The Panoptic Gaze of Web 2.0: How Web 2.0 platforms act as Infrastructures of Dataveillance Michael Zimmer Department of Culture and Communication New York University www.michaelzimmer.org Rhetoric of Web 2.0 • Organize and share information • Interact within communities • Express oneself • Empower creativity • Democratize media production • Celebrate the individual • Power of collaboration and social networks 1
Externalities 2.0 • Increased flow of personal information • Aggregation of data across the network • Intelligent agents that predict your needs • Rise of data mining • Placing these tools in hands of all users. Externalities 2.0 • Infrastructures of dataveillance • Panoptic gaze • Search 2.0 • Amateur Data Mining • P2P Surveillance 2
Panoptic Gaze of Dataveillance Panoptic Gaze of Dataveillance 3
Panopticon “The more constantly “This being impossible, the persons to be the next thing to be inspected are under wished for is, that, at the eyes of the every instant, seeing persons who should reason to believe as inspect them, the much, and not being more perfectly will able to satisfy himself the purpose of the to the contrary, he [the establishment have watched] should been attained.” conceive himself to be so.” Panopticon • Perpetual • Minimal surveillance effort “induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” 4
Panoptic Gaze “There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by internalizing to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over, and against, himself. A superb formula: power exercised continuously and for what turns out to be a minimal cost.” Panoptic Gaze • Quintessential disciplinary apparatus of modern, everyday life – Home – Workplace – School – Hospital “a whole complex mechanism, embracing…stricter methods of surveillance [and] more efficient techniques of locating and obtaining information” 5
Power via Panoptic Gaze • Everyday functioning of power – Panoptic sort (Gandy) – Social sorting (Lyon) • Sorting ≈ Exercise of power – (Foucault; Bowker & Star; Lyon) “…sorts people into categories, assigning worth or risk, in ways that have real effects on their life-chances. Deep discrimination occurs, thus making sorting not merely a matter of personal privacy, but of social justice” Panoptic Gaze of Dataveillance 6
Panoptic Gaze of Dataveillance Dataveillance • Collection and storage of personal data • Systemic use of personal data in investigation or monitoring of individuals – Roger Clarke, 1988 • Rise of digital dossiers 7
Digital Dataveillance • Digital networking • Interconectivity • Data storage • Aggregation • Processing power • Real-time analysis Electronic key cards Frequent shopper cards Intelligent transportation systems RFID tags Biometrics Internet Dataveillance • Ideal infrastructure of dataveillance • Widespread monitoring and collection of personal information – Cookies – DRM – Clickstream – Spyware 8
Panoptic Gaze of Dataveillance Panoptic Gaze of Dataveillance 9
Panoptic Gaze of Dataveillance Panoptic Gaze of Dataveillance • Concrete, material effects – Discrimination – Social justice – Personal freedom “[The] impact of dataveillance is a reduction in the meaningfulness of individual actions, and hence in self- reliance and self- responsibility. …In general, mass dataveillance tends to subvert individualism and the meaningfulness of human decisions and actions” 10
Panoptic Gaze of Web 2.0 • Search 2.0 • Amateur Data Mining • P2P Surveillance Panoptic Gaze of Web 2.0 • Search 2.0 • Amateur Data Mining • P2P Surveillance 11
Search as Center of Gravity • 84% have used a search engine • 60 million users send 200 million requests per day (U.S. data) Search engines have become the center of gravity for people’s everyday information-seeking activities Search 2.0 • Drive towards the “perfect search” • Intuitive results based on past searches and browsing history • Perfect recall “Like the mind of God” 12
Dataveillance in Search 2.0 • Engage in dataveillance of users’ online activities – Server logs – Web cookies – User accounts Dataveillance in Search 2.0 • Majority of users unaware of dataveillance – DOJ v. Google – AOL data • Some try to avoid dataveillance – IP routing – Cookie blocking – Obfuscation 13
Google’s Broader Dataveillance Infrastructure • Dataveillance across all products & services • Intellectual activities across the web as well as the material world Google’s Broader Dataveillance Infrastructure • General information inquiries: 14
Google’s Broader Dataveillance Infrastructure • Academic research: • News & political information: Google’s Broader Dataveillance Infrastructure • Communication & social networking: 15
Google’s Broader Dataveillance Infrastructure • Personal data : • Financial data : • Shopping & product interests: • Desktop computer files: Google’s Broader Dataveillance Infrastructure • Internet browsing: 16
Google’s Broader Dataveillance Infrastructure • Over two dozen products & services • Interconnected via cookies & Google Accounts Search 2.0’s Gravitational Pull • Feedback loop ~ gravitational pull • Database of intentions Source of insight into what someone is thinking, not just what that person is doing 17
Panoptic Gaze of Search 2.0 • Disciplinary power – Deleted Gmail messages as evidence – Search history “neck snap break” • Storage of records – China – Brazil Panoptic Gaze of Search 2.0 • Panoptic sorting – Financial motivations – Profile users potential economic value “Google knows a lot about the person surfing, especially if they have used personal search or logged into a service such as Gmail” 18
Panoptic Gaze of Search 2.0 • State of consciousness & visibility – “My goodness, it’s my whole personal life…I had no idea somebody was looking over my shoulder” • Tools to circumvent – FoxyProxy – TrackMeNot Resisting Search 2.0 • Expanding the infrastructure of dataveillance: • Easy to take at “interface value” 19
Resisting Search 2.0 • Collection of personal information becomes a prerequisite of participation – “oscillates between seemingly rewarding participation and punishing attempts to elect not to divulge personal information” • Default settings Panoptic Gaze of Search 2.0 • Social, political, and technical infrastructure that renders visualization meaningful for the basis of disciplinary social control • Emergence of a “soft cage” of dataveillance – Individual freedom – Concept of self – Social justice 20
Panoptic Gaze of Web 2.0 • Search 2.0 • Amateur Data Mining • P2P Surveillance Panoptic Gaze of Web 2.0 • Search 2.0 • Amateur Data Mining • P2P Surveillance 21
Don, the Camera Thief cyberwarrior@rogers.com Lonelygirl15 22
Farrand Field Farrand Field 23
Amateur Facial Recognition Riya 24
Riya Riya 25
Panoptic Gaze of Web 2.0 • Amateur Data Mining • Peer to Peer Surveillance • Search 2.0 Values in technology design… 26
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