cybersurveillance workshop cfp final1

							Call for Participation

Cyber-Surveillance in Everyday Life: An international workshop

May 12-15, 2011, University of Toronto, Canada

Digitally mediated surveillance (DMS) is an increasingly prevalent, but still largely invisible, aspect
of daily life. As we work, play and negotiate public and private spaces, on-line and off, we produce a
growing stream of personal digital data of interest to unseen others. CCTV cameras hosted by
private and public actors survey and record our movements in public space, as well as in the
workplace. Corporate interests track our behaviour as we navigate both social and transactional
cyberspaces, data mining our digital doubles and packaging users as commodities for sale to the
highest bidder. Governments continue to collect personal information on-line with unclear
guidelines for retention and use, while law enforcement increasingly use internet technology to
monitor not only criminals but activists and political dissidents as well, with worrisome implications
for democracy.
This international workshop brings together researchers, advocates, activists and artists working on
the many aspects of cyber-surveillance, particularly as it pervades and mediates social life. This
workshop will appeal to those interested in the surveillance aspects of topics such as the following,
especially as they raise broader themes and issues that characterize the cyber-surveillance terrain
more widely:
       social networking (practices & platforms)
       search engines
       behavioural advertising/targeted marketing
       monitoring and analysis techniques (facial recognition, RFID, video analytics, data mining)
       Internet surveillance (deep packet inspection, backbone intercepts)
       resistance (actors, practices, technologies)
A central concern is to better understand DMS practices, making them more publicly visible and
democratically accountable. To do so, we must comprehend what constitutes DMS, delineating
parameters for research and analysis. We must further explore the way citizens and consumers
experience, engage with and respond to digitally mediated surveillance. Finally, we must develop
alliances, responses and counterstrategies to deal with the ongoing creep of digitally mediated
surveillance in everyday life.
The workshop adopts a novel structure, mainly comprising a series of themed panels organized to
address compelling questions arising around digitally mediated surveillance that cut across the
topics listed above. Some illustrative examples:
    1. We regularly hear about ‘cyber-surveillance’, ‘cyber-security’, and ‘cyber-threats’. What
       constitutes cyber-surveillance, and what are the empirical and theoretical difficulties in
       establishing a practical understanding of cyber-surveillance? Is the enterprise of developing a
       definition useful, or condemned to analytic confusion?
    2. What are the motives and strategies of key DMS actors (e.g. surveillance
       equipment/systems/ strategy/”solutions” providers; police/law enforcement/security
       agencies; data aggregation brokers; digital infrastructure providers);
       oversight/regulatory/data protection agencies; civil society organizations, and
       user/citizens?
    3. What are the relationships among key DMS actors (e.g. between social networking site
       providers)? Between marketers (e.g. Facebook and DoubleClick)? Between digital
       infrastructure providers and law enforcement (e.g. lawful access)?
    4. What business models are enterprises pursuing that promote DMS in a variety of areas,
       including social networking, location tracking, ID’d transactions etc. What can we expect of
       DMS in the coming years? What new risks and opportunities are likely?
    5. What do people know about the DMS practices and risks they are exposed to in everyday
       life? What are people’s attitudes to these practices and risks?
    6. What are the politics of DMS; who is active? What are their primary interests, what are the
       possible lines of contention and prospective alliances? What are the promising intervention
       points and alliances that can promote a more democratically accountable surveillance?
    7. What is the relationship between DMS and privacy? Are privacy policies legitimating DMS?
       Is a re-evaluation of traditional information privacy principles required in light of new and
       emergent online practices, such as social networking and others?
    8. Do deep packet inspection and other surveillance techniques and practices of internet
       service providers (ISP) threaten personal privacy?
    9. How do new technical configurations promote surveillance and challenge privacy? For
       example, do cloud computing applications pose a greater threat to personal privacy than the
       client/server model? How do mobile devices and geo-location promote surveillance of
       individuals?
    10.        How do the multiple jurisdictions of internet data storage and exchange affect the
       application of national/international data protection laws?
    11.        What is the role of advocacy/activist movements in challenging cyber-surveillance?
In conjunction with the workshop there will be a combination of public events on the theme of
cyber-surveillance in everyday life:
     poster session, for presenting and discussing provocative ideas and works in progress
     public lecture or debate
     art exhibition/installation(s)
We invite 500 word abstracts of research papers, position statements, short presentations, works in
progress, posters, demonstrations, installations. Each abstract should:
     address explicitly one or more “burning questions” related to digitally-mediated surveillance
      in everyday life, such as those mentioned above.
     indicate the form of intended contribution (i.e. research paper, position statement, short
      presentation, work in progress, poster, demonstration, installation)
The workshop will consist of about 40 participants, at least half of whom will be presenters listed on
the published program. Funds will be available to support the participation of representatives of civil
society organizations.
Accepted research paper authors will be invited to submit a full paper (~6000 words) for
presentation and discussion in a multi-party panel session. All accepted submissions will be posted
publicly. A selection of papers will be invited for revision and academic publication in a special issue
of an open-access, refereed journal such as Surveillance and Society.
In order to facilitate a more holistic conversation, one that reaches beyond academia, we also invite
critical position statements, short presentations, works-in-progress, interactive demonstrations,
and artistic interpretations of the meaning and import of cyber-surveillance in everyday life. These
will be included in the panel sessions or grouped by theme in concurrent ‘birds-of-a-feather’
sessions designed to tease out, more interactively and informally, emergent questions, problems,
ideas and future directions. This BoF track is meant to be flexible and contemporary, welcoming a
variety of genres.
Instructions for making submissions will be available on the workshop website by Sept 1.
See also an accompanying Call for Annotated Bibliographies, aimed at providing background
materials useful to workshop participants as well as more widely.


      Timeline:

       2010:
Oct. 1: Abstracts (500 words) for research papers, position statements, and other ‘birds-of-a-
feather’ submissions
Nov. 15: Notification to authors of accepted research papers, position statements, etc. Abstracts
posted to web.

       2011:
Feb. 1: Abstracts (500 words) for posters
Mar. 1: Notification to authors of accepted posters.
Apr. 1: Full research papers (5-6000 words) due, and posted to web.
May 12-15 Workshop
Sponsored by: The New Transparency – Surveillance and Social Sorting.
International Program Committee: Jeffrey Chester (Center for Digital Democracy), Roger Clarke
(Australian Privacy Foundation), Gus Hosein (Privacy International, London School of Economics),
Helen Nissenbaum (New York University), Charles Raab (University of Edinburgh) and Priscilla
Regan (George Mason University), Jay Stanley (American Civil Liberties Union)
Organizing Committee: Colin Bennett, Andrew Clement, Kate Milberry & Chris Parsons.