USP 530 – Session 6

March 3rd
Session Six: Surveillance in Cities – Assignment #1 DUE TODAY 

This session will focus on the impact of increased surveillance in cities. For every 1,000 people in SF, there are over 3 cameras and the District Attorney’s office has access to almost ⅔ or their data (ABC7 News). Cameras are disproportionately in Tenderloin, Chinatown, DogPatch, Mission, Union Square. San Francisco ranks fourth in the United States in a study on public surveillance cameras. We will be guided by the following questions:

  1. What do we mean by the term “surveillance”?
  2. How does increased surveillance in cities effect urban populations?
  3. What forms does surveillance take in cities?
  4. How does surveillance impact different groups differently?
  5. What strategies and policies can people/groups use to protect themselves from unwanted surveillance

Required reading 

  1. http://www7.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UNSWLawJl/2014/27.pdf
  2. https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org.uk/files/09627250708553275.pdf
  3. Ring Planned Neighborhood “Watch Lists” Built On Facial Recognition, The Intercept, Biddle 11/26/19
  4. https://tcf.org/content/report/disparate-impact-surveillance/?agreed=1
  5. https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/how-stop-smart-cities-becoming-surveillance-cities
  6. https://www.theguardian.com/world/askjack/2019/dec/05/how-do-i-protect-my-online-privacy-from-surveillance-capitalism
  7. https://ssd.eff.org/en#index
  8. Phone radiation protection

Videos

  1. The Power of Privacy – 28 minutes

Virtual protection video – heather find this video

Notes

We talked about the challenges of urban planning when you’re ordering communities subvert your plans and specifically the example of Berkeley and Emeryville

This was connected to the implications of trying to do planning around banning cars and gas stations and car lots because they’ll just go outside your jurisdiction

We talked about IOT and the fact that it doesn’t necessarily give people more power but instead it gives corporations more power

She said we need to think about;

  • who is making the app and why
  • where is the data going
  • who is using the app.

These three lenses are the lenses through each of you IOT related issues

We talked about the problem of tracking online and the fact that even with all of these pseudo options like disabling location sharing and disabling cookies it actually makes no difference whatsoever as to whether these companies can track you and sell information about you