This episode was produced by UIC communication students Kathleen Lieffers ‘16, eliza Poznanski ‘16, Brittany Evola ‘16, and Danny Mccormick ’16. Focusing on privacy and following Snowden revelations, this episode explores potential implications of the awareness of being constantly watched on online behavior. Dr. Lee Humphreys (Comm @Cornell) was the guests of the show.
This podcast is a class exercise and it does not represent the views and opinions of the University of Illinois at Chicago or any of its departments.
Produced: Spring 2016.
Transcript
[KATHLEEN LIEFFERS] Welcome to InfoNation, University of Illinois at Chicago’s very own podcast created by students, for the students. At InfoNation we discover how media, information, and communication are created, governed and used. Produced by upper-level communication students in the Department of Communication, InfoNation brings academic research to help make sense of our increasingly mediated society. We go to the library so that you won’t have to.
[LIEFFERS] What comes to mind when you hear the word privacy?
[ANONYMOUS PERSON 1] The ability to know with certainty that whatever you are doing or think or feeling like that’s all to yourself. You don’t have to think for more than a second that it’s anywhere but with you.
[ANONYMOUS PERSON 2] I mean I usually think about like Internet wise, like Facebook privacy, as silly as that sounds.
[ANONYMOUS PERSON 3] Not being private I guess, the lack of privacy that there is nowadays with Twitter, Facebook all of that. Everything is sort of out in the public.
[LIEFFERS] What do you know about the NSA’s domestic surveillance program?
[ANONYMOUS PERSON 1] Uh nothing really so.
[ANONYMOUS PERSON 2] I know that they use cell phones and like any type of social media to gather information about people.
[LIEFFERS Do you care that the NSA might be collecting information about your private communication?
[ANONYMOUS PERSON 1] I just feel like that sounds unsafe and makes me uneasy.
[ANONYMOUS PERSON 2] I definitely do care because they are allowed to do that and they shouldn’t be allowed to do that.
[LIEFFERS Have you changed your privacy behaviors after finding out about the NSA’s domestic surveillance program?
[ANONYMOUS PERSON 1] No I don’t really know how I would because I feel like everything is public.
[ELIZA POZNANSKI] Thank you for tuning in today. We are, Brittany Evola, Kathleen Lieffers, Eliza Poznanski, Danny McCormick.
Joining us today is Lee Humphreys, Associate Professor of the Department of Communication at Cornell University. We’ve brought her on today to help shed light on the everyday conceptions, meanings, and activities associated with surveillance, privacy, and interactive technologies.
We will be covering a topic that is relevant to everyone, privacy. Though we don’t think about it every day, privacy is ingrained in our everyday lives.
[BRITTANY EVOLA] The concepts of privacy and the issues surrounding it are rapidly changing in today’s world.
While some turn to the traditional notion of privacy as a basic Constitutional liberty, others take a more modern approach and see privacy as a surveillance concern in a Post-Snowden era.
While it was once safe to assume that no one sees or hears our private moments, the revelation of The National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance efforts have brought new awareness and concerns regarding privacy.
[POZNANSKI] It really has. It has been almost three years since Edward Snowden first leaked the details of the NSA’s collection of metadata from the phone calls and emails of millions of average Americans. This collection of metadata includes who Americans call, when they call, and for how long.
[EVOLA] You would imagine that news like this would take our nation by storm and prompt immediate action.
[POZNANSKI] But it hasn’t. The Snowden revelations did bring domestic surveillance to the forefront of the public eye.
The question now is, whether this knowledge of the NSA’s surveillance efforts has changed people’s behavior.
[EVOLA] That is is the question, I mean, It is no doubt that the people are aware of the NSA’s domestic surveillance program. In fact, the Pew Research Center found in a survey that 80% of survey respondents had heard of the Snowden leaks in some way or another.
[POZNANSKI] Unfortunately, while people may be aware of the threats to privacy, a change in privacy behaviors may not necessarily have followed.
According to the Pew Research Center only 12% of those aware of the NSA’s programs say they changed their online behaviors quote on quote a great deal.
[LIEFFERS] They identified some of the reasons for such a low percentage of people changing their behaviors. Some of these include people believing they have nothing to hide, not having the time or knowledge of privacy tools available, or simply being in favor of the government’s surveillance efforts.
There seem to be a lot of factors that surround the issue of people’s privacy behaviors and why people act, or don’t act, the way they do. Danny, didn’t you find a study on this?
[DANNY MCCORMICK] Oh yes I did, Kathleen. A study by researcher. Sören Preibusch examining web search behavior after the Snowden leaks also yielded similar results from the public.
He found that the effect on the public’s interest in relation to privacy behaviors was very limited and short-lived despite extensive media coverage on the topic. There was also no growth in privacy-enhancing technologies such as anonymizing proxies.
[LIEFFERS] Similar to Preibusch’s findings, Pew researchers found that only 3% of survey respondents have used proxy servers, 2% have used anonymous software and only 1% have used locally-networked communication tools such as FireChat.
[MCCORMICK] Wow Kathleen, it seems you’d have to REALLY care about your privacy to go out and find tools that would protect it. Many people just aren’t taking the time to learn about the privacy enhancing technologies there are out there which is another reason people’s behaviors just aren’t changing.
[LIEFFERS] It is really surprising that with all the research out there, people still aren’t changing their privacy behaviors. Leslie Francis of the University of Utah brings up an interesting point that goes along with what we are talking about. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who say they care but still aren’t doing anything. Francis talks about the “privacy paradox,” in which people say they value privacy but behave in the opposite way. People profess value to privacy but instead share intimate details and personal information on the Internet as well as other behaviors that reject privacy overall.
[MCCORMICK] Our guest Lee Humphreys talks about this very idea. Lee would you mind introducing yourself for our listeners?
[LEE HUMPHREYS] My name is Lee Humphreys. I am an associate professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University and the author of the article “Who’s Watching Whom: A Study of Interactive Technology and Surveillance” from the Journal of Communication.
[LIEFFERS] Lee’s study looked at an early form of Mobile social networking. The service used in her study was called Dodgeball. And this was used before the time of smartphones. Mobile phones were basically used for calls and messaging only. It was a service that would allow its users to send message with locations or “check-ins” and it broadcasted out to the network of their friends via text messaging.
So Lee, were you surprised by the results and how the people in your study were not primarily concerned about privacy?
[HUMPHREYS] Absolutely, and you know it’s one of those things, when I went into this project I was not planning on studying privacy. The motivation for this study originally was this concern that people using cellphones in public places would drive apart social connectivity. That is, people would use their phones in public spaces rather than talking face-to-face. And so there was this question, would mobile phones bring people together or would it drive us apart? But one of the things that happens when, particularly when you do qualitative field work, is that things start to come up. And this notion of who would use it and maybe who wouldn’t use this kind of service and then what are the things that users might be concerned about or things that weren’t working very well. And based on those kinds of questions, issues regarding surveillance and privacy really emerged from the users themselves. And so it became really interesting that even though, you know again, no one really talked about privacy concerns and no one used the term surveillance. But nevertheless, the things that they were describing were very much within the realm of anyone who studies surveillance or privacy would certainly fit among those practices. And so, it became pretty obvious that the people who were using this, you know one of the ways they differentiated themselves from non-users, was that they were pretty open, tech savvy individuals. They didn’t really express concerns about privacy because they were the ones who were actively using it. So you could imagine that people who would have concerns about privacy would not have been using it to begin with.
[LIEFFERS] Oh yeah that makes sense, yeah.
[MCCORMICK] So our research lies surrounding the times after Edward Snowden, and since your study was done in 2011 and Snowden leaks were done in 2013, do you think behavior online in terms of privacy has changed since your study and like will it continue to change as just the years keep going on?
[HUMPHREYS] That’s a great question, uhm I think yes and no. I think, you know one of the things that didn’t come out in this study and I would say it has to do with to some degree the population I was studying. But state surveillance did not emerge as as a kind of surveillance that was of concern to these participants. I think in a post-Snowden era, I think that would definitely change that concerns about what the state or the government is viewing and monitoring of social media behaviors is certainly central to many people’s ideas about what it means to participate in these platforms. But I think the kinds of questions about who is using our various kinds of information and for what reasons becomes an increasing public concern.
[LIEFFERS] No that’s really interesting.
[MCCORMICK] Could you explain more about the different kinds of surveillance you use, voluntary panopticon, lateral surveillance, and cell surveillance?
[HUMPHREYS] Yeah, so voluntary panopticon comes from Whitaker’s notion of participatory panopticon and one of the things that he distinguishes between participatory panopticon and traditional forms of surveillance is the fact that people willingly participate in the monitoring of their own behavior in part because they derive benefit from it. So Whitaker’s work really was looking at, the use of credit cards, actually, and how people would willingly turn over their consumption patterns to these credit card companies who then sell that information to advertisers, for the ability to use a credit card because it’s, you know it’s very convenient to not have to use cash all the time. And so, there’s this idea within the participatory panopticon is that the sort of risk benefit is that people derive enough benefit from using a particular service that they, that it outweighs the risk of sharing such personal data. So that’s that participatory panopticon.
And then, the second form of surveillance is Mark Andrejevic’s term lateral surveillance. And this really emerged in a post you know, 9-11 environment. Where citizens were actively encouraged to be watching each other and concerns about you know potential terrorism. Right? But what it lead to was this way that citizens would monitor each other’s behaviors in non-reciprocal forms so like, googling people and you know that that started to become very much everyday practice.
And then the third kind of surveillance that I draw is Josh Meyerowitz’s term self surveillance, and this, you know, when I first came across this term it was, he described it as and the difference between going to a wedding, for example, and seeing the home recording of the wedding. Or you can imagine any sort of like family event or ritual, that you go to it and experience it as this beautiful and lovely gathering of friends and family. And then you watch the video, and you see you know, like you see people with food in their mouth, and you see people drunk, and you see people dancing in really awkward ways and you scrutinize the video in ways that you don’t in the lived experience. And one of the things that that happens is, you know the power there is the recorded event or experience can sometimes take away from our lived experience of an event and to some degree supersede our own experience of something because the technology suggests that its more true or more accurate than what we may have missed you know, while we were there. And so thats a third kind of surveillance that the study draws on.
[LIEFFERS] Now that’s very, that’s really interesting. Especially self- surveillance. I am guilty of that, in everyday life.
[HUMPHREYS] Right we, we all are. You know it’s one of those things, I mean, I think self- surveillance helps us understand to some degree our fascination with selfies, right? That you know part of the reason we would record ourselves in this way is so that we can begin to see ourselves and reflect on what we look like and what it is that we are doing in a different kind of way, a way that you can’t necessarily when you’re in the mirror. And I think that’s in communication technology and mobile technology in particular and of course the camera phone is really central to I think self- surveillance practices.
[LIEFFERS] In terms of personal privacy, in your study you mention that control was a factor of personal privacy, but do you believe that control or lack of control is always the case or can it be attributed to lack of concern for privacy?
[HUMPHREYS] That’s a good question. I would say that if people feel like they are in control of their data then they or their information let’s say, that they are not going to have the privacy concerns of people who aren’t. I think you know, to some degree that’s why this Snowden case was so concerning. I mean if everyone knew that the government was monitoring Facebook and what not, then I don’t know if it would change people’s practices at all. But I don’t think people would have the privacy concerns because they knew about it and then they were willingly participating in it. So I think for those who didn’t know about it and then you know they were like ‘well I have nothing to hide’ right? that’s a common sort of trope you hear that well if you have nothing to hide, if you’re not doing anything wrong, then you shouldn’t have any problem with this.
I think that that, in that kind of case, people still feel to some degree that they’re in control of their behaviors and of their information. So even if they don’t have privacy concerns they feel like they’re in control, whether it comes from a place of social privilege or class right? But I think they still feel like they’re coming from a place of control.
[LIEFFERS] Okay.
[MCCORMICK] We just have one more question for you, if you don’t mind?
[HUMPHREYS] Of course.
[MCCORMICK] Why did you become interested in studying surveillance, like was it just something you were always interested in?
[HUMPHREYS] I never had any intention of studying surveillance.
[LIEFFERS] Haha okay.
[HUMPHREYS] Never ever ever. But one of the things that happens I think when you study new communication technologies actually is that surveillance has just become such an everyday practice right? And so it’s not always state surveillance, it’s not always you know government surveillance or corporate surveillance but it’s just a way of watching that has become very much a central part of the contemporary media landscape. And so you know it became obvious that it was something, it was a framework that I had to start engaging with if I was going to be studying mobile technology. Because it is part of the way that mobile technologies work today. And again if you think about social media, it’s now the predominant way people access social media both Facebook and Twitter is on mobile devices. It’s something like 86% of Facebook’s advertising comes through its mobile channels and so that’s you know, billions of dollars being generated. And so, I think it’s important, and again, the sort of nuanced understandings of the various kinds of surveillance that are going on is a really helpful way of expanding that framework to help us understand the contemporary mobile media environment.
[LIEFFERS] Well thank you so much for speaking with us today.
[MCCORMICK] Yeah Lee thank you so much.
[HUMPHREYS] Well thank you again. Alright take care.
[LIEFFERS] You too.
[MCCORMICK] Humphrey’s interview touches on these basic concepts of surveillance and privacy that are becoming, as she stated, an increasing public concern. Her study looked at a specific kind of mobile surveillance service, however the research and results she obtained are applicable to the discussion we’ve had today.
[EVOLA] Her study was just the beginning of surveillance discussions. In 2011, there was not this public knowledge we have now regarding surveillance in the media. Since Humphrey’s study, social media and access to those social media has increased making privacy much more difficult to control. Yet, people are no more concerned about privacy than they were in 2011 even after Edward Snowden leaked the confidential NSA surveillance secrets.
[LIEFFERS] We know people are going to do whatever they want regarding their own privacy and surveillance, so what we hope we’ve accomplished with this short podcast discussion is raise awareness. We hope to have encouraged our listeners to question their privacy behaviors and think about their future in the realm of surveillance. We want people to understand the research behind surveillance and be able to take the matter more seriously. Even if you ‘have nothing to hide’ we want our listeners to know that privacy has become a privilege often taken for granted.
[MUSIC: Every Breath You Take’- The Police]
[LIEFFERS] “Every click you make
Every pic you take
Every dude you date
Every nude you take
NSA is watching you
Oh baby can’t you see
You need your privacy
Who took it all away
It was the NSA”
[LIEFFERS] Thanks for listening to InfoNation! Coming to you from the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Communication. Our theme music was created by Shawn Rizvi, a 2015 graduate. We hope we picked your interest and you learned something new today. Please feel free to engage by rating, commenting or sharing our episodes.
Additional readings
Bamford, J. (2006). Big Brother is Listening. Atlantic, 297(3), 65-70.
Cole, D. (2014). Real NSA Reform Still Needed. The Nation, 298(6), 3-4.
Francis, L. P. (2014). Introduction: Technology and New Challenges for Privacy. Journal Of Social Philosophy, 45(3), 291-303.
Friedewald, M., & Pohoryles, R. J. (2013). Technology and privacy. Innovation: The European Journal Of Social Sciences, 26(1/2), 1-6.
Humphreys, L. (2011), Who’s Watching Whom? A Study of Interactive Technology and Surveillance. Journal of Communication, 61: 575–595.
Lanier, J. (2013). How Should We Think about Privacy?. Scientific American, 309(5), 64-71.
Madden, M. (2015). Americans’ Privacy Strategies Post-Snowden. Pew Research Center.
Preibusch, S. (2015). Privacy Behaviors After Snowden. Communications Of The ACM, 58(5), 48-55.
Raab, C. D., & Mason, D. (2002). Privacy, Surveillance, Trust and Regulation. Information, Communication & Society, 5(2), 237-241.
Shaw, C. M. (2016). Personal Privacy Up for Grabs. New American (08856540), 32(3), 23-28.
Sinha, G. A. (2013). Nsa surveillance since 9/11 and the human right to privacy. Loyola Law Review, 59(4), 861-946.