Personal Panopticons

From Real Life Magazine:

A key production of ubiquitous surveillance is people who are comfortable amongst it

Every directly too then, due to some egregious blunder or blatant overreach on the component subdivision of regime agencies or tech companies, concerns nearly surveillance too engineering intermission out beyond the confines of academic specialists too into the populace consciousness: the Snowden leaks nearly the NSA inward 2013, the Facebook emotional manipulation study inward 2014, the Cambridge Analytica scandal inward the wake of the 2016 election. These moments seem to elicit a vague anxiety that ultimately dissipates every bit speedily every bit it materialized. Concerns nearly the NSA are directly rarely heard, too piece Facebook has experienced notable turbulence, it is non at all clear that meaningful rule volition follow or that a important publish of users volition abandon the platform. Indeed, the primary lawsuit of these fleeting moments of surveillance anxiety may live on a gradual inoculation to them. In my experience, most people are non exclusively untroubled yesteryear journalistic critiques of exploitative surveillance practices; they may fifty-fifty live on prepared to defend them: There are trade-offs, yes, but privacy appears to live on a reasonable cost to pay for convenience or security.

This mental attitude is non new. In the slowly 1960s, researcher Alan Weston divided the population into iii groups according to their attitudes toward privacy: fundamentalists, who are by too large reluctant to part personal information; the unconcerned, who are untroubled too unreflective nearly privacy; too pragmatists, who study some line nearly privacy but are also willing to weigh the benefits they powerfulness have inward central for disclosing personal information. He constitute too hence that the bulk of Americans were privacy pragmatists, too subsequent studies accept tended to confirm those findings. When Westin updated his inquiry inward 2000, he concluded that privacy pragmatists amounted to 55 percentage of the population, piece 25 percentage were fundamentalists too twenty percentage were unconcerned.

In a to a greater extent than recent study of attitudes toward privacy amid older adults, Isioma Elueze too Anabel Quan-Haase expanded upon Westin’s taxonomy to include a category for what they termed the “cynical expert.” These individuals were ameliorate informed nearly privacy concerns than their peers but also tended to live on to a greater extent than probable to part personal information. The findings corroborated a 2016 study of privacy attitudes too social media platforms yesteryear Eszter Hargittai too Alice Marwick that sought to ameliorate sympathize what they called the “privacy paradox”: the gap betwixt reported privacy attitudes too actual privacy practices. Hargittai too Marwick suggested that the ascension of privacy “cynicism” (or “apathy” or “fatigue”) was inward component subdivision a business office of the opacity of how social media platforms construction privacy settings too what users perceived to live on the inevitable dynamics of what Marwick too danah boyd had, inward a previous paper, termed “networked privacy.” In a network, they contended, the private invariably cedes a stair out of command over privacy to others inside the network who accept the ability to part too publicize information nearly them without their consent.

That moving-picture demo has been further complicated yesteryear the widespread adoption of the accouterments of the “smart home,” including internet-connected devices similar Nest too AI assistants such every bit Amazon Echo or Google Home. Perhaps this evolution has been plenty to force people from privacy cynicism toward what media scholar Ian Bogost, writing inward the Atlantic, has described every bit full-blown “privacy nihilism,” which presumes an omnipresent regime of surveillance that nosotros tin flame no longer resist too may every bit good non bother to try. He points to experiences of what nosotros powerfulness telephone phone the information uncanny — “someone shouts downwards the aisle to a companion to pick upward some Red Bull; on the ride home, Instagram serves a sponsored postal service for the beverage” or “two friends are talking nearly recent trips to Japan, too presently afterward i gets hawked inexpensive flights there” — that accept led users to erroneously conclude that their phones are listening inward on their conversations.

As Bogost observes, this is non however technically feasible, but the fact that this belief persists is itself revealing. Having surrounded ourselves amongst cameras, microphones, too a panoply of sensors, nosotros directly discover ourselves enclosed inward our ain personal panopticon. It doesn’t thing whether anyone is truly watching or listening every bit long every bit nosotros can’t live on sure that they aren’t. Once the apparatus of surveillance is considered a fait accompli, too hence some stair out of cynicism, apathy, or nihilism may acquaint itself every bit the exclusively reasonable response. It’s worth emphasizing, too, that this panopticon is experienced every bit personal: i whose boundaries are drawn simply about the self too whose structures derive chiefly from consumer choices rather than regime injunctions. The panoptic bubble nosotros inhabit overlaps amongst what nosotros accept traditionally thought of every bit the private sphere, the sphere of the trunk too the home. In this way, it reinforces the sense that privacy is a private rather than populace concern.

This all suggests the broader possibility that the pervasive presence of surveillance helps make people who are to a greater extent than at repose amongst it — people who no longer know what privacy is for, or what socio-moral milieu could give it value. We may retain some retentiveness of how the give-and-take is used, but nosotros don’t know what it names. This evolution is, inward part, an lawsuit of habitually experiencing the self every bit mediated through the apparatus of surveillance. The subjective sense of operating inside the plain of surveillance has to a greater extent than bearing on our attitudes than detached theorizing nearly the capacities of the surveillance apparatus or the abstract ideal of privacy....MORE