Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: Apparently she’s the Karl Marx of our time… Has she written a manifesto? Tech companies use rhetoric that misleads us. Liking targeted ads, personalization, or saying, “I have nothing to hide,” comes from a place of ignorance. Information is being gathered whether or not you disclose it from residual data. Google knows where you are at all times or how fast you type/drive. Collecting data can improve service, but it also studies patterns of human behavior. This is when auctioning your interests to companies behind your back comes into play. Restaurants can be recommended based on your zipcode. Tech can tell if you’re pregnant before you even know it based on your online purchasing. Muscles in your face can be analyzed in a Facebook photo to read your emotion. Facebook can even manipulate how you feel without you knowing it. There’s a connection between Google Earth and Pokemon Go. The ‘click through’ method gets replaced with ‘foot fall’. Businesses profited from Pokemon Go too and nobody noticed/questioned it because they were having fun. Hidden microphones also collect data. The point is that no company is taking responsibility for selling your data. You are held hostage to privacy contracts -if you don’t agree with the contract you don’t get to use the service. A future where cars are free if you pay with your privacy? Creepy! Christopher Wylie exposes Cambridge Analytica which then sparks a California lawsuit against Facebook? Freaky! Good on India for not taking the free smart phone bait. Also, the Amish not letting technology control them is kind of incredible. Using VPNs can subvert Google, but it doesn’t fix the problem.
Hellen Nissenbaum’s Mapping Interventions: TrackMeNot is a privacy project which sends fake queries to the Department Of Justice. Cryptagram encrypts images to prevent facial recognition which doesn’t necessarily hide the person, just creates noise. So, hiding in plain site? Obfuscation interferes with reading people as if they’re machines. More examples of obfuscation include Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s DNA spray, Grosser’s Go Rando, and Nissenbaum’s ADNASEUM which makes it look as though you like all the ads targeting you. ADNASEUM got banned from the chrome store for ‘harming’ the advertisement networks? Because they challenged Google’s interests (a.k.a. ad revenue)? Once again, people trading privacy for a false sense of security gets mentioned. Hopefully I will get to know more about Gary Marx come discussion time.
Carole Cadwalladr’s ’I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: I couldn’t imagine having Steve Bannon as my boss… Does Christopher Wylie feel extremely guilty for his role regarding SCL/Cambridge Analytica? I guess so if he’s considered a whistler blower. Then again, maybe he’s just saving face? I wonder if I’m one of the 230 million Americans who were psychologically profiled via Facebook… I always thought those quizes/games were sketchy. It’s scarier to think that just one Facebook friend falling for this myPersonality quiz is enough to have your information gathered as well. Apparently it doesn’t matter to Facebook if it’s for ‘research’. Of course tech and the military go hand-in-hand. Though it is interesting how they’re making a connection between fashion trends and politics… So Cambridge Analytica didn’t do work for Lukoil (a Russian company); however, they briefed them on Facebook, data, micro-targeting, and election disruption? I can’t facepalm any harder. I think describing Wylie as Machiavellian isn’t a stretch. The Lib Dems might have said no to him, but he just stumbled upon Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer who would say yes to him.
Stuart A Thompson and Charlie Warzel’s One Nation, Tracked: This website is gorgeous! Of course it’s made by The New York Times… Once again, it’s legal in the U.S. to collect and sell your data. Companies that collect your data justify this act with three claims: 1) People consent to be tracked, 2) the data is anonymous and 3) the data is secure. The reality is that these claims don’t hold up, they’re from a place of ignorance. I like how they are actually showing their collected data as dots on a map (and later paths). clearly they’ve decided to not show the names of people for the sake of this op-ed, but the reality is that names are not all that anonymous when you know where they work and live. The simple fact that they were able to acquire this data and turn it into news questions how secure it really is. I think it’s especially scary how easy it is to track down protesters, it makes running an authoritarian regime much simpler. Ah yes, the privacy policies filled to the brim with legal jargon that a layman could never really understand… I’ve never heard of S.D.K.s (which transmit location data)? Of course Facebook, Google, and Amazon have them.
Memorable quotes: 1) “The seduction of these consumer products is so powerful that it blinds us to the possibility that there is another way to get the benefits of the technology without the invasion of privacy.” 2) “D.N.A. is probably the only thing that’s harder to anonymize than precise geolocation information.”
Jenny Davis’ A clear case for resisting student tracking and Drew Harwell’s Colleges are turning phones into surveillance machines: An app called SpotterEDU is advertised as helpful for tracking student attendance (Does it make sure athletes stay eligible to play or does it notice warning signs for mental health? Probably neither?); however, this kind of tracking has the potential to negatively effect disadvantaged students. For example, students who receive financial aid and are a full-time worker may have their funding cut based on behavioral metrics (a.k.a. class attendance being lower than average). When attendance averages are determined by/reflect the demographic majority (e.g., white, upper-middle class), demographic minorities may suffer from even more unnecessary monitoring. In fact, students have already been tracked separately based on race and residency by colleges. Jenny Davis proposes that this system may expand to effect faculty too, by monitoring how long their classes are or how much time they spend in their office. I wonder if it’s truly worth having packed classes because students fear a tracking device linked to their phones?
Memorable quotes: 1) “There is a fine line between mechanisms of support and mechanisms of control.” 2) “The point is that data systems come from society and society is unequal.” 3) “Building technology was a lot more fun before it went all 1984.” 4) “We’re reinforcing this sense of powerlessness… when we could be asking harder questions, like: Why are we creating institutions where students don’t want to show up?”