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From Right to Information to Real-Time Information: Case Against Convenience | | | Scrolling... wait, what?
A month ago, Namrata and I were walking past Hamilton Deli and I expressed my urge to get a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. She said I’ve had too much sugar, and I proceeded to make my case by talking about the fair labour practices of Ben & Jerry’s which even Bernie Sanders acknowledges. I failed and went home. A creature of habit, in the few seconds I had to spend in the elevator, I opened Instagram. In between a picture of a dog trying to bite its tail and another of a football star recovering from his injury, I saw a Ben & Jerry’s advertisement. Had it been any other time, I would have been uncomfortable, but scrolled down nonetheless. But it wasn’t to be. After hearing Jake, who deleted Instagram and Facebook, I decided I should quit too. While I understand that this one-off act does not imply that I am ‘out of sight-out of mind’, but it marked an important step towards educating myself (apart from this course). | |
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< | For far too long, was I consumed by this mechanical drill, where even a walk from my room to the kitchen would involve a brief look at an Instagram story, or a Facebook update. In his book, Tim Wu calls this the “industrialisation of human attention capture”. So it has been diagnosed. The tech companies, advertising agencies and data brokers have a range of measures to track users on the web. Cookies, fingerprints, data trails by location and other indicators and the small share button which make third-party webpages accessible for Facebook, Google and the like. | >
> | In this process, it has been hard for me to situate the gravity of my complicity in the gradual erosion of privacy. It’s truer than I cared to admit, that privacy has not been so much taken from me as surrendered by me. And I, like many, surrendered it for what can seem a mere pittance in return. We give data away to the likes of Facebook and Google, without a second thought and delude ourselves that the surrender of our data is a fair price for the pleasure of chatting with friends, playing inane games, and seeing an endless stream of cat, baby, and travel videos. | | | | |
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< | If I were to take our class as a sample of the general sentiment, it would be reasonable to conclude that people are comfortable to let the big tech watch us (when they end up with cross-platform ultra-specific ad recommendations, for example). It is easy to dismiss, an otherwise eerie feeling, because there is a dependence on these companies, their services, and the convenience they offer.
The way users have attributed Alexa, Siri, Hello Google and others with anthropomorphic qualities, transforms their surveillance into benevolence. Their recommendations, of any kind, seems like a bond – as if it knows us and our interests (which of course they know, for reasons unstated). | >
> | What we have failed to appreciate is the true nature of the bargain we have struck with various online platforms. Facebook is a case in point. Though people tend to think of themselves as “customer” of Facebook, we are not strictly speaking their customers at all. We are commodities, the products they sell, not just to commercial advertisers, but to political campaigns, psychological and medical researchers, and a host of others with a vested interest in probing, analyzing and manipulating our behavior, for good or for ill, both online and off. Yet another element is the anthropomorphic transition of Alexa, Siri and Google, which sees their surveillance as benevolence. Their recommendations, of any kind, seems like a bond – as if it knows us and our interests (which of course they know, for reasons unstated). | | | And of these companies, their endless storage of our quirks, flaws, and very identities feels roughly akin to being cared for as a person. After all, it’s hard to criticise something that not only is so “nice” to us but that has rendered us dependent to the degree that it might make us uncomfortable to acknowledge that very dependence. | |
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> | In practice, this means that we can no longer expect a meaningful difference between observability and identifiability — if we can be observed, we can be identified. In one recent study, for example, a group of researchers showed that aggregate cellular location data — the records generated by our cellphones as they anonymously interact with nearby cell towers — can identify individuals with 73 percent to 91 percent accuracy. | | | | |
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< | The RTI Transformation - Acronym Retained, Meaning Lost...
Another component is the relationship between big tech and governments. This leads me to believe, following from David Carrol that our data needs to be reclaimed now more than ever. A case in point is the amendment introduced by the Indian government to dilute the Right to Information Act. The original Act had quantified the tenures, and defined the salaries in terms of existing benchmarks. The amendments are being viewed as implying that, in effect, the terms of appointment, salaries and tenures of the Chief Information Commissioners and Information Commissioners can be decided on a case-to-case basis by the government. The Opposition has argued that this will take away the independence of the RTI authorities. On the other hand, in December 2018, India’s Home Ministry released a notification which empowers ten government agencies to intercept, monitor or decrypt any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer resource, such as social media. The authorisation for such surveillance must be given by the Home Secretary, who works directly under the government. The combined effect is that the government holds the remote control not only on any medium that can be used to surveil us but also on our ability to find out any details linked to the surveillance.
Embedded in this opacity, is the shift from the right to information (RTI) to real-time information (RTI). The activity of targeting individuals will only become more popular and probably more involved and this is possible because private companies are hand-in-glove with the government. | >
> | And even without these advanced methods, finding out who we are and what we like and do has never been easier. Thanks to the trails created by our continuous online activities, it has become nearly impossible to remain anonymous in the digital age. | | | Apologise for the Inconvenience Caused.
One of the most pernicious long-term side effects of such a culture of mass surveillance is that it tends to change the very fabric of society by turning its individuals into scared little automatons. Knowing that my data could contain a thousand ways of incriminating me, it doesn’t take a Sartre to predict that I will naturally alter how I behave. I’m likely to become less individualistic, less willing to speak my mind, and deathly afraid of challenging the status quo. | |
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< | China’s social credit system is a harrowing real time reminder of this very phenomenon in action. Its citizens are subjected to merciless surveillance which has the effect of moulding them into “model citizens” petrified of stepping out of the narrow path of acceptable behaviour. Its creepy hierarchy of citizens and its spectrum of rewards and punishments has the uncanny feel of a dystopian alternate reality. | >
> | Technology abandons the facade of neutrality at precisely the moment that it is employed by people. More specifically, by people in power. Take for instance, China’s social credit system which is a harrowing real time reminder of this very phenomenon in action. Its citizens are subjected to merciless surveillance which has the effect of moulding them into “model citizens” petrified of stepping out of the narrow path of acceptable behaviour. Its creepy hierarchy of citizens and its spectrum of rewards and punishments has the uncanny feel of a dystopian alternate reality. | | | The truth is, the “but I have nothing to hide!” rationalisation is simply evidence of the truncation of critical thought. It’s a failure of imagination and consequently, we are consenting to putting our privacy up for sale and to laying our bare identities at the feet of those in power to scavenge through and even, to manipulate. |
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