veillant media & emotiveillance
TRANSCRIPT
Veillant Media: ‘Veillant Panoptic Assemblage’ and ‘Emotiveillance’
Vian Bakir and Andrew McStayBangor UniversityWales, UK
Abstract• Vian Bakir and Andrew McStay will present work they are doing in the area of
‘Veillance’ – Mann’s term for mutual watching. • Vian is interested in how sousveillance works across media to challenge official
versions of events and hold power to account in the secretive area of national security. She is concerned that this potential for resistance is being compromised by weak civic structures and through the ever-growing surveillant state operating through what she terms the ‘Veillant Panoptic Assemblage’.
• Andrew is researching how emotions are both being watched by ourselves, and corporate and governmental actors. What he terms as ‘emotiveillant technologies’ and ‘empathic media’ are wide-ranging and being deployed in advertising, education, health, gaming, marketing, policing, retail, security, sport and other domains. Drawing on interview and UK-wide survey data, Andrew will outline conceptual principles of empathic media, what they portend for the future, and important but non-obvious critical questions for ethical businesses, regulators and privacy groups.
Terminology (Steve Mann)
• Veillance - processes of mutual watching/monitoring by surveillant organizations & sousveillant individuals.
• Surveillance - monitoring from position of power by those who are not a participant to the activity being watched
• Sousveillance - monitoring from position of minimal power, and by those participating in the activity being watched
• Equiveillance - equality between surveillant & sousveillant forces, or a‘transparent society’.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z82Zavh-NhI• wearcam.org/veillance/veillance.pdf• http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/veillance
Premature sousveillance
Impactful sousveillance
Suppressed sousveillance Hoax sousveillance
Sousveillance - monitoring from position of minimal power, and by those participating in the activity being watched
By 2013
• Twitter – over 500 million total users
• Google - over 500 million total users
• FaceBook – over 1 billion total users
DATA-PSST! Debating & Assessing Transparency Arrangements - Privacy, Security, Sur/Sous/Veillance, Trust
http://data-psst.bangor.ac.uk/
1. Different aspects of transparency
2. How do these affect privacy, security, surveillance and trust?
3. What different actors think of existing/desirable transparency arrangements?
4. Build a typology of transparency types
DATA-PSST!
Transparency TypeCitizen Control over Personal
Visibility
Extent of Oversight of
Surveillant Entity
Liberal Transparency High High (to ensure no unwanted
prying into citizens’ lives)
Liberal Translucency High Socially/ legally agreed
limitations
Radical Translucency
Low (everyone has signed
away their control to maximize
social good)
Socially/ legally agreed
limitations
Radical Transparency
Low (everyone has signed
away their control to maximize
social good)
High (to ensure concurrent
citizen & state/ corporate
openness)
Forced TransparencyNone (state/corporate-imposed,
secret control)Insufficient to win social trust
Bakir, V. & A. McStay. 2015. Assessing Interdisciplinary Academic & Multi-Stakeholder Positions on Transparency post-Snowden. Ethical Space, 12 (3/4): http://www.communicationethics.net/espace/index.php?nav=feature
http://www.cogitatiopress.com/ojs/index.php/mediaandcommunication/article/view/277
Post-SnowdenCompromised sousveillance?Towards a veillant panoptic assemblage
• Surveillant ‘assemblage’ &‘panopticon’ inform each other
• state re-appropriation of citizens‘communications for disciplinary purposes– includes data from
sousveillance• Eg selfies• Eg whistle-blowing
Equiveillance
… veillance infrastructures are extensive and the power requirements to enact change from below are marginal. This type of system would likely protect whistle-blowers, encourage public fora and debate, and implement participatory projects and innovations to the system. Even the powers of oversight in this configuration are likely to be seen from below and subject to evaluation. (Mann & Ferenbok 2013: 30)
From ‘veillant panoptic assemblage’ to ‘equiveillant panoptic assemblage’
Equiveillance:• …. This type of system
would likely protect whistle-blowers, encourage public fora and debate, and implement participatory projects and innovations to the system.
• protect whistle-blowers: • Snowden not technically a
whistleblower – didn’t follow national security whistleblower protocols -stranded in Russia
• Obama’s multiple indictments of national security whistleblowers under Espionage Act [1917]
• whistle-blowing is discouraged, channeled & remains a weak formal mechanism to enact change from below
From ‘veillant panoptic assemblage’ to ‘equiveillant panoptic assemblage’
Equiveillance:• …This type of system
would likely protect whistle-blowers, encourage public fora and debate, and implement participatory projects and innovations to the system.
• encourage public fora & debate– intelligence agencies manipulate
press via secrecy • withhold information • prior constraint • whistle-blower prosecution • harass non-compliant press• self-censorship by journalists
– and propaganda • spread intelligence-sourced,
disguised, propaganda • Provide minimal critical reportage of
intel agencies – MSM weak force for accountability
• http://hij.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/01/29/1940161214566693.abstract
From ‘veillant panoptic assemblage’ to ‘equiveillant panoptic assemblage’
Equiveillance:• …This type of system
would likely protect whistle-blowers, encourage public fora and debate, and implement participatory projects and innovations to the system.
• implement participatory projects
• US/UK review groups/oversight boards set up to study intel agencies’ surveillance consulted wider legislature & NGOs
• What weight was given to concerns expressed by these broader voices?– Eg UK’s Intelligence & Security Committee
presumes to know public opinion but seems to discount it
– See Public Feeling on Privacy, Security and Surveillance: A Report by DATA-PSST and DCSS (Nov 2015)
– weak force for accountability?
From ‘veillant panoptic assemblage’ to ‘equiveillant panoptic assemblage’
Equiveillance:• …This type of system
would likely protect whistle-blowers, encourage public fora and debate, and implement participatory projects and innovations to the system.
• innovations to the system
• tech industry campaigns for change to surveillance & transparency laws/practices
• Some leading tech companies implemented end-to-end encryption
• STRONG accountability mechanism – intel agencies worry about internet ‘going dark’
So where are we now (2016)?
• Far from ‘equiveillant panoptic assemblage’• Instead: ‘veillant panoptic assemblage’ • protect whistle-blowers -
WEAK - discouraged, channeled
• encourage public fora and debate –WEAK – MSM in thrall to security state.
• participatory projects - WEAK – just for show?
• innovations to the system – STRONG
– big tech cos– Neo-liberal corporate
activism– Brand maintenance
Empathic Media: The Surveillance of Emotional Lifeo Outlineo Emotiveillance?o Technologies: sentiment, respiration, heart, face,
voice, skin and braino Ends: advertising, marketing, entertainment
(gaming/movies), employment, national security and more
o Methodso Survey findings
Collect it allo What the advertising and media giants say …o Programmatic logic/Data Management Platformso Emotion-sensitivity inevitable (if one does it, they all
will) o Transparencyo Immoral, or just a different view of data flows
(seamless/frictionless UX and consumer experience)?o But… consent mechanisms, pseudoanoymisation
problems, unintended outcomes, etc.
In public spaces…
See McStay (2015) Empathic Media: Advertising that Tracks Your Mood
… and over at Wimbledon
I asked people in the UK (n=2000+)
Advertising agencies have developed outdoor ads equipped with cameras that scan onlookers’ faces to work out our emotions towards the ad.
If our reactions are not positive the ad changes itself to be more appealing. Which of the following best represents your feelings about this?
Responses offered…
1. I am not OK with my data about me being collected in this way.
2. I am OK with data collection about my emotions in this way as long as the information is anonymised and cannot be associated with me, my email address, phone number or any other possible means of personally identifying me.
3. I am OK with data collection about my emotional state in this way and OK for this data to be linked with personal information held about me.
4. Don't know.
They said…
1. I am not OK with my data about me being collected in this way. (-%)
2. I am OK with data collection about my emotions in this way as long as the information is anonymised and cannot be associated with me, my email address, phone number or any other possible means of personally identifying me. (--%)
3. I am OK with data collection about my emotional state in this way and OK for this data to be linked with personal information held about me. (-%)
4. Don't know. (-%)
Contact details• Vian Bakir, Professor of Political Communication & Journalism
– [email protected]– Twitter: @VianBakir1
• Andrew McStay, Reader in Advertising & Digital Media– [email protected]– Twitter: @digi_ad