Paper long abstract:

The recent frenzy in discussing NSA activities and the collecting of Big Data show a widespread critical concern for the current practice of gathering and using personal data. These concerns have their history.

In an essay from 1971, the legal scholar Alan Westin had used the term 'data surveillance' to describe what he identified maybe not as a entirely novel mode of power, but - because of its scale - as a serious threat to and challenge for contemporary society (Westin 1971: 304). At that time, various media reports, popular books, scientific publications, and political hearings all of a sudden began to address contemporary practices of collecting and storing of personal data as a form of 'data surveillance'.Drawing on contemporary literary and scholarly works on these issues, I will examine how the societal usage of personal data was explored in novel normative and cultural ways by a group of scholars and in public discourse. There have been concerns about the usage of personal data before, but - as I will show in my paper - not on this broad societal level and to this extent as in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I argue that during that time, the societal handling of (personal) data became a highly controversial matter not only of public, but also of private interest.

The empirical material of my inquiry includes mostly media reports, sociological and juridical studies from the United States and Germany during 1960s and 1970s.

Paper long abstract:

The technological progress and the plethora of new data driven applications, which have are discussed as "Big Data", raise serious concerns about new possibilities for surveillance. In particular the recent disclosures about the activities of secret services has shown the potential of data collection and analysis as means of surveillance. At the same time, many of the data used by those surveillance programs accrue in services which form an integral part of the quality of life in modern societies: easy and mobile access to the internet, effective and fast communication and social networking, access to widespread sources of information. Furthermore, companies, states, and NGOs are working on potentially beneficial uses of "Big Data". To name a few, they hope to improve healthcare, education, energy distribution, resilience against catastrophes, or the predication of disease outbreaks. These positive outlooks create an "ethical dissonance" with the negative connotations of surveillance. Furthermore, the negative implications of "Big Data" are not limited to surveillance. For example, increased use of data might lead to socially unjust distributions of healthcare; unjust insurance policies; or paternalist schemes concerning education, drug use, or diet. Against this background, we inquire to what extent surveillance is suitable as a critical paradigm for "Big Data". To that aim, we propose a wider perspective of analysis that shows which new ways of action are enabled or disabled and how power and participation are distributed in these processes.

Paper long abstract:

Current researches largely present the surveillance threats to democracy focusing mainly in the democracy-privacy trade-offs. Our framing consists in a twofold proposition: focusing on the political participation in all spheres of public daily life; and concentrate on the key concept of autonomy to understand the conditions for political participation. Regarding political participation, the loss of privacy is nowadays the major threat to autonomy.

When most people face privacy-security trade-offs, they rapidly choose security over privacy. Are they aware of the consequences to their autonomy brought by the loss of privacy, like losing their faculty and power to make political choices and to participate in decision-making within the public domain? Thus, autonomy is a central issue regarding the threats to political participation.

In the 20th century, previously to the emergence of ICT, political sociology mainly kept at large the crucial issue of autonomy, what has not happened within points of view that are more liberal. An action is autonomous if it respects the will of the individual, which implies not to be constrained.

Surveillance has increased exponentially in contemporary societies, either extensively through all spheres of social activity, as intensively penetrating in the routines of our daily lives. Transparent citizens may hardly be politically free.

This paper intends to analyse as surveillance is reconfiguring the political participation. This analysis embraces the way surveillance threats the autonomy effectiveness and the consequences to further political participation. Is also considers the changes in political participation due to surveillance, considering that individuals need three conditions - resources, opportunities and motivation - to be politically active.

Paper long abstract:

Arguments for the Data Retention Directive and revelations from Edward Snowden reveal something of a Big Data fetish on the part of security forces. We are told that these forces need to know about all communications if they are to keep us safe from terrorism. And computational service providers seem eager to promise them that with enough data and the right algorithms, they will be able to predict and prevent crimes. Part of the argument behind this is that if N=all then sampling error is no longer an issue; if N=all then apparent correlations are true correlations; if N=all then no prior theory is needed as calculations are not about testing but about discovery. This paper will, in simple terms, discuss why these arguments do not hold water and why Big Data - while it may serve well for other purposes - is dangerous to rely on for security purposes.

Paper long abstract:

This contribution discusses the changing reality in security discourse in relation to technology-related surveillance practices and implications for privacy concepts. Regardless of whether recently uncovered mass surveillance programs are framed as data collection or surveillance, societal impacts particularly on privacy and autonomy remain critical. These surveillance forms are linked to significant transformations in security discourse since the 1990s towards a holistic security concept with accordingly extensive measures for its achievement, entailing deep privacy impacts. Big data surveillance fits perfectly in new modes of pre-emption aiming at eliminating potential threats before they become serious. This reinforces a "security continuum" (Buzan et al 1998) where security itself becomes a moving target with self-amplifying dynamics. The term security, generally understood as a state free from unjustifiable risks as such is always afflicted with risk - thus, security without risks is a contradiction in terms. This contraction becomes inherent part of a "securitization" (cf. Weaver 1995) where security becomes a permanent process seducing with a seemingly predicting view on threats fostering effectivity of security measures. Technology is mostly seen as perfect means to improve security with seemingly simple, automated, cost-efficient measures. Recent trends in the scope of big data to pre-emptively gather personal information drastically reinforce this fallacy further. Tightly connected to this paradigm shift is an assumed privacy-security trade-off reinforced by technology usage. This creates a reality where surveillance becomes justifiable by a "natural" privacy-security conflict which - in this logic - has to be approved to improve security at the cost of privacy.

Paper long abstract:

While the military use of drones has been the subject of significant academic scrutiny since the mid-2000s, the more recent civil society, government, industry, and media interest in the use of drones for civilian and humanitarian purposes has so far received little scholarly attention. As evidenced by the ongoing drone wars, UAV technology enables a specific set of political and military rationales and projects that must be investigated, not for their often-alleged ´newness` but for the power they represent and the type of settlements they generate. In this paper, we argue that the prospect of using drones for humanitarian and other life-saving activities has produced an alternative discourse on drones, dedicated to develop and publicize the endless possibilities that drones have for 'doing good'. This has led to the material and discursive creation of what we label 'the Good Drone'. We explore the role of the Good Drone as an organizing narrative for political projects, technology development and humanitarian action. We aim to open up a critical conversation about the political currency of 'good'. To that end, we unpack the different meanings of 'good' in the discourses surrounding the actual development and use of drones, whether arising from the language of technological innovation, commercial imagination or political rhetoric.

Paper long abstract:

Norway is a newsprint country, 2/3 of households subscribe to at least one daily newspaper. What are Norwegian newspapers saying about surveillance after Edward Snowden's whistleblowing? We have tracked a range of newspapers for one week in March 2014 to see how surveillance was being covered.

In November, when the March week was chosen, it seemed Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald had mastered the management of the story, releasing "pebbles" of information into the media pool with a timing and order that would keep the story alive almost indefinitely to create a deep understanding of the workings of mass surveillance. However, media attention spans are notoriously short. What ripples would still be flowing out and reflecting back from those "pebbles" come March? Which would have faded away? Or, to use a connect-the-dots metaphor: what dots remain, what connections are drawn, and what overall image of surveillance is surveillance-themed journalism creating?

A Norwegian database search shows that the number of surveillance-themed newspaper items soared immediately after Greenwald began publishing from Snowden's leaked documents, June 2013. The numbers dipped during Parliamentary elections in September 2013, then rose again from October falling thereafter gradually.

Reading the articles themselves, one striking point is the number of key issues from Snowden's revelations that are not mentioned in the March 2014 newspapers, even when articles take up closely related points. Those "missing dots and connections" and the changed shapes their absence may create in the overall picture of surveillance will be our theme in this paper.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we present an analysis from a discourse perspective of one week of articles on surveillance in Scandinavian news media. Our analysis of this material is currently ongoing. As a first step in the analysis, we have looked at what surveillance is called in various contexts and to what extent the journalists, editors, letter-to-the-editor authors express trust in surveillance. A tentative finding, as of abstract deadline, is that how surveillance is signified varies with how the activity is evaluated. Articles that use the word "surveillance" (övervakning, overvåking, overvågning), tend to be critical of the surveillance activity in question. Articles supportive of surveillance activities tend to use synonyms (or, given this finding, perhaps we should call them euphemisms) such as "mapping", "investigation", "screening". The subject under surveillance and the purpose of the surveillance play key roles in this negotiation of trust and other values and norms.

Paper long abstract:

Edward Snowden's revelations triggered a shift from utopian towards dystopian notions of big data and the internet. The paper provides a theoretical-conceptual contribution to central terms in this debate. The main thesis is that transparency forms an essential prerequisite of democratic governance, but cannot substitute for regulation. For investigating the interrelationship between transparency, technical surveillance, privacy, and democracy, we must seek to clarify these concepts in the digitized information society.

"Transparency" is related to concepts of openness and the public sphere. We need to distinguish between formal transparency (availability of information), and cognitive transparency (comprehensibility) (Beck 2013). Transparency and publicity form normative ideals in liberal democracies. The ambiguity between transparency and surveillance, and different concepts of panoptical (Bentham, Foucault 1992), and post-pan-optical (Baumann 2003) control in contemporary societies shall be discussed.

Transparency is not only metaphoric and descriptive, but always implies prescriptive notions. Therefore, the "shadows" of transparency must also be kept in mind, as veiling and unveiling, covering and discovering become intertwined and co-constitutional (Kilian 2013). Followings this dialectics, we therefore have to inquire the selectivity of transparency, as understanding and knowledge require situatedness, contexts, and interpretation. The openness of data does not yet mean transparency of politics, corporations, or individuals. Media attentiveness, issue framing, and reception have to be taken into account. Transparency's interrelationship with freedom, responsibility, and democratic accountability will be assessed. Hence, transparency is a necessary precondition for democratic governance - but it does not form a substitute for democracy and regulation (Etzioni 2013).

Paper long abstract:

This contribution tackles modern surveillance from the perspective of politics of disappearance, which problematizes the presence and absence of heterogeneous elements in concrete practices. It aims to illuminate neglected styles of association encompassing what is present, but also what is left out, banned or omitted. Relying on the notion of obscenity, the paper attempts to bridge the gap between these politics and more established accounts of surveillance focused on the (in)visibilities at stake, moving beyond visions too narrowly entrenched in discussing who observes what.

Two case studies flesh out this approach. First, the paper considers how revelations about US NSA's surveillance triggered operations of unveiling and concealing, from an initial uncovering of covert practices towards a displacement of their visibility by the image of Edward Snowden, and followed by the progressive transformation of the whistle-blower's image into a ghostly presence.

Second, it looks into so-called resistance practices, and particularly into a selected set in which activists re-activate notions such as subjectivity and privacy through a saturation of nakedness. Here, exposure is used to reclaim a right to hide, and asserting the presence of the body is played out as a mode of contestation of increasingly nebulous and un-fathomable data processing operations.

These cases allow interrogating the meaning of the ob-scene, by bringing to the fore its location at the crossroads of what is (too) (in)visible and what is just (not) there. Finally, the contribution asks which new configurations open up when surveillance and counter-surveillance are addressed from this standpoint.

Paper long abstract:

Practices for security consist on the display of CCTV in public space. Electronic technologies supplies videosurveillance devices with cameras or microphones. CCTV, wireless video and other surveillance system are imposed to reduce the crime. One example is the recorded video material of an incident in Woolwich, London, U.K. It is an historical case about the progress, the technology and the civil rights. The attack in Woolwich is described as a terrorist attack, where the British Army soldier: Drummer (Private) Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was killed by two men near the Royal Artillery Barracks. Exists CCTV recorded material analyzed by the police but not released in the media. The Independent Police Complaints Commission released a statement about the investigation of the incident recorded through CCTV footage. The images taken from passers and residents with mobile devices and telephone cameras have been distributed through media channels like YouTube and newspapers as Daily Mirror. But the most important about the case, refers to the audio captured and recorded from i-phones and microphones from mobile telephones. This is an historical novelty about public space sound recording, new journalism and surveillance. Regarding the Data Protection Law 1998 it is not permitted to record sound in public space. Electronic communications are subjected to privacy legislation. Phone calls, emails, text messages, web browsing sessions, GPS data, although could capture and record sound are not permitted, are against the law and against privacy and human rights.

Paper long abstract:

New developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) enable powerful institutions to not only accumulate an abundance of data about humans but also to create algorithms and mechanisms for interpretation of big sets of data into high quality information in order to identify movements, preferences, political attitudes and aspirations of individual persons, social groups and communities.

New developments in feminist research and politics hold that it is not by identity politics but by overcoming identity politics that a basis for solidarity in feminist and anti-racist politics and research may be created.

This paper tries to combine epistemological and methodological questions about how to do empirical research in this highly contested field of ICTs with cosmopolitical (Stengers) feminist solidarity and ethico-political questions (Barad): What is the meaning of solidarity in these contested fields? What is the meaning of knowledge? What kind of knowledge production may be of help for whom and where and when? What about the relation of the subjects and (potential human) objects of research in such a global (research) environment?

The paper will draw on an action research project recently completed by an international network of feminist migrant grass roots organisations.

Paper long abstract:

The world is becoming increasingly smart. Be it workplaces, private homes or the public space—all these realms are progressively populated by interconnected smart devices and ambient intelligence promising gains in efficiency, safety, security, convenience, and comfort. To provide their functionality, all these artifacts depend on data being collected, processed, stored, and interpreted. With a growing interconnectedness of devices and services, different kinds of data are increasingly related to one another, frequently combining big-data-assets with individual data.

Although not explicitly designed as surveillance technologies, those smart environments bear the potential to form an extremely dense surveillance network which extends into the most private realm and whose data are considerably more meaningful than e.g. an individual's 'mere' location. But the system of ubiquitous visibility emerges, quasi, as a by-product and Big Brother enters through the back door, borne by the desire for gains in quality of life.

Drawing on qualitative interview data gathered in a project on the social acceptance of cloud-based smart-home-technologies, the paper explores this issue of privacy and surveillance against the background of cloud-connected smart environments. From the interviews, we gain insights into the visions and fears that individuals harbor concerning smart artifacts and the socio-technical network they constitute as well as their expectations about the technology's impact on privacy and its influence in terms of behavioral control. The paper concludes with an outlook on the question of trust in smart environments and some implications for their design.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates contemporary practices associated with the 'citizen scientific' culture, and how data (may they be qualitative or quantitative, individual or aggregated) collected and collated through these practices contribute to shaping today's data-saturated society.

Based on some case studies on 'citizen science' projects in relation to weather data, this paper looks into the types of data that are collected, collated and shared through different protocols and means, and how these data are governed, exploited, re-used, re-purposed and re-appropriated. The paper also examines the values that participants attach to such citizen science projects, their motivations for participating, and how their participation is facilitated. Through answering these questions, the growing interest from governments, the private sector, communities and individuals in 'citizen science' and 'big data' is placed under an infrastructural context (Star 1999; Star and Bowker 2010) where technological artefacts and services, and human knowledge, experiences, and actions are aligned and assembled to shape and challenge orthodox scientific agendas and cultures.

This paper will map the socio-technical practices to demonstrate how such a culture of DIY measurement in favour of the values of accuracy, instancy and completeness are facilitated and fulfilled through exploiting, generating and re-generating the values of big data.

Star, S. L. (1999). 'The Ethnography of Infrastructure'. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(3): 377-391.

Star, S. L. and Bowker, G. C. (2010). 'How to infrastructure'. In L. A. Lievrouw and S. Livingstone (eds). Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Social Consequences of ICTs. Sage.

Paper long abstract:

Companies and people are increasingly looking for social intelligence in "big data"-- from the analysis of historically large and interlinked new streams of data, traces of massive online social networks, and computational models of complex problems. But what happens when we cast information and computer technologies into the social role of decision makers? What happens when people try to listen to (and learn from) the machines around them? And what do these questions imply about human communication, power, and agency in the many complexly linked social and technical systems in our contemporary world? In this paper I will present qualitative data from five years of field research on team decision making with, through, and around computational models in building architecture, and three years in the field of data-enhanced personal health and wellness.

The results are surprising and require new theoretical frames for the role of communication technologies in power and agency. In the fields we studied, teams deferred to the intelligence of algorithms that were little understood, governed, or questioned; people talked about using data to substitute for conversations; and they searched Facebook for surprise discoveries to thorny scientific problems. In short, these practices with data in our everyday lives challenge a vision of engaged, empowered and in-control users. They present us instead with the need for new languages to talk about the increasingly powerful social role our media and our devices play in shaping our lives.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, talk of 'Big Data' has conquered the political realm. In a host of reports and speeches, policymakers have sought to lay out an agenda for the governance of what has been referred to as the next "industrial revolution" (Kroes 2014). Given the importance of such guidelines for legislation, regulation, and the funding of research and innovation, this paper will provide a concise discussion of some of the key Big Data-related policy documents from both Europe and the United States, posing three distinct though interrelated questions:

1) Which sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim 2009) accompany the notion of Big Data in the examined policy documents and what kind of technopolitical cultures (Felt and Müller 2011) do these visions enact?

2) How reflective are the reports of the potential ethical, legal, and social implications of Big Data activities that have been highlighted by numerous commentators, including a growing number of data sociologists (e.g. Boyd and Crawford 2012).

3) Do the reports present any discursive 'openings' that would allow SSH researchers to better connect and communicate to a political audience, not unlike the role the notion of 'responsible research and innovation' continues to play in the field of new and emerging technologies?

By addressing these questions, the paper will not only provide fresh insights regarding a pressing matter of concern, that is, the governance of Big Data, but will furthermore present potential rhetorical strategies for the social sciences and the humanities to more effectively participate in the related political debate.

Paper long abstract:

The current policy push for open access to research data has led to shifts in responsibilities and the development of new practices. The integrity and preservation of data in many disciplines has been the sole responsibility of the researcher. The ambition of governments and funding bodies to make more research data digitally and openly available requires researchers to work with institutional data repositories and centres to manage and curate their data. Various institutions, data centres and research organisations have taken initial steps to give shape to this ambition. They have developed and offer services to support researchers in data management, produced guides and roadmaps, created training programmes. However, many researchers are reluctant to participate and make use of services offered.

This paper focuses on the assumptions about the distribution of responsibility for the curation and management of data that underlie top-down initiatives to stimulate open access to research data. Drawing on STS literature about boundaries and communities of practices, this paper critically reflects on some of these assumptions as they appear in policy documents, reports, roadmaps and guides. In particular, we analyse how they may conflict with existing scientific and scholarly practices in the natural sciences and humanities. The analysis serves as a basis for exploring alternative possibilities for creating places for open access to research data.

Paper long abstract:

Contemporary surveillance societies feature complex cyberphysical datascapes, with BIG DATA techniques being applied in all kinds of areas and by various kinds of organizations. In those datascapes established structural principles, such as the public/private distinction come under severe pressure. Now, when delving into the privacy discourse it becomes clear that the overwhelming majority of participants draw on a fundamentally individualistic notion of privacy. Whereas there has been a lot of criticism regarding this individualism it still seems disproportionate to drop the long standing concept of privacy too hastily. Here STS approaches may enable us to have our cake and eat it too, for it seems easily possible for them to conceive of the collective production of individuality. Thus, it becomes possible to de-individualize but nevertheless stick to the notion of privacy. E.g., "Selbstdatenschutz" ("self-data-protection") is constantly propagated in German discourse as a way to resist BIG DATA-related surveillance strategies: the individual self is called upon to produce her own privacy by technical means (i.e. PETs). When applying STS instruments it becomes clear, though, that also practices of "Selbstdatenschutz" require to, be produced and maintained collectively. This being revealed, it becomes impossible for government representatives and economic players to shift the responsibility for ensuring privacy on to "isolated" individuals in some governmentality fashion. It is for these - sociological as well as political - reasons that I would like to plead for STS privacy research in digital datascapes. My plea will combine general STS insights with an analysis of the "Selbstdatenschutz" discourse.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will examine the fraught processes entailed in researching the everyday connections between individuals' experiences of information exchange, and the vast data storehouses of states and global capital, across online and offline boundaries. The paper will particularly consider the various impediments to such research, including those challenges posed by proscribed interactions, systems of ownership and control, and regulatory regimes. The paper touches on the multiple and overlapping relations of power throughout these connections, as well as the positioning of the data subject in such relations. The paper concludes with some reflections on the questions that remain for surveillance studies scholars over whether any evidentiary basis for an understanding of the relationship between a data subject and a 'data double' will ever be possible.