Peter Fletcher

I’m against airport body scanners

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I’m dead against the proposed new airport body scanners that can see through clothes.

It’s not that I’m a prude. If someone is desperate enough to want to see me in the nick then go for it. Take a free shot – but be prepared to be disappointed. But it’s the imposition of the authoritative gaze of the government into yet another part of our lives that grates me. The same goes for gratuitous body searches. I’ll put up with my luggage being x-rayed, I’ll even put up with the bullshit of not being allowed to take a nail file or nail clippers on board (how absurd: Eeek, stop the plane, he’s got a pair of – gasp – nail clippers. Good god!) but to have some dude running their hands up my inner thigh pretending to look for drugs – enough is enough.

Sure, if the government has a reason to suspect a person of posing a security threat go ahead and frisk and x-ray. But don’t target the average person going about their daily business. Airport authorities should need to show just cause why a personal search is warranted and not have it be one of the costs of traveling on an aeroplane.

Rant over.

Surveillance of blogs isn’t always high tech

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Surveillance of blogs may not always be the result of high-tech capabilities. Blogs can come to the attention of management through the personal association of colleagues with the blogger. Once the blog is thus brought to the attention of management then a variety of methods might be used to keep watch on the blog.

Importantly blogs can come under retrospective surveillance. Internet archives often reveal the complete contents of a blog despite attempts by the author to delete the blog. As an example a quick Google search can locate the archive of the Washingtonienne; a blog that resulted in the dismissal of its author despite it being deleted prior to the dismissal.

The panspectron: Panopticon improved?

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Tactical memory: The politics of openness in the construction of memory by Sandra Braman
In this at times meandering article from First Monday, it is proposed that, whilst the Panopticon was, and still is, a powerful way to imagine spaces of discipline, it is the Panspectron that turns today’s environment of open information into an always-on surveillance machine. The article suggests that openness of information leads to all of the world’s information being gathered and analysed all of the time; and it is not until a query is made that a subject is brought into being.

This concept gives us pause for reflection in that whilst intuitively, open information appears to be a noble end in and of itself, as we consider the ways this information can be used as a tool of mass surveillance, participation in this information love-in appears much less appealing. This is particularly the case when we consider that the gathering and analysing of information is being conducted by both government and big business, neither of whom have a great track record in the protection of libertarian values.

Best I being careful what I write.

Micro-blogging and privacy

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My final essays are due soon and I’m writing one of them on how micro-blogging is leading to increased levels of self disclosure and what how this may affect individual privacy. My initial thoughts are that yes, people are disclosing more about themselves and they do this to achieve various personal and economic gains. But as a counterpoint, some people may be unaware of what the collection of their micro-blogs may in fact say about them, and they may be unaware that their posts are virtually permanent, are more public than they may be intended, and may give away information that was not intended for the actual audience.

For example, someone may post that they’re “at the beach” and this may give a burglar notice that their house is unwatched. The same post may inadvertently tip off a boss that a person is having a day off when they were booked on sick leave. There are any number of unintended consequences of this micro-blogging phenomena.

So I think I’ll include in my essay individual conceptions of private and public spaces and how this is blurred on the Internet, and the the all-pervasiveness of surveillance that can be achieved through monitoring micro-blogging sites including Facebook and MySpace. Is there anything else worth including?

PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE IN COMPUTER SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK

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PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE IN COMPUTER SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK:

“Whenever individuals are being informally watched or listened to, they are somewhat inhibited by what they imagine others’ reactions to be. This is how informal social control works in groups. We tend to try not to upset the people around us, especially if they have the means to retaliate in some way. Gossip and other private communications are an ordinary part of both group and organizational office politics. In informal conversation it’s one person’s word against another’s as to what was said and by whom. A private comment can be publicly denied. However, once a conversation gets recorded (for example in a paper memo or in an e-mail message) it assumes a more formal existence. As people begin to suspect they’ll be held accountable for their spontaneous utterances, their freedom to express themselves is inhibited. While this may be an improvement in the case of malicious gossip, it also destroys the backstage area where so much of group work is actually done.”

This may give us a clue as to why so many organisations are keen for people to blog. Once a blog post is published, it is almost impossible to delete any trace of it from the net, and when people know their comments are “permanent” and they believe they are being read and watched, they tend to normalise their behaviour. Blogs, while being a powerful tool for democracy may also become a Deleuzian “society of control.”

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