Online Privacy: The Impact of Surveillance Capitalism on Our Sense of Well-Being
How does surveillance capitalism impact our privacy and well-being? More importantly, what exactly is surveillance capitalism and how might it have a longer term impact on us and society? In this episode, I’m diving head first into the topic of surveillance capitalism, privacy, and how it is affecting us in ways that we may not even realize.
Listen in as I define surveillance capitalism and how it differs from the most common understanding of capitalism, how companies collect and use our data, and what data exhaust is. I also examine the psychological impact that privacy concerns can have on us, why privacy is crucial to our overall well-being, and what the future of data privacy and surveillance capitalism may look like.
And as with everything I share on the podcast, this is what I believe based on what I’ve read and researched. But please don’t take my word for it. Keep what sticks, discard the rest and for goodness sakes, go out and test drive it!
What You’ll Learn In Today’s Episode:
What surveillance capitalism is.
How our data is most often used.
What digital Exhaust is.
The psychological impact on privacy.
The importance of privacy on our well-being.
The future of data harvesting.
The difference between hacking and digital surveillance.
What the privacy paradox is.
What the future of privacy is.
What Was Mentioned:
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“How is it possible that they could know what I want before I do?” – Christina Sestan
“No conversation about privacy is complete without considering the value of what our digital technologies are threatening to erode.” – Christina Sestan
“Hacking and surveillance are different, but they can also be the same.” – Christina Sestan
“There is no wifi in the woods, but you’ll never get a better connection.” – Christina Sestan
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Speaker 1 0:01
Hi, it's Christina. Thanks for joining us. And welcome to The Squeeze today. I want to open a can of worms on privacy, the digital kind. So I was on a call in my home office the other day, and after hanging up, I suddenly hear from somewhere under a pile of papers on my desktop, appointment with John Doe booked. Siri, is that you? Unbeknownst to me, she'd been doing what she thought was my bidding and had misinterpreted something that I'd said during the phone call, heard it as a command, and tried to set an appointment. Do you forget she's there? I know I do all the time, and when she pipes up like that, just like out of nowhere, I usually respond with a few choice words, because honestly it feels like eavesdropping, and that pisses me off. So, why don't I just switch off my microphone? Well, we'll get into that in this episode. Stay tuned. But first, listen to this quote if they want to listen in on my phone calls or read my emails, who cares? I don't have anything to hide. Have you ever heard this before? I know I have. Have you ever said it? Maybe I sure hear it a lot. In fact, every semester when I ask my incoming third year business students to consider big data and online privacy. I generally hear some version of this. I became fascinated with the concept of online privacy years ago, simply because I've always been fascinated with the concept of privacy in general, namely who we are when no one is looking, and the whole online experience just seems to be remolding our interactions in general, so I find that fascinating as well. Anyway, my fascination into privacy, it goes way back to probably early experiences where I observed, you know, adults saying one thing publicly and then doing something differently when they were alone. I was always curious about that anyway. Online privacy used to be in the headlines a bunch more than it is now, but then again, you know, I don't frequent the mainstream news channels much these days, so perhaps we're still sort of talking about it collectively, but not in the earth-shattering way, you know, back when the whole Cambridge Analytica kind of Facebook thing reared its ugly head, and of course, Facebook wasn't the only big internet company accused of leaking our private data, the highest bidder. Those kinds of stories were popping up all over the place. The fact is, we live with the evidence of data collection every day. We've all had this experience. You're looking something up on Google, and then you see an ad for the exact same thing pop up in your feed the next day, meh, no big deal, right? A couple years ago, my stepdaughter kept repeating the word Doritos next to her smartphone. She did this for a couple of weeks, and then one day she sent me this text saying an ad for Doritos had shown up in her Facebook feed. She thought it was a lark. I found it well, disconcerting, probably because it forced me to confront the fact that I, too, was being listened to, you know, back to that whole eavesdropping Siri thing at the beginning. But do you remember a few years back, which I think in tech revolution evolution is really an eternity, there was an Amazon Alexa, that's that intelligent personal assistant device that you have in your home, you know, the one we yell at to change the music or shut off the lights downstairs when we go to bed. Anyway, it recorded a woman's private conversation and sent it to her husband's employees without her knowledge, or of course without her requesting permission, even if you don't remember this specific example, I know you've heard something like it, because these experiences are just the tip of the iceberg, and they're exactly the kind of situation that gives privacy advocates fuel for well, advocating, but I was kind of surprised how few people seem to care, you know, more than anything, it just seemed like kind of a good story to pass on, and of course, Amazon defended their tech.
Speaker 1 4:26
They said it was not designed to eavesdrop, but come on, doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that one of the most important features of any home assistant is to listen in order not to miss the so-called wake word, that's something akin to saying hey Siri to our smartphone, now several years after those first leaks were reported. Guess what? It seems convenience continues to trump privacy, and the race to normalize home assistance continues. And then I think even further back, this is to the beginning of the surveillance. Discussion, you know, we were all a little more concerned then, but I think maybe that was because we were just beginning to wrap our heads around digital technology in general. So 10 years ago, people in my home province of BC, they were all up in arms over the installation of these smart BC hydro meters on our homes, those are the meters that measure our energy consumption, and then now transmit it wirelessly, but previously we'd relied on these meter men or women to walk through the neighborhood manually recording the numbers. I remember those guys, I remember like looking out my bathroom window and seeing someone walk down the side of the house and almost having a heart attack, but I digress. So, it's painfully obvious that that was a very antiquated process of gathering that data. I totally get it. But what happened was, we discovered that transmitting digital data, it opened this host of unintended consequences or opportunities for hackers. Now, they were able to target homes for break-ins, because they would just track when consumption dipped. Maybe we were away, and so then we all protested, all up in arms, to have the meters removed. They weren't, and probably nobody thinks of them anymore. And, of course, this all sounds so little house on the prairie compared to everything that was to follow, in fact, and I'm going to skip ahead in the timeline for a second. It makes me wonder what an interview with Edward Snowden would sound like today. Like, I know he continues to speak publicly, but I mean specifically around his initial whistleblowing, that was back in 2013 So, back then he risked his life to leak details about Prism, that was that program that the NSA wanted to use to extract huge amounts of like audio, video, photographs, emails, all kinds of documents through Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, YouTube, Apple, probably some others in there, anyway. It wasn't just limited to the US, and as a result of his leak all around the world, it was like these dominoes of government-sanctioned surveillance just started to kind of tip over and be revealed. It seemed like such an incredible coup at the time. I remember watching Citizen Four and being like riveted, on the one hand, I thought Stone's revelations were heroic, and I thought the world surely is going to wake up and change the way it operates, but on the other hand, I was kind of afraid to hold my breath, because I think, you know, definitely big policies changed the USA Freedom Act, for one, that limited surveillance of private citizens in the US, and I think Snowden was really happy about that, and in fact, I think it was a New York Times op-ed piece where he was quoted as saying that it was a historic victory for the rights of every citizen, but does he still think it was worth it? I mean, he gave up everything, he went to incredible lengths to keep his identity a secret, he left his home, he now lives, quote unquote, permanently in Russia. We'll see how that pans out. He said he had no regrets in an interview that was back in June 2018 with The Guardian. But what he said next got my attention. He said that people are still powerless to stop surveillance, but we are trying, and his revelations made the fight more even, wait, what we're powerless, but we're trying. This is not what I thought a leak of this magnitude would accomplish. And then, in a YouTube interview from later that same year, Snowden hoped that now that we know, we will adjust the way we think about these issues, and we can then go on to direct and steer the software accordingly.
Speaker 1 8:39
Okay, I agree with the logic, but I gotta say, finding evidence to support this has been tough. My theory is that much of the reason things haven't gotten better is that people don't really understand what data privacy means. I mean, we get the obvious things, right, like identity theft or having our bank accounts hacked, or whatever, but in a larger scale, I don't really think we understand, and then we don't really put up much of a fuss, so we do break the land speed record, it seems, for clicking agree to the myriad terms of service that accompany every app we download. I mean, tell me the truth, have you ever, and I mean even just once read the terms of service before clicking agree. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. Remember the quote about privacy only being an issue if you have something to hide. Well, from where I'm standing and what I've just shared, that sentiment is so far from the real issue that to my ears it's got the same ring as a four year old explaining why they should be able to stay up later than their regular bedtime, not a lot of traction on that one. Let's stay tuned. So there are a lot of ways that we can view data privacy, but I want to explore two different lenses. Firstly, the most obvious is economics, but secondly in farm. More fascinating to me personally, anyway, is psychology. So, let's start with the obvious. The most recognized use for private data is to market things to us. No surprise there. Marketing organizations, they just, they use our demographics, our socioeconomic status, etc. and then they are able to better target their products. It is a very rare person online or on social media who doesn't accept the correlation between online activity and those freakishly accurate ads. You know, I would actually buy some of those things. Seriously, I saw a crow lamp, a crow lamp. They definitely know me, but most people don't really understand just how sophisticated the bigger game of data collection really is. I came across a book, it's called The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, even just that term, surveillance capitalism. It's good one. It was written in 2019 by Shoshana Zuboff, and in it she highlights the importance of something called ambient data. Well, what's that? That's actually the data that occurs alongside the classic data sets. So, the classic data sets are things like age, address, sex, et cetera. But ambient data includes things like how long you're on an app for, who you associate with, where you go next after that app, et cetera. The tech industry used to refer to this kind of data as digital exhaust. I love these metaphoric terms, but it reminds me of those journalists in the early days, and they used to break into celebrity garbage cans looking for a story. And ambient data, it turns out, is just the tip of the iceberg for how data is harvested. If you've ever checked out that Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, then you already know that the sophistication of what they call psychographic profiling, it goes way beyond digital exhaust, and it still sends prickles up and down my spine when I think about how is it possible that they could know what I want before I do, I Hey, you're listening to the Squeeze, and if you like what you're hearing, there's a whole world of citrus couching to discover. We've got an online leadership program, it's called Citrus You, and it features those three key tools you need to be a better leader, well, to be a better human. We also have a number of mini learning bundles that you can get into, and there's plenty more. If you're interested, you can follow us on Instagram, or check out our website@www.citruscoaching.com And the show resumes now. Okay, that's enough about the economic driver behind data collection, but I want to examine for a minute the psychological impact on privacy, because I think if we understand that a little better, we might understand a little bit of what we might be giving up, so you know those little signs you sometimes see hanging in someone's house, and it says dance like no one's watching. Well, I'm pretty sure most of you listening have some idea of what this is pointing to.
Speaker 1 13:11
I think it implies we spend a lot of time worrying about what others think, even when we say we don't, and the idea of just letting loose on the dance floor without worry, it sounds kind of dreamy. Maybe that's why Tom Cruise's dancing scene in Risky Business was so darn memorable. But here's another way to think about it. I want you to imagine that you've just arrived home to an unexpectedly empty house, so you expected there would be people there, and there's not you. Walk in, what does it feel like? It's different, isn't it? There's a palpable contrast when we walk into a house, has people in it, or when we're alone, we just unconsciously switch off our public persona, and it's not like we start behaving differently, unless, of course, you know, nudity or cross dressing is whatever is your jam, but you know, even then, maybe not, but every part of us can feel the difference, because being off is palpable. It frees us from having our attention directed by others. Hey, what do you want out for dinner? Can you drive me somewhere? Dad, help me with my homework. It frees us from that. It gives us permission to power down and relax, we can take the time to reflect on our thoughts and our feelings, things we might negate or ignore if someone else were around. Sure, you can drink from the carton, or eat from the pen, or pick your nose, or read a trashy novel, or whatever floats your boat, but more importantly than what we do is how being alone makes us feel, and how crucial it turns out to be for our sense of well-being. You see, the core value of being alone is the security and comfort of keeping those parts of ourselves just for ourselves, or of being able to pull back into a bit of a healthy anonymity when we want to lick our wounds at the end of a trying day, when no one. Can see us, it's the place where we are more well ourselves. It's a validation that builds the confidence that we need to go out into a world full of challenges, and no conversation about privacy is really complete without considering the value of what our digital technologies are threatening to erode. So, if we need downtime to function well in the world, I hate to say it, but I'm going to suggest that for many of us we may not be as alone as we think we are anymore. In the book, The Social Machine Designs for Living Online, it's a great book. Judith Donneth describes it this way, that the last decade of online technological development. Well, it was about perfecting online tracking technologies. Done. Check. But that the next decade, and this is the one to be concerned about, is going to focus on massively increased surveillance of our wait for it offline behavior. Offline behavior, like, think about that for a moment, what does that even mean? The book goes on to describe something many of you may already know about. It's called the Internet of Things, or IoT for short. I've also heard it referred to as the colonization of the space in your home, think smart refrigerator, or washer dryer, or even your Roomba vacuum and security cameras, you see a washing machine that texts you when it's time to change over your laundry, that's a smart washing machine, or a refrigerator that scans barcodes on your food, so you always know what you have and when it will expire, or a vacuum, the vacuums while you're at work, or a security camera you can view from anywhere, but each of these devices have the technological capabilities to forgive my oversimplification, but I think it fits. Spy, check this out. In a Science Daily 2020 article, researchers were actually able to hack robot vacuums to act as listening devices, even though they don't come with a microphone. The truth is that any internet-connected device can be hacked. I mean, Newsweek itself, not long ago, said a network is only as strong as its weakest device. Okay, but I need to make a distinction here between hacking and intentional surveillance. Is there one? Didn't the FBI just purchase Pegasus last year, a hacking tool designed to extract data from smartphones.
Speaker 1 17:22
Okay, so they said they wanted to understand the life from the criminal perspective a bit better, and they never executed it. But did we all just fall off the turnip truck yesterday? I'm not going to go further down that particular rabbit hole, lest I get branded a conspiracy theorist, which I am most decidedly not. However, hacking and surveillance, they are different, but they can also be the same. Let's just assume some blurry lines, shall we? Now, revisiting the psychological benefit of being alone or in private, we know that a certain quality of well-being depends upon some time off the radar to reflect or relax, or whatever it is that's needed, including possibly dancing in your underwear, but if your home is colonized with any smart appliances, or you have a couple of cell phones lying nearby, you have more of an audience than you think, and you are no longer as private as you may imagine yourself to be okay. So, quick distinction here. If you don't know, who cares, right? Hmm, not that simple. There have been many research papers written about something that's called the privacy paradox, and that is essentially a disparity between what we say that we value our privacy and the actions that we take, continuing to purchase and engage with IoT technology. It may interest you to know that when this paradox is brought to your attention, like perhaps is happening right now, we rely heavily on the lack of awareness justification. Okay, so I am no stranger to denial, my human nature rabbit hole has afforded me many glimpses into this uber common pattern. It always reminds me of the little kid who's frightened, and so they hide their face so they can't see the scary thing. But we all know that this would be the worst possible defense imaginable if you woke up in the night and there really was an intruder in your bedroom. My theory here is that we like the short-term gain of buying our mind a bit of what I call fake peace, like sticking our fingers in our ears and going, "I can't hear you, I can't hear you" when somebody's saying something scary. There's only one problem with this. The other bookend to short-term gain, well, it's of course long-term pain, and this is the potential reality that you may be inadvertently providing an ongoing and unparalleled look into the most authentic and private corners of your life and risking your most intimate details, and maybe you're still thinking, so what? Okay. For you, maybe, and I would beg to differ here, for reasons I'll get to in a second, but what about your so-called defenseless kids? Those are the little folks who are going to inherit this whole cyber world that we are busy building right now. Do you really not want them to know what life feels like beyond the cyber eye? Even if I step back from the psychological loss of privacy and the impacts to our well-being, which I agree is subtle and may be very hard to qualify and quantify. Don't we also open ourselves to even more serious personal threats? It's not just organized surveillance by the government agencies that we need to consider, although that is certainly some scary spying. What about the independent or criminal hacking organizations? How would you even begin to know if your devices were sending data to servers in foreign countries? For what I can only imagine would be nefarious motives. Google, largest collector of data in the world, is clear that it does not sell our personal data. What does that even mean in a 2021 article in the markup entitled What does it actually mean when a company says we do not sell your data, Ari Ezra Walman of Northeastern University School of Law writes, quote, saying that they don't sell data is like a yogurt company saying they're gluten-free yogurt is naturally gluten-free. It's a misdirection from all the other ways that may be more subtle, but still are deep and profound invasions of privacy. End quote.
Speaker 1 21:32
Honestly, the list of data breaches goes on and on, and I'm getting a bit depressed and anxious as I sift through some of these for the podcast in 2020 The Guardian reported that a hacker allegedly got into a Ring camera and told an eight year old girl that he was Santa Claus and asked if she wanted to be his best friend. Security cameras have been hacked to peer into children's rooms. This is seriously scary shit. I may not be able to prove or disprove unequivocally whether you're being surveilled at any given moment, but doesn't the possibility get your attention and cause you to consider the cost of all the promised convenience of something like the Internet of Things. Okay, let's take a beat here. Remember the quote I opened with at the beginning, that you know I don't care who's watching, because what do I have to hide? Has your opinion shifted at all? Are you nervously glancing around the room at your smartphone and other smart appliances? And wouldn't it be kind of funny and dramatic if your robot vacuum just suddenly passed underfoot? That would make a pretty funny scene in a movie. In all seriousness, I really hope you're beginning to see that you actually do have a lot to hide and to protect both your personal security and your mental well-being, but I'll be honest, I'm not exactly holding my breath for a collective wake-up, because I don't see a lot of evidence of that taking place. An anonymous professor was quoted in a Pew Research article, saying, quote, "As life becomes more and more monitored, what was previously private space will become public, causing more stress in people's lives. Furthermore, some of these technologies will operate without a person's knowledge or consent. People cannot opt out, advocate for themselves, or fix errors about themselves in proprietary algorithms, end quote. The last part really bothers me. Our private spaces are being eroded at an alarming rate, and that has impacts that I'm not sure we're feeling fully yet. Surveillance technology just continues to evolve in a way that feels to me like no one is really driving this bus. So, what does it all mean? In a CNN article from March 2017 Susan Scuddy interviewed Laurie Craner. She was a prof of computer science and engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and she said that, based on her research, she believes people will say, quote, "There's nothing you can do, you've lost all your privacy. I can't live my life feeling suspicious all the time, so I'm just not going to worry about it. End quote. Recognize any denial there? Here's the rest of the quote. Or, on the other side, people say they'll avoid the internet, social networks, online banking, and any sort of activity that might lead to surveillance, end quote. But I don't buy that. If you've ever tried to quit social media or just take a social media fast, then you know how hard it can be to disconnect. I think people are impacted in a serious way. These privacy concerns are very real. If this discussion occurs for you as a bit of a fork in the road, in other words, do you continue down road A and hope for the best, or do you switch to road B and do something differently? What then can you do? Well, remember the adage, short term gain for long term pain. Well, what if we were to flip that on its head to create a different outcome? What short term pain would you be willing to accept in return for growth? Greater peace of mind longer term. I'm not naive enough to suggest you're going to consider getting rid of your smartphone anytime soon. I know the stats on that likelihood, but maybe at the very least you might opt for a retro flip phone. And no, I'm not talking about the new Samsung Galaxy Z flip four, but like a bonafide old school flip phone, a phone you can't surf on, but one with a keypad with dial keys that made texting something like French braiding your own hair, but that may not even be an option now, as the telco companies sunset their g networks.
Speaker 1 25:33
Maybe the short-term pain is just giving this some thought, and then running yourself through the exercise of peering around your life and your family's day to day life to explore what might be possible. At the very least, I highly recommend you bone upon some basic security features for your kids. I'm not very tech savvy, or I would give you a list of suggestions. I have a VPN and antivirus software on all my devices. I cover up my cameras with tape regularly, turn off location services and microphones, but perhaps the most impactful habit I've gotten into is simply leaving home without my phone. Sure, I'd probably curse up a blue streak if I ran into car trouble or needed to get hold of someone urgently, but as a member of the straddle generation, meaning I lived life before, during, and after our internet adoption, I actually remember doing life this way. My current hypothesis is this: that life is overall more enjoyable and mental health revitalizing when I'm left to my own devices, and I don't mean of the tech variety. There was this great saying that I heard, there is no Wi-Fi in the woods, but you'll never get better connection. So, if there are any tech geniuses listening out there who want to weigh in, or maybe even join me for a chat that we can then share, what are you waiting for? Let me know, and even if you're not a tech genius, but you have some good privacy tech habits. Then let me know in the comments. Privacy still think you have nothing to hide. So you've been listening to The Squeeze. Thanks for joining us today. If you want to continue tuning in, don't forget to click subscribe, and as always, we want to hear your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, and challenges. If there's anything you don't agree with, thanks for joining us, and see you next time.
Unknown Speaker 27:34
Bye.