Surveillance in Canada:
Transparent Lives
"Transparent Lives demonstrates dramatically just how visible we have all become to myriad organizations and what this means—for better or for worse—for how we conduct our everyday lives. The irony is that as we have become more transparent to organizations, they have become less transparent to us. The politics of personal data involves making surveillance processes more visible to us so that we can engage democratically to seek fairness for all. In a digital age, data, especially personal data, are profoundly political.
The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting—a Major Collaborative Research Initiative funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada—seeks to understand the factors contributing to the expansion of surveillance as a technology of governance, including its underlying principles, technological infrastructures, and institutional frameworks, and to elucidate the social consequences of surveillance for institutions and for ordinary people. [The research has identified nine trends] conducted during the first half of this seven-year project."
Trend 1 – The Normalization of Surveillance
In today's digital age, surveillance has evolved into an all-encompassing force, penetrating every aspect of our lives. Companies like Acxiom gather vast personal data, while technologies like biometrics and electronic surveillance reshape societal norms. Intelligence agencies aspire to process a yottabyte of information, emphasizing the pervasive impact of modern surveillance on individuals and society.
Trend 4 – The Growing Ambiguity of Personal Information
In the digital era, the definition of personal information is evolving, raising complex questions about privacy. Individuals can be identified even without explicit personal data, as demonstrated by the re-identification of nearly 98% of individuals based on birthdate, gender, and postal code. Social networking platforms further complicate privacy discussions, as user-generated content blurs ownership lines. The treatment of metadata, crucial for tracking individuals and their online habits, lacks uniform privacy standards. This complexity reveals the inadequacy of privacy laws in addressing the multifaceted challenges posed by surveillance.
AI is the Future, but at what Cost?
In the age of technology, the pervasiveness of digital media has significantly increased and plays a special role in our day-to-day lives. We’re on the edge of an incredible movement in the history of technology and we’re entering a stage that has the potential to change everything around us. We are progressing towards the era of artificial intelligence (AI). What once used to be futuristic technology that we could only imagine, has already increasingly been integrated within our lives. Along with AI, there has been a pique in interest regarding digital assistants and smart home devices. The ability to control the thermostat, change the color of your light bulb, or simply set an alarm using a voice command, is a prime example of the presence of AI. The goal of such devices is to make the human routine as frictionless and easy as possible but how much do we really know about them?
While we are accelerating towards these new technologies, it’s necessary to educate ourselves of the implications and the things that go on behind-the-scenes. Not many are aware of the meaning of surveillance and how it’s becoming more normalized in our society. Digital assistants have made their way inside of our homes, aa space which we consider private. When we use our digital assistants, even to carry out basic tasks like asking what the weather is, that information can reveal a lot about out personal lives. While the use of digital assistants is increasing, the doubt, transparency and awareness surrounding privacy of personal information, is decreasing. We no longer realize just how much information we are leaving behind with a simple voice-command.
"how might digital assistants be contributing to the growing ambiguity of personal information and the normalization of surveillance?"
