-Shoshana Zuboff
This video talks about what is surveillance capitalism, how it engaged in our life and what will be the future of it. Surveillance capitalism is caused by IT companies using user’s data to surveillance people, and people are not aware of it in most circumstances. Those companies gained our data and sell them to third parties, and we have no idea what third parties will do to them. However, the speaker believes that this phenomenon exists because this is something no one has done before, it takes time for the public to wake up and enact related laws to constrain this behavior. Democracy will defeat surveillance capitalism eventually.
- Carole Cadwalladr
Cambridge analytical company was a company using Facebook user’s data to interact with the US presidential election and other political movements. They think politics is like fashion. They found connections between people’s personalities and which side they are more willing to vote for. Facebook was aware of this but didn’t actually try to stop this company from what they are doing. People can be controlled in shadow by some organization by analyzing data and permeate into daily digital life.
-Stuart A Thompson and Charlie Warzel
The smartphone on our phone can precisely track our position data. This applies to both normal people and celebrities. By looking into data, we are able to find who is doing something at where easily. Our demographic information can create audience profiles used in targeted advertising. Some companies offer their own ethical guidelines to govern it because of the absence of federal privacy law. “The greatest trick technology companies ever played was persuading society to surveil itself.”
-Drew Harwell
Some college is using apps to surveillance their student to see if they attend class. They use data to decide what score can a student get. They even use students’ data to see if a student is “normal”. They thought in this way they can know and guide students better. While students were struggling with technical problems. Some students feel that they are adults and should have basic privacy. There are students and parents believe this kind of software is actually very helpful.
-Helen Nissenbaum
Helen mainly told us about some extension her team made in order to cause obfuscation. “Obfuscation does not work by hiding rather it works by introducing noise.” Tract me not and Adnauseam is an extension that does random searching for users, so companies like Google and Facebook are not able to find users’ tire patterns. Her extensions are banned by google later on because it harmed the third parties: it harmed the income of commercials.
-Jenny Davis
The author resists students from tracking clearly. University is a place for people to get through from students to adults, it’s for students to learn how to take care of themselves, do decision because they think they should do this from the bottom of their hearts instead of being forced to things. Learn to choose, learn to manage how to enjoy their freedom under restrictions, decide what are the truly important things to do. The surveillance will spread, not only for students but also for faculty and other university-related students.
When people are facing choices instead of force to choose the good/right things, it’s time for their to check their moral standard. If we want to create a society with trust, dignity, care, we have to give people room to train for these noble characters.