Access to these archives provides an unprecedented opportunity for surveillance, or "dataveillance," and intimidation by authoritarian regimes.
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The surveillance tools at their disposal are far more sophisticated than anything developed in the 20th century, both on a physical surveillance level (surveillance in real-time) and a "dataveillance" level (surveillance that picks-up and processes snippets of information after the fact).
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These policies are related in turn to the MTA's vote to add an additional 33 police to the subways this year to the tune of $250 million as it undertakes an array of high-tech financial/dataveillance upgrades and corporate partnerships, exemplified by OMNY technology.
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Using digital media often leaves traces of data and creates a digital footprint of our activity. Unlike sousveillance, this type of surveillance is not often known and happens discreetly. Dataveillance may involve the surveillance of groups of individuals. There exist three types of dataveillance: personal dataveillance, mass dataveillance, and facilitiative mechanisms.
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Mass Dataveillance: Refers to the collection of data on groups of people. The general distinction between mass dataveillance and personal dataveillance is the surveillance and collection of data as a group rather than an individual. Facilitative Mechanisms: Unlike mass dataveillance a group is not targeted. An individual's data is placed into a system or database along with various others where computer matching can unveil distinct patterns.
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The types of dataveillance are separated by the way data is collected, as well as the number of individuals associated with it. Personal Dataveillance: Personal dataveillance refers to the collection and monitoring of a person's personal data. Personal dataveillance can occur when an individual's data causes a suspicion or has attracted attention in some way. Personal data can include information such as birth date, address, social security (or social insurance) number, as well as other unique identifiers.
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With social networks collecting a large amount of personal data such as birth date, legal name, sex, and photos there is an issue of dataveillance compromising confidentiality. Ultimately, dataveillance can compromise online anonymity. Despite dataveillance compromising anonymity, anonymity itself presents a crucial issue. Online criminals who steal users' data and information may exploit it for their own gain.
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There are many concerns and benefits associated with dataveillance. Dataveillance can be useful for collecting and verifying data in ways that are beneficial. For instance, personal dataveillance can be utilized by financial institutions to track fraudulent purchases on credit card accounts. This has the potential to prevent and regulate fraudulent financial claims and resolve the issue.
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Dataveillance is very important to the concept of predictive policing. Since predictive policing requires a great deal of data to operate effectively and dataveillance can do just that. Predictive policing allows police to intervene in potential crimes to create safer communities and better understand potential threats. Businesses also rely on dataveillance to help them understand the online activity for potential clients by tracking their online activity.
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Comparing to traditional methods of surveillance, dataveillance tends to be an economical approach, since it can help monitor more information in a less amount of time. In this case, the responsibility of monitoring is transferred to computers, therefore reducing time and human labors in the process of surveilling. Dataveillance has also been useful in assessing security threats associated with terrorism. Authorities have utilized dataveillance to help them understand and predict potential terrorist or criminal threats.
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With such an increase in data collection and surveillance, many individuals are now attempting to reduce the concerns which have risen alongside it. Countersurveillance is perhaps the most significant concept focused on the tactics to prevent dataveillance. There are various tools associated with the concept of countersurveillance, which disrupt the effectiveness and possibilities of dataveillance. Privacy-enhancing technologies, otherwise known as PETs, have been utilized by individuals to reduce data collection and decrease the possibility for dataveillance.
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Unlike computer and network surveillance, which collects data from computer networks and hard drives, dataveillance monitors and collects data (and metadata) through social networks and various other online platforms. Dataveillance is not to be confused with electronic surveillance. Electronic surveillance refers to the surveillance of oral and audio systems such as wire tapping. Additionally, electronic surveillance depends on having suspects already presumed before surveillance can occur.
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On the other hand, there are many concerns that arise with dataveillance. Dataveillance assumes that our technologies and data are a true reflection of ourselves. This presents itself as a potential concern, given that it can be believed that our data is true to our own actions and behaviours . This becomes a critical concern when associated with the surveillance of criminal suspects and terrorist groups.
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On the other hand, dataveillance can use data to identify an individual or a group. Oftentimes, these individuals and groups have sparked some form of suspicion with their activity.
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The removal of human actors can allow for false representations to be created, based on the data that has been collected and surveilled. This is largely due to the lack of logical reasoning present within data. Computer systems can only use the data they have, which is not necessarily an accurate depiction of individuals or their situations. Dataveillance is highly automated through computer systems which observe our interactions and activities.
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Dataveillance gives rise to data shadows since it allows for the identification, classification and representation of individuals or organizations. Dataveillance is defined as a mode of surveillance which tracks, monitors or regulates an individual using digital activity including their personal details and social media activities. In 2013, Edward Snowden’s revelations on the National Security Agency's PRISM program, that the organization would “receive” emails, video clips, photos, voice and video calls, social networking details, logins and other data held by a range of US internet firms”. It is also revealed that corporate social networks share their information with the intelligence agencies. Platform owners such as Google and Facebook, anchor the trust of their users and reassure them that their information is protected through portrayal of corporate codes of conduct such as “Do no evil” and “Making the world transparent and connected” However, as pointed out by Bodle, platform owners are themselves collecting the user’s information and using it for purposes they deem to be necessary.
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Cookies have been a new way for businesses to obtain data on potential customers, since it allows them to track their online activities. Companies may also look to sell information they have collected on their clients to third parties. Since clients are not notified about these transactions it becomes difficult to know where your data has been sold. Furthermore, since dataveillance is discrete, clients are very unlikely to know the exact nature of the data that has been either collected or sold.
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Tactics used by online users to conceal their identity, make it difficult for others to track the criminal behavior and lay claim to those responsible. Having unique identifiers such as IP addresses allows for the identification of users actions, which are often used to track illegal online activity such as piracy. While dataveillance may help businesses market their products to existing and potential clients, there are concerns over how and who has access to customer data. When visiting a business's website, cookies are often installed onto users' devices.
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Some of the various tools featured with these web browsers are the capabilities to block ads and remove cookie data and history. Private browsing, otherwise known as Incognito for Google Chrome users, allows users to browse the web with having their history or cookies saved. These tools, aid in curbing dataveillance, by disrupting the collection and analysis of users' data. While several other web browsers may not pre- enable these PETs within their software users can download the same tools, like adblocker, through their browser's web store such as the Google Chrome Web Store.
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"Information Technology and Dataveillance". Communications of the ACM. 31 (5): 498–512. . The Economist has described China's developed Social Credit System under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping's administration, to screen and rank its citizens based on their personal behavior, as "totalitarian".China's Social Credit System was first announced in 2014 and aims to introduce the idea that "keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful" according to a government document that guided the ideology of the plan. By 2020, the Social Credit System should be fully operational and mandatory for millions of people across the country.
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Some of the normative and ethical concerns addressed by Kitchin include surveillance through one's data (dataveillance), the privacy of one's data, the ownership of one's data, the security of one's data, anticipatory or corporate governance, and profiling individuals by their data. All of these concerns must be taken into account by scholars of data in their objective to be critical. Following in the tradition of critical urban studies, other scholars have raised similar concerns around data and digital information technologies in the urban context. For example, Joe Shaw and Mark Graham have examined these in light of Henri Lefebvre's 'right to the city'.
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The concept of panopticon has been referenced in early discussions about the impact of social media. The notion of dataveillance was coined by Roger Clarke in 1987, since then academic researchers have used expressions such as superpanopticon (Mark Poster 1990), panoptic sort (Oscar H. Gandy Jr. 1993) and electronic panopticon (David Lyon 1994) to describe social media. Because the controlled is at the center and surrounded by those who watch, early surveillance studies treat social media as a reverse panopticon. In modern academic literature on social media, terms like lateral surveillance, social searching, and social surveillance are employed to critically evaluate the effects of social media.
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Too much reliance on results brought up by big data, may lead to the subjective judgement of police, and may reduce the amount of real-time on site communication between local police officers and residents in particular areas, thus decreasing the opportunity for the police to investigate and cruise in local communities at a frequent basis. Secondly, data security still remains to be a huge dilemma, considering the access to crime data and the potential use of these data for negative purposes. Last but not least, discrimination towards certain community might be developed due to the findings of data analysis, which could lead to improper behaviours or over- reaction of surveillance. One of the major issues with dataveillance, is the removal of a human actors who are replaced by computer systems which oversee data and construct a representation from it.
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