Michael Zimmer.org

Given the renewed focus on full-body “backscatter” surveillance technology, I thought I’d highlight this poster a group of students created in my Spring 2009 “Information Technology Ethics” class (brief news story is here).
Airport Surveillance Poster
View more presentations from michaelzimmer.

The students note that while the technology provides a way to thoroughly search more people without needing to profile those for further pat-downs, they acknowledge that the technology represents a unique invasion into one’s personal body and space.
To mitigate some of the ethical concerns, they propose creating a robust code of ethics …

The city of Chicago has started to integrate its network of CCTV surveillance cameras to its 911 call center, creating a robust infrastructure to allow dispatchers to visually observe, in real time, the location of many 911 calls throughout the city. According to the city’s press release:
When a 911 call is received, the CAD system scans the OVS network to find any safety camera within 150 feet of the address of the call.
Within seconds, real time video of the location appears on the call taker’s screen.
This story in the NY …

Following up, the DVD for the hit action/thriller movie “Eagle Eye” has been released. The second disc of the 2-disc special edition includes the commentary “Is My Cellphone Spying on Me?”, featuring reflections on technology and surveillance by the actors and producers of the film, Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Clearinghouse, and myself.
And, yes, I talk to fast when I get excited about a topic.

If you share my appreciation for the ctrl[space]: Rhetorics of Surveillance exhibit and book, linking surveillance, theory, and art, you might be interested in this call for papers for a special issue of Surveillance & Society on “Performance, New Media, and Surveillance”:
Special Issue of Surveillance & Society | www.surveillance-and-society.org
Performance, New Media, and Surveillance | guest editorsJohn E. McGrath and Robert W. Sweeny
The relationship between the visual arts and surveillance has been explored through large scale exhibitions (e.g.: CTRL [Space], ZKM), and texts such as Loving Big Brother (McGrath, 2004) have …

UW-Milwaukee has issued a nice press release regarding my contribution to the DVD bonus material for the action/thriller movie “Eagle Eye,” which features sophisticated surveillance technologies as one of its plot devices.
The closing paragraph pretty much sums up where we are on the project:
At this point, with “Eagle Eye” flying high at the box office, Zimmer isn’t sure when the DVD will come out or how much of his interview will be on the final version. Still, he says, it was a fun experience and an opportunity to educate the …

The Information Warfare Monitor, a joint project of the Advanced Network Research Group, part of the Cambridge Security Programme, The SecDev Group and the Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, has released major investigative report, Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China’s TOM-Skype platform (PDF of full report), detailing a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives certain Internet text conversations that include politically charged words on the popular Skype platform. The …

During my studies in privacy and surveillance theory, I’ve gained an interest in technologies of obfuscation and resistance. Especially simple ones that nearly any average citizen can implement.
TrackMeNot is a great example: a simple Firefox extension that periodically issues randomized search queries to popular search engines, thereby hiding users’ actual search trails in a cloud of ‘ghost’ queries, significantly increasing the difficulty of aggregating such data into accurate or identifying user profiles. While it might not fully protect one’s privacy or create a veil of full anonymity, TrackMeNot acts as …

I’ve been ridiculously busy lately, and need to quickly catch up on some recent items of note:

Scientific American has a nice special issue dedicated to “the future of privacy.” Nothing new here for most privacy scholars, but it is a nice treatment of the issues that is approachable to those who don’t spend every breathing moment thinking about privacy and surveillance theory. (Also very good for undergraduate courses!)
Colorado Law School professor Paul Ohm has released an important new article on “The Rise and Fall of Invasive ISP Surveillance,” where he …

This post is a bleg:
I’ve been asked to film an interview that will accompany the DVD bonus material for the forthcoming (Steven Spielberg produced) action/thriller movie “Eagle Eye,” which features sophisticated surveillance technologies as one of its plot devices. The topic for the interview will be cellphone surveillance.
I’ve discussed the topic on occassion here, but am seeking any references readers might have at hand that might help me organize my thoughts on the topic.
Thanks.

Holidays, travel, deadlines, start of semester…plenty of excuses for my lapse in blogging. Here are some quick links of important stories I can’t provide detailed comments on right now.

January 28, 2008 is Data Privacy Day
US intelligence agencies are reportedly working on new plans to allow government access to virtually any e-mail, file transfer, or Web search.
Joris van Hoboken reacts to a comment in the above story from an intelligence officer that “security and privacy are a zero sum game”.

Alec Saunders at GigaOM has written a Privacy Manifesto for …

Blogging has been light due to other duties, but I wanted to point out a few notable items that deserve attention:

 Twitter appears to be planning to expand the search offerings, allowing users to search for particular terms within others’ real-time personal data streams. If implemented, one’s Twitter messages will no longer be practically obscured from most people’s eyes (only a few people really other to view your stream, trust me). Instead, access to your stream is only a search term away.
Philipp Lenssen posted a nice piece of satire about how …

The ACLU launched the “Surveillance Society Clock” to symbolize how we are fast approaching a surveillance society in the United States. The clock is set at six minutes before the “midnight” of such a dark end to privacy:
The reality is we are fast approaching a genuine surveillance society in the United States – a dark future where our every move, our every transaction, our every communication is recorded, compiled, and stored away, ready to be examined and used against us by the authorities whenever they …

From Wired’s Ryan Singel:
The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.
The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation’s telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.
It’s a “comprehensive wiretap system that intercepts wire-line phones, cellular phones, SMS …

Jeremy Hunsinger points to this disturbing report about how a dean of students at a Washington high school thought he saw two girls kissing, so he checked the school’s surveillance footage to confirm it. He then proceeded to share what he saw with the parents of one of the girls, who pulled her out of school, and fueled a major controversy.
This is a prime example of function creep – where a technology designed for one purpose (ensuring public safety in schools) is later used for a different purpose (enforcing social …

Related to my earlier mention of the challenges of relying on Panoptic theory to talk about surveillance, Anders Albrechtslund has posted an informal taxonomy of “21 perspectives on surveillance“:

The Big Brother perspective
Surveillance is a scary way for the state to intrude on people’s privacy. Currently, we are on a slippery slope towards a surveillance society.
The control perspective
Surveillance is a way to practice control over individuals or a group of individuals. Thus, it is a tool to exercise power.
The care perspective
Surveillance is a way to provide care for individuals, e.g. when …