Privacy: Algorithms and Society
Privacy: Algorithms and Society focuses on encryption technologies and privacy debates in journalistic crypto-cultures, countersurveillance technologies, digital advertising and cellular location data.
Important questions are raised such as: How much information will we be allowed to keep private through the use of encryption on our computational devices? What rights do we have to secure and personalized channels of communication, and how should those be balanced by the state’s interests in maintaining order and degrading the capacity of criminals and rival state actors to organize through data channels? What new regimes may be required for states to conduct digital searches, and how does encryption act as counter-surveillance? How have key debates relied on racialized social constructions in their discourse? What transformations in journalistic media and practices have occurred with the development of encryption tools? How are the digital footprints of consumers tracked and targeted?
This volume on Privacy presents multi-disciplinary discussions and case studies of key issues related to the transformations of practice, regulatory gaps and social impacts of encryption and surveillance technologies. Scholars and students from many backgrounds, as well as policy makers, journalists and the general reading public will find a multidisciplinary approach to questions of privacy and encryption encompassing research from Communication, Sociology, Critical Data Studies, and Advertising and Public Relations.
Chapter 1 — “Distributing Journalism: Digital Disclosure, Secrecy, and Crypto-cultures” by Luke Heemsbergen and Alexia Maddox — begins the volume by charting developments in distributed and crypto-journalism in connection to the cypherpunks movement and the rise to prominence of WikiLeaks. This sets the stage for an in-depth analysis of how coverage of the Capital riots on Jan 6th, 2021 reflect key changes in journalistic public information-making practices.
Chapter 2 — “Centering Race in Analyses and Practices of Countersurveillance Advocacy: Mythologies of the Racialized Other in the Crypto Wars” by Karina Rider and S.L. Revoy — expand the discussion around encryption as a general technical solution for achieving effective countersurveillance to include racial constructions. Through discourse analysis on sixteen years of US congressional hearings they highlight the racial mythologization of criminals and how this has shaped public policy.
Chapter 3 — “Data Privacy in Digital Advertising: Towards a Post Third-party Cookie Era” by Naim Çınar and Sezgin Ateş — analyzes the methods by which consumer behaviors are tracked online for the delivery of personalized advertising and have their personal data commodified in the marketplace. The technologies employed inevitably lead to privacy violations and regulations often do not keep up with the fast pace of these technical developments which allow for ever more effective web tracking and surveillance.
Chapter 4 — “Smartphones, APIs & GNSS (Not GPS) Location Data” by Tommy Cooke — provides a granular analysis of the specific algorithmic protocols and systems that track our location and movements via cellular technologies. These challenge our conception of privacy since much is mystified under the general heading of “GPS” and these increasingly precise tools make our location information available to firms around the world.
This volume is in Routledge’s short form Focus format. As such, the series can be nimble and responsive to fast emerging issues and debates.
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