Knowing Glances:

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Knowing Glances From Privacy to Visibility in
Information Infrastructures
David J. Phillips Department of Radio-Television
Film University of Texas at Austin djp_at_mail.utexas
.edu Anonymity Project Ottawa, ON June 2004
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THE PUNCH LINE Identities are performed in
communities of meaning. In talking about
appropriate forms of identification, we have to
talk about forms of performance, community,
and sense-making.
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Surveillance a 4 stage process individuation
and identification tracking and
monitoring statistical analysis response   Sur
veillance produces social identities, social
relations. It mediates social power.
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Think of GeePS a location-based marketing
system as a local market, a one-mile circle of
energy around a potential customer, which moves
with him or her, providing local information that
fits individual needs. This information is
dynamic and controlled by the merchants,
communities and establishments in that radius.
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Can the surveillance process be used by the
known population itself, to make sense of the
world from alternative perspectives, to
maintain subcultural identity and to
articulate that identity within the larger
social order.
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Queer theory studies the creation and
maintenance of social divisions/positions/power
through identity categories It aspires toward
changed possibilities of identity,
intelligibility, and publics. It probes
opportunities for discursive
counterpractices. (queering the discourse)
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• Practices of identity, visibility, presence
• claiming a recognized identity
• negotiating identity among various social
  contexts
• recognizing others who share our identity
• creating, defending, and acting upon
  subcultural knowledge
• occupying public space

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How do surveillance infrastructures potentially
mediate transgressive, contingent
identities regenerative places and communities
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Identities are performed toward certain
ideals, in certain contexts, and using
certain resources
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Resources for identity performance Mirrors
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Resources for identity performance
Mirrors Familiarity with ideal identities
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Resources for identity performance
Mirrors Familiarity with ideal
identities Awareness of context
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Resources for identity performance
Mirrors Familiarity with ideal
identities Awareness of context Ability to
signal within a subculture
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Resources for identity performance
Mirrors Familiarity with ideal
identities Awareness of context Ability to
signal within a subculture Availability of
public space
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Resources for identity performance
Mirrors Familiarity with ideal
identities Awareness of context Ability to
signal within a subculture Availability of
public space Availability of public presence
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(No Transcript)
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Case Study U.S. E9-1-1 Political analysis of
an infrastructure of visibility an ecology of
surveillance
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Infrastructure Intertwining of law,
institutions, economics, culture and everyday
practice shaping and mediating law,
institutions, economics, culture and everyday
practice
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Why 9-1-1? Its the killer app of locational
surveillance
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• structuring elements
• legacy technical configuration
• telecomm industry competition
• mobile telephony
• E9-1-1 regulation
• information policies and laws
• profit motive
• a culture of fear and safety

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Wireline carrier switching office
Public Service Answering Point
Caller dials 911
Dedicated 911 switching network
Basic 9-1-1
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Wireline carrier switching office
Public Service Answering Point
Caller dials 911
ANI / ALI DATABASE
PHONE ADDRESS
512 471 8083 512 353 3664 340 Oak St. 1823 Elm Ave.
Dedicated 911 switching network
Wireline carrier business office
Wireline Enhanced 9-1-1
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Wireline carrier switching office
Public Service Answering Point
Caller dials 911
ANI / ALI DATABASE
PHONE ADDRESS
512 471 8083 512 353 3664 340 Oak St. 1823 Elm Ave.
Dedicated 911 switching network
Wireline carrier business office
Wireline carrier business office
Wireline carrier business office
Enhanced 9-1-1 with Wireline Competition
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Wireline carrier switching office
Public Service Answering Point
Caller dials 911
ANI / ALI Database
PHONE ADDRESS LAT LON
512 471 8083 512 353 3664 610 242 8811 340 Oak St. 1823 Elm Ave. 30 15 98 30
Dedicated 911 switching network
Mobile carrier switching office
Wireline carrier business office
Wireline carrier business office
Wireline carrier business office
Location service
Wireless Enhanced 9-1-1
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New markets for geographic database management
for geographically aware call-delivery
systems for location-determining
systems for automated dispatching
systems   served by private companies but funded
by mandated surcharges.
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• Information Policy and Laws
• No opt out of E9-1-1
• Info used only to deliver emergency services
• Use of locational information (not generated in
  9-1-1) requires express prior authorization
• Only data itself, not infrastructure is
  protected
• De-identified info might not be covered
• Whats emergency service?

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• Market Imperatives
• unused systems capacity is a resource to be
  profitably mined
• pressure to design and deploy general purpose,
  modular, and reconfigurable systems
• linking locational databases to other
  databases
• Multi-purpose call delivery (fleet management,
  targeted ads.)

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• Context of infrastructure development
• private, volatile, fractured, profit-seeking
  telecomm industry
• well-funded cultural and legal mandate for
  emergency service
• a patchwork of privacy laws

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• Resulting resources
• Legible landscape
• Individual visibility to telcos
• Privately owned data space data available for
  sense-making through
• consent
• de-identification
• power
• Privately owned call-routing systems

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Desiderata for appropriable surveillance
infrastructures Mirrors Familiarity with
ideal identities Awareness of context Ability
to signal within a subculture Availability of
public space Availability of public presence
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• Publicness of data space / Availability for many
  modes of sense making
• Attributes of landscape (maps) differentially
  available.
• Data produced by individuals actions available
  through
• consent
• de-identification
• power (emergencies, subpoenas)

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• Signaling within subcultures / Publicness of
  performance
• Different places for individuals in same space
• Segmenting

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A generic, modular, malleable system Potentially
responsive to all sorts of patterns of data
exchange and analysis (like the internet?) But
who can harness the consent, money, and authority
to populate, use, and apply the private
dataspaces? Therefore, dominated by the
interests of state and market institutions (like
the internet?)
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In general, the infrastructure facilitates an
imbalance in the creation, acquisition, and
control of social knowledge in favor of
corporate and state interests. This, despite
the strongest privacy laws in the U.S.
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• Possibilities for Intervention
•  
• opt-out of emergency services
• independent oversight of homeland security
• all aspects of system
• restricted to emergency operations OR
• operated as a public resource
• mine rifts between state and corporate interests
• address culture of fear

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• Look at other legal regimes,
• (in addition to privacy rights)
• anti-trust
• cultural rights
• data is extracted from the
• cultural context of its production,
• commodified and marketed
• to the detriment of the culture from
• which it was drawn.

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David J. Phillips Department of
Radio-Television-Film University of Texas at
Austin 1 University Station A0800 Austin, TX
78712 USA 512-471-6624 djp_at_mail.utexas.edu