COM 174 Exam 1

Edinburg Bridewell

1795; Scotland's first penitentiary, it was designed by Robert Adam. His original plan was a standard neoclassical building, but after a meeting with Bentham, he changed his mind. The sleeping quarters for prisoners were not visible from the center of the semicircular structure, but their working areas were

Surveillance assemblage

A concept that shifts our attention away from a central actor or place like Big Brother or the panopticon to focus on the shifting, changing construction of surveillance that threads through the many dimensions of our lives Removes individuals and practices from social context, translating them into "data" that can be analyzed in discrete form, exchanged freely, and recombined to provide a seemingly objective representation -- or "data double" -- of individuals Includes many of the things covered in the book: the watching by teachers, bosses, insurance companies, police officers, etc.

Strava heat map

A fitness app that accidentally released sensitive locations, including US military bases around the world. The Heat Map is of all the locations of users and their 1 billion activities. The map showed areas of the world that people wouldn't have access to this app so the only explanation would be US military bases and their sensitive locations around the world.

Heart rate sensor

A personal monitoring device that allows one to measure one's heart rate in real time or record the heart rate for later study. It is largely used by performers of various types of physical exercise

Panopticon

A prison conceived in the 1700s and made famous in the twentieth-century work of the late French intellectual Michel Foucault A cylindrical building surrounding a central guard tower, with individual cells built into its outer walls Cells are backlit and completely observable so that the guards in the central tower could easily watch the inmates The idea of the panopticon was to uses constant observation and a gentle system of regimented discipline to train inmates away from even the possibility of disobedience

Proximity sensor

A proximity sensor is a sensor able to detect the presence of nearby objects without any physical contact. A proximity sensor often emits an electromagnetic field or a beam of electromagnetic radiation, and looks for changes in the field or return signal Today, mobile phones use IR-based proximity sensors to detect the presence of a human ear. This sensing is done for two purposes: Reduce display power consumption by turning off the LCD backlight and to disable the touch screen to avoid inadvertent touches by the cheek.

Domesday Book

A record of English land-holding containing a massive amount of facts about people and property This so called descriptio enabled the Norman administration, having established itself militarily, to consolidate its power

Credit card

A renewing loan fund in which each expenditure borrows the needed money from the bank. If you pay the bill before the due date, no interest is charged and you've got a convenient low-cost means of short-term financial management. Don't pay the bill before the due date, the bills pile up and you are in trouble.

Autonomy

A self-governing country or region

Bureaucracy

A system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials rather than by elected representatives.

Welfare state

A system whereby the government undertakes to protect the health and well-being of its citizens, especially those in financial or social need, by means of grants, pensions, and other benefits.

Back illuminated sensor

A type of digital image sensor that uses a novel arrangement of the imaging elements to increase the amount of light captured and thereby improve low-light performance

Gyroscope

Accelerometers in mobile phones are used to detect the orientation of the phone. The gyroscope, or gyro for short, adds an additional dimension to the information supplied by the accelerometer by tracking rotation or twist

Peer surveillance

All the prying eyes around us that are interested in the data that we produce with comments and likes Friends watching friends

Accelerometer

An accelerometer is a sensor which measures the tilting motion and orientation of a mobile phone. The Apple iPhone was the first popular mobile phone to make the accelerometer a key feature of its user interface

Light sensor

An ambient light sensor is a component in smartphones, notebooks, other mobile devices, automotive displays and LCD TVs. It is a photodetector that is used to sense the amount of ambient light present, and appropriately dim the device's screen to match it

Barometer

An instrument measuring atmospheric pressure, used especially in forecasting the weather and determining altitude.

Census

An official count or survey of a population, recording various details about them.

PII

Any data that could potentially identify a specific individual. Any information that can be used to distinguish one person from another and can be used for de-anonymizing anonymous data can be considered PII.

App permissions

Apps access to data without you knowing Your phone / certain apps must ask for access to our photos, camera, microphone, etc.

Triangulation

Because cell towers monitor the identification and signal direction of each cell phone, and because multiple towers allow "triangulation" on a particular phone, its location can always be tracked. Through this particular process, your location can be narrowed to within a couple of hundred yards in urban areas that have multiple antennae

Bentham

Bentham did not design Millbank. It was the winning entry in a contest held to replace Bentham's design, the final insult after two decades of failed effort on Bentham's part to get his own revolutionary ideas set in stone Bentham tried to build a prison on the site of Millbank. In 1794 he was paid 2,000 pounds by British prime minister William Pitt for preliminary work on the project In his proposal, there was no labyrinth of corridors to get lost in, and no echoing ventilation system to allow for covert communication. His design -- which he called the Panopticon -- was an altogether purer affair. The complete idea was described over the course of 21 letters English philosopher, social reformer and sometime lawyer, best known for his promulgation of the philosophy of utilitarianism In his later life he was a radical, advocating for women's equality, animal rights, separation of church and state, and the decriminalization of homosexuality

Bluesnarfing

Bluetooth hackers can access a Bluetoother's address book, email, and call history or even hijack a phone remotely to make calls and send messages

GPS

Can disclose your location with pinpoint accuracy, typically within 50 feet Phones registered in the US and Canada are linked in with the E911. Which automatically arks your location when you dial 911

COPPA

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act A law created to protect the privacy of children under 13. The Act was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1998 and took effect in April 2000. COPPA is managed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Marketing surveillance

Coerced schemes that require you to disclose information/location about yourself We willingly/ without knowing volunteer this information with free of charge so companies can market to us and get us to buy more Learning what you or people like you want then target you with peer-pressure campaigns

Chain reaction

Companies can combine access to a variety of sensors in order to make up for lack of access to others

Background collection

Companies do background checks before they decide to hire you. Doing a "deep" web searches on individuals, tapping into social networking sites, blogs, Tumblr, Craigslist, Yahoo! groups, and many, many more sites.

Spiders

Computer programs that search the internet, they "crawl" through the information and follow every link to a new page, recording everything they find and bringing it back to the search engine The search engines don't just record what you ask but the IP address, the sites you click on, and how long you stayed on for.

Networked society

Control societies Network power Deleuze All places with surveillance are linked

Cookies & Zombie Cookies

Cookie: a small text file initially placed in the memory of your web browser by a website you visit. When the website's server sends your browser a cookie for the first time, it designates a unique ID containing a name and a value. Cookies are used for all kinds of things, like recognizing your computer and filling in usernames or passwords for you, keeping track of what's in your virtual shopping cart while you browse in an online store, etc. Zombie cookie: An HTTP cookie that returns to life automatically after being deleted by the user.

Isla de la Juventud

Cuba, 1928; This huge prison was built by dictator Gerardo Machado and housed up to 2,500 prisoners at a time in five circular cell blocks, each with a tall central observation tower. After the Cuban Revolution, the prison housed up to eight thousand political prisoners, and was the site of riots and hunger strikes. Visually, this prison is a strong panopticon contender, but Bentham would never have stood for the overcrowding

Credit score

Data gathered by the three companies: Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Data like how many cards, loans, and accounts you have; your total debts, bounced checks, debit card overdrafts, or consistent low balances. This data is gathered and then generate a composite score.

Disciplinary society

Disciplinary power The Panopticon The ideal that the Enlightenment rationalists of the 18th century were attempting to achieve

Electronic Benefits Transfer/EBT Public/Private Partnerships

EBT cards are used for accessing food (and welfare) assistance The same large banks, such as Citibank, run the EBT systems and often collect massive service charges from the people who have the least EBT cards let caseworkers, financial companies, and others scrutinize every purchase so that recipients can be called on to justify their purchases or be cut from assistance programs

Foucault

Elevated the panopticon from failed scheme to governing metaphor French thinker, particularly interested in the structures and dynamics of power and knowledge 1975 - published Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison For him, the panopticon is the pinnacle of what he called the disciplinary society, the ideal that the Enlightenment rationalists of the eighteenth century were attempting to achieve

Surveillance society

Every one of the items, places, and activities is a key agent in the overlapping systems of watching, recording, and assessing that make up a "surveillance society." These forms of supervision might take the shape of tracking your cell phone location, calls, and contact information

Military & surveillance

First developed with the goal of being able to communicate effectively in the event of a nuclear war. Looking for potential recruits and pushing them to enlist/ looking at them and tracking them Drug testing technology was first developed for the military and prisons The military uses surveillance in at least two ways: Surveillance technologies are used to monitor military readiness and performance A vast surveillance assemblage is used to monitor potential threats and prepare for conflict

Surveillance architecture

Foucault described a world where the physical layout of buildings and institutions are used to modify behavior. The shape of buildings and cities could help avoid epidemics and revolts, and even encourage morality Foucault is clear that spatial reorganizations -- even grand architectural plans -- are not enough, that a building alone won't solve social problems. The plans of the architect must correspond with the practices of the people who inhabit that architecture, or the desired effect won't be achieved "I think that it can never be inherent in the structure of things to guarantee the exercise of freedom,...The guarantee of freedom is freedom." - Foucault

Merchant category codes

Four-digit numbers that banks use to monitor and record the types of businesses where we use our credit cards Using these codes, card issuers and other analysts can reconstruct profiles of human behavior -- a pattern of spending like this indicates high risk behavior that could trigger an increased interest rate, a lower credit rating, or reduced credit limit

Big Brother

From George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four; is probably the most famous bogeyman and symbol of a surveillance society. In Orwell's dystopia Oceania, citizens are closely watched for signs of ideological or personal deviation from the norm. Reactions to deviance are terrifying in their cruelty and violence. Civil society does not exist, and families have been co-opted by the totalitarian state

Bentham: His design -- which he called the Panopticon -- was an altogether purer affair. The complete idea was described over the course of 21 letters. Bentham imagined a circular building, with the inspector's tower in the center and the cells arranged radially around it. The Panopticon was designed to make one particular class of people - convicted criminals - live very publically. Bentham's Panopticon is not just an exercise in radical transparency, it's also a labour-saving device Foucault: Elevated the panopticon from failed scheme to governing metaphor. Foucault brought the metaphor to bear on his own society and opened the door for generations of surveillance scholars to do the same. For him, the panopticon is the pinnacle of what he called the disciplinary society, the ideal that the Enlightenment rationalists of the eighteenth century were attempting to achieve. Examining Bentham's plans, he saw those same labor-saving power structures woven into the fabric of 1970s society.

How do Bentham's and Foucault's view of the panopticon differ?

There are at least four ways your location can be tracked: through cell towers, GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth. A cell phone is basically a fancy three-channel radio -- one channel talks, one channel listens, and a third channel arranges communication with the system. When a cell phone is on, it's in steady communication with the now ubiquitous cell towers and antennae - known as sites.

How do our phones locate us?

RealID

In 2005, the U.S. Congress tried to clean up confusion by passing the Real ID Act. This would have created a de facto national ID card by requiring all fifty states to adopt similar formatting, documentation, and verification standards in their state licensing and identification cards Also required each state to share all identification information and driving records with all other states

Infrared sensor

Infrared is a line-of-sight wireless technology that uses a beam of invisible light to transmit information. This means that the infrared ports of both devices must be somewhat aimed at each other for a connection to succeed. Infrared is the same technology used in most remote controls for home A/V gear such as TVs

Democracy & surveillance

Internet is a medium that spreads democracy by creating unfettered access to information and ideas Democracy is a special sub-set of state surveillance. Democratic societies use surveillance to grant various benefits to citizens and non-citizens. Democratic states also employ surveillance in other ways on citizens and non-citizens

Pressure sensor

Measures how hard or how firm you touch your phone screen

Surveillance

Monitoring people in order to regulate or govern their behavior

NFC

Near-field communication is a set of communication protocols that enable two electronic devices, one of which is usually a portable device such as a smartphone, to establish communication by bringing them within 4 cm of each other

Gutenberg Press

Now the political sphere could expand enormously, given the novel availability of written texts This is of course highly pertinent to the development of surveillance as a dimension of modernity; printing facilitated the development of modern democratic governance It also raises the question of whether the late 20th century use of information technology portends further alterations in organizational power Johannes Gutenberg is usually cited as the inventor of the printing press. Indeed, the German goldsmith's 15th-century contribution to the technology was revolutionary — enabling the mass production of books and the rapid dissemination of knowledge throughout Europe

Systemic surveillance

On a broad scale as we shall understand it here, came with the growth of military organization, industrial towns and cities, government administration, and the capitalistic business enterprise within European nation-states It was, and is, a means of power; but not merely in the sense that surveillance enhances the position of those "in power"

Capitalism & surveillance

One abiding feature of societies we call modern is the economic system of capitalism, which brought with it a strong surveillance dimension For Karl Marx, surveillance was located within struggles between labor and capital in the business enterprise and the capitalist system Capitalism relies on surveillance in two primary ways: Employers have developed sophisticated surveillance techniques to monitor their employees Companies use surveillance to understand and target customers

Public by default

Online things are public and it takes effort to make them private...Opposed to the real world where things like conversations are private by default and public by effort. Information is public, you have to change it yourself, if you want your information to be private

OPSEC

Operations security (OPSEC) is a process that identifies critical information to determine if friendly actions can be observed by enemy intelligence, determines if information obtained by adversaries could be interpreted to be useful to them, and then executes selected measures that eliminate or reduce adversary exploitation of friendly critical information

Agency

Our choice. But this agency is heavily constrained or shaped by physical and technological limits and properties.

Papyrus

Paper When papyrus became widely available to the Romans, through their conquest of Egypt, could they hold together administratively the vast spaces that would be known as the Roman Empire Papyrus fell into disuse after the decline of Rome, and it took the growth of printing - the "Gutenberg revolution" - before a further major change could occur in administrative power

Private sector

Part of the national economy that is not under direct government control

Pseudo-panopticon

Prisons and other types of institutions said to have been built on panoptic principles Mostly what this seems to mean is that they're circular. But a circular plan does not a panopticon make

Ancien Regime (Sovereign Power)

Refers to the political and social system in France before the Revolution of 1789 Punishment, torture and even death were meted out upon the criminal body, often before the observing masses The public execution is the ultimate expression of this system of administration

St. Petersburg Panopticon Institute

Russia, 1809; Jeremy's own brother, Samuel Bentham, had a naval trade school built for youths aged seven to twenty-two on a panoptic plan. The workhouse burned down in 1818

Bluetooth

Share your information within a smaller radius. Bluetooth hackers can access the bluetooth person's address book, email, and call history or even hijak the phone remotely to make calls and send messages.

WiFi

Smartphones are wifi devices that continuously scout for available networks so that data can be pushed to the device, even if you are not actively searching the web or checking email. Wifi networks are assigned unique IP addresses that are tied to physical locations, when you use these networks, the IP address is saying "here". Meaning it increases the functionality of our apps but that our location is always known and all of our locations and movements are being archived by our phone.

Biometric sensor

Technology like Face ID, fingerprint unlocking, palm scanning, etc.

Magnetometer

The compass in our phones Provides mobile phones with a simple orientation in relation to the Earth's magnetic field. As a result, your phone always knows which way is North so it can auto rotate your digital maps depending on your physical orientation.

Internet of Things

The connecting of all electronic grids and appliances to the Internet so that each item has a unique number (IP address) that can be accessed remotely. Once they have IP addresses and are connected to the Internet, they can "talk" to other devices or applications and be controlled from remote locations

Function creep

The gradual widening of the use of a technology or system beyond the purpose for which it was originally intended, esp when this leads to potential invasion of privacy What happens when technological systems expand beyond their original purposes

Terms of service

The legal contract between a user and a company offering a service on the Web. rules by which one must agree to abide in order to use a service. Terms of service can also be merely a disclaimer, especially regarding the use of websites

Corporate surveillance

The monitoring of employee communications by employers, who may consider it necessary to prevent employee theft and other misbehavior; critics argue it is a form of corporate theft as an infringement on a traditional right to privacy. Surveillance technologies are direct programs of observation clearly designed to monitor and discipline employees. Or it's just designed for different purposes like sending emails or entering a parking garage

Net neutrality

The principle that Internet service providers treat all data on the Internet equally, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. They cannot prioritize one specific site or platform by slowing them down or causing them problems

Docile bodies

The prisoners in the Panopticon became "docile bodies" so accustomed to constant observation that they internalized discipline and lost the capacity to resist

Self surveillance

The things you do "right" should also worry you or, better, concern you in the sense that you need to attend to them and be aware of your digital persona. Credit ratings monitored and managed for fraud or error, is the same thing that goes for school, health, and insurance records, all these registries that document our lives.

IP address

The unique number that gets linked to all the internet activity that you do.

Geofencing

The use of GPS or RFID technology to create a virtual geographic boundary, enabling software to trigger a response when a mobile device enters or leaves a particular area. A virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area. A geo-fence could be dynamically generated—as in a radius around a point location, or a geo-fence can be a predefined set of boundaries

Warfare state

The waging of war against an enemy; armed conflict.

Data aggregators/Data aggregiation

These companies gather and analyze much of what we do with our cards Any process in which information is gathered and expressed in a summary form, for purposes such as statistical analysis Data mining systems that spread business information online. They collect and share business data with a multitude of sources, including search engines like Google

Unique device identifier

Third parties can track subscriber behavior. These companies can learn what the user likes, and then tailor advertising accordingly.

The rules of ancient civilizations, such as Egypt, kept population records for purposes such as taxations, military service and immigration. And the Book of Numbers records how even the nomadic people of Israel undertook more than one census to record population details as far back as the fifteenth century BC. The Israelite Censuses seem to have been a means of regrouping after the flight from slavery in Egypt and of ensuring some semblance of military order among people who had shortly before seen a ruthlessly exploited ethnic minority underclass. The Domesday Book was a record of English land-holding began in 1086, containing a massive collection of facts about people and property

What are the historical origins of surveillance?

Some ways that people justify not caring about surveillance are (1) Nobody cares about me; (2) If I'm not doing anything wrong, who cares?; and (3) The law will protect me. They aren't right because surveillance isn't necessarily just about exposing someone for doing a negative thing, it's about regulating behavior and governing Internet usage.

What are the ways people justify not caring about surveillance? Are they right?

Virtually all significant social, institutional, or business activities in our society now involve the systematic monitoring, gathering, and analysis of information in order to make decisions, minimize risk, sort populations, and exercise power. Each day, with each new technology, we grow more accustomed to the surveillance society. Surveillance doesn't always come out of the dark recesses of Big Brother's evil scheming. Many books about surveillance place almost complete emphasis on the negatives of surveillance. Surveillance does more than just watch. Surveillance also shapes our selves by creating odd versions of ourselves

What does it mean to say we live in a surveillance society? How is surveillance both helpful and dangerous?

Often, being critical is mistaken as being negative for the sake of being negative. Conversely, the idea of critique is based on the value in "exploring all facets" of a topic. Being critical often makes people uncomfortable because it tasks them with thinking beyond their own lived experience, beliefs, or values. However, in those moments of discomfort and uncertainty, we grow intellectually. There are five assumptions we make when we take a critical approach to surveillance culture: The study of the ways surveillance exists in everyday life can offer insight into social beliefs, attitudes, and power relations The most seemingly mundane practices and discourses can shape our assumptions and worldviews Everyday knowledge and experiences are important to the ways communities share experiences, maintain social stability, and recognize the need for social change Exploring the culture of surveillance allows us to focus on the ways communication about surveillance reproduces, resists, and transforms existing power relations and conditions of inequality A critical approach to surveillance culture calls us to study the implications of surveillance in our society

What does it mean to take a critical approach to surveillance studies? What is the purpose of being critical?

It is important to note how power is maintained in those societies, how the administration depended on writing. Recording details of past transactions was more reliable than human memory Printing facilitated the development of modern democratic government

What important conclusions we can draw from the history of surveillance?

Big Brother: From George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four; is probably the most famous bogeyman and symbol of a surveillance society. In Orwell's dystopic Oceania, citizens are closely watched for signs of ideological or personal deviation from the norm. Reactions to deviance are terrifying in their cruelty and violence. Civil society does not exist, and families have been co-opted by the totalitarian state Little Brother:

What is Big Brother? Little Brother?

The gradual widening of the use of a technology or system beyond the purpose for which it was originally intended, esp when this leads to potential invasion of privacy What happens when technological systems expand beyond their original purposes Facebook creators probably didn't plan on designing platforms that would encourage parents to spy on their children, employers to fire their employees, FBI agents to track suspects, insurance companies to deny medical benefits, gay people to be involuntarily outed, or corporations to humiliate the families of litigants

What is function creep? Can you give examples of function creep?

Rather than think of power as a repressive force used against others, Foucault regards power as a productive force that circulates through all levels of society. Power/Knowledge creates and sustains social relations in every instance

What is power? How does surveillance make use of power?

A prison conceived in the 1700s and made famous in the twentieth-century work of the late French intellectual Michel Foucault A cylindrical building surrounding a central guard tower, with individual cells built into its outer walls Cells are backlit and completely observable so that the guards in the central tower could easily watch the inmates The idea of the panopticon was to uses constant observation and a gentle system of regimented discipline to train inmates away from even the possibility of disobedience The panopticon is the symbol for the shift from public punishment of criminals to the confinement and training of inmates, molding them into good citizens

What is the Panopticon? How has the panopticon been used in surveillance studies?

Data like your location, calls dialed and received, call contents, text messages, music, videos, photos, and all other transactions can be considered data trails.

What kinds of data do our phones keep?

A mass of brickwork equal to a fortress, on the left bank of the Thames, close to Vauxhall Bridge... It was designed by Jeremy Bentham, to whom the fee-simple of the ground was conveyed, and is said to have cost the enormous sum of half a million sterling Still under construction when it opened in 1816. Built on marshy banks of the south side of the Thames; layout was complex - central tower surrounded by hexagon of walls, each segment was base of a further pentagon Troubled project; soggy terrain caused delays, budget overruns; done in 1821, but didn't last long Labyrinthine network of corridors was so confusing that the prison's own warders sometimes got lost. Became a holding cell for convicts being shipped to Australia. Closed in 1890.

What was Millbank prison and what does it teach us about public attitudes about surveillance?

Cell towers

When the cell phone is one it is in communication with the cell towers or sites. The equipment needs to figure out which sites will handle the signal from your regularly moving phone. Even if a call or data transfer is not being made, the service provider's equipment actively monitors the identity, direction, and strength of the signal. Multiple towers allow for triangulation on a particular phone, its location is always being tracked. Your location can be narrowed within a couple of hundred yards.

Voice commands/Wake words

Words like hey google, alexa, siri. The words that wake up your device and they prompt to do what you ask them

De-identification/Anonymization

process used to prevent a person's identity from being connected with information. Common uses of de-identification include human subject research for the sake of privacy for research participants.

Disciplinary power

productive power of surveillance and visibility; Suffuses each and every relationship; Sees bodies as inventions of the technologies that make the body and the person visible, analyzable and manipulable The panopticon is an example

Biometric data

term used to refer to any computer data that is created during a biometric process. This includes samples, models, fingerprints, similarity scores and all verification or identification data excluding the individual's name and demographics.

Privacy settings

the part of a social networking website, internet browser, piece of software, etc. that allows you to control who sees information about you controls available on many social networking and other websites that allow users to limit who can access your profile and what information visitors can see.

Networked power

the power of social actors over other social actors in the network. -the forms and processes of networked power are specific to each network

Little Brother

the same technological advances that have empowered the rise of Big Brother have created another wrinkle in the story. We might call it the emergence of Little Brother: the ordinary citizen who by chance finds himself in a position to record events of great public import, and to share the results with the rest of us. This has become immeasurably easier and more likely with the near-ubiquitous proliferation of high-quality recording devices

Single sign-on

user authentication service that permits a user to use one set of login credentials (e.g., name and password) to access multiple applications