STS "Surveillance and You" Civic Forum

March 31, 2007 at the University of Texas at AustinSponsored by the Science, Technology, & Society Program

Source text University of Texas

“Surveillance” is a commonly heard word in our society today. Everyone has some knowledge of the topic and typically a strong opinion be it positive or negative on the impacts of surveillance. A Civic Forum focused on the societal impacts of surveillance was held on the UT Austin campus on March 31; the event was attended by over 60 participants. Austin community members came to the Civic Forum to express their opinions and concerns, listen to the expert panel, and simply converse with fellow citizens about this important issue.

The STS “Surveillance and You” Civic Forum was an event designed to bring together stakeholders from several different societal groups including members of the general public, private sector, government and academia. Participants were mixed in terms of gender, ethnicity, age, occupation, and experience with knowledge level about the issue of surveillance. Everyone walked in the door with at the very least and opinion and this blend created an environment rich in dialog and information sharing from many perspectives.

Privacy vs. Surveillance

Upon arrival at the Civic Forum, attendees were reminded of the “costs” of privacy and the ubiquity of surveillance, through participation in a “Privacy Economy.” In exchange for $5 worth of “Anonymity Dollars” participants were given the option to give their digital fingerprint. Attendees were given a badge with an IP address instead of a name. For another Anonymity Dollar a participant had the option to purchase their true name or they could opt to stick with the IP Address. For a few more Anonymity Dollars they could purchase alias name badges such as “Harry Potter” or “Lois Lane” or a white mask to cover their face to fully protect their privacy at the Forum. The “Privacy Economy” brought into sharp focus the issues of surveillance, privacy, what we as individuals are willing to sell in order to be able to participate in our monitored environments, and the fact that maintaining privacy can be costly.

Presentations are available

Goodbye Privacy

Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society that was part of the International Bruckner Festival.

“Goodbye Privacy” was the theme of this year’s Ars Electronica, the festival extraordinaire of art, technology and society in Linz, Austria. September 5–11, 2007, the focus was on these late-breaking phenomena of a new culture of everyday life being played out between angst-inducing scenarios of seamless surveillance and the zest we bring to staging our public personas via digital media.

Mobile and ubiquitous—no longer just here and now, but being present wherever you want to be, whenever you want to be. These long-nurtured yearnings that have been projected so euphorically onto new technologies have now materialized into the reality of our time. A reality that is woven from a network in which every user is a node, every exit simultaneously an entrance, every receiver a transmitter too.

At any time, at any place, we’re capable of switching into telematic action mode, of reaching anyone and being accessible by all. With the aid of our avatars, blogs and tags, we assume digital form and adopt more or less imaginative second identities. Emerging at a rapid clip are completely new types of the public sphere featuring new rules of play and (sometimes even) new hierarchies. But it’s not merely technology, information and communication that have become omnipresent. To a much greater extent, it’s we ourselves: traceable at all times and anywhere via our cellphone’s digital signature that makes it possible to pinpoint our location to within a few meters; classifiable via the detailed and comprehensive personality profiles that we unwittingly leave behind as the traces of all our outings in digital domains.What’s occurring in the wake of these developments is a far-reaching repositioning and reevaluation of the political, cultural and economic meaning of the public and private spheres.

Bluetooth & privacy

According to Silicon Republic the Information Commissioner in the UK has effectively ended its regulation of Bluetooth technology leading to fears of spamming, the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC). And in Ireland is currently considering incorporating Bluetooth usage into our data protection acts.

The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) in the UK will now no longer cover Bluetooth technology despite the fact that it is a wireless technology operating on a short-range radio and brings with it all the vulnerability of these connections.

A spokesperson for the office of the Data Protection commissioner said: “We are currently engaging in a debate about this at the moment. The key issue for us is whether and to what extent personal information is involved in the transfer.”

Read the full article at Silicon Republic

Databases Must Balance Privacy With Utility

Article published in ScienceDaily: Databases must balance privacy with utility, says professor

Agencies like the U.S. Census Bureau produce a voluminous amount of data, much of which is of tremendous value to social scientists and other researchers. But the data also includes personal information that, under the law, must be protected and could be harmful were it to fall into the wrong hands.

Thus, organizations that maintain such databases need to devise ways to protect individuals' privacy while preserving the value of the information to researchers, writes Carnegie Mellon University Statistics Professor George Duncan in a commentary in the Aug. 31 edition of the journal Science.

Duncan said traditional methods of "de-identifying" records, such as stripping away Social Security numbers or birthdates, are inadequate to safeguard privacy because a person who knows enough about the data pool could use other characteristics to identify individuals. Duncan, for example, is the only person who holds a Ph.D. in statistics and teaches in Carnegie Mellon's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, so any data set that included that information, even with Duncan's name removed, could be used to determine his identity.

Read the full article

European Data Protection Law

European Data Protection Law, Corporate Compliance and Regulation,Second Edition by Christopher Kuner (Oxford Press, 2007)

Text Source: Epic Bulletin

In the updated edition of his text, Kuner sets out the difficulty ofexpansion into EU markets for US businesses that have not taken themessage of data privacy protection seriously. US businesses intent onexploiting the information age through new EU markets or creating moreefficiency in existing European markets must effectively convert theirbusiness models to comply with EU data protection laws. The various EUdata directives create minimum standards that each member state mustthen adopt though the passage of new laws. However, this model doesallow member states to adopt stronger measures for data protection.There is a process for industries to establish self-regulatory codesunder Article 27(1) of the General Directive, but according to theauthor the process is so cumbersome that few industries have createdthem. He sees the process as taking too long to complete, and the"uncertain legal status" of the measures once adopted.