433 posts tagged with surveillance.
Displaying 1 through 50 of 433. Subscribe:
How social networks prey on our longing to be known
"To be online today is to constantly walk a tight-rope between the longing to be known and the dread of being perceived." [more inside]
PFLAG sues Texas to protect transgender members
From Erin Reed's newsletter: In a legal filing Thursday, PFLAG National sought to block a new demand from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that would require the organization to identify its Texas transgender members, doctors who work with them, and contingency plans for anti-transgender legislation in the state. The civil investigative demand, issued on Feb. 5, calls for extensive identifying information and records from the LGBTQ+ rights organization. PFLAG, in its filing to block the demands, describes them as "retaliation" for its opposition to anti-transgender laws in the state and alleges that they violate the freedom of speech and association protections afforded by the United States and Texas constitutions. [more inside]
Every Transaction an Ad, Every Machine a Spy
When a student at University of Waterloo waited for a vending machine to reboot after a crash, they noted a curious error message for an app titled Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognitionApp.exe. They posted a Reddit message "Hey, so why do the stupid M&M machines have facial recognition?" which eventually led the school to disable the vending machine software until the machines could be removed. [more inside]
Why the Noise of L.A. Helicopters Never Stops
A Land of Contrasts ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Sinicisation
How China is tearing down Islam [ungated; viz. cf.] - "Thousands of mosques have been altered or destroyed as Beijing's suppression of Islamic culture spreads."[1,2] [more inside]
Reminder: Everyday acts of civil disobedience are always an option.
Here's a couple examples. The present: A young woman walks down a street in Tehran, her hair uncovered, her jeans ripped, a bit of midriff exposed to the hot Iranian sun. An unmarried couple walk hand in hand. A woman holds her head high when asked by Iran's once-feared morality police to put a hijab on, and tells them: "Screw you!" [more inside]
Your Face is Not a Barcode
Phil Agre warned us about ubiquitous surveillance--in 2001. “I've been in the military and the police, and if you had seen some of the things that I've seen then you would change your mind. You don't know what I've seen. Besides, everyone knows, having been reminded daily by the news, that evil crimes are committed every day. The real problem with your argument is that, like the argument I just addressed, it could be applied to support giving absolute power to the military and police. But then, by definition, we would no longer be a free society. We need principled arguments about the place of government force in a free society, and my purpose here is to suggest what some of those arguments might be."
Flipping the surveillance state
After the Los Angeles Police Department voluntarily turned over 9300 police officers' photos, names, ranks and badge numbers in response to a public records request, it is now suing a reporter and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition to return these materials, over a concern for undercover officers' privacy. [more inside]
How to geolocate the photo of a spy plane flying over China spy balloon
The Cult of Reaction
Yet much of the anxiety provoked by today’s reaction economy consists in the possibility that, in our desperate hunt for feedback and our need to give feedback to others, we allow ourselves to be steered in directions we did not consent to, and may not wish to go. This has echoes of the mid-20th-century fears of advertising, PR and propaganda, with the difference that now, in the age of reaction chains, we are drawn towards controversy, absurd public spectacles, endlessly mutating memes, trolling etc. In these showers of feedback, much of the appeal is in the sheer quantity of reaction being circulated. Feedback mechanisms, which the cyberneticians viewed as instruments to achieve autonomy and facilitate navigation, turn out to be a trap. from The Reaction Economy by William Davies [LRB; ungated]
No Database is Neutral
Over time, the mere existence of such databases becomes a continued justification for their use, so entrenched are they in everyday governance, in policy and decision-making. They aren’t merely representative of everything that the state already knows about an individual, but what’s possible for the state to know, if and when it becomes ostensibly necessary. from Database States by Sanjana Varghese [more inside]
Boss behavior and policing delivery drivers
At the Digital Doorstep: How Customers Use Doorbell Cameras to Manage Delivery Workers. We wanted to understand how residents use and monitor these cameras, but more importantly, we wanted to know their impact on low-wage delivery workers who are routinely observed and recorded over the course of their daily work. How does this form of surveillance change labor conditions?
Reading this on Phone? In the DB already.
It’s no secret that U.S. government agencies have been obtaining and using location data collected by Americans’ smartphones. However, new documents obtained by the ACLU through an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit now reveal the extent of this warrantless data collection. The 6,000-plus records reviewed by the civil rights organization contained approximately 336,000 location points across North America obtained from people’s phones.
(a small example to be sure)
A canary’s song
Olivia Snow, a writer, professor, and dominatrix explains how the surveillance techniques tested on sex-workers will be deployed against those seeking abortions and offers some tips to protect your privacy. [more inside]
American Dragnet: Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century
When you think about government surveillance in the United States, you likely think of the National Security Agency or the FBI. You might even think of a powerful police agency, such as the New York Police Department. But unless you or someone you love has been targeted for deportation, you probably don’t immediately think of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
This report argues that you should. [more inside]
Your favourite Canadian coffee chain is watching your every move
Canadian investigators determined that users of the Tim Hortons coffee chain's mobile app "had their movements tracked and recorded every few minutes of every day," even when the app wasn't open, in violation of the country's privacy laws. (Ars Technica) “Location data is highly sensitive because it can be used to infer where people live and work, reveal trips to medical clinics. It can be used to make deductions about religious beliefs, sexual preferences, social political affiliations and more.” (Privacy Commissioner of Canada) [more inside]
Rights being lost in reality
Zeynep Tufekci in the New York Times: "That core principle of liberty, the right to be free of intrusions and surveillance of this scope and scale, needs to be defended against the new technologies that have undermined it so gravely." [more inside]
Hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God
Bossware is coming for almost every worker the software you might not realize is watching you.
Work from home reproduces the same state of surveillance as the cubicle. [more inside]
The Secret Police: Inside a Shadowy Surveillance Machine in Minnesota
An investigation by MIT Technology Review reveals a sprawling, technologically sophisticated system of police surveillance targeting civil rights activists, protesters, and members of the press in Minnesota.
[more inside]part 1: Cops built a shadowy surveillance machine in Minnesota after George Floyd’s murder part 2: After protests around George Floyd’s murder ended, a police system for watching protesters kept going part 3: Inside the app Minnesota police used to collect data on journalists at protests
“We need an online equivalent of Free Range Kids”
Cyd Harrell, at wired.com: Intrusive surveillance has become a parental rite of passage in America. But the parental panopticon is not a mark of maturity and responsibility but rather of paranoia, distrust, and devolvement. The Kid Surveillance Complex Locks Parents in a Trap. [more inside]
Where Everyone Knows Your Name
All Eyes on You So you wish to fight street crime but you want to maintain your privacy for reasons. [more inside]
"on the inside I was screaming curses to Jupiter"
“And to the Republic” by Rachel Kolar is a fantasy story about an alternate civic religion for the US and one sister frantically trying to persuade another: "I didn’t hurry out the door, since that would raise suspicion. Instead, I stopped at the shrines as I always did, lighting my incense to Mercury for a safe commute and to Washington, Lincoln, and the paters patriae for the health of the Republic, before sliding behind the wheel of my car and punching my sister’s number into my cell phone." [more inside]
"They aren’t supposed to be used for frivolous things, she knows that"
"(emet)" by Lauren Ring is a speculative novelette involving surveillance technology, a tech worker who's "not even a cog in a machine, she’s just a drop of oil that helps the cog turn," and the programming of golems. It "was originally published in the July/August 2021 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, and is temporarily available on this page for the purposes of awards consideration." Ring's stories on the intersection of tradition and sci-fi futures also include "The Best Latkes On the Moon" ("This is how to make latkes when you’ve just turned eleven and it’s the first night of Hanukkah and you are alone on the moon.") and “Three Riddles and a Mid-Sized Sedan” ("I teach my daughter to chalk runes around the house, double yellow lines that forbid the cars from crossing."). [more inside]
Cats not bears
Making Photography in a Surveillance State
Last summer’s uprisings were likely the most photographed in history, with not only mainstream press in attendance, but near-every attendee equipped with their own networked camera, live-streaming and hashtagging the protests, creating layers upon layers of unquantifiable documentation. The rampant circulation of these images—often shared in real-time— propelled the movement on and offline, allowing the summer’s events to swell into a global uprising. When these images were quickly co-opted by the state, with law enforcement using them to retaliate against BLM activists, photographers online began to employ a variety of visual answers to the problem of privacy, blotting out the faces of protestors with digital ink.
patron records and circulation privacy in libraries
Librarian and researcher Dorothea Salo teaches an information security and privacy class that "asks students to investigate various aspects of the privacy/security situation surrounding their choice of campus-related data." Based on what they dug up, Salo requested records of her own library usage data at the University of Wisconsin, and published the dataset. It's big and detailed, goes back to 2002, and violates traditional library-patron privacy expectations. Librarian Kendra K. Levine: "The circulation data should not exist. I know it’s valuable for collection assessment but to the level of granularity tied to an individual?" Salo wrote a follow-up to "give you some idea where to go looking if you’re curious about a library’s stated practice".
Surveillance Capitalism in the Library and Lab
"For some time now, the major academic publishers have been fundamentally changing their business model with significant implications for research: aggregation and the reuse or resale of user traces have become relevant aspects of their business. Some publishers now explicitly regard themselves as information analysis specialists. Their business model is shifting from content provision to data analytics. This involves the tracking –i.e. recording and storage –of the usage data generated by researchers (i.e. personalised profiles, access and usage data, time spent using information sources, etc.) when they utilise information services such as when carrying out literature searches." [more inside]
“expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize”
UC Berkeley Library acquires FBI records of surveillance of Black leaders
In 1967, the FBI quietly unleashed a covert surveillance operation targeting “subversive” civil rights groups and Black leaders, including the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King Jr., Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and many others. The objective, according to an FBI memo: to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the radical fight for Black rights — and Black power. Details of that sabotage plaster internal FBI records, with thousands of pages scattered across a medley of databases. Now, the UC Berkeley Library is working to put those pieces together.
...Their Apps Tracked Them.
Unlike the data we reviewed in 2019, this new data included a remarkable piece of information: a unique ID for each user that is tied to a smartphone. This made it even easier to find people, since the supposedly anonymous ID could be matched with other databases containing the same ID, allowing us to add real names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and other information about smartphone owners in seconds.
They Stormed the Capitol. Their Apps Tracked Them.
Students needed more support, not more surveillance.
"Proctoring software is some of the most outrageous "cop shit" in schools right now." Educational technology critic Audrey Watters on school surveillance.
These tools gather and analyze far more data than just a student's exam responses. They require a student show photo id to their laptop camera, then match that data that to the student's 'biometric faceprint'. They capture audio and video from the session — the background sounds and scenery from a student's home. Some ask for a tour of the student's room to make sure there aren't "suspicious items" on the walls or nearby. Some also capture a student's keystrokes, track location data, pinpointing where the student is working. [more inside]
These tools gather and analyze far more data than just a student's exam responses. They require a student show photo id to their laptop camera, then match that data that to the student's 'biometric faceprint'. They capture audio and video from the session — the background sounds and scenery from a student's home. Some ask for a tour of the student's room to make sure there aren't "suspicious items" on the walls or nearby. Some also capture a student's keystrokes, track location data, pinpointing where the student is working. [more inside]
The Trick of Orthodoxy
Economics truly is a disgrace - "This is very personal post. It is my story of the retaliation I suffered immediately after my 'economics is a disgrace' blog post went viral. The retaliation came from Heather Boushey–a recent Biden appointee to the Council of Economic Adviser and the President and CEO of Equitable Growth where I then worked. This is not the story I wanted to be telling (or living). Writing this post is painful. I am sorry." (via; previously) [more inside]
Rooms Full of People
Is Palantir's Crystal Ball Just Smoke and Mirrors? Peter Thiel-backed surveillance giant Palantir Technologies (previously) is set to go public September 30. Long controversial for its secrecy and involvement with the more unsavory parts of the national security state (e.g., ICE, CIA, NSA), Palantir is under scrutiny for its financial woes -- it posted a $600 million loss in 2018 and in 2019 -- and for whether its product even works as advertised. Palantir portrays its software as like its namesake — a crystal ball you gaze into for answers... But the truth is that it still appears to take a lot of manual labor to make it work, and there’s nothing magical about that.
AI, aliens, rain control, & how voting/election systems might change
"One Hundred Sentences About the City of the Future: A Jeremiad" by Alex Irvine (2008) and "Reliable People" by Charlie Jane Anders (March 2020) depict future elections, including personal media feeds, aliens, and Humans of Distributed Network Origin. And: in October 2018, Mozilla invited two speculative fiction authors to describe elections in the future. "Hello, I’m Your Election" by Genevieve Valentine (caution: dark) and "Candidate Y" by Malka Older (audio for both) take different approaches to integrating data mining and Q&A into voting processes.
[more inside]
Remorseful Tech Insiders R US
The Social Dilemma is a Netflix documentary-drama on "the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations." But is their solution of "humane technology" the right one? An essay on LibrarianShipwreck argues that in a world of empowered arsonists, "humane technology" seeks to give everyone a pair of asbestos socks.
The chickenization of everything
How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism (thread) - "Surveillance Capitalism is a real, serious, urgent problem... because it is both emblematic of monopolies (which lead to corruption, AKA conspiracies) and because the vast, nonconsensual dossiers it compiles on us can be used to compromise and neutralize opposition to the status quo."[1,2,3] [more inside]
SuperDole (RIP?)
An ode to Pandemic UI (thread) - "The extra unemployment insurance benefits that were handed out by the U.S. government in the early months of the pandemic to people rendered jobless by Covid-19 represent one of the most extraordinary and successful programs in the nation's history. The $600-a-week in assistance, often referred to as 'pandemic UI', was so generous that it caused an unprecedented spike in Americans' disposable income."[1,2,3] [more inside]
A blind and opaque reputelligent nosedive
Data isn't just being collected from your phone. It's being used to score you. - "Operating in the shadows of the online marketplace, specialized tech companies you've likely never heard of are tapping vast troves of our personal data to generate secret 'surveillance scores' — digital mug shots of millions of Americans — that supposedly predict our future behavior. The firms sell their scoring services to major businesses across the U.S. economy. People with low scores can suffer harsh consequences."[1] [more inside]
Ethics in AI
DeepMind researchers propose rebuilding the AI industry on a base of anticolonialism - "The researchers detailed how to build AI systems while critically examining colonialism and colonial forms of AI already in use in a preprint paper released Thursday. The paper was coauthored by DeepMind research scientists William Isaac and Shakir Mohammed and Marie-Therese Png, an Oxford doctoral student and DeepMind Ethics and Society intern who previously provided tech advice to the United Nations Secretary General's High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation." [more inside]
So how's that work from home working out for you at home?
Managers turn to surveillance software, always-on webcams to ensure employees are (really) working from home, Washington Post, Drew Harwell, 4/30/2020 — Always-on webcams, virtual “water coolers,” constant monitoring: Is the tech industry’s new dream for remote work actually a nightmare? With nearly half of office employees working from home to avoid COVID-19 exposure, management tracks their work using: digital avatars in virtual offices; always-on webcams/microphones; productivity stats; monitored web browsing and active work hours; multiple daily check-ins (via email, calls, text messages and Zoom video calls); not-so-optional company happy hours, game nights and lunchtime chats; hidden screen captures; logging of apps used and websites visited; key word flagging; keyboard/mouse usage; unscheduled video conferences; and endless online meetings, meetings, meetings.
Invisibility Cloak
Sure, that might lead to a dystopian future or something, but
Resisting Smartness
Q & A with Angelo Codevilla
The Codevilla Tapes: The historian of American statecraft and spycraft and conservative political philosopher Angelo Codevilla talks about the ruling elite, Jonathan Pollard, and the rise of the techno-surveillance state—and the consequent demise of the American EmpireAngelo Codevilla is interviewed by David Samuels for Tablet Magazine. Sections include: The Ruling Elite, The Rise of the Surveillance State, Are Assange and Snowden heroes or villains?, When Jeff Bezos Has Dinner With the CIA, Henry Kissinger Meets the Demon Emperor, The Progressive High Church Mass, The Cruxification of Jonathan Pollard, and Secrecy and the Rule of Law.
All this information used to be ephemeral
"So if it’s hidden, and it could be hidden, it’s hidden really damn well, even from people who are on the inside." Whistleblower and patriot Edward Snowden digitally stopped by Joe Rogan's podcast on October 23. The interview is over three hours long and Rogan almost entirely hands over the microphone to Snowden, who offers a very detailed account of events both prior to and after his 2013 disclosure of the wide-reaching global surveillance programs. [more inside]
Ding-Dong! Police Calling!
Doorbell-camera firm Ring [*] has partnered with 400 police forces, extending surveillance reach – The doorbell-camera company Ring has quietly forged video-sharing partnerships with more than 400 police forces across the United States, granting them access to homeowners’ camera footage and a powerful role in what the company calls the nation’s “new neighborhood watch.” Washington Post, Drew Harrell, August 28, 2019. [*Owned by Amazon (founded by Jeff Bezos and also owner of WaPo)]
Access for me, not for thee
UC Berkeley law professor Rebecca Wexler writes in the LA Times about "a cluster of new and proposed state and federal laws" that strengthen consumer privacy protections. Unfortunately, the new wave of legislation offers broad exceptions for law enforcement requesting access to data from third-party companies in the course of an investigation--while similar access is denied to defendants trying to prove their innocence. Writes Wexler: "Just as the privacy interests of poor, minority and heavily policed communities are often ignored in the lawmaking process, so too are the interests of criminal defendants, many from those same communities." Further detail provided in a recent paper.
There Are A Lot Of Lonely People Online
In 2017, I started getting regular messages from an anonymous Twitter user telling me my religion was ‘evil’. Eventually I responded – and he agreed to meet face to face. Hussein Kesvani meets his Islamophobic troll. Kesvani discusses the article and growing up Online and Muslim in suburban U.K on ‘What A Hell Of A Way To Die.’ (59:09)
👁️ “A Great Eye, lidless, wreathed in flame.”
Revealed: This Is Palantir’s Top-Secret User Manual for Cops [Vice] Motherboard obtained a Palantir user manual through a public records request, and it gives unprecedented insight into how the company logs and tracks individuals.
“Through a public record request, Motherboard has obtained a user manual that gives unprecedented insight into Palantir Gotham (Palantir’s other services, Palantir Foundry, is an enterprise data platform), which is used by law enforcement agencies like the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. The NCRIC serves around 300 communities in northern California and is what is known as a "fusion center," a Department of Homeland Security intelligence center that aggregates and investigates information from state, local, and federal agencies, as well as some private entities, into large databases that can be searched using software like Palantir.”[The document obtained by Motherboard for this story is public and viewable on DocumentCloud.]
Toronto Tomorrow
A Big Master Plan for Google's Growing Smart City - "Google sibling company Sidewalk Labs has revealed its master plan for the controversial Quayside waterfront development—and it's a lot bigger."[1,2] [more inside]
Your Data, Your Money, Your Laws
Your data could be at the centre of the fight against big tech (NYT) - "Furman, a Harvard professor advising the British government on tech regulation, said that rather than relying on antitrust law alone, countries should create a dedicated regulator for the tech industry, to match those covering the banking, health and transportation sectors of the economy. He said a watchdog with expertise in the field could better review a company's behavior and use of data on a case-by-case basis." [more inside]