Is Big Brother Watching?
As with other increasingly complex concepts, privacy is one that has many nuanced meanings. That is, the more we experience issues of privacy, and are forced to create our own boundaries of public and private, a sliding scale of acceptability emerges for us individually. Then, we have to mix in those personal expectations of privacy, and reconcile them with third-party definitions and policies of privacy.
Everyone needs a privacy policy these days.
And it makes sense to a certain degree, but ultimately I wonder, does any ever actually read privacy policies? And if they do pay attention to such things, could a bad privacy policy change a consumers mind about using the product? I also wonder, to what extent do we value our privacy? Sure, when people think that their privacy has been violated, it is a big deal… but we sign over our rights to privacy on a daily basis. Especially those of us who are heavily engaged with the internet.
Last month, in an editorial piece on CNN, Pete Cashmore (a social media consultant) boldly stated that, “Privacy is dead, and social media is holding the smoking gun.” He gets into the nuts and bolts of why people embed themselves in these digital networks. He speaks of the “attention economy” and the notion that a public life is a successful one. The more public you are, the more capital you will earn. An interesting notion, and probably not too far from the truth.
By engaging in the participatory infrastructure of Cyberspace, we record and post our lives, for all to see and analyse. Even when we are clever and set up our privacy controls so that our “work friends” can’t invade our personal profiles, all of our online activity is continually fed into a massive stream of data which I imagine looks something like the Matrix. Every keystroke, every website visit, every tweet, every photo, every video we share and look at… all being fed into numerous databases for numerous purposes.
As a heavy feeder of data into these streams, I have tried to reconcile my private life with my public one; but I know that if I want to use them, and try to make some headway into the “attention economy”, I must reasonably expect that the price for participating in Cyberspace, is the recording of my every movement within it.
Of course, the underlying assumption in my (and perhaps your) use is that there is no unifying program tying all the little data droppings we leave behind in our daily lives… no one actually listening to and watching the Matrix… This is what allows us to easily invoke Big Brother as if it were still a fictional archetype of a society. Big Brother may have the capability of watching, but he only pays attention when you are breaking the rules, or exploiting personal data.
But what about the people who don’t participate in Cyberspace, and cite privacy issues as their reason number 1.
The HRM has over 1200 cameras in use across the city in facilities and on Metro Transit Buses. That figure is no where close to the total number of CCTV cameras in use across the city, and indeed the whole province. The article indicates (and I suspect most public opinion agrees) that the primary purpose for these cameras is safety, and crime prevention. Although no one is monitoring the cameras, and it is hard to imagine a camera stopping a crime in progress even if they are being monitored… it is generally acceptable that CCTV cameras are a good way to enhance our personal safety.
The Brits have been doing it for years already, and major cities across Canada seem to be adopting a model of surveillance, with one noticable difference from the way it is carried out over there. In the UK, you are constantly being reminded that you are being watched by an omnious voice that comes across the subway speakers every 10 minutes, and asked to assist the CCTV cameras and report “all suspicious activity to authorities.” The authorities want people to feel like Big Brother is watching (even if he isn’t).
In Canada we like to do these things more subtley and friendly… just check out the picture with the associated Herald Story… Smile, you are on camera.
And we complacently smile and wave away our expectations of privacy… enthusiastically even, when the Google car drives by.
But where do we draw the line in the sand? We accept public surveillance in the name of security and public safety. We find electronic banking convenient and reward cards rewarding. We accept most of the cameras and data-tracking. We accept the technology which invades and kills our privacy… in fact we love it. We assist in the creation of the panoptic mosaic which is our technocracy by documenting our lives ourselves, and sharing it with anyone who cares to take an interest.
Perhaps CCTV recording will always remain okay and acceptable by the public, so long as it is related to our activities which are conducted in public.
And perhaps it will remain okay when we install cameras in the houses of people on welfare, like they are now doing in the UK (as reported by Wired Magazine in August). It is apparently a reasonable and rational thing to do over there… so why not here?
I’m glad there are watchdog organizations out there who make it their business to advocate for a human right to privacy… but ultimately I’m just happy for the little claims to privacy I can still make. I still feel as though I am in relative control of my public/private boundaries. Though I acknowledge that control is fairly superficial, because as we are so often reminded – Big Brother could watch if he wanted to.
Another round of policy revisions for The Facebook
I’ve been thinking about Facebook’s privacy policy for a while now… trying to encourage users to maximize their privacy settings, and informing them of their rights when they upload content to the site… In fact, I was writing so much about Facebook back in 2007 that I thought I had said all there was to say about it. Then, this morning, when I woke up and logged on to check in with all my pals, I noticed one friend’s update said something about Facebook violating our “rights” to privacy.
After a discussion with my husband about the semantic implications and inappropriate nature of using the words “privacy rights” and “Facebook” in the same sentance, a quick google revealed the probable source of the status update. Apparently, Facebook wants to own your Facebook Data Double even if you decide to commit Facebook suicide. So even after you disable your profile… even if you go that extra step and send Facebook an email requesting to have your profile deleted… Facebook will not remove the little bits of yourself that you leave behind on people’s walls, in people’s inboxes, or in the massive consumer databases Facebook investors have come to rely on for those great big bonuses and market research. But, they promise not to fuck with your privacy settings… so I guess that’s something…
The policy shift is causing such a ruckus, Facebook is on the defensive. But ultimately, they probably aren’t that worried about losing users because come on, let’s face it, Zuckerberg has achieved his goal of making Facebook the Windows for Web 2.0… we are hooked now, whether we like it or not.
The way Facebook is implementing this new poilicy is unfair. Users who signed up under the original user agreement and are now being informed that it is being replaced with a new user agreement that they don’t get a chance to accept or decline. One which sees you give up the rights to the “soul” of your Facebook Data Double. It seems to me that The Facebook can easily quiet the protesters by simply giving them the option to continue on as Facebook users, or not. Because I am fairly certain most users would simply do what they did the first time they signed up… click “I accept” without even reading the damn fineprint.
Frig, even those who are well-versed in The Facebook’s policies will click “I accept” without blinking an eye, because ultimately, Facebook is such an important part of our lives.
For everyone who is so up in arms about this new policy shift, I ask, what’s the big deal? So Facebook chooses to clog up it’s servers with outdated information that you didn’t care about posting in the first place. Sure Facebook will still have a record that you posted “25 things” about yourself on January 30, 2009… but who cares?
If you are worried, like I once was, about Facebook selling your information to market research firms so that they can devise updated tactics of psychological warfare in their advertising schemes… this little shift shouldn’t bother you that much… because it’s all so fluid these days… data from last week is so last year. If the Facebook data mining practices while you are a user don’t disturb you, then why should you get anxious about how they use your practically useless data after you are gone?
In the end, and in my interpretation, this is not a new privacy issue… As a user of Facebook, you should expect no more privacy in the conversations you have with your friends on their walls and in the other public spaces of Facebook than you would having the same conversations with those friends in a pub, or on the bus… Besides… there are far greater Internet Privacy Concerns on the horizon for Canadians…
Data Double Liberation?
So I’ve been thinking a lot about Facebook lately (surprise, surprise), and it seems to me that there is an awful lot of faith being put into the effectiveness of the market research and targeted advertising occurring there… faith that is perhaps unfounded, but there nonetheless. I’m fairly sure that things such as cost-benefits analyses have been done by Facebook’s mega-clients and investors. And given the amount of financial investment in Facebook from data-mining firms, it is a fairly good assumption that data has told them that this is a very important database to have access to and interact with (and for those of you who are still unaware of the investment of which I speak… here’s a A Brief History of The Facebook that I threw together back in December from all kinds of online sources which have also, in part, done the same)
It appears that Facebook has the SNS data double market cornered. And even though Facebook does not win the quantitative prize for most users (only topping 60 million “active” users worldwide, compared to the 110 million “monthly” users on MySpace in January 2008); it may win the prize for most qualitative impact on its users (and you can check out my Bridging and Bonding paper for a more in-depth analysis on that). All that to say that Facebook is an important social factor in the real life versions of the 60 million active data doubles it is home to.
Okay, so I’m throwing this term “data double” around very loosely. There is a body of sociological work on the data double, though it’s mostly associated with complex concepts like “surveillant assemblages.” The ideas at the base of the concepts, though, are in fact sort of simple, and as you become more open to them, they actually becomes common sense as they are revealed to you in your immediate experiences on a daily basis.
I will try to keep an explanation of the data double simple, but not so simple to offend the more academic of my readers. In the realm of identity and Facebook, the data double emerges as the quantified self; the physical and conceptual self is translated into pure information… bits and bytes of code expressed as profile pictures, demographic info, your likes and dislikes, your cultural preferences, the people you associate with, etc., etc…
The data double is the self assigned alpha-numerical values and assigned more market value as a social object that is a bundle of information rather than a living-breathing-thinking-feeling human being. A grouping of data doubles is a lot easier to monitor and organize than a grouping of flesh and bones creatures for those who make it their business to maintain societal stability by subduing the dangerous animal drives of the masses and guiding public opinion. When those in these positions power and influence no longer have to intervene to collect the data (which immediately taints it), and the individual does all the translation (or coding of the data double) for them, it creates an almost omnipotent ruling class.
When the database is a nice little community for the data double to work and play and communicate in, interaction with the database becomes almost habitual… and the database is MASSIVE… the database is Facebook. Facebook, the tidy little community to organize and analyze and monitor the data doubles as they interact with one another. The ironic thing about it is that most of the habitual, almost addictive, properties of interaction with a Virtual Community, probably stems from an inherent discontent for, and desire to escape from the material world that has been constructed around us … the one of unfulfilled needs and desires… the one where there is a declining sense of physical community and connectedness… the one that begets the inclination of the individual feeling more valuable as a commodified social object, rather than a true independently-thinking self.
I’ve just finished watching a 2002 BBC Miniseries called The Century of the Self, so perhaps my thinking is slightly tweaked towards grandiose theories of the mass manipulation and subduing of the individual (another irony: the main way the individual is subdued, is by convincing them that they are liberated individuals). The 4 part documentary was a chronicle of Public Relations, Advertising, Propaganda, and Social Science (Psycho-Analysis and Sociology) just generally gone wrong, in the US and Britain over the course of the 19th century (if you are interested in watching, you can find all four parts on Google Videos, or Stage 6, or good ole YouTube).
As I watched this interpretation of our recent history all the way up to our current kind of cultural status (that of the individual free-market consumer) I began to wonder how history would record this era of widespread manipulation and social control. The use of the data double, as it has manifested through social technology, towards the purposes of Bernaysian manipulation, actually seems like the next logical twist in the story, given what we know about the characters and the setting. The kinds of databases that Facebook administers are the kinds that admen and the hidden persuaders have wet dreams about… the quantified self is one that can be opened up and picked apart and measured and poked and prodded and experimented with. Eddie Bernays would indeed be proud.
The current PR trends towards brand “identity”, appealing to the uniqueness of the individual, and immediate delivery of needs gratification, essentially becomes a strategy towards the co-option and commodification of the “indie” the “folk” and the “user-created” culture, through methods of psychological, sociological, economic and cultural manipulation. Though, the average consumer likes the fact that corporations can meet their individual needs and desires by providing a glut of product choice while satisfying their impetuous desire for instant gratification… and if it’s what the customer wants, should it not be what the customer gets?
But I digress…
So for me, personally, the running dialogue in my head about participating in Facebook goes something like… Do I really want to be one of the variables in their equations? Because I know that the vast amount of understanding that could be derived from the compilation of such a massive database of user demographics, consumer choices and social connectivity is potentially omnipotent, I am apprehensive. Because I believe that in consenting to participation in a place like Facebook I am actually facilitating the privatization of such understanding, I am in fact placing it in the hands of those who would use it to try to manipulate the choices I make as a consumer and as an individual.
And yet… I do love it so…
A little while ago, I disabled my first Facebook profile, mostly for privacy reasons. But I came back, because ultimately I decided that the potential networking capability of it was more beneficial than the cost of me allowing Facebook to pimp out my data double and take 100% of the profits for the services rendered. But, of that assessment, I’m still uncertain. Now I am presented with the possibility of killing off my Facebook data double as a form of protest, and I am thinking about it again.
I think that it would be the sweetest bit of irony if some form of mass exodus of Facebook could be orchestrated… on and by means of Facebook. And now that they’ve revealed the secret of how to delete your Facebook profile, it opens the door for an interesting kind of culture jam. But how many people would actually be willing to leave? Would they leave for good? Am I willing to leave? Would I actually leave for good this time? History would tell me no… but my conviction that it’s just all wrong may get the better of me… In any case, it is something that I’m going to continue to think about until August 4, 2008.
Of course, as my colleague Ted pointed out this morning as we talked a bit about this, pure liberation of data double would come at the expense of your real-world identity… and it is perhaps, not actually possible. Without your data double… your social insurance number, your bank accounts, your frequent flyer miles, your medical records, your employee or student IDs and your credit rating… you, as an individual in this society, don’t exist… which seems absolutely absurd to me. But this is the bizzaro world, and these are strange days indeed.
Ultimately, I am cynical enough now to believe that there is nothing that can be done to derail us from the current trajectory of our future history… one that resembles a unique balance of 1984 and Brave New World… that is, the en masse willfully consented upon, narcissistic surveillance society. However, I am also still idealistic enough to believe that that belief is still not a fact. Perhaps it is just my reactionary tendencies and my own personal investment in the technology which causes me to believe that information contained the Facebook database will have important (and shaping) implications for the next wave of advertising trends and manipulated consumption patterns. But given what I think I know, I suspect I know, and what my gut tells me about the way this machine has been oiled for the last few 1000’s of years… I think that it is a logical and rational conclusion for now…
