Beyond sunglasses and spray paint: A taxonomy of surveillance countermeasures

Surveillance and privacy are seeming locked in a continual game of one-upmanship. In the security context, adversarial relationships exist where an attacker exploits a vulnerability and the defender responds with countermeasures to prevent future attack or exploitation. From there, the cycle continues, with new vulnerabilities and better exploits, against improved countermeasures. In the privacy context, many have feared the government as a highly empowered threat actor who would invasively and ubiquitously violate privacy, perhaps best personified by DARPA\u27s Total Information Awareness Initiative or Orwell\u27s 1984. However, commercial companies today offer enticing free products and services in return for user information, examples include search social networking, email, and collaborative word processing, among myriad other offerings, leading to instrumentation, data collection, and retention on an unprecedented scale. End users, small business, and local governments themselves are often complicit by supporting, enabling, and conducting such activities. Whether a dystopia exists in our future remains to be seen, although we argue panopticon-like environments exist in today\u27s authoritarian regimes and increasingly surveillance is becoming embedded in the fabric of Western society to thwart terrorism, increase business efficiency, monitor physical fitness, track driving behavior, provide free web search, and many other compelling incentives

A Framework for Analysis of Quotidian Exposure in an Instrumented World

Abstract — For a variety of often reasonable motives such as increased security or increased profit, individuals and organizations fill our world with sensors and data collection systems that sample and track our day-to-day activities. Some people freely invite tracking into their lives. Others are enticed by offers of discounts or even free products and services. But frequently our lives are quietly sampled, unbeknownst to us, by those with the power to do so. As a result, individuals face a rapidly declining freedom to lead a private life. While significant sampling and tracking occur online, this study focuses on the convergence of sensor systems in the physical world. It explores the privacy implications of sensors found on our person, in our home, in our communities, and while travelling. This paper provides the following contributions: a model of human-targeted sensor systems and a framework for sensor categorization