Omniveillance
Omniveillance Update from Eric Schmidt- “We know where you are, we know what you like.”
Sep 7th
Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google had this to say about the future of search:
“Ultimately, search is not just the web but literally all of your information – your email, the things you care about, with your permission – this is personal search, for you and only for you.”
“We can suggest what you should do next, what you care about. Imagine: We know where you are, we know what you like.”
“A near-term future in which you don’t forget anything, because the computer remembers. You’re never lost.”
Shocked? I’m not. Readers of Omniveillance will recall that this has been Google’s goal for quite some time. Here is what I wrote nearly 2 years ago:
In an interview conducted by the Financial Times, Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted the company’s future goal is to organize people’s daily lives.139 Specifically, Schmidt augured that one day “users [will] . . . be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ” and Google would be able to answer those questions.140 Udi Manber, Google’s Vice President of Engineering in charge of Google Search, reaffirmed this sentiment, and posited that Google has “to understand as much as we can user intent and give [users] the answer they need.”141 Mr. Schmidt acknowledged that the primary obstacle to this goal is not the technology, but the lack of information Google possesses about people.142 Talking to journalists in London, Mr. Schmidt stated, “We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don’t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google’s expansion.”143
Omniveillance: Minority Report Is Real, Entire City to Track People With Public Iris Scanners
Aug 18th
This is quite scary. Basically, the city of 1 million people is installing iris scanners across the entire city in public places. The city will index the iris scans of every criminal, and if a criminal walks past a scanner, he will be flagged and the authorities will be alerted. Additionally, the scanners will track people as they travel across the city.
Here is the story From Fast Company:
Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls “the most secure city in the world.” In a partnership with Leon — one of the largest cities in Mexico, with a population of more than a million — GRI will fill the city with eye-scanners. That will help law enforcement revolutionize the way we live — not to mention marketers.
Leon is the first step. To implement the system, the city is creating a database of irises. Criminals will automatically be enrolled, their irises scanned once convicted. Law-abiding citizens will have the option to opt-in.
When these residents catch a train or bus, or take out money from an ATM, they will scan their irises, rather than swiping a metro or bank card. Police officers will monitor these scans and track the movements of watch-listed individuals. “Fraud, which is a $50 billion problem, will be completely eradicated,” says Carter. Not even the “dead eyeballs” seen in Minority Report could trick the system, he says. “If you’ve been convicted of a crime, in essence, this will act as a digital scarlet letter. If you’re a known shoplifter, for example, you won’t be able to go into a store without being flagged. For others, boarding a plane will be impossible.”
From now on your iris is your digital scarlet letter.
Law-abiding citizens will have the “option to opt-in”–for now. Let’s see how long before opt-in becomes mandatory.
For such a Big Brother-esque system, why would any law-abiding resident ever volunteer to scan their irises into a public database, and sacrifice their privacy? GRI hopes that the immediate value the system creates will alleviate any concern. “There’s a lot of convenience to this–you’ll have nothing to carry except your eyes,” says Carter, claiming that consumers will no longer be carded at bars and liquor stores. And he has a warning for those thinking of opting out: “When you get masses of people opting-in, opting out does not help. Opting out actually puts more of a flag on you than just being part of the system. We believe everyone will opt-in.”
Gizmodo has more about this scary phenomenon:
Imagine a public eye scanner that can identify 50 people per minute, in motion. Now imagine that the government install these scanner systems all across an entire city. Or don’t imagine it, because it’s already happening, right now.
There are different kinds of machines being installed across Leon, from large scanners—capable of identifying 50 people per minute in motion— to smaller ones—like the EyeSwipe in the video above—that range from 15 to 30 people per minute. These devices are being installed in public places, like train and bus stations, and connected to a database that will track people across the city.
According to Jeff Carter, the Chief Development Officer of Global Rainmakers, the producer of this technology:
the future, whether it’s entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris. Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected within the next 10 years.
Can’t wait till Google finds out about this. Omniveillance fail.
The Geopolitics of Google Earth
Aug 17th
I have blogged about cities relying on Google Earth to find tax cheats who have undeclared swimming pools. This piece in Foreign Policy Magazine, titled The Geopolitics of Google Earth elaborates on some of these themes, and discusses how “Armchair cartographers are also getting in on the game, uncovering — and creating — political minefields.”
Here is a sample:
DEAR LEADER’S BACKYARD
Where: North Korea
What: No longer is the world of spy satellites and orbital reconnaissance the sole domain of the U.S. National Security Agency and the CIA. From the comfort of one’s living room, amateur sleuths have trained their eyes on the cloistered North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il, discovering everything from nuclear sites to airbases, surface-to-air missile batteries to secret underground bunkers. A few years ago, Google Earth images revealed North Korean submarines — the existence of which Pyongyang had long denied — neatly lined up along the country’s western coast. This begs the question: why would such a notoriously secret regime leave its vast array of military hardware out in the open, in plain view of commercial mapping satellites?
Military analysts suggest it might be a form of deterrence, a show of strength to anyone watching. Whether there’s fuel enough for the hundreds of jets spotted on North Korean airfields is another matter. As for these mansions around an artificial lake, one can only speculate as to the owners … but it’s a bit odd that the roof of the house on the northwestern shore has huge numbers that clearly show the birth dates of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong Il.
North Korea watchers have been aided in their task by Curtis Melvin, a George Mason University doctoral candidate who, with a legion of volunteers, has created the world’s most authoritative annotated map of the Hermit Kingdom using Google Earth. In 2008, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) used Melvin’s maps of North Korean prison camps in a presentation on the Senate floor, saying, “Google has made a witness of all of us. We can no longer deny these things exist.”
Wisdom of the Crowds: Dan 3.0 To Outsource his life decisions to the Internet
Aug 7th
From Gizmodo:
The notion behind Dan 3.0 is that “groups make better decisions,” he says. (About what? That’s up to the group.) Using an online “decision engine,” Dan is outsourcing his “decisions” by letting participants suggest and vote on daily tasks. Each day, he says, he’ll do the most popular task. So far this has taken him to the streets of Lincoln, Nebraska to high-five strangers. And it’s taken him on a walk to the nearest city, Walton.
But don’t worry, Dan says, the big tasks are coming; he and Internet-television network Revision3 just need more time to plan. Then they can focus, for instance, on one of Dan’s favorite topics: his girlfriend. She might get a birthday visit from Dan—if his viewers want it. And since “my viewers care about me,” Dan says, chances are they’ll give him the task he wants. Now who’s controlling whom?
I wish him well, though he may be better off just letting the Google tell him what to do.
I would be remiss if I did not quote from Eric Schmidt from Omniveillance:
In an interview conducted by the Financial Times, Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted the company’s future goal is to organize people’s daily lives.139 Specifically, Schmidt augured that one day “users [will] . . . be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ” and Google would be able to answer those questions.140 Udi Manber, Google’s Vice President of Engineering in charge of Google Search, reaffirmed this sentiment, and posited that Google has “to understand as much as we can user intent and give [users] the answer they need.”141 Mr. Schmidt acknowledged that the primary obstacle to this goal is not the technology, but the lack of information Google possesses about people.142
Google CEO: Every 2 Days Human Beings Create As Much Information As We Did Up To 2003
Aug 4th
Eric Schmidt had some interesting comments at the Techonomy Conference (via TechCrunch):
Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003, according to Schmidt. That’s something like five exabytes of data, he says.
Let me repeat that: we create as much information in two days now as we did from the dawn of man through 2003.
“The real issue is user-generated content,” Schmidt said. He noted that pictures, instant messages, and tweets all add to th
In 2007, Schmidt noted that Google’s biggest obstacle to growth is the lack of information. Here is a snippet from Omniveillance:
In an interview conducted by the Financial Times, Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted the company’s future goal is to organize people’s daily lives.139 Specifically, Schmidt augured that one day “users [will] . . . be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ” and Google would be able to answer those questions.140 Udi Manber, Google’s Vice President of Engineering in charge of Google Search, reaffirmed this sentiment, and posited that Google has “to understand as much as we can user intent and give [users] the answer they need.”141 Mr. Schmidt acknowledged that the primary obstacle to this goal is not the technology, but the lack of information Google possesses about people.142 Talking to journalists in London, Mr. Schmidt stated, “We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don’t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google’s expansion.”143
They got plenty of info now. And will Google move circumspectly in light of this explosion of information? Phsh.
“I spend most of my time assuming the world is not ready for the technology revolution that will be happening to them soon,” Schmidt said.
Indeed. Ready or not — Google is coming.
Omniveillance: Long Island Town Uses Google to Find 250 Pools Without Permit
Aug 2nd
I wasn’t even aware one needed a permit to build a pool in one’s backyard. Apparently Long Island has such a law, under the guise of pool safety. What else?
From Vos Iz Neias (Yiddish for What’s New?):
The town of Riverhead has used the satellite image service to find about 250 pools whose owners never filled out the required paperwork.
Violators were told to get the permits or face hefty fines. So far about $75,000 in fees has been collected.
Riverhead’s chief building inspector Leroy Barnes Jr. said the unpermitted pools were a safety concern. He said that without the required inspections there was no way to know whether the pools’ plumbing, electrical work and fencing met state and local regulations.
“Pool safety has always been my concern,” Barnes said.
Maybe we can just replace life guards with a Google satellite? If a satellite detects that someone is in trouble in the pool, it can automatically dispatch a swat team to help the aquatically challenged? Just a thought.
I won’t bother quoting from Omniveillance, suffice to say a pervasive surveillance network in the hands of the State can wreak serious havoc on our notions of privacy.
Fantastic New Privacy Article: The Boundaries of Privacy Harm
Jul 21st
Please take a look at this interesting new article from M. Ryan Calo, titled The Boundaries of Privacy Harm (H/T Legal Theory Blog). He attempts to “uncouple[] privacy harm from privacy violations, demonstrating that no person need commit a privacy violation for privacy harm to occur (and vice versa).” Here is the abstract:
Just as a burn is an injury caused by heat, so is privacy harm a unique injury with specific boundaries and characteristics. This Essay describes privacy harm as falling into two related categories. The subjective category of privacy harm is the unwanted perception of observation. This category describes unwelcome mental states – anxiety, embarrassment, fear – that stem from the belief that one is being watched or monitored. Examples include everything from a landlord listening in on his tenants to generalized government surveillance.
The objective category of privacy harm is the unanticipated or coerced use of information concerning a person against that person. These are negative, external actions justified by reference to personal information. Examples include identity theft, the leaking of classified information that reveals an undercover agent, and the use of a drunk-driving suspect’s blood as evidence against him.
The subjective and objective categories of privacy harm are distinct but related. Just as assault is the apprehension of battery, so is the unwanted perception of observation largely an apprehension of information-driven injury. The categories represent, respectively, the anticipation and consequence of a loss of control over personal information.
The approach offers several advantages. It uncouples privacy harm from privacy violations, demonstrating that no person need commit a privacy violation for privacy harm to occur (and vice versa). It creates a “limiting principle” capable of revealing when another value – autonomy or equality, for instance – is more directly at stake. It also creates a “rule of recognition” that permits the identification of a privacy harm when no other harm is apparent. Finally, the approach permits the sizing and redress of privacy harm in novel ways.
Calo also notes that massive outdoor surveillance has a high degree of subjective privacy harm:
Having described the properties of subjective privacy harm, however,we can now say that the degree of aversion is small—2 out of 10, forinstance. But we do not stop here: we must multiply the degree of aversionby the extent of surveillance. In the case of massive outdoor surveillanceby closed circuit television camera (“CCTV”) or pervasive aerialphotography, especially where the footage is stored and processed, theextent of the surveillance is enormous. Thus, the ultimately harm can bequite large (8 out of 10).149
This is the essence of the term I dubbed omniveillance, which I described as “omnipresent,omniscient, digital surveillance in public, broadcasted indiscriminately throughout the Internet, without any concern for newsworthiness.” The idea of a subjective category of privacy harm, focusing on “an apprehension of information-driven injury” jives well with the nature of the privacy tort I introduced in Omniveillance.
Calo also notes that massive outdoor surveillance has a high degree of subjective privacy harm:
Having described the properties of subjective privacy harm, however,we can now say that the degree of aversion is small—2 out of 10, forinstance. But we do not stop here: we must multiply the degree of aversionby the extent of surveillance. In the case of massive outdoor surveillanceby closed circuit television camera (“CCTV”) or pervasive aerialphotography, especially where the footage is stored and processed, theextent of the surveillance is enormous. Thus, the ultimately harm can bequite large (8 out of 10).149
As I discussed in Omniveillance.
The key to understanding privacy is to understand how a person chooses to change his speech and actions in varying contexts.72 Inherent in each human being is a dichotomy between what society sees of a person and what that person knows about himself.73 In fact, the “the first etymological meaning of the word ‘person’ was ‘mask,’ ” as everyone exists behind a façade.74 Generally, when a person is in public, he feels a cloak of anonymity. When no one is paying attention, people tend to act free and uninhibited.75
People may feel comfortable exhibiting certain behavior in front of one audience when anonymity exists, but not in front of another audience when privacy is lacking. A person may comfortably and freely express himself when he has the perception of anonymity, even if it is in front of a close group of friends because of the tight bonds within a social network,76 because there is less fear that what is said or done can be used against him to harm him. Anonymity allows people to act with fewer inhibitions, as they have the ability to control the risk of damage to their reputation.
The logical converse of this proposition is that when someone feels they are being watched, they tend not to act as free and uninhibited.77 When a person feels that others may be looking, he will generally act differently.78 Persistently recording a person and broadcasting the images out of context chills an individual’s ability to freely express himself. If a person knows, or even is apprehensive that he is being photographed by omniveillance, his behavior will be even further modified because the observation will be indelibly recorded forever.79 Recently, a German study analyzing how surveillance affects a citizen’s behavior found that [p]eople under surveillance behave differently than people who are not monitored—differently than free people.”80 Therefore, understanding the dynamic of people’s perception of anonymity in public is critical for promoting positive uninhibited expressions.Privacy and free speech can be thought of as two sides of the same coin. They are complementary, rather than competing, interests.81 When properly balanced, they yield optimal results. To further explore this, it is necessary to visualize two extremes. In a world with no privacy protections and unrestricted free speech rights, where everything can be known about everyone, free expression would suffer. A person would not want to express his true thoughts for fear of embarrassment, ridicule, humiliation, or retribution.82 This fear would result in the ultimate chilling of speech.
However, in an alternate universe with absolute privacy rights and no free speech, there would be a similar outcome. A person would not be able to express his true thoughts, and would have to keep all of his emotions to himself. This restraint would also result in the ultimate chilling of speech. Therefore, rather than existing as competing interests, privacy and free speech complement one another when properly balanced to provide a symmetry to optimize people’s desire to express themselves, and at the same time, minimizes any apprehension that such an expression may cause. Without privacy, people do not comfortably speak candidly.83 Without free speech, people cannot speak candidly. For this reason, society should strive to achieve a dynamic equilibrium between free speech and privacy that can promote the optimal level of expression.
Calo also discusses the “notoriously difficult problem of ‘privacy in public”
The approach also furnishes criteria for “sizing” privacy harm and ranking their relative severity. In the case of subjective privacy harms, we can look to the degree of aversion to any observation as distinct from the extent of observation experienced. High degrees of both translate into the greatest harm, but harm is possible if either are very high.146
This insight is useful in describing the notoriously difficult problem of “privacy in public.”147 The law’s approach to privacy in public is monolithic: it generally refuses to see a privacy violation where the observation takes place in public on the theory that people in public have no reasonable expectation of privacy.148 In the absence of a privacy violation, meanwhile, we tend not even to look for privacy harm.
Perhaps focusing on a subjective privacy harm, rather than a privacy injury, to understand privacy in public is a more precise inquiry. This conception of privacy, balancing the “degree of aversion to any observation” to the “extent of observation experienced” somewhat mirrors the privacy tort I proposed:
The right to your digital identity is violated when an individual or organization records and reproduces an image of another without consent using a visual or auditory enhancing device while (1) the party recorded possessed a reasonable expectation of privacy to not be recorded; (2) the matter recorded would be offensive to a reasonable person; (3) the recording is intentionally widely transferred or disseminated through any electronic medium to any electronic format; and (4) the recording is not newsworthy, where a newsworthy recording (4a) has social value, (4b) minimally intrudes into ostensibly private affairs, and (4c) the party that is recorded voluntarily acceded to the position of public notoriety.
Excellent article. Definitely worth a read.
Omniveillance: Tokyo’s intelligent digital billboards mirror Minority Report, can tell gender, age of passerby
Jul 18th
Another Omniveillance See I Told You So, from the Land of the Rising Sun.
In a scene right out of Minority Report, billboards in Japan can discern a person’s gender and age in order to deliver tailored advertisements. From Smart Planet (H/T Gizmodo):
Tokyo, Japan’s Digital Signage Promotion Project is currently trying out digital advertising billboards fitted with cameras that can discern the gender and age group of passerby who look at them.
The point? To tailor their commercial messages to the onlooker.
“The camera can distinguish a person’s sex and approximate age, even if the person only walks by in front of the display, at least if he or she looks at the screen for a second,” said a spokesman for the project to the AFP.
As you might expect, the billboards’ operators promise that they will not save recorded images. What they will do is collect data about groups of people, which will help advertisers learn what works best at which locations in the city and at what time during the day.
Remember this scene from Minority Report?
I discussed this issue at some length in Omniveillance two years ago:
An example of such a bridge between a person’s online presence and the real world takes the form of new smart billboards, a preview of omniveillant technologies to come. A French company called Quividi has installed billboards in New York City equipped with cameras and powerful computers.151 By analyzing the facial characteristics of a person walking in front of the camera (e.g., “cheekbone height and the distance between the nose and the chin”), the billboard can roughly determine the age and gender of a passerby.152 Based on this profile, the billboard, equipped with a large flat-screen television, delivers advertisements specifically targeted to the particular demographic.153 The goal of this technology is “to tailor a digital display to the person standing in front of it—to show one advertisement to a middle-aged white woman, for example, and a different one to a teenage Asian boy.”154
But omniviellance doesn’t stop there. Think a bit forward of how this technology could evolve:
Imagine an alternative business model in an omniveillant society, wherein these cameras do not simply analyze the facial features of a promenading consumer, but rather snap a photo, and search tagged images on the Internet to ascertain the identity of the person. With this technique, the billboard does not simply know the person’s age or gender, but can ascertain what online stores the person frequents, who the person’s friends are, and volumes of other personal information. An advertiser’s dream, indeed! Imagine further that the billboard recorded how long a person stared at the billboard, in order to gauge his interest at a particular advertisement, or even whether a person began discussing the billboard with a fellow spectator. Unassuming spectators would be unknowingly conscripted into serving as a veritable Nielsen rating focus group. This information could be further disseminated throughout the Internet to create a profile about a person’s likes, dislikes, and preferences. The information gleaned from these billboards could serve as a perfect conduit for an omniveiller to gather more information about people from the real world, in order to tell them things like “ ‘[w]hat shall [they] do tomorrow’ ” or “ ‘[w]hat job [should they] take.’ ”155
…
Currently, people who seek to stay out of the limelight can avoid using a computer, abstain from posting to blogs, and miss out on all of the fun of social networking. However, under this new regime, you can’t run; you can’t hide; there is no escape.
Omniveillance: Google Won’t Let You Forget To Give Your Wife A Birthday Present
Jul 16th
A Senior Google Executive outlined his view of the future of search.
First, Google will never let you forget your wife’s birthday again.
“There is no reason why search cannot go to that step where it knows that, back in May my wife’s birthday was coming up, I wanted to buy an iPad and being the busy man that I am I walked up to the Apple store on the day of her birthday before we were due to go out for dinner.
“I said ‘can I buy an iPad’ and he looked at me and almost laughed, ‘Sir, you can order one and get it in three weeks’.
“So why can’t this thing tell me that an event is coming up based on the calendar, and why can’t it tell me what I can afford and base what I might want on my search history.
“Why can’t it tell me that my friend [Google's] Matt Cutts has reviewed the iPad, and know that he is my friend because of my social networks, and why can’t it say it needs to be ordered three weeks in advance?
“Why can’t it stop me from having to sleep on the couch.”
With Google, no forgetful husband will ever have to sleep on the couch again. Huzzah! Just don’t forget Google’s birthday!
Google also helps to tell you what you need to buy, and where you can buy it:
“What we have today is these wonderful components; my calendar is on the cloud, my calendar knows that after I am done here today I will have dinner with my family, my calendar also knows my to do list.
“One of the things on my to do list is to buy a cricket bat because my old one is going dry.
“So my calendar knows when I have free time, my [GPS-enabled] phone knows where I am, my to do list has a list of things I need to accomplish and time is expensive.
“On top of that Google local knows the map of this place and it knows where all the sports shops are – so why cant this thing tell me ‘you have 45 minutes free in your agenda, there’s a sports shop 300 metres away go and buy a cricket bat’.
“And by the way ‘get out turn right walk 200 metres turn right 100 metres and it’s there’.
This is nothing new. I discussed this 2 years ago in Omniveillance:
In an interview conducted by the Financial Times, Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted the company’s future goal is to organize people’s daily lives.139 Specifically, Schmidt augured that one day “users [will] . . . be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ” and Google would be able to answer those questions.140 Udi Manber, Google’s Vice President of Engineering in charge of Google Search, reaffirmed this sentiment, and posited that Google has “to understand as much as we can user intent and give [users] the answer they need.”141 Mr. Schmidt acknowledged that the primary obstacle to this goal is not the technology, but the lack of information Google possesses about people.142 Talking to journalists in London, Mr. Schmidt stated, “We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don’t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google’s expansion.”143
Source: TechRadadar H/T Gizmodo
Omniveillance Dry Run – Google Invites Entire World To Record Everything for 24 Hours On 7/24/10
Jul 7th
Google is launching a dry run of Omniveillance by inviting the entire world to record everything and anything around them–whether in public or private–for 24 hours on July 24, 2010.
From the Google Blog:
Every day, 6.7 billion people view the world through their own unique lens. Imagine if there was a way to collect all of these perspectives, to aggregate and mold them into the cohesive story of a single day on earth.
Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of “Life in a Day,” a historic cinematic experiment that will attempt to do just that: document one day, as seen through the eyes of people around the world. On July 24, you have 24 hours to capture a snapshot of your life on camera. You can film the ordinary — a sunrise, the commute to work, a neighborhood soccer match, or the extraordinary — a baby’s first steps, your reaction to the passing of a loved one, or even a marriage.
While this is a fascinating project, that I am sure will make for some compelling cinema, this project really serves a broader goal. It makes people more comfortable with submitting personal recordings of themselves to the Cloud. People, enamored with the interesting stories of people around the world will become more comfortable with being recorded themselves, even in public. Such a film desensitizes people to notions of what should stay public, and what should stay private.
Google makes no effort on the page to caution people to only record people with their permission. And I doubt people, accustomed to the pervasive monitoring of Google Street View will discern the distinction, especially if these events take place in public.
Perhaps most importantly, unlike Street View, Google is not doing the recording–regular people are. Of course it is easier to boil a lobster by putting it in cold water, and slowly heating the pot up. But Google invites lobsters to hop into the pot!
This is actually quite an ingenuous plan, and a good dry run for full-out omniviellance
Omniveillance Update – Facebook To Automatically Locate Faces in Uploaded Photos (but no auto tagging, yet)
Jul 2nd
Facebook is launching a new feature that will automatically identify faces in photographs users upload. They will not use facial recognition technology to identify the photos–yet. So for the time being, people will still have to tag their friends. But Google Picasa already uses facial recognition technology to identify people. Hang on. Facebook will catch up soon enough.
H/T Engadget
Way back in 2008 in Omniveillance I wrote:
With the advent of photo-sharing Internet sites like Flikr, MySpace, and Facebook, people can now upload photographs and “tag” a specific person’s identity in the photo with metadata, as if they were captioning it in a scrapbook (i.e., John Doe is the third person on the left). Although currently the tagging process must be done manually, new facial recognition such as Google’s Picasa system utilizes artificial intelligence computers to automatically index and tag the subjects of photographs.147 Software like Polar Rose is capable of scanning the entire World Wide Web, matching faces with previously tagged photos based on similarities in biometric features, and automatically tagging the photo with the person’s identity.148 Berners-Lee mentions tagging as one of the key prerequisites to the semantic web.149
Once an image is tagged, these captions can be searched and indexed like any other document on the Internet. As aresult of this emerging image-analysis technology, a search engine like Google can easily correlate a person’s face with his name, contact information, personal preferences, friends, and any of his personal information located on the Internet. In fact, Google’s Director of Product Management, R.J. Pittman, “said that Google is developing visual crawling software that can be used for facial recognition and scene analysis.”150 Applied to Street View, this future technology can be combined with tagging and advanced image search capabilities to identify anyone who is recorded by omniveillance.
Yep.
Omniveillance- Woman Lets Son Run Around Naked In Yard, Freaks Out When Google Photographs Him
Jun 30th
From Gizmodo:
Poor old Claire Rowlands felt “angry, disgusted and upset” after stumbling across a photo of her three-year-old kid Louis on Google’s Street View tool—thanks to her child’s bottom being served up to (possibly depraved) people on the internet.
Fortunately, Google pixelated–but did not take down–this image.
Gizmodo poses an interesting question:
Google has now pixellated the bottom after seeing Claire’s angry face, but it still makes us wonder… is a grainy photo on the internet more or less safe than having your child running about in full public view without any clothes on?
I addressed this question in Omniveillance. Is there a difference between showing something to a small group of people–a group you can ascertain–and recording that act so that will be disseminated throughout the world. I think that there is a difference. And what if a person does not consent to that recording? Even bigger difference.
While a person is comfortable doing something in front of a tiny fraction of the public, they may not be comfortable doing so in front of the entire Internet. People do not suspect that they are being monitored. That is the lure and danger of omniveillance-like technologies like Street View. This pervasive recording, when people do not even know they are being recorded, brings a new privacy rights dynamic to the fore.
As I wrote:
Third, there is a difference between volunteering to be seen in public and volunteering to be recorded in public.384 As Justice Carter observed in Gill, there is a distinction between what is viewable in public and what is viewable by reproduction, as what the photographed couple chose to do “in view of a tiny fraction of the public, does not mean that they consented to observation by the millions or readers of the defendant’s magazine.”385 A “person does not automatically make public everything he does in a public place.”386 It is not enough to engage in any conduct and assume some risk. Rather, in order to qualify as assumption of the risk for negligence under the Restatement of Torts,387 the plaintiff must assume the particular risk at issue.388 In the case of omniveillance, when a person simply goes outside, they are assuming the risk that someone will see them. However, unaware that a secret surveillance apparatus is lurking, such a person does not assume that particular risk of being recorded.According to the Restatement (Second) of Torts, assumption of risk specifically requires a knowledge element that necessitates that the plaintiff “must not only be aware of the facts which create the danger, but must also appreciate the danger itself and the nature, character, and extent which make it unreasonable.”389 This standard thus does not apply in the context of omniveillance.Although a celebrity walking down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills followed by a throng of paparazzi can be said to have assumed the risk of being recorded, the same cannot be said when an average person is surreptitiously photographed by an unmarked vehicle or a hidden camera on a rooftop. Ubiquitous and omnipresent surveillance essentially prevents people from avoiding this spotlight. While it may be possible to escape traditional news media, and give a simple “no comment” response to an inquisitive reporter, when a person is being recorded without their knowledge, an abstention from the media becomes an impossible feat. And, contrary to Andy Warhol’s time, when finding an old story involved digging through a dusty library or scanning through microfiche, the fame that omniveillance creates will last much longer than fifteen minutes. Rather, these images are stored in perpetuity on the Internet for anyone to find.In the case of omniveillance, the people who are photographed did little more than walk outside or open their curtains. They are not involved in a newsworthy event that they voluntarily or involuntarily became a part of. In addition, there is no easy way to determine if one is even photographed, as there are no warnings displayed during the recording. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to interact in society without a reasonable apprehension that omniveillance will capture your image for eternity. Because people are not able to avoid this recording, it is wrong to treatthem in the same vein as people who are thrust into the limelight because of something that happened to them.Strictly applying the Restatement’s approach, the only way to avoid assuming the risk is to lock your door, shut your curtains, and live a concealed life within your own property.390 In the context of omniveillance, society is presented with a Hobson’s choice. People can either live a hermetic life beyond the eye of omniveillance, or live a life in public and have no privacy at all. Recognizing the value of privacy and how it promotes free speech and expression,391 this outcome is quite undesirable, and should not be promoted. Therefore, because most of the people who are photographed by omniveillance cannot assume the risk, their notoriety is not voluntary, and the third prong of the newsworthiness exception to the right to your digital identity will not be met.
Omniveillance Update: Google’s Wi-Fi snoop nabbed passwords and emails
Jun 18th
From The Register:
The Wi-Fi traffic collected by Google’s world-roving Street View cars included passwords and email, according to a report citing a preliminary study from the French data protection authority.
IDG reports that the French National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL) has examined part of the data, after it was turned over by Google. “It’s still too early to say what will happen as a result of this investigation,” CNIL told IDG.
“However, we can already state that [...] Google did indeed record e-mail access passwords [and] extracts of the content of email messages.”
Because Google collected this information for their own purposes, there is no state action. Now imagine the government sought this information. With a subpoena, under the special needs doctrine, the government would now have access to passwords of people around the world.
Way back in 2008 in Omniveillance, I remarked that if Google was permitted to capture so much information, without any constraints, inevitably it would wind up in the hands of the state–at no cost and without the protections government searches usually need to comply with:
Additionally, with a subpoena, the government has ready access to a free surveillance network, further imperiling our civil liberties.
Just wait till the government figures out all of the information they can get from Google.
Another Omniveillance See I Told You So – Google to Give Governments Street View Data
Jun 3rd
From the New York Times:
Google is bowing to the demands of four European governments and says it will begin surrendering the data it improperly collected over unsecured wireless networks.
Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, told The Financial Times in an interview in London that within the next two days, the company would share the data with regulators in Germany, Spain, France and Italy. The data is thought to include fragments of personal information like e-mail and bank account numbers.
Google had previously resisted requests from European officials and privacy advocates to hand over the data, saying it needed time to review legal issues.
Last month, Google revealed it had been inadvertently collecting 600 gigabytes of personal data, saying that the roving, camera-mounted cars in its Street View program had collected not only photographs of neighborhoods but snippets of private information from people whose personal Wi-Fi networks were left unencrypted.
Way back in 2008 in Omniveillance, I remarked that if Google was permitted to capture so much information, without any constraints, inevitably it would wind up in the hands of the state–at no cost and without the protections government searches usually need to comply with:
Additionally, with a subpoena, the government has ready access to a free surveillance network, further imperiling our civil liberties.
Sigh. Another prediction coming true.
Update: Just out of curiosity, I ran a citation check for Omniveillance. The article was officially published January 2009, and I already have 7 citations from the Boston College Law Review, the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts, Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, the Mississippi Law Journal, Texas Wesleyan Law Review, the University of Pittsburgh Journal of Technology Law & Policy, and the Defense Counsel Journal. Pretty cool.
Omniveillance 2 Year Old Prediction Comes True: Google & Facial Recognition Technology
May 19th
From the Financial Times:
Google executives are wrestling over whether to launch controversial facial recognition technology after a barrage of criticism over its privacy policies.
Mr Schmidt said: “Facial recognition is a good example . . . anything we did in that area would be highly, highly planned, discussed and reviewed. When you go through these things, you review your management procedures.”
Facial recognition has the potential to be the next privacy flashpoint. Google already uses the technology in its Picasa photo sharing service. This lets users tag some of the people in their photos and then searches through other albums to suggest other pictures in which the same faces appear.
Privacy campaigners have raised fears that adding facial recognition to Goggles would allow users to track strangers through a photograph, making it into an ideal tool for stalkers and identity fraudsters.
The implications of this technology are startling. If the facial recognition software is somehow applied to Google Street View–although faces are currently blurred–stalkers would be able to locate people on the street anywhere.
Way back in 2008 in Omniveillance, I wrote:
With the advent of photo-sharing Internet sites like Flikr, MySpace, and Facebook, people can now upload photographs and “tag” a specific person’s identity in the photo with metadata, as if they were captioning it in a scrapbook (i.e., John Doe is the third person on the left). Although currently the tagging process must be done manually, new facial recognition such as Google’s Picasa system utilizes artificial intelligence computers to automatically index and tag the subjects of photographs.147 Software like Polar Rose is capable of scanning the entire World Wide Web, matching faces with previously tagged photos based on similarities in biometric features, and automatically tagging the photo with the person’s identity.148 Berners-Lee mentions tagging as one of the key prerequisites to the semantic web.149
Once an image is tagged, these captions can be searched and indexed like any other document on the Internet. As a result of this emerging image-analysis technology, a search engine like Google can easily correlate a person’s face with his name, contact information, personal preferences, friends, and any of his personal information located on the Internet. In fact, Google’s Director of Product Management, R.J. Pittman, “said that Google is developing visual crawling software that can be used for facial recognition and scene analysis.”150 Applied to Street View, this future technology can be combined with tagging and advanced image search capabilities to identify anyone who is recorded by omniveillance.
More Omniveillance Predictions Come True
Feb 17th
When I first wrote Omniveillance in the Summer following my 1L year, many people told me that it was totally unrealistic. The things I predicted would never happen. In fact, if you take note of who published it, you should realize that the Law Review I served on decided not to accept it. With that background, I relish whenever a prediction I made back in 2007 comes true. Here are a couple more.
While I didn’t quite get the concept of augmented reality at the time, largely because it wasn’t a term, but I understood the ability of Web 2.0 to overlay historical events at a specific location, creating somewhat of a time machine. I wrote:
[Omniveillance] provides the users of this system with omniscience to know everything happening in a specific location at a specific time. Furthermore, this information will be indefinitely retained, and easily accessible. When future versions of this technology is properly implemented, it will be possible to enter a time, date, and location, and witness what happened at that moment as if you were there. It is a virtual
time machine.
Recently, Google did just that. Kinda. They overlayed aerial images of World War II Destruction with today’s Google Earth. It is pretty cool. You can enter in a location in Europe, and see what that region looked like after it was Blitzed during the war. But you can see how this augmented reality approach can be used to create a virtual time machine, just as a I described. The technology exists. The only thing lacking is the data.
Also, take a look at PleaseRobMe.com. As TechCrunch describes:
Please Rob Me is a stream of updates from various location-based networks (though right now all I’m seeing is Foursquare) that shows when users check-in somewhere that is not their home. The idea, of course, is that if they’re not home, you can go rob them.
The site automatically scans Twitter feeds to find location check-ins that are being tweeted out. It then shows them in this stream, and also pings the person on Twitter with a message like: Hi @NAME, did you know the whole world can see your location through Twitter? #pleaserobme.com
I made a very similar observation about the power of Omniveillance, or broadly understood as Web 2.0 technologies, in my article:
A potential criminal may easily case houses or understand the schedules of potential victims in planning the commission of a crime.207 . . . This predatory behavior becomes as facile as clicking around the Internet. Cyber-stalking can take on a whole new meaning
While I didn’t know of Twitter (largely because it hadn’t hit mainstream yet), I knew that producing so much information about people’s intimate behavior and location on the Internet could easily be exploited by those with nefarious ends. It makes cyber-stalking a piece of cake.
Omniveillance- Microsoft’s Mobicast Stitches Together Multiple Cell Phone Videos in Real Time
Dec 28th
From New Scientist (H/T Gizmodo):
Now researchers from Microsoft’s labs in Cairo, Egypt, have developed a way to combine the video from multiple phones capturing views of the same scene into larger, more detailed footage to be broadcast live online.
When two or more phones with the software start streaming video, they synchronise their clocks with the server, which then uses timestamps on the footage to align video frames in time. Then image-recognition technology gauges how footage physically overlaps: features such as edges and corners are used to find areas that match, before the images are blended to create a wider view of the scene. The method used and end result are much like those of software that stitches multiple photos of, say, a landscape, into a larger image.
With this technology, if two or more people start streaming video of an event with their cell phones, Microsoft can stitch together the images, and generate a 360 degree panorama film in real time.
Bhaskar Roy, co-founder of Qik, says this kind of technology has the potential to enhance services like his own. “Think of somewhere where there will be a lot of people capturing video on phones, like a sporting or breaking news event,” he says. “This could bring us closer to experiencing it in 360 degrees from our desk.”
I previously blogged about researchers at Georgia Tech incorporating streaming video into Google Maps.
Putting these technologies together paints a bleak picture for the future. As I wrote in Omniveillance (p.3 40):
Although the current version of Street View is limited to pre-recorded still photographs, future technology will allow real-time streaming video feeds of everything occurring in public. Immersive Media, the company that provides the surveillance apparatus for Google, has not stopped its research at still photographs. Currently in its laboratories it is developing what it calls “Immersive 360° Video” or “Spherical Video.”159 Rather than just taking still shots of specific locations, the technology can record interactive and navigable 360-degree videos.160 This capability allows a user to watch a video from multiple camera angles.161 These omens ominously bear on the value of Street View, and create a scary image of what Google could do. Because there is no viable right to privacy in public, and because Google seeks to create a visual map of the planet, there is nothing preventing Google or any other company from installing such video cameras with tagging capabilities on the rooftops of private business throughout America. This vision of the future poses serious issues and conjures up an Orwellian nightmare.162
In an earlier draft of the Article, I think I mentioned the possibility of cell phone cameras uploading video of public events. I don’t recall why I cut this section out, but in hindsight, it was quite prescient.
Twitter Tapping – When the Gov Monitors Facebook, Twitter, and Web 2.0
Dec 26th
From the New York Times, an editorial titled Twitter Tapping,
The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters. A public interest group has filed a lawsuit to learn more about this monitoring, in the hope of starting a national discussion and modifying privacy laws as necessary for the online era
This month the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law sued the Department of Defense, the C.I.A. and other federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act to learn more about their use of social networking sites.
Who needs search warrants and the Patriot Act when people freely volunteer information about themselves onto Facebook, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 sources. And despite any privacy mechanisms these sources may offer, the Government can easily obtain this information.
As I wrote in Omniveillance, Google, Privacy in Public, and the Right to Your Digital Identity: A Tort for Recording and Disseminating an Individual’s Image over the Internet at 209, “Additionally, with a subpoena, the government has ready access to a free surveillance network, further imperiling our civil liberties.”
Omniviellance. Coming to a Police Officer with Head Mounted Camera, Near You
Dec 22nd
From the Mercury News, San Jose police test head-mounted cameras for officers
San Jose police, under fire for interactions with the public that have turned violent, on Friday launched a pilot project equipping officers with head-mounted cameras to record contacts with civilians.
Officers will activate the cameras, about the size of a Bluetooth device and attached by a headband above the ear, every time they respond or make contact with a person. At the end of the officer’s shift, the recording will be downloaded to a central server.
And I wonder what else the government will use the recording devices for.
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