Carole Cadwalladr – ’I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’ (Guardian)
Wylie even goes as far as breaking a non-disclosure agreement that outs at risk not only himself, but his boss and affiliates. It brings into question at what point is it necessary to break non-disclosure agreements in order to provide the public with the truth.
This idea of studying personality by quantifying it reaches patterns of likes/dislikes according to profile data is really interesting. I imagine that these results are limited to the selected emotions/response allowed through Facebook. But would the same patterns be visible through different social platforms? Where is the line of Facebook profile data versus all social media profiles? Should it be fair use or censored for public/selected public?
It’s crazy to understand that politics have infiltrated the online public now in order to promote and campaign their representatives. Facebook discreetly sharing profile data goes to show how corrupt the online playing field has gotten. Manipulating, and setting up propaganda according to different communities has always been in history, but this is taking it a step further. How far is too far (in the sense that we as a public loose our freedom of thought)?
Stuart A Thompson and Charlie Warzel – One Nation, Tracked (NY Times)
Phones in a way have become the new census. Except instead of the information being disclosed to the actual participants, the data is collected secretly. Instead of it belonging to a federal / government department, it is held by big corporations that hold severe consequences for their workers if they were to ever reveal information. For me, it questions the legitimacy of a federal government. It also questions the morality of these people behind the data, what are their intentions? And why are they hiding the data in the first place?
Not only do they have information of our location, they have information of our voices and facial recognition. It reminds me of Amazon’s ties with facial recognition data that Jeff Bezos attempted to hand over to ICE in order to collect undocumented customers. By doing so, profile data is being stored and handed off to federal operations that oppress, segregate, and harm lives in America.
More info here: https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/amazon-role-immigration-crackdown-190716194004183.html
Drew Harwell – Colleges are turning phones into surveillance machines (Washington Post)
When I read this I immediately thought about two apps. One of them was Kahoot. The other was an app that my friend had mentioned to me a couple semesters ago. The app they had mentioned would track your location and make sure you were in the campus during your classes. It would total points to your profile depending on how long you were in the lectures, labs, studios, etc. Kahoot also monitors the students but through anonymous data collection that they are aware of when they participate.
This article brings the topic of micromanaging into phone surveillance. I think it’s interesting that the students backlash on this because of their discomfort. They feel that it’s not only an invasion of privacy, but it sets them up to conform to being systematically surveyed. Especially if this tactic is implemented into education and academia, it become a grave and permanent mindset for upcoming generations.
Jenny Davis – A clear case for resisting student tracking (Cyborgology)
“One social consequence of SpotterEDU and similar tracking applications is that these technologies normalize surveillance and degrade autonomy. This is especially troublesome among a population of emerging adults”
I definitely agreed with this. By micromanaging students specifically, it also normalizing intensive surveillance. In addition to this, I don’t think it’s necessary. As a student, it devalues the trust, independence, and personal motivation for education and replaces it with fear of consequences/punishments. It underestimates the potential of a singular person and encourages the idea that we need someone to look after us in order to be successful. By collecting all this data, it steers towards shaping a collective persona rather than unique independent individuals.
Helen Nissenbaum – Mapping Interventions – Digital Democracies Conference (talk, 30m)
Obfuscation: “the production, inclusion, addition or communication of misleading, ambiguous, or false data in an effort to evade, distract, or confuse data gatherers or diminish the reliability (and value) of data aggregations.”
Example of manipulation of plane location through paper shreds that confused the radar frequencies during battle. Compared to spiders that make web based spiders to confuse other prey from eating their food. I’m curious about how the need to confuse and manipulate environments for the sake of private safety relates to modern day censorship of data collections.
Banning, appealing and applying legislation to prevent private data collection. Investigations reveal advertising networks play a part that continue to aid large corporations (Google).
“Information services and platforms need machine-readable humans in order efficiently to exploit out most human endeavors (sharing, learning, searching, socializing, communicating).”
Battle of morality. Who’s right is it to own information? How much of an invasion of privacy is it? And does profiling manifest efficient control.
Shoshana Zuboff – The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (video documentary, 50m)
Talks about how the biggest companies use our data that they collect. Questions how we can gain our control of our data back. Surveillance capitalism. The idea that humans are commercialized and their data is used as monetary profit among big companies.
Data not only informs the collectors of the users history, but their predictable future. With the data exchanged/sold between big businesses (Google), they can easily create algorithms that predict what the users will likely do in the future. It can inquire future geographic locations or purchases. Through this, companies can adjust their marketing and even take action within media propaganda to lure their customers.
It’s difficult to come up with a reasonable solution for the daily consumer. Since phones and technology have become to prominent and necessary, it is difficult to boycott these platforms for the sake of web privacy. While I may risk my information online if I carry my phone around, I may risk my life if I were to come to a dangerous real life situation without a phone that I could use to navigate to safety. Despite even deleting and monitoring the information my apps take from my internet profiles, there is also the constant data collection of the audio and facial recognition from the phone itself.