Beyond Moral Coupling: Analysing Politics of Privacy in the Era of Surveillance (original) (raw)

Rethinking Privacy: A Feminist Approach to Privacy Rights after Snowden

Tim Cook’s message to Apple customers, regarding Apple’s refusal to provide the FBI with a backdoor to the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, typifies the corporate appropriation of privacy rights discourse. In light of this appropriation, I propose a reconsideration of the sovereign subject presupposed by privacy rights discourse through a comparative approach to the US and EU’s treatments of privacy rights. I then apply feminist theories of the non-sovereign subject, which challenge liberal democratic discourse’s construction of the subject by emphasising social interdependence. I argue that critical scholars of surveillance and the digital economy need to address the fact that the digital economy is predicated on the subject’s non-sovereignty, where individuals can be fragmented and combined into the mass collection of data. I conclude with a discussion of how the non-sovereignty of the subject under commercial surveillance could also provide the grounds for the socialized redistribution of big data profits.

'Spying for the People': Surveillance, Democracy and the Impasse of Cynical Reason

This essay examines the Snowden affair as a sort of Rorschach test that traces the contours of what I am calling the impasse of cynical reason. In particular, I contend that the emerging form of algorithmic dataveillance both elicits and actively thwarts theoretical and critical approaches predicated on a normative, symbolic model of epistemology that this form aspires to supplant. As a result, what such approaches tend to discern in the emerging culture of surveillance are its own epistemological commitments -the very ones comprising the impasse of cynical reason. Breaking out of this impasse will thus require disrupting the deep, hidden complicity of such critique with its ostensible object. I contend that this will require taking seriously the often disingenuous or fallacious arguments on behalf of dataveillance in order to overcome the critical resistance to the quite genuine eventuality they connote -that of the decline of cynical reason as the prevailing form of social coordination.

Ethical Issues and Citizens Rights in the Era of Digital Government Surveillance

Over recent years, terrorism has pressed democracy and Westerners to their ethical limits not only regarding torture but also the ways citizens are secretly spied. The use of current digital technologies to monitor lay persons or activists is one of the aspects that triggered a hot-debate in Europe and US. After Snowden`s case, citizenry not only realized the dark side of government, but how slowly democracy is dying. Doubtless, this is the intersection where this book is inserted. Based on 13 high-quality chapters, organized in three sections, editors Robert Cropf and Timothy Bagwell provide to readers with a pungent work containing a great varieties of themes discussing how e-surveillance is often used for Government to enhance security, as well as some individual rights are harmed. Over recent years, terrorism has pressed democracy and Westerners to their ethical limits not only regarding torture but also the ways citizens are secretly spied. The use of current digital technologies to monitor lay persons or activists is one of the aspects that triggered a hot-debate in Europe and US. After Snowden`s case, citizenry not only realized the dark side of government, but how slowly democracy is dying. Doubtless, this is the intersection where this book is inserted. Based on 13 high-quality chapters, organized in three sections, editors Robert Cropf and timothy Bagwell provide to readers with a pungent work containing a great varieties of themes discussing how e-surveillance is often used for Government to enhance security, as well as some individual rights are harmed. The dichotomy security vs. rights, seems to be one of the salient points throughout this argument. At a closer look, the security of citizens corresponds with some of the sacred-duties of any government but at the same time, privacy or private life represents one of the rights of that citizens who should be protected. How both contrasting values can be organized in democracy? The three sections, which are oriented to respond the above formulated question, reflect different viewpoint which oscillates from conceptual ethical issues towards legal research and

The Snowden Disclosures: Balancing Security and Privacy in a Panoptic Society

This paper explores government and mass surveillance in democratic societies, using the recent case of the United States and the National Security Agency (NSA) which were revealed to have collected data from millions of Americans. The NSA’s surveillance programs—some of the programs discussed in this paper are Prism and Bullrun—and information about their operations were disclosed in June 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who had downloaded millions of secret documents from the NSA servers and handed them over to journalists. Following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, the United States government was put in a situation where they needed to re-evaluate how to prevent future terrorist attacks. One of the solutions was the Patriot Act, which allowed the government to more extensively carry out surveillance. However, the protection of national security came at the expense of the individual’s rights to privacy—sometimes freedom. The first focus of this paper is the effects of surveillance in society, shown by using the Panopticon, an architectural plan by Jeremy Bentham and later social theory by Michel Foucault, and also George Orwell’s interpretation of a surveillance society as it is envisioned in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The purpose of incorporating the panopticon is to establish if it is possible to describe the modern society as a panoptic society. Secondly, this paper investigates the balance of national security and the individual’s right to privacy in connection to the NSA case, using arguments from supporters and critics of the United States’ handling of mass surveillance. The intention with this investigation is to determine in which situations it is acceptable for a democratic country to prioritise the national security above the rights to privacy. As a conclusion to the first focus—the panoptic society—the paper argues that surveillance has increased with the technological advances, and we are now living in a society where we are surrounded by surveillance equipment, either through our phones with GPS, credit cards, computers, or CCTV. Despite the notion of isolation described in Bentham’s panopticon, today’s society shows many similarities with the works of Bentham, Foucault, and Orwell and can in essence be considered panoptic. The second focus, about the balance of security and privacy, uses the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 to establish a scenario of crisis for the United States. According to arguments made in this paper, war or emergencies create scenarios that change the perception of the value of privacy and allow the government temporarily to prioritise security.

Redesigning or Redefining Privacy

Snowden's revelations of 2013 have shifted attention to societal implications of surveillance practices and in particular privacy. This editorial reflects on key concepts and research questions raised in the issue. How can privacy be defined? Can it be designed? Considering such developments, this editorial asks if the public's attitudes to the sharing of data have moved towards, 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' arguments and if greater awareness and corporate transparency are possible. Even if corporate surveillance does not operate through overt coercion, it is argued that it yet results in self-regulation and subjugation to neoliberal rationality. Since telecoms and social media companies generally work hand in hand with the state and legal and practical standpoints boundaries overlap on a great scale, how can privacy be safeguarded for citizens? And where 'accountability' of data holders, as interviewee Mark Andrejevic suggests, is a growing imperative. Contributions to this issue suggest detailed attention to legal frameworks, encryption practices, definitions of the surveilled subject and the history of such scrutiny may hold some of the answers.

The Politics of Privacy - A Useful Tautology

"Media and Communication", 2020

While communication and media studies tend to define privacy with reference to data security, current processes of datafication and commodification substantially transform ways of how people act in increasingly dense communicative networks. This begs for advancing research on the flow of individual and organizational information considering its relational, con-textual and, in consequence, political dimensions. Privacy, understood as the control over the flow of individual or group information in relation to communicative actions of others, frames the articles assembled in this thematic issue. These contributions focus on theoretical challenges of contemporary communication and media privacy research as well as on structural privacy conditions and people's mundane communicative practices underlining inherent political aspect. They highlight how particular acts of doing privacy are grounded in citizen agency realized in datafied environments. Overall, this collection of articles unfolds the concept of 'Politics of Privacy' in diverse ways, contributing to an emerging body of communication and media research.

Four Theses on Digital Mass Surveillance and the Negotiation Of Privacy

2015

The privacy-security continuum has been disrupted by a change in the nature of surveillance itself. In comparison with past ones, the current digital surveillance system for the monitoring populations is unique in that it is not direct, but rather participatory. Privacy has changed, too. In this new paradigm, it is not be construed as an individual prerogative, but rather a collective negotiation. Defining the nature of this negotiation, helps us understand why claims that privacy is disappearing are erroneous and ideologically motivated. Contrary to received wisdom, the importance attributed to managing the limits and content of citizens’ personal spheres is in fact growing in the current social and technological climate.

The Conflicting Frames of Privacy

This paper discusses the results of the research project 'Privacy and Anonymity on the Net (PRIANO, 2014–2016)', which tries to chart the fate of online privacy in Finland after the Snowden revelations and during the ongoing law-making process. From interviews (n = 17) conducted with Finnish experts, we identified three frames of opinion (national security, business, and fundamental rights) and analysed their values and strategies of justification. I also conducted a survey (n = 1000) on Finns' opinions about online privacy and compared the results with those of similar surveys in the U.S. and Estonia. The survey findings indicated that Finnish internet users still value privacy. Finally, in the conclusive part, I reflect on the empirical results based on the theoretical literature on surveillance capitalism and the fate of social trust and democracy.

Government Surveillance and Why Defining Privacy Matters in a Post-Snowden World

Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2016

There is a long-running debate as to whether privacy is a matter of control or access. This has become more important following revelations made by Edward Snowden in 2013 regarding the collection of vast swathes of data from the internet by signals intelligence agencies such as NSA and GCHQ. The nature of this collection is such that if the control account is correct then there has been a significant invasion of people's privacy. If, though, the access account is correct then there has not been an invasion of privacy on the scale suggested by the control account. I argue that the control account of privacy is mistaken. However, the consequences of this are not that the seizing control of personal information is unproblematic. I argue that the control account, while mistaken, seems plausible for two reasons. The first is that a loss of control over my information entails harm to rights and interests that privacy protects. The second is that a loss of control over my information increases the risk that my information will be accessed and that my privacy will be violated. Seizing control of another's information is harmful, even though it may not entail a violation of privacy. Indeed, seizing control of another's information may be more harmful than actually violating their privacy.