Rethinking Surveillance
The concept of surveillance and tracking has existed in one shape or another since ancient times, however, the digital era and advancements in technology have enabled surveillance to grow exponentially. For instance, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic saw governments swiftly move towards the use of human tracking through contact tracing in an effort to halt the spread of the disease.
In Everyday Surveillance, William Staples (2013) describes how we are entering a state of “permanent visibility” where our own bodies and actions are being monitored continuously and anonymously. Our bodies are being treated as objects that hold evidence of our identity and of possible aberrances. Even though surveillance can seem quite seamless, it can sabotage our ability to participate in civic life reducing us to “docile citizenry subjects” (ibid., p.201) instead of us being democratic ones. This has led to the emergence of a “postmodern disciplinary society” (ibid., p.202), a society that lacks personal privacy and liberty raising the question of whether accepting certain risks in life outweighs the benefits of living in a mass surveillance society.
Many users feel powerless in the face of surveillance systems that gather, use and even own their personal information, which has left the notion of trust as a rare commodity in today’s surveillance society. Hence, I believe it is essential to rethink surveillance in a way that builds users’ trust and protects privacy by involving users in the process of tracking. This distinctive approach is the subject of my current project which inspired me to write this paper.
This post looks at how the roles and responsibilities of users in a surveillance system can be defined to develop a trust-based relationship. I assess concepts and approaches from two perspectives: participatory surveillance; where both parties partake in the activity of surveillance, and self-tracking surveillance; where in addition, the role of tracking mainly sits with those under surveillance. The objective is to analyse whether it is possible to rethink surveillance in ways that enhance rather than erode trust.
Participatory surveillance
We typically see surveillance set up in a hierarchical fashion where two end-users are part of the surveillance equation. We see one user holding the power by conducting the surveillance, while the other being placed in a position of powerlessness as the user under surveillance. An example of this can be seen in the Panoptican where the institution holds the power and those subjected to the gaze of the Panoptican are left powerless. The Panoptican (Fig. 1), designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1791, is a concept aimed to discipline prisoners by means of an observation tower placed in the center within a circle of prison cells (Foucault, 1991). Foucault describes the prisoners in the Panopticon thus: “he is seen, but he does not see; he is an object of information, never a subject of communication” (ibid). Foucault claims that the Panoptican concept has moved well past its initial physical embodiment and is now being utilized more broadly as an apparatus that exerts power in society.
To create a more balanced trust-based user experience, I looked into how to eliminate the hierarchal elements of surveillance in society to drive more equitable participation. This led me to the idea of horizontal surveillance which is a concept that revolves around flattening participatory surveillance where participants have more balanced positions. In The Transparent Society, David Brin (1999) suggests that the problem with surveillance isn’t in the volume of the data collected, but the asymmetry of the process in which the data is hoarded by the powerful and refused to the user. Consequently, Brin suggests that we acknowledge and accept the ubiquitous cloud of electronic eyes and sensors, but with the demand for democratic control and free access to the data collected.
Figure 2 illustrates the roles that both governments and citizens can play in relation to the use of surveillance technologies. Although many libertarians would argue for “Privacy Utopia” where both governments and citizens lack surveillance technologies, I believe that this is not feasible since surveillance has progressed to a point where we can’t inhibit nor suppress the transfer of data. Brin argues that liberty is flourishing not when the government is weak, but when it is accountable and when there is an open process where individuals are active, vigilant, and work collectively to safeguard the society.
To bring to life the idea of active participation in what happens to our data, I used metaphors to better understand the notion of horizontal participatory surveillance by drawing parallels from common life examples. The use of metaphors allows for the effective framing of a given situation to identify non-traditional design solutions (Pee, Dorst, and Bijl-Brouwer, 2015). For instance, Albrechtslund (2008) compared surveillance as a participatory practice to online social networking. According to Albrechtslund, online social networking and the idea of balanced roles do not destroy subjectivity but rather act to empower individuals by providing new ways to build one’s identity and to socialize. This shapes the role of the user as an active individual rather than a passive one where surveillance offers a chance to act, seek information, and communicate.
Although participatory surveillance can balance power by enhancing and elevating the role of the user under surveillance, I still believe that the issue of privacy still needs to be better addressed and embedded in the fabric of the surveillance set-up. Bringing on an active role to users doesn’t result in improved privacy. I would challenge Brin’s notion that “privacy” is something of the past that is no longer affordable in our present time and that we should accept this lack of privacy and embrace it, as I believe that securing privacy is key for user buy-in despite the challenges it may bring.
Self-tracking surveillance
To increase the adoption of a horizontal participatory surveillance system, securing privacy for users in addition to having balanced roles is key. This can be done by incorporating a self-tracking mechanism.
Self-tracking is a concept that empowers individuals by giving them control over their personal data. According to Nafus and Sherman (2014), self-tracking is a form of “soft resistance” to the algorithmic system and the harvesting of user’s personal data. This approach requires individuals to track themselves independently and to derive meaning from their personal information. It is usually developed voluntarily, as part of an expedition of self-awareness and advancement and as a pleasurable method of self-surveillance. Foucault’s (1988) theory of the practices and care of the self, identifies self-tracking as a mode of governing the self and positioning the individual as a responsible citizen willingly able to take care of his/her well-being.
While the very act of keeping a log of explicit aspects of the self and of daily activities goes well beyond bits and bytes and into analog systems (e.g. handwritten diaries and journals), digital technology has empowered new, simple, and effortless means of self-tracking. It has created an opportunity to analyze collected information efficiently and to derive patterns in ways that were not possible before. Although self-tracking appears to be an individualistic practice, it has been incorporated into different areas of civic and social institutions. According to Lupton (2014), educational institutions, clinics, workplaces, and other agencies have started to encourage individuals to engage in self-tracking as part of health, fitness, and employee productivity enhancement programs.
Self-tracking allows users to interpret their personal data, define who gets to assemble it, and determine the mechanism by which their data is assembled. This form of active user participation drives effective interactions with algorithms through conversations that move between data as a manifestation of the self to data that can be acted on. Personal data needs to be truly governed through self-tracking to protect and manage against data being aggregated and exploited. The development of commodification and commercial value of digital data is blurring the boundaries between private and public data (Nafus and Sherman, 2014). We see users being encouraged and even coerced to use self-tracking applications to monitor aspects of their personal life to produce data which are then exploited for the benefit of others. Similar to the notion of posthumanism is the idea that human bodies are represented as computerized information systems in which the body acts as a chaotic mass producer of data that needs to be managed and disciplined (Hayles, 2008).
Call To Action
Anchored in the above findings, my team and I strived to integrate the soft resistance of self-tracking into the horizontal participatory surveillance system design to come up with a distinctive value proposition for our micro-unit project (Fig. 3). We used self-tracking to help track and trace people during this COVID-19 pandemic. To solve the issue of users’ privacy and trust, we integrated physical and digital aspects into the design concept. We developed the concept based on a gamification strategy to track through a physical map motivating users and enhancing their commitment to actively self-track. The physical aspect helped keep the data personalized only intersecting with the digital platform when sharing of data is needed in situations where the user becomes infected. Only an infected person would have to share his/her map on the community platform to help other users isolate and take precautions in instances where their map overlapped with the infected user’s map. Since the infected person is the one responsible for sharing the information, he can control the type of data that is being shared and strip away any identifying markers before sharing.
Our design concept illustrates how a private mode of self-tracking can be merged with communal self-tracking when the focus is encouraging users to achieve community safety and development. Since our design integrates physical and digital aspects, it protects users’ privacy from personal data exploitation on the network. Users are capable of conducting soft resistance by tracking beyond, but alongside, the digital. Consequently, the users now have a clear view of when the digital provides a helpful externalization of the self, and when it bypasses vital internalizations.
Although our design concept of using self-tracking in the surveillance system manages to track and trace while maintaining user’s privacy; nevertheless, the question of where soft resistance meets its constraints remains, as does the question of what other options would seem like in cultural contexts that fail to privilege the self.
References
Albrechtslund, A., 2008. Online social networking as participatory surveillance. 13(3), pp.1-10.\
Brin, D., 1999. The Transparent Society. New York: Basic Books.
Foucault, M., 1991. Discipline And Punish. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Foucault, M. Technologies of the self, in L. Martin, H. Gutman, & P. Hutton (eds), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, London: Tavistock (1988), 16-49.
Hayles, N.K. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Lupton, D., 2014. Self-tracking Cultures: Towards a Sociology of Personal Informatics. In: 26th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference on Designing Futures: the Future of Design. [online] New York: Association for Computing Machinery, pp.77-86. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1145/2686612.2686623> [Accessed 15 June 2020].
Nafus, D. and Sherman, J., 2014. The Quantified Self Movement as an Alternative Big Data Practice. International Journal of Communication, 8, pp.1784–1794.
Pee, SH, Dorst, CH & van der Bijl-Brouwer, M 2015, Understanding problem framing through research into metaphors. in V Popovic, A Blackler, D-B Luh, N Nimkulrat, B Kraal & Y Nagai (eds), IASDR 2015 Interplay : 2-5 November 2015, Brisbane, Australia. pp. 1656-1671, 2015 IASDR International Design Research Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 2/11/15.
Staples, WG 2013, Everyday Surveillance: Vigilance and Visibility in Postmodern Life. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [24 April 2020].
Images
Brin, D., 1999. Matrix. The Transparent Society. New York: Basic Books.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2020. The Country Is Right To Be Skeptical Of Big Tech, But Its Help May Be Essential In Solving This Crisis. [image] Available at: <https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2020/04/28/Contact-tracing-challenge-New-project-from-Apple-Google-needs-public-trust/stories/202004230023> [Accessed 15 June 2020].
Reveley, W. (1791). Plan of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon prison. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/23/panopticon-digital-surveillance-jeremy-bentham
