Privacy

Tragic hitchBOT and Camera Surveillance

The hitchhiking robot and social experiment called hitchBot came to an end in Philadelphia this week. It had survived crossing Canada and being in Germany and Italy. But it turns out the US was not friendly enough for it to survive. Message from the family:

hitchBOT’s trip came to an end last night in Philadelphia after having spent a little over two weeks hitchhiking and visiting sites in Boston, Salem, Gloucester, Marblehead, and New York City. Unfortunately, hitchBOT was vandalized overnight in Philadelphia; sometimes bad things happen to good robots.

The bot was a relatively simple device with a vaguely human shape – or more like a rough robot shape; two arms and two legs a torso and a screen for eyes.

The robot was able to carry on basic conversation and talk about factoids, and was designed to be a robotic travelling companion while in the vehicle of the driver who picked it up. It had a GPS device and a 3G connection which allowed researchers to track its location. It was equipped with a camera which took photographs periodically to document its journeys. Wikipedia

It’s sad that the robot was destroyed and it could probably have happened anywhere – even if it did happen in Philly. The interesting part for me is that a couple of days later this surfaces: Here’s Video of the Jerk Who Killed hitchBOT talk about surveillance society.

There is always a camera somewhere. The question is: are we doing anything that makes it worth the effort to find the footage?

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Shooting Down Drones

A man in Kentucky man shot down drone that was hovering over his property. He has been arrested and charged with first degree criminal mischief and first-degree wanton endangerment. News story here. The Kentucky man was quoted as saying:

“Our rights are being trampled daily,” he said, the station reported. “Not on a local level only — but on a state and federal level. We need to have some laws in place to handle these kind of things.”

So what is the position on drones? And in particular what is the position on preventing other people’s drones from entering private property?

The right to property does not include an unlimited right to the airspace above the property. Therefore flying objects are not violating your property when they fly above it. This makes a lot of sense in relation to airplanes and helicopters. It would be strange if they needed permission to fly above individuals property – also it would be very dangerous if individuals could take pot-shots at them for violating airspace.

Actually there are most probably several laws and ordinances that deal with shooting a firearm in an urban area. And also shooting at aircraft. But this isn’t the first time someone shot down a drone a New Jersey man was arrested and charged with “possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and criminal mischief” for  shooting down his neighbor’s drone.

The FAA has guidelines in place for unmanned aircraft systems and has partnered with industry associations to promote Know Before You Fly. The latter has provisions about respecting privacy.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Firing Racists and Mob Rule

The Internet is a magical wonderful thing that contains both the ugly and beautiful. For some time now I have been struggling with in which of these categories to deposit the Racists Getting Fired mob. Most of the time racists online seem to have the same modus operandi as trolls and haters. They’re ugly and noisy but maybe the best thing to do is to ignore them. You know, don’t feed the trolls. On the other hand there is value in the argument that if nobody speaks up against online racism they may believe there own garbage. They may also be able to grow in their own bubble.

Some online are reacting.

One such group can be seen in examples like the Tumblr Racists Getting Fired which actively posts personal information about racists and contacts their employers with the aim of getting them fired. Most companies seem to reply quickly to these types of complaints to disassociate them from the message their employees are spreading. Some companies have even fired the employees for spreading racist comments online.

I have no sympathy for the racists. But I do have concerns about mob mentality in online environments. A part of me congratulates the civic mindedness of people for not silently ignoring the horrible remarks, while a part of me abhors spreading personal information online. In effect this is doxxing as a punishment for racism and also intentionally trying to get the racist fired.

Will the fired racist change or understand? Will the fired racist be silenced? Does it matter? Isn’t it enough that the racist understands that the world will not silently ignore the vile messages? A recent case was the father whose daughter was bullied and racially taunted. He called the father of the bullies and was himself the receiver of racial abuse. He posted it all online. The bullies’ father was fired from his job.

When social stigma doesn’t work the next step is to cause actual hardship. The racists are wrongdoers and should be penalized but there is something about the process and punishments in these examples that raises concerns.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Posner on Privacy: A privileged old white wealthy man’s view

Judge Richard Posner’s (quoted by PC World) during a conference privacy and cybercrime has said some very sad things about privacy. First off he says “I think privacy is actually overvalued,”

he developed this with

“Much of what passes for the name of privacy is really just trying to conceal the disreputable parts of your conduct,” Posner added. “Privacy is mainly about trying to improve your social and business opportunities by concealing the sorts of bad activities that would cause other people not to want to deal with you.”

This is a very narrow minded and underdeveloped view of privacy. It reflects the Judge’s privileged social, economic and political position.

Privacy – like other social protection – is supposed to protect the weak. In the same way that Free Speech is not necessary to protect those who politely parrot the status quo and consumer protection is not there to protect the corporation against the consumer. Privacy is there to protect those who are in a weaker position, or those who risk physical, social, political, or economic harm.

Even though homosexuality is no longer illegal in most countries, it does, in some cases, still carries social stigma, and even physical harm (see gay bashing). Therefore, someone who faces threats of physical harm and social discrimination may want to keep their sexuality private in certain situations. Posner cannot mean that they are then concealing disreputable parts of their conduct.

This kind of argument would apply to most persecuted minorities in history. Would anyone argue that hiding a Jewish identity in countries occupied by Nazi’s in WWII is “trying to conceal the disreputable parts of your conduct”?

The ability to ignore weakness stems from the privilege of not being weak. Not seeing the injustice that is around is comes from the perspective of those who are not subjected to the harmful effects of lack of privilege. As a white, over-educated, economically sound, male in Western society Posner has no need of these protections. They do not protect him or his. However, it is short-sighted at best to therefore argue that privacy is overvalued.

Society needs to protect its minorities. But by shifting the blame onto them, and attempting to blame the victim Posner is acting as an instrument of social repression. Privacy is not about hiding, it is about being able to create a fair society where all can participate as equals.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Names & Identity: Teaser for upcoming talk

This post appeared first on the Center for Global Communication Studies blog as a teaser for my talk Public Platforms and Anonymity: Real Name Policies and Freedom of Speech. The talk will be on Wednesday November 19 between 12:15AM – 01:30PM, more info here.

Life is a series of roles. We behave differently when we are talking to our underage children at home, when we play a game of poker with friends, or when we are having dinner with our parents. For each of these social situations, and for many others, we adopt different roles, mannerisms, speech, and even dress. Social networks struggle to deal with the complexity of human behavior, preferring instead to simplify our existence. When the halting definitions of friends and contacts and the obscurity of privacy settings is coupled with a less than user-friendly design, conflicts unsurprisingly arise. As the largest social network by population, Facebook provides an array of examples where social messages have been transmitted to the “wrong” person.

Among the classic miscommunicated messages are those of employees engaging in criticism of co-workers or of the company itself, teenagers sharing party photos that are later seen by adults, and medical staff posting patient information. The practice of providing different information to different groups is undermined in situations where contacts are binary, and social media technology creates simple “friend/not-friend” binaries where complexities should exist.

In the book The Facebook Effect (2010), Kirkpatrick argues that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, is implementing what is sometimes referred to as “radical transparency,” a form of social engineering that holds that individuals will benefit themselves and society by being more transparent.

In an infamous quote that exemplifies this stance, Zuckerberg goes beyond transparency, arguing that attempting to maintain different identities is disingenuous:

“You have one identity…The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly…Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”[1]

It is not a coincidence that Facebook’s radical transparency is the foundation of its business model. The users of Facebook, though they have accounts, are not the company’s customers. Facebook’s business model is to collect as much user information as possible in order to market their expertise to their real customers—advertisers.

Radical transparency becomes a social problem when social networks become primary means of mass communication. While those who are at the top of a social hierarchy may indeed believe two identities indicate a lack of integrity, for those who may face social ostracism or physical punishment if certain identities are revealed, multiple identities are necessary. Facebook has caused young gay adults to be outed to, and ostracized by, their families, Ashley Payne was asked to leave her teaching position after posting a picture of herself holding a beer while on holiday, and in the UK, there are several cases of people facing prison sentences for insensitive comments posted on Facebook.

The purpose of the talk “Public Platforms and Anonymity” is to look at questions of identity and anonymity in order to further explore the impact of radical transparency on marginalized groups, to place the minority opinion in relation to freedom of speech and democratic development, and, finally, to put forward an argument in support of a democratic right to anonymity and pseudonymity on social networks and other online platforms.

 

[1] Kirkpatrick, D. (2011). The Facebook effect: The inside story of the company that is connecting the world. Simon and Schuster.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Public/Private Spaces: Notes on a lecture

The class today was entitled Public/Private Spaces: Pulling things together, and had the idea of summing up the physical city part of the Civic Media course.

But before we could even go forward I needed to add an update to the earlier lectures on racial segregation. The article The Average White American’s Social Network is 1% Black is fascinating and not a little sad because of its implications.

In the meantime, whites may be genuinely naive about what it’s like to be black in America because many of them don’t know any black people.  According to the survey, the average white American’s social network is only 1% black. Three-quarters of white Americans haven’t had a meaningful conversation with a single non-white person in the last six months.

The actual beginning of class was a response to the students assignment to present three arguments for and three arguments against the Internet as a Human Right. In order to locate the discussion in the context of human rights I spoke of Athenian democracy and the death of Socrates, and the progression from natural rights to convention based rights. The purpose was both to show some progression in rights development – but also to show that rights are not linear and indeed contain exceptions from those the words imply. The American Declaration of Independence (1776) talks of all men

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

but we know that this was not true. Athenian democracy included “all” people with the exception of slaves, foreigners and women. So we must see rights for what they are without mythologizing their power.

In addition they cannot seen in isolation. For example the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) came as a result of the French Revolution include many ideas that appear in similar rights documents

  • Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.
  • Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else.
  • Law is the expression of the general will
  • No punishment without law
  • Presumtion of innocence
  • Free opinions, speech & communication

The similarities are unsurprising as they emerge from international discussions on the value of individuals and a new level of thought appearing about where political power should lie.

The discussion then moved to the concept of free speech and the modern day attempts to limit speech by using the concept of civility, and interesting example of this is explained in the article Free speech, ‘civility,’ and how universities are getting them mixed up

When someone in power praises the principle of free speech, it’s wise to be on the lookout for weasel words. The phrase “I favor constructive criticism,” is weaseling. So is, “You can express your views as long as they’re respectful.” In those examples, “constructive” and “respectful” are modifiers concealing that the speaker really doesn’t favor free speech at all.

Free speech is there to protect speech we do not like to hear. We do not need protection from the nice things in life. Offending people may be a bi-product of free speech, but a bi-product that we must accept if we are to support free speech. Stephen Fry states it wonderfully:

fryAt this point we returned to the discussion of private/public spaces in the city and how these may be used. We have up until this point covered many of the major points and now it was time to move on to the more vague uses. Using Democracy and Public Space: The Physical Sites of Democratic Performance by John Parkinson we can define public as

1.Freely accessible places where ‘everything that happens can be observed by anyone’, where strangers are encountered whether one wants to or not, because everyone has free right of entry

2.Places where the spotlight of ‘publicity’ shines, and so might not just be public squares and market places, but political debating chambers where the right of physical access is limited but informational access is not.

3.‘common goods’ like clean air and water, public transport, and so on; as well as more particular concerns like crime or the raising of children that vary in their content over time and space, depending on the current state of a particular society’s value judgments.

4.Things which are owned by the state or the people in and paid for out of collective resources like taxes: government buildings, national parks in most countries, military bases and equipment, and so on.

and we can define private as:

1.Places that are not freely accessible, and have controllers who limit access to or use of that space.

2.Things that primarily concern individuals and not collectives

3.Things and places that are individually owned, including things that are cognitively ‘our own’, like our thoughts, goals, emotions, spirituality, preferences, and so on

In the discussion of Spaces we needed to get into the concept of The Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin 1968) which states that individuals all act out of self-interest and any space that isn’t regulated through private property is lost forever. This ideology has grown to mythological proportions and it was very nice to be able to use Nobel prize winning economist Elinor Ostrom to critique it:

The lack of human element in the economists assumptions are glaring but still the myth persists that common goods are not possible to sustain and that government regulation will fail. All that remains is private property. In order to have a more interesting discussion on common goods I introduced David Bollier

A commons arises whenever a given community decides that it wishes to manage a resource in a collective manner, with a special regard for equitable access, use and sustainability. It is a social form that has long lived in the shadows of our market culture, but which is now on the rise

We will be getting back to his work later in the course.

In closing I wanted to continue the problematizing the public/private discussion – in particular the concepts of private spaces in public and public spaces in private. In order to illustrate this we looked at these photos:

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Just a Kiss by Shutterpal CC BY NC SA

The outdoor kiss is an intensely private moment and it has at different times and places been regulated in different manners. The use of headphones and dark glasses is also a way in which private space can be enhanced in public. These spaces are all around us and form a kind of privacy in public.

The study of these spaces is known as Proxemics: the study of nonverbal communication which Wikipedia defines as:

Prominent other subcategories include haptics (touch), kinesics (body movement), vocalics (paralanguage), and chronemics (structure of time). Proxemics can be defined as “the interrelated observations and theories of man’s use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture”. Edward T. Hall, the cultural anthropologist who coined the term in 1963, emphasized the impact of proxemic behavior (the use of space) on interpersonal communication. Hall believed that the value in studying proxemics comes from its applicability in evaluating not only the way people interact with others in daily life, but also “the organization of space in [their] houses and buildings, and ultimately the layout of [their] towns.

The discussions we have been having thus far have been about cities and the access and use of cities. How control has come about and who has the ability and power to input and change things in the city. Basically the “correct” and “incorrect” use of the technology. Since we are moving on to the public/private abilities inside our technology I wanted to show that we are more and more creating private bubbles in public via technology (our headphones and screens for example) and also bringing the public domain into our own spaces via, for example, Facebook and social networking.

We ended the class with a discussion on whether Facebook is a public or private space? If it is a private space what does it mean in relation to law enforcement and governmental bodies? If it is a public space when is it too far to stalk people? And finally what is the responsibility of the platform provider in relation to the digital space as public or private space?

here are the slides I used:

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Design and Access to the City: Notes on a lecture

What is a city? Who gets to decide how it should be used and by which groups? In order to address this I began with two examples intended to demonstrate the conflict. I purposely chose not to use large scale examples.

The first example was in 2009 when the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr was arrested for breaking into his own home. Despite being able to identify himself and that it was his own address the police “…arrested, handcuffed and banged in a cell for four hours arguably the most highly respected scholar of black history in America.”

The second example was Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker being accused of shoplifting and patted down by an overzealous employee at the Milano Market on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. This latter example is interesting because the market apologized and said of the employee: “He’s a decent man, I’m sure he didn’t mean any by wrong doing, he was just doing his job” “a sincere mistake”. An interesting thing about this is that if you search the term “Forest Whitaker deli” most of the hits are for the apology and not for the action itself.

These two minor events would never had come to the attention of anyone unless they had happened to celebrities with the power to become part of the news. They demonstrate that even among sincere well meaning people there are groups thought to have less access to the city.

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an excellent op-ed called The Good, Racist People , which he ends writing about the deli:

The other day I walked past this particular deli. I believe its owners to be good people. I felt ashamed at withholding business for something far beyond the merchant’s reach. I mentioned this to my wife. My wife is not like me. When she was 6, a little white boy called her cousin a nigger, and it has been war ever since. “What if they did that to your son?” she asked.

And right then I knew that I was tired of good people, that I had had all the good people I could take.

Following this introduction the lecture moved on to demonstrate the power of maps. I began with a description of the events leading up to Dr John Snow identifying the Broad Street Pump as the cause for the Soho Cholera outbreak of 1854.

Dr Snow did not believe in the miasma (bad air) theory as the cause of cholera and in order to prove that the cause was connected to the public water pump on broad street he began mapping out the cholera victims on a map. They formed a cluster around the pump.

pumpWith the help of this illustration he was able to show that the disease was local and get the pump handle removed. The cholera cases decreased rapidly from that point.

The immediate cause of the outbreak was the introduction of human waste into the water system – most probably from a mother washing an infected child’s diapers. But the fundamental reason for the huge death count was the lack of sewer and sanitation systems in this poorer area of the city. By insisting on the miasma theory the city could claim to be free from responsibility.

In the following part of the lecture I wanted to discuss how cities can maintain segregation and inequality of services despite the ways in which the rules are presented as fair and non-biased. In order to do this I used a list of maps demonstrating cities segregation by race and ethnicity created by Eric Fischer.

One dot for each 500 residents. Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Yellow is Other. Images are licensed CC BY SA. There are several maps of interest and they are well worth studying. Here I will only present Philadelphia and Chicago:

Chicago: One dot for each 500 residents. Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Yellow is Other.

Chicago: One dot for each 500 residents. Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Yellow is Other.

Philadelphia: One dot for each 500 residents. Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Yellow is Other.

Philadelphia: One dot for each 500 residents. Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Yellow is Other.

As we are in Philadelphia I also included a map of household income (Demographics of Philadelphia)

Median household income in Center City and surrounding sections, 2000 Census.

Median household income in Center City and surrounding sections, 2000 Census.

At this point I moved the discussion to the distinction between public and private spaces. I used definitions of these from Wikipedia

A public space is a social space that is generally open and accessible to people. Roads (including the pavement), public squares, parks and beaches are typically considered public space.

To a limited extent, government buildings which are open to the public, such as public libraries are public spaces, although they tend to have restricted areas and greater limits upon use.

Although not considered public space, privately owned buildings or property visible from sidewalks and public thoroughfares may affect the public visual landscape, for example, by outdoor advertising.

As the distinctions between private/public will be discussed in depth in a future lecture I left this as a relatively vague discussion and went into the problems of two of our rights as practiced in the “public space”

Free Speech: Not wanting to delve into the theory of this fascinating space I jumped straight into the heart of the discussion with a quote from Salman Rushdie: “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist” The point being that we don’t need protection to conform but we do need it to evolve. 

For this lecture I brought up outdoor advertising. This is an activity which is globally dominated by one corporation: The Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings is probably the biggest controller of outdoor communication in the world. They have the ability to decide which messages are transmitted and which are not. They have accepted advertising for fashion brands which transmit harmful body images and even brands which have been accused of glorifying gang rape. For a look at this disturbing trend in advertising see 15 Recent Ads That Glorify Sexual Violence Against Women.

The messages being pushed out on billboards can arguably seen as a one-sided participation of the public debate. Changing messages (adbusting) or even correcting willfully false information on billboards is seen as vandalism. As a demonstration that something can be done I showed a clip of a report about the clean city law, where the city of Sao Paulo has forbidden outdoor advertising.

However, when Baltimore in 2013 attempted to introduce a billboard tax Clear Channel Outdoor argued that billboards should be protected as free speech by the First Amendment and this tax would therefore be a limitation of the corporations human rights.

In order to demonstrate the right of assembly I used the demonstrations at Wall Street where the desire to protest was supported (in theory) by Mayor Bloomberg

“people have a right to protest, and if they want to protest, we’ll be happy to make sure they have locations to do it.”

Despite this sentiment the parks of New York close (even the ones without gates) at dusk or 1 am. This prevents demonstrators staying overnight. In order to circumvent this and continue the protests the demonstrators went to the privately owned Zuccotti Park where they could stay overnight. Eventually the protestors where dispersed when it was argued that the conditions were unsanitary.

Health hazard! by Seema Krishnakumar CC by nc sa

Health hazard! by Seema Krishnakumar CC by nc sa

The slides I used are here:

 

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Are tweets really, really public?

There is a very interesting discussion going on at Gawker about whether Twitter is private or public. Here is a representative excerpt:

Most things that you write on Twitter will be seen only by your followers. Most things that you write on Twitter will not be read by the public at large. But that is only because the public at large does not care about most things that you have to say. It is not because the public does not have “a right” to read your Twitter. Indeed, they do. They can do so simply by typing Twitter dot com slash [your name] into their web browser. There, they will find a complete list of everything that you have chosen to publish on Twitter, which is a public forum.

If you do not want your Twitter to be public, you can make it private. Then it will not be public. If you do not make it private, it will be public.

So far, so good. But then there is the bit that made me think.

Because Twitter is public, and published on the internet, it is possible that someone will quote something that you said on Twitter in a news story. This is something that you implicitly accept by publishing something on Twitter, which is public.

This part I find less convincing. Yes, Twitter is public. But does this really mean that everything in the public could be used in any way. Am I supposed to have implicitly agreed to any form of possible, potential use of my material simply because Twitter is public?

No.

From a copyright perspective there is a good case for arguing that my tweets are my property. But then again I would also argue that republishing the tweets falls under fair use or right to quote. Despite this, it’s still a good illustration that public does not mean free-to-use-in-any-way-I-want.

But what are the limits of re-use of Tweets? I would be offended if a militant group of madmen (take your pick) used a tweet of mine (along with my image and user name) on a poster (unlikely scenario, I know). But would I be able to prevent it?

What about using tweets in lectures? Ah yes, its fair use. What about shaming a student by displaying his/her tweets? (Not outlandish it happened here). What about the police shaming drunk drivers? What if a doctor retweets medical information tweeted by a patient? Would this breach medical ethics?

Tweet This by Kris Olin CC BY NC SA

The technology is public (open for all to see). But this mean that the public has the right to do whatever they please with what they see? Even if there is no legal limits to this behavior, there are ethically questionable reuses of tweets.

The point is that when I tweet something there is a small chance that the people who follow me see it. If some of them retweet then there is a chance of others seeing it. But if @stephenfry were to accidentally retweet it – I would achieve internet fame.

My tweets do not achieve internet fame. My tweets exist within a context. Naturally there is no law preventing them from leaving that context but when they do, their meaning may warp beyond their original meaning and purpose. And when this happens – what is the ethical responsibility of the re-tweeter?

Posted on by Mathias Klang

The Day We Fight Back

Today, 11th February 2014, is ‘The Day We Fight Back” – a day of campaigning against mass surveillance. The problem is that we have become so comfortable with the creeping levels of mass surveillance in our lives that we no longer stop to question what is happening and what surveillance means.

Basically this is all about lack of imagination and education about the issues. Sure we love our technological toys but it is up to all of us to know what it means when the convenience of technology lulls us into accepting large scale privacy invasions in our lives. Among the reasons for the existence of large scale surveillance is that we have come to accept it rather than protest or even question it.

Standing up for our rights is worthwhile and important. Read more on the EFF site, check out the events and info on the Today We Fight Back site and why not follow Paul Bernal’s advice in 10 Ways to Fight Back. It’s not about not using your favorite tech but it’s about being allowed to use your stuff in ways which are not harmful to us.

Posted on by Mathias Klang