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Introduction to Special Theme Veillance and transparency: A critical examination of mutual watching in the post-Snowden, Big Data era:

Introduction to Special Theme Veillance and transparency: A critical examination of mutual... Introducing the Special Theme on Veillance and Transparency: A Critical Examination of Mutual Watching in the Post-Snowden, Big Data Era, this article presents a series of provocations and practices on veillance and transparency in the context of Big Data in a post-Snowden period. In introducing the theoretical and empirical research papers, artistic, activist and educational provocations and commentaries in this Special Theme, it highlights three central debates. Firstly, concerning theory/practice, it queries how useful theories of veillance and transparency are in explaining mutual watching in the post-Snowden, Big Data era. Secondly, it presents a range of questions concerning norms, ethics, regulation, resistance and social change around veillance and transparency. Thirdly, it interrogates the upsurge in veillance and transparency discourses and practices post-Snowden, and asks whether they are adequate to the task of educating and engaging people on abstract and secretive surveillance practices, as well as on the possibilities and pitfalls of sousveillance. Keywords Equiveillance, Snowden, sousveillance, surveillance, transparency, veillance videos and social media to monitor police at demon- Provocations and practices on veillance strations, or when insider whistle-blowers leak incrimi- and transparency nating documents). The past decade has seen an Veillance is Steve Mann’s (2013) term for processes of intensification of veillant forces from all quarters mutual watching and monitoring by surveillant organ- (state, commercial, civil society, citizens), leading to izations and sousveillant individuals. Surveillance questions of whether it is possible, or desirable, to involves monitoring from a position of political or com- resist being watched. Accepting the inevitability of sur- mercial power by those who are not a participant to the veillance, and the rapid growth of sousveillance, Mann activity being watched (for instance, CCTV cameras, (2013) envisages a state of equiveillance, where there is undercover policing, sentiment analysis and program- equality between surveillant and sousveillant forces, matic tools used by marketing companies and intelli- leading to a transparent society. While a balanced con- gence agencies). By contrast, sousveillance (Mann, dition of mutual watching may be unrealisable in 2005) involves monitoring from a position of minimal power, and by those who are participating in the activ- School of Creative Studies and Media, Bangor University, Bangor, UK ity being watched or sensed. Sousveillance takes several School of Social Sciences, Bangor University, Bangor, UK forms. Personal sousveillance is a form of watching without political or legal intent (such as sharing selfies, Corresponding author: life-logging and using wearables). Hierarchical sousveil- Vian Bakir, College of Arts and Humanities, Bangor University, JP Building, lance has political or legal intent targeted at the power- Bangor LL57 2DG, UK. ful (such as when protesters use their smartphone Email: v.bakir@bangor.ac.uk Creative Commons CC-BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http:// www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access- at-sage). 2 Big Data & Society practice, this Special Theme critically examines a range transparency arrangement is that, as these are socially of veillant forces, resistances and tensions, seeking to or legally agreed norms, citizens have low individual understand these operations in the context of Big Data control over their own personal visibility. Forced trans- in a post-Snowden period. parency is the pre-Snowden condition of surveillance In June 2013, the leaks by national security whistle- that secretly demands high visibility of citizens to maxi- blower, Edward Snowden, exposed governments’ secret mise the greater good of national security. Unlike a mass surveillance of ordinary citizens’ digital footprints radical transparency arrangement, forced transparency in multiple liberal democracies. The leaks revealed that largely operates without citizens’ knowledge or consent, signals intelligence agencies such as the USA’s National nor with sufficient oversight of surveillant entities to Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s Government win social trust. Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) collect data in bulk from the servers of US global telecommunica- Our key debates tions companies, compelling them to secretly hand over this data; and that intelligence agencies secretly tap Through multiple veillant forces, we clearly live in a fibre-optic cables carrying internet traffic. The data techno-cultural condition of increased transparency, intercepted and collected includes the content of com- but what is less clear are the wider implications. As munications (such as emails, instant messages and full such, we have assembled theoretical and empirical web browsing histories); and metadata information research papers, artistic, activist and educational about the communication (for instance, who the com- provocations and commentary to explore three sets of munication is from and to whom; from where it is sent, questions that we posed to contributors. and to where; the record of web domains visited; and mobile phone location data). These disparate data 1. Theory-practice streams, which can be acted upon in real time and/or stored for subsequent analysis (GCHQ, 2012; NSA, How useful are theories of veillance and transparency 2001), reveal much about a person’s actions, thoughts in explaining mutual watching in the post-Snowden, ‘Big and intentions. Use of Big Data analytics is also Data’ era? Accepting the inevitability of surveillance, common in commercial organisations to better target Mann and Ferenbok (2013: 26) seek to counter-balance advertising and marketing content. However, while surveillance by increasing sousveillant oversight from intelligence and security agencies seek to identify crim- below (‘undersight’) facilitated through civic and tech- inals and pre-empt specific threats thereby making indi- nology practices such as better whistle-blower protec- vidual identification a key goal, commercial entities tion, public debate, participatory projects and systems often try to avoid identifying people so as not to fall innovations. Once this balance is achieved, they suggest foul of privacy regulations, instead using analytics to that such a society is both equiveillant and transparent. deliver insights into groups of similar people rather But can more sousveillance really counter-balance sur- than individuals (McStay, 2017). veillance? What about reincorporation of sousveillant These security and commercial practices lead us to data by surveillant practices? Is it possible to resist suggest: through various veillant forces, we live in a veillant forces in contemporary digital societies? Does techno-cultural condition of increased transparency.As the answer lie in counterveillance, Mann’s (2013) term cultural philosophers observe, transparency takes vari- for blocking both surveillance and sousveillance? Does ous forms (Bakir and McStay, 2015; Birchall, 2014; the answer lie in univeillance (Mann, 2013) where sur- McStay, 2014; Vattimo, 1992). Historically, transpar- veillance is blocked but sousveillance is enabled (exem- ency has been a liberal principle. As explored in McStay plified by default encryption adopted by technology (2014), it is an enlightenment norm advocating corporations post-Snowden)? Our Special Theme’s accountability and public inspection of state power research papers respond to veillance theories in differ- (Mill, 1962 [1859]), an exemplar being journalism ent ways. acting as the Fourth Estate. In modern terms, this Dan McQuillan’s analysis of algorithmic paranoia transparency arrangement also holds that law-abiding dismisses Mann’s concept of veillance as the wrong citizens should be able to exercise personal choice/con- sort of metaphor for the forms of seeing introduced trol over their own visibility to real or machinic others. by Big Data algorithms. McQuillan observes that the Related, Bentham advocates transparency of both data produced by machines is most often ‘seen’ by public and private processes for the general good, pro- other machines in order to find correlations to enable posing that, ‘Every gesture, every turn of limb or fea- prediction in financial, social or security risk situations; ture, in those whose motions have a visible impact on and that this seeing reproduces the prejudices of its the general happiness, will be noticed and marked input. For McQuillan, this induces a psychological down’ (1834: 101). The impact of this more radical state of algorithmic paranoia that, if it is to be Bakir et al. 3 challenged, requires that we change how we see (rather we do about practices of watching that operate without than, for instance, blocking certain types of veillance); informed consent or adequate processes of and that this demands critical work on algorithms to accountability? minimise algorithmic prejudices. Anthony Mills and Katherine Sarikakis address Other research papers in this Special Theme adapt these questions through the lens of investigative jour- the veillance metaphor to explore specific variants of nalism. They argue that legislative change towards mutual watching. Critiquing the idea that equiveillance stronger state surveillance across multiple countries dis- captures our contemporary condition of mutual watch- rupts the preconditions for a strong democracy based ing, Clare Birchall advances the notion of shareveillance on free media and free citizens. Their examination of in her discussion of subjectivity, open data (that gov- journalists’ experiences with surveillance in non- ernments willingly share with citizens) and closed data Western and Western countries finds that investigative (such as that collected by intelligence agencies). For journalists have been intimidated through surveillance; Birchall, the contemporary condition of mutual watch- but that they fight back through often-fraught cooper- ing is not an evenly poised balance between surveillant ation with hacktivists, and through self-directed protec- and sousveillant forces. Rather, we are in a state of tion of communications and sources. shareveillance: an ‘anti-politicised role the datafied neo- Lina Dencik, Arne Hintz and Jonathan Cable liberal security state imagines for its public; the latter is address these questions through the lens of British configured more as either a flat dataset or a series of social justice activists. They find that their resistance individual auditor–entrepreneurs than as a force with to state surveillance largely takes shape in techno- political potential’. To challenge this state of affairs, she legal responses to encryption, and policy advocacy offers suggestions for how data sharing could be more around privacy and data protection. They find this ethically distributed, and unpacks what citizens’ ‘right problematic because of activists’ ambiguity around to opacity’ might mean in the digital context. technological resistance strategies, with critical Focusing on the pre-crime assemblage – an auto- responses to Snowden’s leaks largely confined to mated, fluid disciplinary space designed to modify expert communities. Introducing the notion of data and monetise human behaviour to pre-empt harmful justice, they suggest that resistance to surveillance futures – Peter Mantello advances the notion of ikea- needs to be reconceptualised and connected to broader social justice agendas. veillance: ‘a do-it-yourself, voluntary opt-in approach to algorithmic governance’ that contributes to the Focussing on advertising and the net rise in empathic pre-crime assemblage. Examining case studies from media (namely, technologies that track bodies and react the USA, Australia and Japan, he concludes that the to emotions and intentions), Andrew McStay advances masses, rather than seeking resistance, are complicit in the notion of emotiveillance: the use of biometrically voluntarily trading privacy or sacrificing anonymity for sensitive technologies to infer peoples’ emotions. product discounts, benefits and services, or to self- McStay examines the use of biofeedback in advertising, enhance notions of civic-minded servitude. both for in-house emotion detection of responses to Piro Rexhepi’s Early Career Researcher essay sees adverts, and for digital out-of-home advertising that Big Data surveillance as tantamount to what she reacts to peoples’ emotional expressions. Through terms sur/violence (for instance, drone strikes killing survey work, he finds that few British citizens are com- people via metadata identification). By focusing on per- fortable with having data about their emotional state ipheral political spaces, Rexhapi queries the ability of linked with personal information. Setting this insight sousveillance to destabilise and disrupt sur/violence.In against industry practices that claim not to use personal the periphery, surveillance is not framed by middle class data, he argues that rather than fixating on privacy concerns over privacy, democracy and civil society, but invasions based on identification, regulators and self- is a matter of life and death. regulators should attend to the principle of intimacy, as this is a core characteristic of data about emotions. 2. Norms, ethics, regulation, resistance and social Focusing on regulations and rights, Yvonne change McDermott-Rees’ commentary observes that the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Are existing mechanisms of regulation and oversight Union entered into force in 2009. This created a funda- able to deal with the security states’ practices of forced mental right to data protection, standing as distinct to transparency, and corporations’ drive to maximise data the right to privacy. In examining this new and unique collection for commercial gain, or is resistance required right to data protection, she posits that its underpin- from other quarters? How healthy are current sousveil- ning principles reflect key European legal values, lant civic and technology practices, and where do they namely: privacy, transparency, autonomy and need strengthening? What, if anything, can or should non-discrimination. She notes the challenges in 4 Big Data & Society implementing this right in an era of ubiquitous veillance contributes toward an informed public debate about practices and Big Data. These include the volume of large-scale monitoring of open source, social media data on the self that is ‘volunteered’ by others, such data and provides a prototype for counterveillance as via social media, which means that a consent-based and sousveillance tools for citizens. By demonstrating model cannot ensure protection of one’s data; and find- that what a dataveillance program ‘sees’ when it ‘reads’ ing the balance between the security state’s dataveil- social media posts is nothing like what a human being lance and the right to data protection. sees, they aim to create a debate over current dataveil- lance technologies, and the efficacy and ethics of mass 3. Representation, discourse and public understanding automated dataveillance. Benjamin Grosser’s interactive artwork, Tracing Snowden’s leaks provoked libertarian pro-privacy You, includes data provided by Google’s Maps Service discourses and practices: encryption software, courses to present a website’s best attempt to see the world in how to use these, and encrypted consumer technol- from its visitors’ viewpoints. This makes transparent ogies have proliferated. The leaks also provoked dis- the potential visibility of one’s present location, and courses and practices concerning public accountability gives each site visitor the ability to watch other visitor of intelligence agencies. Arguments were made for ‘traces’ in real time. By making its surveillance capacity greater transparency of regulation concerning intelli- and intention overt, this computational surveillance gence agencies’ surveillant powers, and for translus- system provokes questions about how the architecture cency rather than transparency to reveal the general of networks affects our own visibility both within and shape of the state’s secrets rather than their details. outside of the network. These discourses have manifested in multiple sites Yuwei Lin ‘s commentary reflects on her experiences including investigative journalism (for instance, The of teaching privacy and surveillance to media arts prac- Guardian, The Intercept), documentaries (Laura tice university students in the UK. Reflecting on the Poitras’ (2014) CitizenFour), feature films (Oliver creative media practices, attitudes and behaviours of Stone’s (2016) Snowden), think tank reports (Simcox, her students, her commentary raises questions about 2015), internet and technology firms’ promoting their the role educators play in enriching public engagement privacy-enhancing technologies and lobbying for legis- with critical thinking about Big Data. Ben Brucato’s commentary on Big Data, transpar- lative change on bulk data collection and transparency (The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, ency and measuring and representing killings by the 2014), public reports and statements by intelligence US police notes that there are few national, longitu- agencies and their official oversight bodies (Clapper, dinal studies or records of police use of force. This 2013; Intelligence and Security Committee, 2015), and perceived lack of transparency amplifies concerns that NGOs’ representations as a wide range of civil liberties, many of these killings are unjustified and signals a human rights, privacy, transparency and press freedom deliberate avoidance of accountability. He considers groups were consulted by post-Snowden surveillance efforts by journalists and activists to construct data- review boards (Bakir, 2015). While we have seen an bases that document and measure police violence, par- upsurge in veillance and transparency discourses and ticularly in terms of how they exemplify the new practices post-Snowden, how do they position the sur/ transparency. sous/veillant subject; and are they adequate to the task of Last but not least, Steve Mann’s commentary draws educating and engaging people on abstract and secretive our attention to the need for bottom-up transparency in surveillance practices, as well as on the possibilities and computer engineering, arguing that scientists have the pitfalls of sousveillance? These questions are addressed right and responsibility to be able to understand the in our commentaries by people at the coal-face – instruments that they use to make their discoveries. educators, artists, engineers and legal experts (the cate- He posits that veillance is important not just in gories overlap). human–human interaction (such as people watching Evan Light’s Snowden Archive-in-a-Box is an offline other people) but also in terms of Human–Computer wireless network and web server providing private Interaction. Advancing the idea that ‘‘‘Little Data’’ is access to a replica of the Snowden Digital Surveillance to sousveillance (undersight) as ‘‘Big Data’’ is to sur- Archive – a digital archive that hosts all the published veillance (oversight)’, he suggests that we need leaked documents from Snowden as well as the news- Sousveillant Systems, namely forms of Human– paper articles that published the leaks (2013–2015). Computer Interaction in which internal computational Light explains how Archive-in-a-Box is both a research states are made visible to end users, when and if they tool and a tool for public education on data surveillance. wish. He envisages an interim solution (an app called Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki’s interactive art- LUNATIC) by which a virtual personal assistant inter- work, Crowd-Sourced Intelligence Agency, innovatively acts on our behalf with erratic websites or servers, Bakir et al. 5 Clapper J (2013) Official statement. Welcome to IC on the thereby making people aware of the need for Record. Available at: https://icontherecord.tumblr.com/ Sousveillant Systems. post/58838654347/welcome-to-ic-on-the-record (accessed To conclude, this Special Theme highlights the 3 March 2017). importance of inter- and multi-disciplinary debate on Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) (2012) current forms of mutual watching. We argue that the News. Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/media/media- veillance field is multi-perspectival and characterised by 34103.pdf (accessed 3 March 2017). tension. To understand contemporary data transpar- Intelligence and Security Committee (2015) Privacy and ency by focusing on surveillance alone is to misunder- Security: A Modern and Transparent Legal Framework. stand modern watching, sensing and data analytics, London, UK: House of Commons. Available at: http:// although it remains to be seen whether we will ever see isc.independent.gov.uk/ (accessed 3 March 2017). Mann’s equiveillance in practice. However, we do not Mann S (2005) Sousveillance and cyberglogs. Presence: subscribe to a politics of pessimism, but end by calling Teleoperators & Virtual Environments 14(6): 625–646. for continued critical, technical, legal, political, educa- Mann S (2013) Veillance and Reciprocal Transparency: tional and artistic intervention into the veillance field. Surveillance versus Sousveillance, AR Glass, Lifeglogging, and Wearable Computing. Available at: http://wearcam. org/veillance/veillance.pdf. Declaration of conflicting interests Mann S and Ferenbok J (2013) New media and the power The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with politics of sousveillance in a surveillance-dominated world. respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this Surveillance & Society 11(1/2): 18–34. article. McStay A (2014) Privacy and Philosophy: New Media and Affective Protocol. New York, NY: Peter Lang. McStay A (2017) Privacy and the Media. London: Sage. Funding Mill JS (1962 [1859]) Utilitarianism, On Liberty, Essay on The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup- Bentham. London: Fontana Press. port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this National Security Agency (NSA) (2001) Business Records article: the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (BR) FISA – Course Welcome. Available at: https://snow- Seminar Series (2014–16), DATA – PSST! Debating & denarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/collect/snowden1/index/ Assessing Transparency Arrangements: Privacy, Security, assoc/HASH017d/9ecf019c.dir/doc.pdf (accessed 3 March Surveillance, Trust. Grant Ref: ES/M00208X/1. 2017). Poitras L (2014) Citizenfour. Praxis Films, Participant Media, References HBO Films. Simcox R (2015) Surveillance after Snowden: Effective Bakir V (2015) ‘‘Veillant panoptic assemblage’’: Mutual Espionage in an Age of Transparency. London: The watching and resistance to mass surveillance after Henry Jackson Society. Snowden. Media and Communication 3(3): 12–25 ( DOI: Stone O (Dir.) (2016) Snowden. Open Road Films. 10.17645/mac.v3i3.277. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (2014) Bakir V and McStay A (2015) Theorising transparency Report on the Telephone Records Program Conducted arrangements: Assessing interdisciplinary academic and Under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT ACT and on multi-stakeholder positions on transparency in the post- the Operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Snowden leak era. Ethical Space: the International Journal Court. Available at: https://www.pclob.gov/events/2014/ of Communication 3(1): 24–31. january23.html (accessed 3 March 2017). Bentham J (1834) Deontology. London: Rees, Orme, Brown, Vattimo G (1992) The Transparent Society. Cambridge, UK: Green and Longman. Polity Press. Birchall C (2014) Radical transparency? Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies 14(1): 77–88. This Editorial is an introduction to the special theme on Veillance and Transparency. To see a full list of all articles in this special theme, please click here: http://bds.sagepub.com/content/veillance-and-transparency. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Big Data & Society SAGE

Introduction to Special Theme Veillance and transparency: A critical examination of mutual watching in the post-Snowden, Big Data era:

Bakir, Vian; Feilzer, Martina; McStay, Andrew
Big Data & Society , Volume 4 (1): 1 – Mar 15, 2017
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Abstract

Introducing the Special Theme on Veillance and Transparency: A Critical Examination of Mutual Watching in the Post-Snowden, Big Data Era, this article presents a series of provocations and practices on veillance and transparency in the context of Big Data in a post-Snowden period. In introducing the theoretical and empirical research papers, artistic, activist and educational provocations and commentaries in this Special Theme, it highlights three central debates. Firstly, concerning theory/practice, it queries how useful theories of veillance and transparency are in explaining mutual watching in the post-Snowden, Big Data era. Secondly, it presents a range of questions concerning norms, ethics, regulation, resistance and social change around veillance and transparency. Thirdly, it interrogates the upsurge in veillance and transparency discourses and practices post-Snowden, and asks whether they are adequate to the task of educating and engaging people on abstract and secretive surveillance practices, as well as on the possibilities and pitfalls of sousveillance. Keywords Equiveillance, Snowden, sousveillance, surveillance, transparency, veillance videos and social media to monitor police at demon- Provocations and practices on veillance strations, or when insider whistle-blowers leak incrimi- and transparency nating documents). The past decade has seen an Veillance is Steve Mann’s (2013) term for processes of intensification of veillant forces from all quarters mutual watching and monitoring by surveillant organ- (state, commercial, civil society, citizens), leading to izations and sousveillant individuals. Surveillance questions of whether it is possible, or desirable, to involves monitoring from a position of political or com- resist being watched. Accepting the inevitability of sur- mercial power by those who are not a participant to the veillance, and the rapid growth of sousveillance, Mann activity being watched (for instance, CCTV cameras, (2013) envisages a state of equiveillance, where there is undercover policing, sentiment analysis and program- equality between surveillant and sousveillant forces, matic tools used by marketing companies and intelli- leading to a transparent society. While a balanced con- gence agencies). By contrast, sousveillance (Mann, dition of mutual watching may be unrealisable in 2005) involves monitoring from a position of minimal power, and by those who are participating in the activ- School of Creative Studies and Media, Bangor University, Bangor, UK ity being watched or sensed. Sousveillance takes several School of Social Sciences, Bangor University, Bangor, UK forms. Personal sousveillance is a form of watching without political or legal intent (such as sharing selfies, Corresponding author: life-logging and using wearables). Hierarchical sousveil- Vian Bakir, College of Arts and Humanities, Bangor University, JP Building, lance has political or legal intent targeted at the power- Bangor LL57 2DG, UK. ful (such as when protesters use their smartphone Email: v.bakir@bangor.ac.uk Creative Commons CC-BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http:// www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access- at-sage). 2 Big Data & Society practice, this Special Theme critically examines a range transparency arrangement is that, as these are socially of veillant forces, resistances and tensions, seeking to or legally agreed norms, citizens have low individual understand these operations in the context of Big Data control over their own personal visibility. Forced trans- in a post-Snowden period. parency is the pre-Snowden condition of surveillance In June 2013, the leaks by national security whistle- that secretly demands high visibility of citizens to maxi- blower, Edward Snowden, exposed governments’ secret mise the greater good of national security. Unlike a mass surveillance of ordinary citizens’ digital footprints radical transparency arrangement, forced transparency in multiple liberal democracies. The leaks revealed that largely operates without citizens’ knowledge or consent, signals intelligence agencies such as the USA’s National nor with sufficient oversight of surveillant entities to Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s Government win social trust. Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) collect data in bulk from the servers of US global telecommunica- Our key debates tions companies, compelling them to secretly hand over this data; and that intelligence agencies secretly tap Through multiple veillant forces, we clearly live in a fibre-optic cables carrying internet traffic. The data techno-cultural condition of increased transparency, intercepted and collected includes the content of com- but what is less clear are the wider implications. As munications (such as emails, instant messages and full such, we have assembled theoretical and empirical web browsing histories); and metadata information research papers, artistic, activist and educational about the communication (for instance, who the com- provocations and commentary to explore three sets of munication is from and to whom; from where it is sent, questions that we posed to contributors. and to where; the record of web domains visited; and mobile phone location data). These disparate data 1. Theory-practice streams, which can be acted upon in real time and/or stored for subsequent analysis (GCHQ, 2012; NSA, How useful are theories of veillance and transparency 2001), reveal much about a person’s actions, thoughts in explaining mutual watching in the post-Snowden, ‘Big and intentions. Use of Big Data analytics is also Data’ era? Accepting the inevitability of surveillance, common in commercial organisations to better target Mann and Ferenbok (2013: 26) seek to counter-balance advertising and marketing content. However, while surveillance by increasing sousveillant oversight from intelligence and security agencies seek to identify crim- below (‘undersight’) facilitated through civic and tech- inals and pre-empt specific threats thereby making indi- nology practices such as better whistle-blower protec- vidual identification a key goal, commercial entities tion, public debate, participatory projects and systems often try to avoid identifying people so as not to fall innovations. Once this balance is achieved, they suggest foul of privacy regulations, instead using analytics to that such a society is both equiveillant and transparent. deliver insights into groups of similar people rather But can more sousveillance really counter-balance sur- than individuals (McStay, 2017). veillance? What about reincorporation of sousveillant These security and commercial practices lead us to data by surveillant practices? Is it possible to resist suggest: through various veillant forces, we live in a veillant forces in contemporary digital societies? Does techno-cultural condition of increased transparency.As the answer lie in counterveillance, Mann’s (2013) term cultural philosophers observe, transparency takes vari- for blocking both surveillance and sousveillance? Does ous forms (Bakir and McStay, 2015; Birchall, 2014; the answer lie in univeillance (Mann, 2013) where sur- McStay, 2014; Vattimo, 1992). Historically, transpar- veillance is blocked but sousveillance is enabled (exem- ency has been a liberal principle. As explored in McStay plified by default encryption adopted by technology (2014), it is an enlightenment norm advocating corporations post-Snowden)? Our Special Theme’s accountability and public inspection of state power research papers respond to veillance theories in differ- (Mill, 1962 [1859]), an exemplar being journalism ent ways. acting as the Fourth Estate. In modern terms, this Dan McQuillan’s analysis of algorithmic paranoia transparency arrangement also holds that law-abiding dismisses Mann’s concept of veillance as the wrong citizens should be able to exercise personal choice/con- sort of metaphor for the forms of seeing introduced trol over their own visibility to real or machinic others. by Big Data algorithms. McQuillan observes that the Related, Bentham advocates transparency of both data produced by machines is most often ‘seen’ by public and private processes for the general good, pro- other machines in order to find correlations to enable posing that, ‘Every gesture, every turn of limb or fea- prediction in financial, social or security risk situations; ture, in those whose motions have a visible impact on and that this seeing reproduces the prejudices of its the general happiness, will be noticed and marked input. For McQuillan, this induces a psychological down’ (1834: 101). The impact of this more radical state of algorithmic paranoia that, if it is to be Bakir et al. 3 challenged, requires that we change how we see (rather we do about practices of watching that operate without than, for instance, blocking certain types of veillance); informed consent or adequate processes of and that this demands critical work on algorithms to accountability? minimise algorithmic prejudices. Anthony Mills and Katherine Sarikakis address Other research papers in this Special Theme adapt these questions through the lens of investigative jour- the veillance metaphor to explore specific variants of nalism. They argue that legislative change towards mutual watching. Critiquing the idea that equiveillance stronger state surveillance across multiple countries dis- captures our contemporary condition of mutual watch- rupts the preconditions for a strong democracy based ing, Clare Birchall advances the notion of shareveillance on free media and free citizens. Their examination of in her discussion of subjectivity, open data (that gov- journalists’ experiences with surveillance in non- ernments willingly share with citizens) and closed data Western and Western countries finds that investigative (such as that collected by intelligence agencies). For journalists have been intimidated through surveillance; Birchall, the contemporary condition of mutual watch- but that they fight back through often-fraught cooper- ing is not an evenly poised balance between surveillant ation with hacktivists, and through self-directed protec- and sousveillant forces. Rather, we are in a state of tion of communications and sources. shareveillance: an ‘anti-politicised role the datafied neo- Lina Dencik, Arne Hintz and Jonathan Cable liberal security state imagines for its public; the latter is address these questions through the lens of British configured more as either a flat dataset or a series of social justice activists. They find that their resistance individual auditor–entrepreneurs than as a force with to state surveillance largely takes shape in techno- political potential’. To challenge this state of affairs, she legal responses to encryption, and policy advocacy offers suggestions for how data sharing could be more around privacy and data protection. They find this ethically distributed, and unpacks what citizens’ ‘right problematic because of activists’ ambiguity around to opacity’ might mean in the digital context. technological resistance strategies, with critical Focusing on the pre-crime assemblage – an auto- responses to Snowden’s leaks largely confined to mated, fluid disciplinary space designed to modify expert communities. Introducing the notion of data and monetise human behaviour to pre-empt harmful justice, they suggest that resistance to surveillance futures – Peter Mantello advances the notion of ikea- needs to be reconceptualised and connected to broader social justice agendas. veillance: ‘a do-it-yourself, voluntary opt-in approach to algorithmic governance’ that contributes to the Focussing on advertising and the net rise in empathic pre-crime assemblage. Examining case studies from media (namely, technologies that track bodies and react the USA, Australia and Japan, he concludes that the to emotions and intentions), Andrew McStay advances masses, rather than seeking resistance, are complicit in the notion of emotiveillance: the use of biometrically voluntarily trading privacy or sacrificing anonymity for sensitive technologies to infer peoples’ emotions. product discounts, benefits and services, or to self- McStay examines the use of biofeedback in advertising, enhance notions of civic-minded servitude. both for in-house emotion detection of responses to Piro Rexhepi’s Early Career Researcher essay sees adverts, and for digital out-of-home advertising that Big Data surveillance as tantamount to what she reacts to peoples’ emotional expressions. Through terms sur/violence (for instance, drone strikes killing survey work, he finds that few British citizens are com- people via metadata identification). By focusing on per- fortable with having data about their emotional state ipheral political spaces, Rexhapi queries the ability of linked with personal information. Setting this insight sousveillance to destabilise and disrupt sur/violence.In against industry practices that claim not to use personal the periphery, surveillance is not framed by middle class data, he argues that rather than fixating on privacy concerns over privacy, democracy and civil society, but invasions based on identification, regulators and self- is a matter of life and death. regulators should attend to the principle of intimacy, as this is a core characteristic of data about emotions. 2. Norms, ethics, regulation, resistance and social Focusing on regulations and rights, Yvonne change McDermott-Rees’ commentary observes that the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Are existing mechanisms of regulation and oversight Union entered into force in 2009. This created a funda- able to deal with the security states’ practices of forced mental right to data protection, standing as distinct to transparency, and corporations’ drive to maximise data the right to privacy. In examining this new and unique collection for commercial gain, or is resistance required right to data protection, she posits that its underpin- from other quarters? How healthy are current sousveil- ning principles reflect key European legal values, lant civic and technology practices, and where do they namely: privacy, transparency, autonomy and need strengthening? What, if anything, can or should non-discrimination. She notes the challenges in 4 Big Data & Society implementing this right in an era of ubiquitous veillance contributes toward an informed public debate about practices and Big Data. These include the volume of large-scale monitoring of open source, social media data on the self that is ‘volunteered’ by others, such data and provides a prototype for counterveillance as via social media, which means that a consent-based and sousveillance tools for citizens. By demonstrating model cannot ensure protection of one’s data; and find- that what a dataveillance program ‘sees’ when it ‘reads’ ing the balance between the security state’s dataveil- social media posts is nothing like what a human being lance and the right to data protection. sees, they aim to create a debate over current dataveil- lance technologies, and the efficacy and ethics of mass 3. Representation, discourse and public understanding automated dataveillance. Benjamin Grosser’s interactive artwork, Tracing Snowden’s leaks provoked libertarian pro-privacy You, includes data provided by Google’s Maps Service discourses and practices: encryption software, courses to present a website’s best attempt to see the world in how to use these, and encrypted consumer technol- from its visitors’ viewpoints. This makes transparent ogies have proliferated. The leaks also provoked dis- the potential visibility of one’s present location, and courses and practices concerning public accountability gives each site visitor the ability to watch other visitor of intelligence agencies. Arguments were made for ‘traces’ in real time. By making its surveillance capacity greater transparency of regulation concerning intelli- and intention overt, this computational surveillance gence agencies’ surveillant powers, and for translus- system provokes questions about how the architecture cency rather than transparency to reveal the general of networks affects our own visibility both within and shape of the state’s secrets rather than their details. outside of the network. These discourses have manifested in multiple sites Yuwei Lin ‘s commentary reflects on her experiences including investigative journalism (for instance, The of teaching privacy and surveillance to media arts prac- Guardian, The Intercept), documentaries (Laura tice university students in the UK. Reflecting on the Poitras’ (2014) CitizenFour), feature films (Oliver creative media practices, attitudes and behaviours of Stone’s (2016) Snowden), think tank reports (Simcox, her students, her commentary raises questions about 2015), internet and technology firms’ promoting their the role educators play in enriching public engagement privacy-enhancing technologies and lobbying for legis- with critical thinking about Big Data. Ben Brucato’s commentary on Big Data, transpar- lative change on bulk data collection and transparency (The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, ency and measuring and representing killings by the 2014), public reports and statements by intelligence US police notes that there are few national, longitu- agencies and their official oversight bodies (Clapper, dinal studies or records of police use of force. This 2013; Intelligence and Security Committee, 2015), and perceived lack of transparency amplifies concerns that NGOs’ representations as a wide range of civil liberties, many of these killings are unjustified and signals a human rights, privacy, transparency and press freedom deliberate avoidance of accountability. He considers groups were consulted by post-Snowden surveillance efforts by journalists and activists to construct data- review boards (Bakir, 2015). While we have seen an bases that document and measure police violence, par- upsurge in veillance and transparency discourses and ticularly in terms of how they exemplify the new practices post-Snowden, how do they position the sur/ transparency. sous/veillant subject; and are they adequate to the task of Last but not least, Steve Mann’s commentary draws educating and engaging people on abstract and secretive our attention to the need for bottom-up transparency in surveillance practices, as well as on the possibilities and computer engineering, arguing that scientists have the pitfalls of sousveillance? These questions are addressed right and responsibility to be able to understand the in our commentaries by people at the coal-face – instruments that they use to make their discoveries. educators, artists, engineers and legal experts (the cate- He posits that veillance is important not just in gories overlap). human–human interaction (such as people watching Evan Light’s Snowden Archive-in-a-Box is an offline other people) but also in terms of Human–Computer wireless network and web server providing private Interaction. Advancing the idea that ‘‘‘Little Data’’ is access to a replica of the Snowden Digital Surveillance to sousveillance (undersight) as ‘‘Big Data’’ is to sur- Archive – a digital archive that hosts all the published veillance (oversight)’, he suggests that we need leaked documents from Snowden as well as the news- Sousveillant Systems, namely forms of Human– paper articles that published the leaks (2013–2015). Computer Interaction in which internal computational Light explains how Archive-in-a-Box is both a research states are made visible to end users, when and if they tool and a tool for public education on data surveillance. wish. He envisages an interim solution (an app called Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki’s interactive art- LUNATIC) by which a virtual personal assistant inter- work, Crowd-Sourced Intelligence Agency, innovatively acts on our behalf with erratic websites or servers, Bakir et al. 5 Clapper J (2013) Official statement. Welcome to IC on the thereby making people aware of the need for Record. Available at: https://icontherecord.tumblr.com/ Sousveillant Systems. post/58838654347/welcome-to-ic-on-the-record (accessed To conclude, this Special Theme highlights the 3 March 2017). importance of inter- and multi-disciplinary debate on Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) (2012) current forms of mutual watching. We argue that the News. Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/media/media- veillance field is multi-perspectival and characterised by 34103.pdf (accessed 3 March 2017). tension. To understand contemporary data transpar- Intelligence and Security Committee (2015) Privacy and ency by focusing on surveillance alone is to misunder- Security: A Modern and Transparent Legal Framework. stand modern watching, sensing and data analytics, London, UK: House of Commons. Available at: http:// although it remains to be seen whether we will ever see isc.independent.gov.uk/ (accessed 3 March 2017). Mann’s equiveillance in practice. However, we do not Mann S (2005) Sousveillance and cyberglogs. Presence: subscribe to a politics of pessimism, but end by calling Teleoperators & Virtual Environments 14(6): 625–646. for continued critical, technical, legal, political, educa- Mann S (2013) Veillance and Reciprocal Transparency: tional and artistic intervention into the veillance field. Surveillance versus Sousveillance, AR Glass, Lifeglogging, and Wearable Computing. Available at: http://wearcam. org/veillance/veillance.pdf. Declaration of conflicting interests Mann S and Ferenbok J (2013) New media and the power The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with politics of sousveillance in a surveillance-dominated world. respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this Surveillance & Society 11(1/2): 18–34. article. McStay A (2014) Privacy and Philosophy: New Media and Affective Protocol. New York, NY: Peter Lang. McStay A (2017) Privacy and the Media. London: Sage. Funding Mill JS (1962 [1859]) Utilitarianism, On Liberty, Essay on The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup- Bentham. London: Fontana Press. port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this National Security Agency (NSA) (2001) Business Records article: the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (BR) FISA – Course Welcome. Available at: https://snow- Seminar Series (2014–16), DATA – PSST! Debating & denarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/collect/snowden1/index/ Assessing Transparency Arrangements: Privacy, Security, assoc/HASH017d/9ecf019c.dir/doc.pdf (accessed 3 March Surveillance, Trust. Grant Ref: ES/M00208X/1. 2017). Poitras L (2014) Citizenfour. Praxis Films, Participant Media, References HBO Films. Simcox R (2015) Surveillance after Snowden: Effective Bakir V (2015) ‘‘Veillant panoptic assemblage’’: Mutual Espionage in an Age of Transparency. London: The watching and resistance to mass surveillance after Henry Jackson Society. Snowden. Media and Communication 3(3): 12–25 ( DOI: Stone O (Dir.) (2016) Snowden. Open Road Films. 10.17645/mac.v3i3.277. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (2014) Bakir V and McStay A (2015) Theorising transparency Report on the Telephone Records Program Conducted arrangements: Assessing interdisciplinary academic and Under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT ACT and on multi-stakeholder positions on transparency in the post- the Operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Snowden leak era. Ethical Space: the International Journal Court. Available at: https://www.pclob.gov/events/2014/ of Communication 3(1): 24–31. january23.html (accessed 3 March 2017). Bentham J (1834) Deontology. London: Rees, Orme, Brown, Vattimo G (1992) The Transparent Society. Cambridge, UK: Green and Longman. Polity Press. Birchall C (2014) Radical transparency? Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies 14(1): 77–88. This Editorial is an introduction to the special theme on Veillance and Transparency. To see a full list of all articles in this special theme, please click here: http://bds.sagepub.com/content/veillance-and-transparency.

Journal

Big Data & Society – SAGE

Published: Mar 15, 2017

Keywords: Equiveillance; Snowden; sousveillance; surveillance; transparency; veillance

References

  • “Veillant panoptic assemblage”: Mutual watching and resistance to mass surveillance after Snowden
  • Theorising transparency arrangements: Assessing interdisciplinary academic and multi-stakeholder positions on transparency in the post-Snowden leak era
  • Radical transparency?
  • Sousveillance and cyberglogs
  • New media and the power politics of sousveillance in a surveillance-dominated world