The Surveillance Project

TEXT AND LOGO SOURCE: THE SURVEILLANCE PROJECT WEBSITE

The Surveillance Project is a multi-disciplinary and international collaborative initiative at the cutting edge of social science research. We are based in the Department of Sociology at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. Our work also supports appropriate policy development and contributes to an understanding of the contemporary politics of information.

The Surveillance Project researches both the workings of large surveillance systems -- data, video, audio -- and their interactions with ordinary people -- workers, travelers, consumers, citizens. Our work impacts attitudes and policy; our academic study informs and challenges all to greater care and accountability in processing personal data.

The Surveillance Project researches the ways in which personal data are processed. We explore why information about people has become so important in the 21st century and what are the social, political and economic consequences of this trend. Questions of "privacy" and of "social sorting" are central to our concerns.

Surveillance is "any systematic attention to a person's life aimed at exerting influence over it" (James Rule). So The Surveillance Project studies everything from supermarket loyalty cards to police networks searching for suspects. We have a special interest in the surveillance aspects of post 9/11 quest for tightened security. While high-tech methods have become very significant, we also examine surveillance as face-to-face supervision or as mediated watching using video cameras.

Surveillance is not simply about large organizations using sophisticated computer equipment. It is also about how ordinary people - citizens, workers, travelers, and consumers - interact with surveillance. Some comply, others negotiate, and yet others resist. The Surveillance Project explores how expanding flows of personal data affect and are affected by everyday life.
Surveillance raises important issues such as privacy, anonymity, and trust. But because surveillance is related to risk management and to modes of governance it also involves what we call social sorting. Social groups are classified so that they can receive different treatment. So questions of social justice and democratic participation are at least as important as those of security and privacy.

UK telcos lead in online accessibility but fall down on privacy

text source: By Maggie Holland at ITPRO

Telco websites in the UK are more accessible than those in Canada or the US, but British players still need to get a better handle on privacy, according to research from The Customer Respect Group.

UK telecommunications companies are better than their North American counterparts when it comes to making their websites more accessible for people with visual impairment or mobility disabilities, according to the findings of the First Quarter 2007 Online Customer Respect Study of the Global Telecommunications Industry.

But, in contrast, we still lag behind Canada and the US when it comes to respecting the privacy of personal data, claims the report compiled by research and consultancy firm The Customer Respect Group.


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CRCS Privacy & Security Lunch Seminar

CRCS Privacy & Security Lunch Seminar - Wed. March 7

Speaker: Ivan Krstic, One Laptop per ChildDate: Wednesday, 7 MarchTime: talk 12-1, discussion 1-1:30 (lunch provided)

Place: Harvard University. Center for Research on Computation and Society.

Maxwell Dworkin 119

Title: How do you secure 100 million laptops? A security model for the One Laptop per Child

Abstract: One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization aiming to redefine learning and education for the world’s children by providing each child with a specially- developed, innovative and low-cost laptop. More than 5 million laptops will reach children in developing countries this year, with another 50-100 million in the next two years. The scale of the deployment, the laptop’s unique hardware and software stacks, and a target user group as young as 6 all present some extremely difficult challenges in providing a secure user experience. We present Bitfrost, an integrated security platform for the OLPC XO laptop designed to address these challenges.

RFID and Ubiquitous Computing

"RFID and Ubiquitous Computing"

Marc Rotenberg, EPIC Executive Director

Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue

Brussels, BelgiumMarch 12, 2007

Little Brother

Two articles:

USA TODAY. Maria Puente, writes this article: Hello to less privacy.

Oh, for the good old days when all we worried about was Big Brother government watching us. Too late: Now we have Little Brother to contend with, too — and he has a camera phone.

Little Brother could be a fed-up straphanger on a subway, a sneaky student in class, maybe a ticked-off guy in the audience. Or a vengeful ex-lover or jealous friends looking to embarrass an American Idol contestant.

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FOXNEWS. by Susan Estrich. Do Old Privacy Protections Apply in Digitized, Terrorized Society?

The Washington Post summary of a soon-to-be released Government Accounting Office report says the government has already committed significant privacy violations in testing a new and highly sophisticated data mining system.

ADVISE, which stands for Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement, uses mathematical algorithms to look for connections in data that might reveal suspicious people, behavior, places, or relationships.

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