Privacy, Visibility, Transparency, and Exposure

This essay considers the relationship between privacy and visibility in the networked information age. Visibility is an important determinant of harm to privacy, but a persistent tendency to conceptualize privacy harms and expectations in terms of visibility has created two problems. First, focusing on visibility diminishes the salience and obscures the operation of nonvisual mechanisms designed to render individual identity, behavior, and preferences transparent to third parties. The metaphoric mapping to visibility suggests that surveillance is simply passive observation, rather than the active production of categories, narratives, and, norms. Second, even a broader conception of privacy harms as a function of informational transparency is incomplete. Privacy has a spatial dimension as well as an informational dimension. The spatial dimension of the privacy interest, which the author characterizes as an interest in avoiding or selectively limiting exposure, concerns the structure of experienced space. It is not negated by the fact that people in public spaces expect to be visible to others present in those spaces, and it encompasses both the arrangement of physical spaces and the design of networked communications technologies. U.S. privacy law and theory currently do not recognize this interest at all. This essay argues that they should

Proxy of democracy? : metaphors of connection as arguments against representation

This paper aims to assess the arguments that claim representative democracy may be enhanced or replaced by an updated electronic version. Focusing on the dimension of elections and electioneering as the core mechanism of representative democracy I will discuss: (1) the proximity argument used to claim the necessity of filling the gap between decision-makers and stakeholders; (2) the transparency argument, which claims to remove obstacles to the publicity of power; (3) the bottom-up argument, which calls for a new form of legitimacy that goes beyond classical mediation of parties or unions; (4) the public sphere argument, referred to the problem of hierarchical relation between voters and their representatives; (5) the disintermediation argument, used to describe the (supposed) new form of democracy following the massive use of ICTs. The first way of conceptualizing e-democracy as different from mainstream 20th century representative democracy regimes is to imagine it as a new form direct democracy: this conception is often underlying contemporary studies of e-voting. To avoid some of the ingenuousness of this conception of e-democracy, we should take a step back and consider a broader range of issues than mere gerrymandering around the electoral moment. Therefore I shall problematize the abovementioned approach by analyzing a wider range of problems connected to election and electioneering in their relation with ICTs

Rendering an Account: An Open-State Archive in Postgraduate Supervision

The paper begins with a brief account of the transformation of research degree studies under the pressures of global capitalism and neo-liberal governmentality. A parallel transformation is occurring in the conduct of research through the use of information and communication technologies. Yet the potential of ICTs to shape practices of surveillance or to produce new student-supervisor relations and enhance the processes of developing the dissertation has received almost no critical attention. As doctoral supervisor and student, we then describe the features and uses of a web-based open state archive of the student's work-in-progress, developed by the student and accessible to his supervisor. Our intention was to encourage more open conversations between data and theorising, student and supervisor, and ultimately between the student and professional community. However, we recognise that relations of accountability, as these have developed within a contemporary "audit revolution" (Power, 1994, 1997) in universities, create particular "lines of visibility" (Munro, 1996). Thus while the open-state archive may help to redefine in less managerial terms notions of quality, transparency, flexibility and accountability, it might also make possible greater supervisory surveillance. How should we think about the panoptical potential of this archive? We argue that the diverse kinds of interactional patterns and pedagogical intervention it encourages help to create shifting subjectivities. Moreover, the archive itself is multiple, in bringing together an array of diverse materials that can be read in various ways, by following multiple paths. It therefore constitutes a collage, which we identify as a mode of cognition and of accounting distinct from but related to argument and narrative. As a more "open" text (Iser, 1978) it has an indeterminacy which may render it less open to abuse for the technologies of managerial accountability

Transit: An analysis of networked criminal groups and criminal opportunities at transit ports

Like the path of many contraband commodities, trafficked cultural objects cross countless legal borders and intersect with the legitimate market world at a number of critical transit junctures, which supports the concept of a single “grey” market. These transit settings, where different elements of trafficking networks must converge, are sites of vulnerability for criminals and opportunity for law enforcement intervention. For this discussion, the case study of Subhash Kapoor’s trafficking network will be used as a frame of reference throughout the essay to support the idea that a port, as an interface in the global supply chain, is a critical site for analysis and understanding of international trafficking in cultural objects. What follows is a discussion of conceptualisations of organised crime in late modernity, a spatial analysis of the global cultural heritage trade, and an overview of the securitisation and role of sea ports in trade

Towards Conceptualizing Information Transparency and its Role in Internet Consumers' Concerns: A Literature Review

In recent years, calls for a safer online shopping environment are growing louder. Empirical studies on consumers’ expectations of ethical e-commerce practices have found that the top concerns among e-shoppers revolved around security of transactions, privacy protection of personal data, deception and reliability issues. Consumer generally desire richer and truthful information to make purchase decisions. By addressing the information needs of consumers, transparency presents itself as a promising concept for firms to leverage towards strategizing its role in ethical practices. This paper revisits the consumer-perceived ethical issues in e-commerce literature, presents the disclosure paradox faced by e-seller firms, reviews the various conceptualizations of transparency in multidisciplinary literature and suggests extending the transparency strategy to map to consumers’ informational needs and concerns

Control responsibility : the discursive construction of privacy, teens, and Facebook in Flemish newspapers

This study explores the discursive construction of online privacy through a critical discourse analysis of Flemish newspapers' coverage of privacy, teens, and Facebook between 2007 and 2018 to determine what representation of (young) users the papers articulate. A privacy-as-control discourse is dominant and complemented by two other discourses: that of the unconcerned and reckless teenager and that of the promise of media literacy. Combined, these discourses form an authoritative language on privacy that we call "control responsibility." Control responsibility presents privacy as an individual responsibility that can be controlled and needs to be learned by young users. We argue that the discourses contribute to a neoliberal rationality and have a disciplinary effect that strengthens various forms of responsibilization

The political imaginaries of blockchain projects: discerning the expressions of an emerging ecosystem

There is a wealth of information, hype around, and research into blockchain’s ‘disruptive’ and ‘transformative’ potential concerning every industry. However, there is an absence of scholarly attention given to identifying and analyzing the political premises and consequences of blockchain projects. Through digital ethnography and participatory action research, this article shows how blockchain experiments personify ‘prefigurative politics’ by design: they embody the politics and power structures which they want to enable in society. By showing how these prefigurative embodiments are informed and determined by the underlying political imaginaries, the article proposes a basic typology of blockchain projects. Furthermore, it outlines a frame to question, cluster, and analyze the expressions of political imaginaries intrinsic to the design and operationalization of blockchain projects on three analytic levels: users, intermediaries, and institutions.</p

A question of value(s): Political connectedness and executive compensation in public sector organizations

While the de-politicization of public sector management was a core objective of past reform initiatives, more recent debates urge the state to act as a strong principal when it comes to public sector unity and policy coherence - and consequently make a case for reinvigorating links between the political and managerial sphere. Using data from Austrian public sector organizations, we test and confirm the causal relationship of political connectedness of board members and executive compensation. Differentiating between value-based and interest-based in-groups, we suggest that only value-based political connectedness has the potential to restore patronage as a control instrument and governance tool. Self-interested and reward-driven patronage, on the other hand, indicated by a strong association of political connectedness and executive pay, refers to the type of politicization that previous public sector reforms promised to abolish