NY Times – One Nation, Tracked:
We all know we’re all being tracked, even if we try to deny it or just shove it to the back of our minds, it’s happening and they are watching us. This article is all about that, and basically we’ve all consented to be tracked as well, which is the really messed up part.
Two researchers, we’re able to gain access to tracking data from an unspecified company. The article then shows and uncovers various patterns and graphics of people’s location in an area based on tracking from their smartphones. Again, surprise surprise, we’re being tracked and it wasn’t so hard to get the information of hundreds or thousands of people’s everyday movements. But I guess what really shocked me about this is how easy and accessible it is to get people’s tracking information. Yes, of course, the researchers who wrote the article had to put a lot of effort into getting it, but still, in a sense, it was easily accessible. The piece was gripping for me because although I know I’m being tracked, I’ve never known by who and to think that it’s smaller businesses makes me think, of what importance is my location to them? I’m no one in a high-power position or for that matter just one of the millions of people of un-interest to a larger audience. And yet I sit back and think about why these companies are tracking me, while I can pull up my phone and look at an app – Find My… – and actively see the multitude of friends I track.
This then made me think about these questions: How can I stop being tracked? Is it possible?
I feel as though as a society we give up our privacy for the luxury of our smartphones…
Cyborgology – A Clear Case for Resisting Student Tracking:
This article is all about SpotterEDU which is an app created for universities to track their students, by means of attendance. Although, the app is only made to track attendance to classes there are very obvious downfalls to tracking students. It’ll show disparities in who’s doing what work and for how long, which creates unrealistic standards that students would have to be held accountable to. Students are not the only ones who could be tracked but faculty would be held accountable for tracking as well… again still creating unrealistic standards of how to manage time…
It’s kind of shocking to think that a university could have access to a student location, yet not even student but everyone who is an active participant in a university system. We all know we’re being tracked but I’d honestly never suspect my university was watching me THAT closely…
Washington Post – College are Turning Phones into Surveillance Machines:
Re: The Cyborgology website, this article also focusses on SpotterEDU and explores its advantages and disadvantages through multiple viewpoints and personal perspectives. Again, universities are tracking their students as they feel it’d be a benefit to overall student academic habits but what the real use of tracking students?
Immediately looking at this piece, I resonate with the argument of not tracking students because infantilizes students when being in college is our freedom to grow. I relate to this because my father is constantly tracking my whereabouts on an app called Life360. For me, it doesn’t really matter, 1. I know he’s not actively watching me every day and 2. Even if he was, he’s 3 hours away and the places I go have no significance to him. But it the principle of things, why does he feel the need to track me in the first place? Safety? If safety was the answer, what good does it do anyway? He’s not here.
Taking a step back, I think tracking is all about control. That’s the whole point of this SpottedEDU app is so professors can have the control to see who’s coming to their class and not and thus execute repercussions for those who don’t.
But in the end, I think, who cares about all this control? If they don’t come to your class, the student is the one suffering and losing the money, not the teacher…
I also am thinking about the flaws within this system. It’s highly based that students are going to lectures and libraries as their main basis of being a student, but especially on the UIUC campus there are thousands of students all in different majors all doing different things. As an art student, I don’t need to go to the library to study, so how does tracking that sort of activity affect me? Or even benefit the so-called beneficial data collection for the university?
My real questions about this article is: why do universities feel it’s important to have these tracking systems put in place? What is the real benefit? Why is it so important to know and to micromanage student movement? But answering these questions beyond just thinking that it can boost the universities’ academic status, what is the real root for the need for this system? – the best example I found of this in the text was said by Erin Glass: “Why are we creating institutions where students don’t want to show up?”
Guardian – Steve Bannon:
Cambridge Analytica is a company that has used certain Facebook user data sets to manipulate or to suede opinion in political movements like the US election. The article focusses on a spotlight of Christopher Wylie who is now 28, but has been successful in heavily developing the data and at such a young age working with many high ups in position to do the work done by Cambridge Analytica. There are lots of legal issues going on with this data collection. They basically had millions of Facebook user’s personal data in order to find trends and make connections between people’s personalities to see who they would vote for. For me, this is again another example of a breach of privacy, Facebook + other companies say our data is safe, but here it is, once again, being easily accessed by big companies and used to manipulate an outcome.
I knew Facebook was bad… but this makes me question how easily my information is accessible to everyone…
Surveillance Capitalism:
They are watching us. My biggest take away from this video was that the information we give sites or just put on the internet is the least important information we give. They look at the trends, moods, location or clues in what we put out in order to target our needs without even knowing we have the need. Just like the example with the pregnant lady, how the internet knew she was pregnant before she did just because she changed to a less scented shampoo. I’ve never looked at the scope of how my activity, and not the personal information I give, is more important. Again, they are watching us but I never knew to this scope. It’s kind of like when you say you need something and then about two minutes later there is an ad related to whatever you said. It knew before you did, and that’s a scary broader concept to think about.
Slight tangent: but kind of like the Matrix? How all the robots evolved to know more than us and then harvested humans to sustain their robots habits a.k.a creating the Matrix. If our technology is so advanced that it can predict our needs before we do, is this a look into a possibility of having the reality of the Matrix?
But back to the video, Shoshana Zuboff speaks entirely of surveillance capitalism how we engage with it, how it engages with us and what all this has to do for our future (THE MATRIX ???). In a general sense, she explains that surveillance capitalism boils down to IT and data companies using people’s data to target and surveillance them. In most cases, people aren’t even aware how their data is being used and what will happen to the information we put out there.
This video and the way I’ve reacted to it is also a call for action. Knowing what we know about how our information and personal data is being used, it’s time to wake up. And, for me, I’m thinking about how we need to create action so extremes like the Matrix don’t happen.
Mapping Interventions:
Helen Nissenbaum speaks on the creation and use of TrackMeNot. It’s created to send fake queries to web browsers as to oppose the data tracking of an individual based on the information they put on the web. TrackMeNot is all based on obfuscation, which is meant to create misleading data to diminish data aggregations.
This was the last source I looked at out of all the content and with the overwhelming information I’ve taken in about how we are being tracked, thinking of obfuscation or escaping tracking is something that has really pressed my thoughts. Thinking on Adblocking and securing private data, I think about why these things needed to be created in the first place. To relate back to one of the previous sources about tracking students, why is it that people find our useless internet data so important? Yes, I understand it contribution to our capitalist society, but I’m thinking of why in a broader sense…
After Thought:
After looking at all this content an overall general thought I had was just, how much does government, companies or just data people know about me? I’ve thought about how everything I put on the internet is forever and that my information is probably stored somewhere, but I never knew it was to this degree.
I literally changed my banking password last night to prevent people from hijacking my information…