Tagged: surveillance

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Media & Communication

£1984: the cost of consumer surveillance? The future of facial recognition technologies

How close are we to the dystopian world outlined in 1984? Following on from my colleague bschaefer’s article ‘Volunteering for surveillance: Consumerism, fear of crime, and the loss of privacy’, this article discusses the latest challenges to our consumer privacy rights. The concept of surveillance raises significant social questions, especially in relation to how far technologies constitute an unacceptable degree of intrusion into our private lives. This week Tesco announced their plans to introduce targeted advertising through facial recognition technologies...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Volunteering for Surveillance: Consumerism, Fear of Crime, and the Loss of Privacy

The announcement by Apple this week regarding the latest version of the IPhone excited consumers worldwide. Along with any new release comes with anticipation over what new features will be included. The latest installment of the IPhone, the 5S, comes with a fingerprint technology called TouchID that replaces the now “antiquated” password with a biometric scan of the phone user’s fingerprint. Security experts are praising this new function as a way to increase protection for consumers and deter criminals from attempting...

Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Fear and Data Hoarding in the U.S.A.: The Use of Big Data to Fight Crime

  Key components of New York Police Department’s controversial stop-and-frisk strategy were recently struck down by a Federal Judge for violating the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.  The controversy surrounding the stop-and-frisk program primarily focused on its racial profiling—over 85 percent of the 4.3 million people stopped since 2003 were minorities. This decision has received considerable attention; however, there was a second component of NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program that was also defeated that received less attention. As part of the stop-and-frisk program,...

Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Liquid Charity

by pj.rey In the ten days following the earthquake that devastated Haiti’s capital, Americans used text messaging to donate over $30 million.  Text messaging has been prominent in the news as of late.  Candidate Obama shocked supporters by announcing his vice presidential pick using this new medium.  In 2008, Nielson reported that the average teen sends a whopping 2,272 messages a month.  A new term, “sexting,” entered popular usage following several high profile cases of teens being expelled or even...

Opinion

facebook's message of empowerment

Users logged into Facebook this week to find various messages from the company telling them of changes in the way they will share their information. While the company frames all of this as putting users in “control” of their own data, it strikes me that this is more about empowering the company than the users. Users are given more opportunity to share more information with more people, creating more of the data that Facebook profits from. Whether you care if...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Sniffing the City

by kiddingthecity What happens if some people decided to take control, in different ways, of their own images taken in public space by the millions of CCTV, by becoming conscientious actors and protagonists of the never ending film of the city (in London, there are more that half million of CCTV, 1 every 14 citizens)? What if some people started reclaiming, under the Data Protection Act, their own ‘performances’? To the extent, for instance, of making a music video, or...

Political & Economic Sociology / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Media & Communication

Visual Culture according to the Police

by kiddingthecity It sounds more and more likely that the Police have something to do with the death of a newsagent at the rally in the City of London. Many witnesses have come forward and most importantly there is The Picture: the evidence, the forensic clue, the probatio, the real stuff judges love and on which the surveillance culture of the streets in this country has been built upon. Mr Tomlinson is on the floor, surrounded by police officers, his...

Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Organizations & Work

University Lecturers: Academics or Immigration Officers?

by paulabowles A group of university lecturers and students have recently handed a petition to the British Government, in order to protest against forthcoming immigration reform. As part of these new rules, UK universities will be required to obtain a licence before they can enrol students from outside the EU. Furthermore, the universities will also be expected to sponsor these overseas students for the period of their study. Although, the government insist these plans were subject to a period of...

Social Movements / Social Change / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

facebook, youtube, twitter: mass exhibitionism online

By nathan jurgenson Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder and CEO) said recently at the 2008 Web 2.0 Summit: “I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and [the] next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before.” The Web 2.0 summit discusses the user-generated web, and of sociological interest here is that when people are given tools to share information about themselves online, they do,...