Session 1

The Document People: Privacy, Identity, and Continuous Personal Experience Capture

Ian Kerr and Jane Bailey

Faculty of Law ~ University of Ottawa

 

Public Privacy: Surveillance of Public Places and the Right to Anonymity

Christopher Slobogin

College of Law ~ University of Florida

 

(Re)exposing the naked body – the misuse of surveillance cameras in Spencer Tunick’s photography event

Hille Koskela

Department of Geography ~ University of Helsinki

 

Moira Gunn, Commentator - Tech Nation

---

 

Moira Gunn (introduction)

Who protects individual sovereignty? Nation/state against tech, or tech against the state? The breakdown of the nation-state and the rise of personal sovereignty. Sometimes the nation-state should be protecting personal sovereignty; other times, the technology should do it.

Ian Kerr (+ Jane Bailey)

Starts with Jennicam. Her whole life online. “The Real me” unadulterated. Huge following.

The Association of Computing Machinery conference: Makes a statement about Continuous Archival and Retrieval of Personal Experiences

 

Also, Steve Mann: ICam “visual memory prosthetic.” Archive his personal experiences. Says he has poor memory and wants to save everything he sees/hears.

 

Personal experience capturers to enhance personal autonomy– “The Documenters”

 

Video documentation

Gibson says: if everyone were surveilling the surveillance it would be neutralized

Mann: icam is the colt 45 – the great equalizer. “Everyone is packing heat”

 

(Not the most reassuring image. Who’s shooting? What if you don’t want to shoot?)

(who is injured most by handguns? Equalizer in public maybe, but domestically, Children in the home, family in domestic disputes, and suicide. Video and public display in these instances)

 

What’s in common between Steve and Jennicam?

• Voluntary

• Passive

• Continuous

• Experimental/purposive (performative)

• Documentary

• Empowerment through self-surveillance

 

Self-surveillance – makes it sounds like they are watching themselves, not exposing themselves to public view.

 

Sousveillance – watching from underneath

Recording from perspective of participant.

P2P? only if other people are recording.. Calling this p2p is unsatisfying

A new voice in surveillance. Self-empowering (?)

 

What happens when you introduce other players?

The State – could go in different direction

Congress: require it to be turned off in some circumstances, or give an indication of people listening.

OR could require it to be kept on (to not miss things) of interest or import for the state

 

The People

Howard Landman: watches Jennicam. Makes poetry - mixing his sonnets with her images. Objectifies and sexualizes her in ways that contradict her own reading of the events.

 

The Technology

(the BUSINESS INTERESTS)

 

(Why are the three players state people and tech?

If we think if players as representing interests – there’s corporations, other institutions, health care, education)

 

Jane Bailey On Consent

Individual right to privacy, and a right to consent to waive it. As long as we know that we’re in control then what’s the problem.

Is privacy an individual right?

 

Voluntary, consent waiver analysis, do we miss anything?

Jenni: it’s her home, people can choose to enter

Steve: but what about everyone else? Steve bases his answer on the right to negotiate with him.

Is that really workable, individual waivers? What about groups, being in a crowd?

 

Informed consent

Do people understand the implications of what the viewer can do with the message she intends to convey?

What do Steve’s friends know about the use he makes of his footage?

 

Even this misses the social element of privacy – impact of the individual seatings of privacy in terms of the collective social value of privacy.

 

Social impact of consent

Canadian legal analysis: reasonable expectation of privacy w/r/t situation and information that was disclosed

Reasonableness → a collective, ephemeral set of assumptions

 

Spatial privacy

Reasonable expectation’s pinnacle? usually, in your home, but what about Jennicam?

Public Private divide hasn’t serve women well, has been used to keep women out. (used to shield abuse) – jennicam is a mechanism to challenge that divide

But the experiment allows you to decontextualize her and do what you like.

 

Questions pointed out that there are significant differences between Jenni and Steve Mann: Jenni made a choice, but Mann captures other people as well as his own experience. How workable is it to say that individuals can negotiate their right of privacy with me? When Jenni turns on the Webcam does she understand that the images are mashable, retrievable, etc., and that someone else may change the message she intends to convey. Steve Mann: what do people have to know about his project? What is the use of the material that he takes?

 

Others mentioned the aggression with which Mann sometimes pursues his "sousveillance". (wg: having been the target of this at a conference where SM was intrigued by the autoharp I had with me, I can attest to the fact that it can be quite relentless.)

 

Bailey: our project thinks of the social element of privacy, which is treated as an individual right in Canada, but subject to "reasonable expectations". There is an ephemeral set of assumptions about social norms. Some are spatial expectations - there is the greatest expectation of privacy in one's home. (By contrast, a feminist analysis of Jennicam might say that the public/private divide hasn't served women very well.) Think about social goods and the impact of individuals on collective values.

 

__Chris Slobogin__

Asserts the right to public anonymity

 

Lay people think cctv is more intrusive than many things SCOTUS has ruled out. So there may be arguments against it.

 

CCTV use:

Washington DC used to be the crown jewel of surveillance, with a $7 million command center, hundreds of cameras with night vision. CCTVs linked to 1,000 squad cars

Chicago is now ahead. 2200 cams, all state of the art.

IACP (int’l assoc. of chiefs of police) poll: of 209 police departments 25% have cameras in public spaces/streets in 2001.

UK: 400,000 on public spaces

 

It will be unusual by the end of the decade if an individual is not monitored from the time of leaving the house to the time of return.

 

The premise is that it reduces crime. Law enforcement claims as much as 50-75% reduction in areas where the cameras are trained. However, this is a gross exaggeration. A metareview of 22 studies showed that on average, crime was reduced by about 4%. There is anecdotal evidence to confirm that lower figure. Oakland's sophisticated CCTV system was discontinued because there was no proof it reduced crime. DC's state of the art system captured one serious crime on camera, a car break-in in 2001. (see paper)

Other research indicates that very well-run camera systems in small town settings can reduce nonviolent crime by 20-25% with very little displacement effect. Soime cameras have captured perpetrators, such as the 7/7 London bombing. We are going to have them for the foreseeable future.

 

Some statutory regulation of non-law enforcement cameras

In re law enforcement cameras no enforceable guidelines. Only voluntary, and no sanctions for violating them

 

notts decision (allowing beeper GPS in car), some courts have followed this in re cameras.

But no court has addressed the constitutionality of overt camera networks

Dicta in knox says in a dragnet situation other constitutional issues might arise

Is CCTV a dragnet?

 

Even Rehnquist recognized that continuous and conspicuous surveillance has bad effects

 

Bentham: the act of being watched leads to moral reform. Inhibition of bad behavior.

 

CCTV an open air panopticon?

• Anticipatory conformity

• Double vision, identify with outside observer’s viewpoint

• Exposure of private facts

Effect of recording

• Decreased spontaneity (?Wagenstrom?)

• Assumption of aggregation (Solove)

• Habit change, people change, transmute to private life (?Burbola?)

 

Social science research

Bohan- Employees subject to surveillance: less loyal, less motivated, less trustworthy, more stressed out

Roger Clarke- a climate of suspicion

Enhances the disappearance of disappearance

Argues for a constitutional right to public anonymity

1st amendment – right to free expression

14th Right to locomotion, to stasis

general right of privacy

4th amendment – Katz: public camera surveillance infringes expectations of privacy that society is prepared to recognize is reasonable

 

Asked 190 people about it. 20 different investigative scenarios, 5 of which involved cameras. Rate from 1-100 on a scale of intrusiveness, most camera interference rated more intrusive than roadblocks (eg, sobriety checkpoints, which have been upheld on the basis of imminent threat to others, but is violation of 4th amendment to use roadblocks in other situations, eg if cars are being stopped to find out if they have narcotics in them - you can't use roadblocks to stop ordinary criminal activity unless you can demonstrate an imminent threat or law enforcement problem)) that are regulated by the 4th amendment

Where should cameras be placed?

• US v. martinez fuerte – formidable law enforcement problem or (sitz) imminent threat

• Edmond vs Indianapolis: random placement impermissible

• Placement has to be made by politically accountable official

How long on and how long targeted?

• Individualized suspicion is needed

• Training on private spaces should require probable cause

 

What should be done with recordings? (Whalen, Ferguson)

• Should be authorized by statute

• Discl made to nonlaw.. restricted

• Accountability: how do you enforce the rules (David Brin (The Transparent Society) suggests “watching the watchers”)

“auditing” train cameras on camera operators.

assure compliance but having actual sanctions

 

__Hille Koskela__

Geographer. Worked on The Geography of fear. Moved from fear to surveillance. How surveillance is changing urban space. Then on webcams. Back into surveillance. But still interested in voluntarism.

 

A Post-Disciplinary approach to surveillance?

 

How to understand

Voyeurism and exhibitionism?

That people are eager to see?

That people are eager to be seen?

 

Surveillance studies used to focus

Technology (its development)

Globalization (intl trends and comparative)

More legalized

 

But it is more embedded, and it is used for voyeuristic, and exhibitionistic purposes. No real diff of surveillance mentality

Paparazzi mentality searching for news..

 

John McGrath: underlying reasoning is usually Crime prevention, Privacy rights

But also we need a theory of performativity (Butler)

Identity is social, related to seeing showing and being seen

Social practices of the gaze are ever more techhnologised

 

Everyday life is filled with

• Protective voyeurism (aim of trad surveillance)

• Empowering exhibitionism “reclaim the © of their own lives”?

• Banal voyeurism

• Fame seeking exhibitionism

 

And various attempt to commodify all of this

 

Spenser Tunick photographs large numbers of naked people in cities. Aims to de-erotify and render them into landscapes.

She arrived for the shooting: early morning still dark.

Everyone gathers. Puts everything they wear in abag and hang it on a numbered pole, and walks naked to the space.

Felt like going in to the showers in a concentration camp.

“Do you have a cigarette?” “It’s one euro” (nobody had anything, completely naked)

Next he was shooting only men. She went over to watch. Turned around and there were only police cars and the huge space until the poles with the clothing. She had to cross the space alone, naked. And she ultimately found it really empowering. “This is my city”

 

Tunick argues against social sorting – discrimination, sexism and racism

Argue against the commodification of the naked body

Aim to make human bodies disappear in the landscape

 

Uses exhibitionism to criticize voyeurism and commodification

 

What happened in Newcastle: CCTV operators shot pictures of individual people participating in the Tunick photo and sold them as sexual pics

Undermined all the essential points of the project!

Brought in social sorting

Separating individuals from the landscape

Recommodifying the body

Reexposing those who wanted to expose themselves

 

Suggests there is something sexy in the surveillance itself – people paid for pictures when they could have freely downloaded pictures from Tunick’s website.

 

There may not be binaristic oppositions to help us analyse this easily.

 

__Comments: Moira Gunn__

Oakland has just started an audio surveillance project, can detect gunshots and triangulate

Do we have to solve everything visually? Other things may also be important

 

Issues with volunteering: One’s will can change, one can be too young.

Recurring issues

human desire to control vs. wishful thinking

different than a need or decision. Control is a black box term

 

Natural march of technology

Doesn’t exist, early emergence, to ubiquity/invisibility

No rules, questions re rules, to exceptions

Can’t opt out from exposure to radio waves

 

Emerging tech is in front of ethics, law, accepted social etiquette

Not because inherent neutrality of tech, but because of how we can’t control how people use it.

 

Control vs. trust

 

You don’t presume trust!