Caring is not enough: the importance of Internet skills for online privacy protection

This article explains Internet users’ self-help activities in protecting their privacy online using structural equation modeling. Based on a representative survey of Swiss Internet users, it reveals past experiences with privacy breaches as a strong predictor of current protective behavior. Further, in line with the ‘privacy paradox’ argument, caring about privacy (privacy attitudes) alone does not necessarily result in substantial self-protection. Most strikingly, however, general Internet skills are key in explaining users’ privacy behavior. These skills enable users to reduce risks of privacy loss while obtaining the benefits from online activities that increasingly depend on the revelation of personal data. Consequently, Internet skills are an essential starting point for public policies regarding users’ self-help in privacy protection.     

Some principles for surveillance adopted for multivariate processes with a common change point

The surveillance of multivariate processes has received growing attention during the last decade. Several generalizations of well-known methods such as Shewhart, CUSUM and EWMA charts have been proposed. Many of these multivariate procedures are based on a univariate summarized statistic of the multivariate observations, usually the likelihood ratio statistic. In this paper we consider the surveillance of multivariate observation processes for a shift between two fully specified alternatives. The effect of the dimension reduction using likelihood ratio statistics are discussed in the context of sufficiency properties. Also, an example of the loss of efficiency when not using the univariate sufficient statistic is given. Furthermore, a likelihood ratio method, the LR method, for constructing surveillance procedures is suggested for multivariate surveillance situations. It is shown to produce univariate surveillance procedures based on the sufficient likelihood ratios. As the LR procedure has several optimality properties in the univariate, it is also used here as a benchmark for comparisons between multivariate surveillance procedures     

WORKLESS PEOPLE AND SURVEILLANT MASHUPS Social policy and data sharing in the UK

This paper examines the use of ICT driven surveillant assemblages in UK welfare policy by drawing on the results of empirical research conducted for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The focus is on one aspect of the growing role of surveillance in social policy: data aggregation on populations characterized by sustained worklessness. The implementation and implications of this form of surveillance are examined. The paper explores surveillance systems that were extant in 2005/06 and those that were being designed. The paper argues that there is an ongoing need for critical evaluation of the underlying logic of data mashing on marginalized populations.     

Tracking (Im)mobilities at Sea: Ships,Boats and Surveillance Strategies

Abstract

This paper explores how national governments exercise regulatory power over spaces beyond their jurisdiction, when activities in those extra-territorial spaces have direct impacts within the boundaries of state concerned. Focusing explicitly on the control of shipping mobilities in the high seas and territorial sea zones, it is contended that apparatus of control, in particular, surveillance, are not only complex across spaces of alternate legal composition and between spaces of national and international law, but also across of the differing conditions and materialities of land, air and sea. Indeed, this paper argues that the immobilisation of the undesirable mobilities of ships and boats is inherently difficult at sea because of its very nature – its mobile legal boundaries, its liquidity compared to ‘landed’ fixity, and its scale and depth. Drawing on the case study of offshore radio pirates and the tender vessels which travelled ship to shore to supply them with necessary goods, it is reasoned that greater attention must be paid to mobilities at sea in view of forms of governance in this space. The sea is not like the land, or air, legally or materially, and mobilities cannot be governed, controlled and contained in the same ways therefore, as these connected spaces. Thinking seriously about the issues that arise when surveillance of mobilities is taken to sea, can help work towards better understandings for why security at sea proves so problematic and how those issues can be resolved, when the sea is the stage for contemporary geopolitical concerns in the twenty-first century.     

The electronic eye: emerging surveillant practices in social work with children and families

Given the rise of a ‘surveillance society’ or ‘surveillance state’, this article examines the evolution of new surveillant practices which are targeted at children in general, but also particular groups of children who are frequently seen as ‘troublesome’, even threats to the social order. In England for example, there has been an emerging preoccupation with ‘identifying’, ‘profiling’, and ‘tracking’ the potentially criminal young. Furthermore, other major changes are likely to be introduced in the area of child welfare and child protection. Important here is the New Labour administration’s plan to introduce ‘information hubs’ which will electronically log details on children and families. It is argued that social work and the social professions, throughout Europe, need to critically analyse developments such as this and have their responses informed by international discourses founded on civil and human rights.     

A PLAGUE ON THE PANOPTICON: Surveillance and power in the global information economy

With technological advances in data-manipulation, the increased 'informability' of our daily lives and the potential for social management, surveillance has become a key site for understanding the workings of power within the global informational economy. Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon has, courtesy of Foucault, become a dominant metaphor in surveillance studies. This central eye, aimed at the moral reform of institutionalized bodies and operating through a de facto closure of individual agency, tends to limit our conception of the complex ways surveillance serves and disrupts power. Through analysis of commercial and workplace surveillance, this paper shows that power is contested and agency never completely closed down. To comprehend this negotiated relationship, an alternative framework - 'plague management' - is presented. This envisions surveillance within a social setting operated by multiple agents who themselves are open to the gaze of those surveyed. The aim of this project is to categorize rather than to reform and cure, and moreover space is available for resistance. On the global scale, new technologies have opened up space for informal, local surveillances to be effectively linked to media and Internet audiences. These 'surveillance networks', informal alliances of a variety of actors, have the potential to radically alter orthodox relations of power by evading the information controls of the state and connecting a local gaze with the global community. This paper concludes that although surveillance studies has rightly been concerned with the control capacities of IT, a balance must be actively sought with the facilitative, enabling and even democratic impulses nascent in the new technology.     

Traditional birth attendants’ roles and homebirth choices in Ethiopia: A qualitative study

BackgroundIn Ethiopia, it is encouraged that labour and delivery care are performed under the observation of skilled/trained midwifery or medical professionals. However, 70% of all births occur outside the healthcare system under the care of unskilled birth attendants, family members, or without any assistance at all.ObjectiveThis study aimed to assess the reasons for choosing homebirth and the role of traditional birth attendants in Arba Minch Health and Demographic Surveillance Site.MethodA qualitative, exploratory study was carried out between May and June 2017. Twenty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with various respondent groups such as traditional birth attendants, pregnant women, skilled birth attendants, and health extension workers. Data were transcribed and for analysis, structured as per the participants’ responses, sorted and categorized as per the topic guide, and presented in narrative form.FindingsThe study revealed that traditional birth attendants are actively engaged in assisting homebirths in the selected area. It was also found that many women still prefer traditional birth attendants for childbirth assistance. Reasons for choosing homebirth included lack of transport to health care facilities, distance to health care facilities, lack of respectful care at health care facilities, and the friendliness of traditional birth attendants. Lack of formal partnerships between traditional birth attendants and the health system was also observed.ConclusionsThere is a need to incorporate traditional birth attendants as a link between healthcare facilities and pregnant women; thereby, improving respectful care at the healthcare facilities.     

Obtaining cancer risk factor prevalence estimates in small areas: combining data from two surveys

Summary.  Cancer surveillance research requires accurate estimates of risk factors at the small area level. These risk factors are often obtained from surveys such as the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) or the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System (BRFSS). The NHIS is a nationally representative, face-to-face survey with a high response rate; however, it cannot produce state or substate estimates of risk factor prevalence because the sample sizes are too small and small area identifiers are unavailable to the public. The BRFSS is a state level telephone survey that excludes non-telephone households and has a lower response rate, but it does provide reasonable sample sizes in all states and many counties and has publicly available small area identifiers (counties). We propose a novel extension of dual-frame estimation using propensity scores that allows the complementary strengths of each survey to compensate for the weakness of the other. We apply this method to obtain 1999–2000 county level estimates of adult male smoking prevalence and mammogram usage rates among females who were 40 years old and older. We consider evidence that these NHIS-adjusted estimates reduce the effects of selection bias and non-telephone coverage in the BRFSS. Data from the Current Population Survey Tobacco Use Supplement are also used to evaluate the performance of this approach. A hybrid estimator that selects one of the two estimators on the basis of the mean-square error is also considered.     

The horizons of technological control: automated surveillance in the New York subway

Surveillance technologies may be capable of monitoring a domain, but they need a sufficiently orderly domain to monitor. This article examines the secretive effort to institute artificial-intelligence-based ‘smart surveillance’ in the New York subway, using object- and pattern-recognition algorithms to identify dangerous activities in video feeds, such as a person abandoning a package. By considering the necessary preconditions for computer vision systems to recognize patterns and objects, I show how smart surveillance was challenged by the lack of visual and social uniformities necessary for smart surveillance systems to make its fine-toothed distinctions. In spite of vast resources and involvement of a major military contractor, the project was eventually deemed a failure. Although problems in computer vision are being incrementally solved, those improvements do not yet add up to a holistic technology capable of parsing the real-world ambiguity of open-ended settings which do not meet the assumptions of the detection algorithms. In the absence of technologies that can handle the actual mess, the world itself must cooperate, but it often does not. The article demonstrates the importance of looking beyond the claims of technical efficacy in the study of security and surveillance to discover how technologies of inspection and control actually work, as a means to cut through the heavy rhetorical packaging in which they are sold to their publics.