Cybercrimes and Surveillance

October 21, 2014

Dr. Kapatamoyo

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The Panopticon

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Who's Watching Whom?The Panopticon:

Conceived by Jeremy Bentham.

Made even more famous by M. Foucault People consciously felt visible Moderated behavior

In Web 2.0; we have Participatory Panopticon Voluntary surveillance Lateral surveillance Self surveillance

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Why do we care? FERPA – the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act But… People not bothered enough to change. They have

degrees of awareness

1. Unawareness of surveillance technology – through devices, software, guy next door with a packet sniffer, etc.

2. Awareness of surveillance technology without their knowledge or permission of use

Feel safe despite no assurance of privacy, e.g. Blackboard and other

3. Awareness of confirmed surveillance At the mall. People behave as per Bentham.

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Perspectives on Surveillance (1) Panopticon (Michel Foucault, Discipline and

Punish, published in 1975): a prison design in which visibility of inmates are maximized by enabling the guards in the central tower to watch the prisoners at all times without being seen.

New surveillance technologies, some argue, have created an “electronic panopticon” for modern societies.

See Spouse watching Apps

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Perspectives on Surveillance (2) Big Brother (by George Orwell, Nineteen

Eighty-Four, Published in 1949): A dictator in Oceana, a totalitarian state, that keeps everybody under complete surveillance (via a telescreen) at all times.

The “thought police” co-ordinate the monitoring effort of the state in order to maintain social order and conformity.

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Perspectives on Surveillance (3) Surveillant Assemblage: a term proposed by

Haggerty and Ericson (2000) to describe the evolving mechanisms of surveillance techniques and technologies.

With the latest developments of new technologies, discrete electronic monitoring systems can be combined to provide for exponential increases in the degree of surveillance capacity, both by the state and extra-state institutions.

The “disappearance of disappearance”: it is increasingly difficult for individuals to maintain their anonymity or stay away from monitoring mechanisms.

A series of discreet flows about individuals is reassembled in different locations to achieve an unprecedented level of surveillance over those individuals.

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Surveillance is Omnipresent CCTV cameras in public places

There are about 3,000 surveillance cameras in Manhattan, NYC The city of Chicago has at least 2,000 surveillance cameras in its

neighborhoods.

Iris-scans at the airports

DNA databanks by law enforcement agencies

Fingerprint databases by federal agencies

Other technologies: smart cards, face-recognition, biometrics, automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), etc.

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Three Kinds of SurveillanceVoluntary panopticon

the voluntary submission to corporate surveillance (also called the “participatory panopticon”)

Lateral surveillancethe asymmetrical, nontransparent monitoring

of citizens by one another

Self-surveillancethe ways in which people record themselves (or

invite others to do so) for potential replaying in other times and places

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Definition of CyberspaceCyberspace is a dynamic, fluid, changing

environment, a “deterritorialized semiotic plane” in which “artist/inventor/author” and “audience/user/reader” unite in a consensual interplay in the formation of, execution and interpretation of works.

Cyberspace is built of computers (e.g. web servers), communications devices (wired and wireless), and storage media, but its real meaning is the vast web of communications and information that includes the internet and more.

Coined by William Gibson in his novel Neuromancer in 1984. (Canadian-American fiction writer).

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CyberspacePierre Levy points to a

digitally conceived utopian universe, a virtual world in which vast

repositories of information, decentralized authorship, mutable identity, and telematic interaction, that form an “endless horizon” of

evolving forms of art and communications. (“The Art of and Architecture of Cyberspace,” Collective Intelligence, 1994).

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Cyberspace: Under Construction? Cyberspace may signify a terrifying place where:

the cataloging of the individual; the process of delocalized data; the anonymous exercise of power; the implacable techno-financial empires; social implosion; the annihilation of memory.

This enables new forms social bonds; perfects democracy; and forges unknown paths of knowledge among people (Maybe Rumsfeld was right).

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Design to ImplementationCyberspace is concerned with Messages/Data

that are:Called (searched, queried); Controlled; Dismissed; Distanced; Combined, etc.

No matter how they are orchestrated and regardless of type they will now revolve around the individual receiver/user.

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CybercrimesEvery security breach/violation involving

cybertechnology is criminal, but NOT every crime in cyberspace necessarily involves a breach or violation of cybersecurity.

For example, a pedophile can use a computer to solicit sex

with young kids; a college student can use a computer to

download copyrighted music.

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Defining Cyber CrimesCyberpiracy = using cybertech:

To reproduce copies of proprietary information; To distribute proprietary information in digital form.

Cybertrespass = using cybertech gain unauthorized access to: An individual’s or an organization’s computer system, or Password protected Website

Cybervandalism = using cybertech to unleash programs that: Disrupt the transmission of electronic information across networks Destroy data resident in a computer or damage a computer’s resources.

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Cybersecurity definedThree categories of Cybersecurity are:

Unauthorized access to data (data security)Concerned with vulnerabilities to unauthorized

access to data resident in computer storage devices or exchanged between two or more computers.

Attacks on system resources (system security)Concerned with the resources on the computer

such as hardware, operating system software and application software.

Viruses, worms and malicious programs.Attacks on computer networks (network security)

Concerned with securing large, private or government computer networks.

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ContextComputer security or Cybersecurity is

concerned with larger issues, such as:

Reliability;

Availability;

Safety;

Integrity;

Confidentiality;

Privacy.

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Cost of Protection

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Conclusions We see consequences from

A heavy (in some cases, exclusive) reliance on modern information and communication technologies (ICTs).

Shift from centralized state informational power to dispersed assemblage (although the state keeps its powerful presence).

Shift from targeting specific individuals to categorical suspicion, and from individuals to networks and organizations and collectives.

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Conclusions

Social sorting is enhanced, such as

Categorical suspicion: someone is in the suspect category because he/she belongs to a particular category or group.

Social categorizing: a discriminatory mechanism to classify people based on superficial social-demographic or other criteria.

“Racial” profiling: e.g., along “Arab” lines.

Other types of profiling: e.g., particular behavioral patterns; communication & purchasing activities; religious groups.

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