of criminal or antisocial behaviour may be justifiably discriminated against. A technological justification for discrimination.

The article by John O'Neill "The Disciplinary Society: from Weber to Foucault" spoke about bureaucracy and control. He describes the decline of feudalism and the enclosure of land as two of the events that left peasants without any means to sustain themselves. Able-bodied peasants were able to sell their labour. But in order to maintain "a docile labour force suited to the needs of early industrial capitalism" (O'Neill 1986, p.50), surveillance and disciplinary measures had to be undertaken. Industrial discipline arose on the model of the prison, effectively reproducing through social control of the concept of a good citizen, the capitalist class system (O'Neill 1986, pp.49-51).

In a different system, is it possible to minimize the need for surveillance and control in the workplace? If labour is organized in a system where the means of production are owned by the workers, would the need for surveillance decrease? Argentina has just seen an incredible economic and political collapse. Out of the chaos, many workers are taking over abandoned factories at which they worked, and all become stakeholders in the process. A co-operative system, where all are responsible for the outcome of the product, may reduce the need to surveil people on the basis that they are both benefactors of and responsible to the place of labour.

Ball, Kirstie. "Categorizing the Workers." Surveillance as Social Sorting. Ed. David Lyon. London: Routledge, 2003. 201-225.

O'Neill, John. "The Disciplinary Society: From Weber to Foucault." The British Journal of Sociology. 37.1. (1986): 49-51.

Hoping for a Better World

2004-11-05T15:32:00.000-08:00

What particular sociological contexts have surveillance mechanisms developed from? Dr. Andrew Feenberg believes that a technology must claim existence from a context in which it can flourish - in a particular the social and political climate. When did new surveillance technologies arise? What need did they fill? What other social phenomenon accompanied the increased use of surveillance? Was it a product of the growth of capitalist societies themselves - industrialization, growth of cities, increased population? With cities, did the need for more control and decreasing risk become motivating forces for increased surveillance?

At what point did surveillance evolve into a mechanism for social sorting? Sorting may have always been an element of surveillance, but the effects of new surveillance technologies appear heightened. Gary Marx discusses this in his paper "What's New About the 'New Surveillance'? Classifying for Change and Continuity". Marx believes these new surveillance technologies “challenge fundamental assumptions about personal and social borders… low visibility and the involuntary and remote nature of much contemporary surveillance may mean more secrecy and lessened accountability, less need for consent and less possibility of reciprocity” (Marx 2002, p.16).

For me, Marx's description of surveillance technologies describes the ethos of this moment in time as a whole. After George Bush was re-elected in the US, I felt utterly disheartened. Although American foreign policy under Bush may be, in reality, only somewhat different than if Kerry had been elected, I still feel that our sovereignty as Canadians is more severely endangered with Bush’s administration still in place. While many provisions of the Patriot Act may lapse in a year, the effects of policies, structures and ideologies that are being put in place will remain. Already, Canada seems like a defenseless threatened species, rich in resources, weak in believing its ability to wield political might. Will the missile defense system be approved? Will our borders be increasingly monitored with biometric identifiers? Will our health records and other personal information be subject to American law? This is our country and we have a right to be subject to ONLY our legal system. But, like the new surveillance technologies, America's protectionist strategies will challenge fundamental assumptions about personal and social borders. Already there is lessened accountability from North American governments to its people, there is less need for Americans to obtain Canadian consent with regards to economic provisions such as NAFTA, and even less possibility of reciprocity from the Canadian government, so afraid are our politicians of evoking the wrath of our neighbours to the south. There is a feeling of apprehension and uncertainty in the air, a subtle slipping of our collective democratic rights, an increased willingness to compromise individual privacy for the state, accompanied by a lack of concern or a feeling that it should be this way (we should be under the camera, how else will we be safe?) to the point of self-censorship and self-surveillance.

I am trying hard to keep hoping for a better world.

Marx, Gary. "What's New About the 'New Surveillance'? Classifying for Change and Continuity" Surveillance & Society. 1.1 (2002): 9-29.

Netscapes of Power

2004-11-02T13:32:00.000-08:00

If you have an opportunity to watch this video, I think it is worth your time - a good little 'mind-bite' to chew on. It looks briefly at media ownership, as explored in "Netscapes of Power" byDwayne Winseck, and comments on how knowledge that counters the message of the state can come under surveillance.

Check out The Guerrilla News Network

Two-Ways Gaze

2004-10-23T15:31:00.000-07:00

Certainly women are able to refute cultural constructs of the gendered gaze. Women are creating their own gaze through female authoring of traditionally-male constructed views; beauty, pornography, film, scholarship are being redefined in many ways by women.

However, the historical past lays a heavy burden on redefining things in this way. Still, women do not account for 50% of positions of authority. Women are able to project a 'gaze' to assert power, but more often than not, in my experience, a women's gaze offers opportunity and invitation. The female gaze is generally not threatening to men, and cannot claim to have the same exercised potential for violence or authority. Looking can be powerful, but has the potential to be interpreted as possibility.

-Added November 6, 2004 -
I have been trying to better assess the power of looking in my forays across town. It seems that perhaps the gaze can be best characterized by context, rather than specifically relegated to sex - there are so many factors in which one interaction can occur that it is difficult to be able to pinpoint who holds the power in a given situation and why. Generalities most likely won't suffice. Is gaze also influenced by class? By race? How do these factors interact to affect a situation. When regarding the construct of a surveillance technology, the bias may be 'built in', but an different interaction can occur depending on the operator and on the awareness and the tools of the observed.

Here is an amusing animated piece from zed.cbc.ca that flips the gender construct of the 'gaze' on its head!

Somebody's Watching Me
By Ryan Archibald

Posted on http://zed.cbc.ca

The Gendered Gaze and Political Power

2004-10-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

As a woman, my feelings about the gendered gaze of surveillance are conflicted. Koskela states in ‘The Gaze Without Eyes’, that “looking connotates power, and being looked at powerlessness” (Koskela 2000, p.255). This statement may be true in many ways, but the converse also has the temporary appearance of being true.

Often it seems that a woman’s most persuasive power her physical attractiveness. If you are not looked at, as a woman, you are robbed of some sort of base power, your value as a female person is diminished. If you are looked at, you achieve a type of power. But this power is false. Being looked at can be objectifying, intimidating and sometimes threatening. My solution to the problem of both wanting and not wanting to be "seen" is to ignore the gaze, deflecting power and powerlessness.

That said, there is a difference between knowing that you are being looked at, and being under surveillance, unaware of the exact presence of the gaze. That is what makes surveillance technologies potentially so insidious, especially when used inappropriately, to victimize an unknowing and undeserving subject.

Why are places that are mainly inhabited by women so thoroughly surveilled? Public and semi-public spaces such as shopping malls and public transit are places where women make up a large part of the user base. Who makes up the rest? In public transit, youth, the elderly, minorities and women account for the bulk of the riders. As stated on the Bus Rider’s Union website “women of colour, Aboriginal women, recent immigrants, seniors, women with disabilities, students and youth … already face discrimination in other aspects of their lives and have a greater need for public transportation” (BRU 2004) as they cannot afford a car, or have physical limitations due to disability or age. In shopping malls, a similar composition of people might be likely to exist.

The group of people absent from the collection of the surveiled are most likely the same ones who decide where and how to implement surveillance measures. Are surveillance technologies implemented from fear of people not like oneself, rather than the actuality of danger? Does the ability to 'watch' reproduce and reinforce the current power structure (Koskela 2000, p.256)?

For more information on the Bus Rider's Union, and issues in transit, check out
http://bru.resist.ca

Koskela, Hille. "'The gaze without eyes': video-surveillance and the changing nature of urban space." Progress in Human Geography. 24.2 (2000): 234-265.

"Women in Transit." Bus Rider's Union. 21 Oct 2004. http://bru.resist.ca/wit

Genetic Pre-determination and the Subjugation of our Most Essential Selves

2004-10-10T23:41:00.000-07:00

The informational power of genetic information has catastrophic potential. With the ability to sequence genes through various imaging techniques, we can largely determine the sequence of nucleic acids that are required to build our unique person. A lot of the genetic code is believed to be 'junk' information left over from our evolutionary history, and a lot remains unknown about the exact function of these 'nonsense' codes, or even of the coding sequences themselves.

Contrary to what was originally believed, one gene does not always code for one trait. Often a non-linear sequence of a variety of genes code for a single trait. As well, environmental conditions can also determine whether a gene is expressed or not. There are so many things that scientists cannot know about the behaviour of genes that it is potentially very dangerous to use the limited knowledge that they do have to make broad, sweeping generalizations about human behaviour.

That is what frightens me the most about the prolific use of DNA to categorize people as having the 'potential' for particular types of behaviour. It is much too easy to amass information on the presence of genes or other biological indicators and determine that this information alone is responsible for, or indicative of, human action. I think that people have too much confidence about the ability and technical superiority of genetic testing and biotechnologies to faithfully interpret the natural world in all of its nuances. If there is anything at all that I have learned in all of my years of schooling, it is that simple solutions often mask an incredibly complex interrelation of interactions, structures and circumstances. I don't believe in the nature vs. nurture debate. In my mind, there is no debate as to which has more dominance. Very definitely, one must interact with the other in order to create the unique set of circumstances that are the result.

I myself would not want to have my DNA tested. If I were to learn that I had a cancer of one sort or the other, lurking in my genetic future, I would be paralyzed by this knowledge, and would be overly motivated to prevent this grim prediction from becoming reality. Have you ever heard of the phenomenon of doctors taking on, and often dying, of the very disease that they had studied for decades? It is not uncommon for cardiac doctors, for example, to die of heart disease. What a contradiction, when you imagine the countless hours they spent studying how to prevent, treat and cure the affliction. In my mind, there is the potential that excessive knowledge, fear or rumination on a health ailment (for example) can manifest that very circumstance in your own body. I know three women who have endometriosis, which is a disease in which the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus and attaches to other organs in the abdominal cavity, resulting in excruciatingly painful menstruation. Often these women must have their uterus removed in an attempt to alleviate the painful symptoms. I think it is interesting to note that all three of these women are devoutly Catholic. Perhaps the idea of abstinence in a culture of heightened sexual expectation creates this tension? Could the idea of a virgin mother create a strange disjoint in the female psyche? I have no proof, and I can't know, but I think that this overall idea is worth some study.

My point, really, is that if someone is told they have the 'criminal' gene, for example, they may believe that they are genetically doomed to a future of crime, and will behave accordingly. This is much the same as Dr. Smith's idea that surveillance cameras in schools will convince students that they are not trusted by authorities, and in turn, they too will mistrust those in power.

In the end, what is more powerful, the mind or the technology?

Surveillance, Media and the State

2004-10-08T16:24:00.000-07:00

The Independent Media Centre, which is an international, autonomous, collective media outlet, has had their servers confiscated by the FBI. The servers were taken from host Rackspace, under the auspices of a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT). The MLAT helps countries assist each other investigate occurrences like international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering.

This brings to mind the scene in Wim Wender's film, "The End of Violence", when the FBI traces Max's email in order to determine when and where he is located. As Lyon & Stalder asked in Surveillance As Social Sorting (p. 78), when is it acceptable to relinquish our rights to privacy and democratic freedoms in order to maintain national security and public perception of the state?

Also interesting is the use of film to bolster both Kerry and Bush in their current presidential campaigns. A movie on Kerry's war days, "Going Upriver", has just been released, as has "Celsius 41.11", Bushites re-write of Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9-11". (I'm sorry, it is so funny, the tag line for the movie Celsius 41.11 is 'the temperature at which the brain begins to die.'). Already the US cultural products and celebrities have used their visibility to encourage people to vote. Now the candidates are crossing over into the realm of entertainment... although I guess that isn't really very unique to this election. Ronald Regan and Arnold Schwarzenegger both were elected to their respective posts on a lot of star power.

Full information about FBI confiscation of Indymedia's hard drives at http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml

And, the extremely amusing trailer to Celsius 41.11 at
http://www.citizensunited-interactive.org/c41.11/

Thought Crime and Human Dignity in '1984'

2004-10-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

In George Orwell's totalitarian surveillance state, Foucault's enclosed spaces are distended in a horrific construction of the Disciplinary Society. 1984 left no stone unwatched, allowed no safe place for contemplation, created no space for dissention with the bureaucracies of INGSOC. Orwell's bleak warning to post-WWII society about the power of surveillance and the persuasiveness of propaganda has deeply embedded itself in much of our imaginings about surveillance gone too far.

What struck me the most about this dystopian world was the utter degradation of human dignity. Where people lived in a continual panoptic state, normalization of the self was so complete that even a subversive thought was punishable. Not free to rally against the state, engage in a love affair, or express individuality, these people were neither happy, nor free. Although the creation of 1984 society seems unlikely now, these still are rights and freedoms that are at stake when surveillance goes unchecked. DNA surveillance, data tracking and profiling all pose the risk of decreasing our human dignity and our right to democratic freedoms, human equality and social justice.

There are people who believe that control of the mind is a scientific possibility, and many neuroscientists are working toward unravelling the neural code. A 1964 experiment by neuroscientist Jose Delgado demonstrated that a bull's behaviour could be altered through the use of an electric impulse sent to his brain through electrodes. Since this time, there has been both fear and impetus that this knowledge could be used to create human robots, or evoke Orwellian knowledge of "thought crime". Fortunately, many now believe that neural cells are too plastic to be interpreted correctly and harnessed in this way (Horgan, 2004). However, if it was possible to do so, I wouldn't hestitate for a second in believing that this capacity would be harnessed and exploited by both government and industry for control or profit.

Horgan, John. "The Myth of Mind Control." Discover. 25.10. (2004).

Periled Thoughts from an Affected State of Mind

2004-09-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

The rendering of technology as a part of the social apparatus has a large part to do with the construction of the technology and the purpose for what it is designed, within degrees of inclusion/exclusion, opening/closing, concentrating/diffusing power. It is in the moments of generation, where a technology's use is not yet patented, solidified and institutionalized that you still can negotiate with the actuality of the technology, the outcomes of its potential design and effects. So surveillance and biotechnologies need to be discussed now before they are cemented in use and presence.

The Rear Window is always the one you forget to close.

2004-09-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

Alfred Hitchcock managed to make the movie, Rear Window (1954), more interesting than I could have imagined given the fact that it all took place on one set.

I think that this movie touches on something brought up in our first class. One woman in CMNS 453 mentioned that surveillance is not reliant on technology, and can even be carried out by a group of elderly women gossiping on the street.

In response, Dr. Smith agreed that women in the street could monitor and affect another's behaviour. However, technology endows us with capabilities that exceed normal human capacities, which can elevate observation into a tool with which to more completely surveille one another.

At the outset, Rear Window presents watching as a harmless, if naughty and reprimandable, past-time. When Jeff becomes suspicious of Mr.Thorwald's behaviour one night, he brings out his binoculars and telephoto lens to increase his visual capacities, and get a better image of Mr.Thorwald's actions. If he had not use magnifying technologies, Jeff may have believed that Mr.Thorwald was only wrapping fish in newspaper, unable to perceive that it was actually knives. The increased power and accuracy with which he could see his neighbours' actions is elevated to a degree that transformed observation into surveillance.

Until the last scenes, Mr.Thorwald was less affected by his constant surveillance than Jeff. There were many times when I thought that Jeff would become the victim of his own obsession of unsubstantiated surveillance, watching someone who was neither criminal nor suspicious. Jeff's mental state was under question the more zealous he became about Mr.Thorwald's wrongdoing. Alfred Hitchcock left us with this ambiguity until the very end. I almost wish he had not established that Mr.Thorwald was murderous, and instead that Jeff had unjustly cast suspicion on his neighbour.

Alfred Hitchcock raises the question of ethics and surveillance, but ultimately, he seems to decide that it is more ethical to protect public safety than it is to maintain the right to privacy. Those surveilling solved the crime, and peace was restored to the busy apartment block. Even when presented with the dilemna of observing suicidal neighbour Miss LonelyHeart in the process of taking her own life, Jeff decides instead to rescue Lisa from Mr.Thorwald. Hitchcock does not punish Jeff and Miss LonelyHeart does not perish, also has her happy ending.

The Dance of the Seven (sur)Veils

2004-09-10T23:27:00.000-07:00

Redemption

The first and most powerful use of video surveillance that I can remember involved a black man named Rodney King, whose vicious and unjust treatment at the hands of four white LA cops was documented by a bystander. Overwhelmingly convinced of the officers' wrong doing, the public was incensed to riot when all cops were aquitted of their crimes.

Protection

In this same sense, environmental activists take along video cameras to protect themselves from violent actions of forest workers who are angered by protests against logging in BC's sensitive old growth forests.

Suspicion

Protection is one of the most powerful uses of video surveillance. But protection easily transforms into suspicion, when watchful mechanical eyes are used to monitor for criminal potential.

Accusation

Can suspicion lead to unjust accusations? Is the eye a completely unbiased documentation of what it can capture? I think that in many cases, only part of the story is told by an eye fixated in time and place, without prior context or circumstatial knowledge.

Acquisition

Real time image capture is not the only method of surveillance that Canadians are subject to. Tracing an individual through financial transactions is a useful way for businesses to determine how to acquire consumers who fit their market profile. As a person who despises "the pitch and sell", I do my best to stay off their compiled phone lists and club accounts. My mind is already crammed full of ad jingles that I can never shake, and my eyes distinguish between more logos than they do types of trees.

Compilation

Financial and personal information is not the only data at risk. As more of the human genome is partitioned into trademarked codes, and computers are powered to compile and compare personal information, even the identity of the individual can be minutely monitored and managed. My fear of biometric capabilities is that it could be used to pre-select, elminate or limit people due to genetically determined "predispositions", that only tells part of a person's life story.

Deviation

The most devastating criminal behavior is committed by those who hold the greatest power. Screening for possible terrorists and spying on those who oppose the state is disputed as both a necessary tactic to ensure public safety, and as a crime against democracy and personal privacy.

Although surveillance technologies have the potential to be used for deterring criminal behavior, the opposing possibility that the same technologies can be destructive is just as strong.