CAI1020 Week Eight: Surveillance and Privacy

Panopticon- A prison where guards can observe prisoners, but prisoners can't see guards. Invented by Jeremy Bentham in 1791.

Michel Foucault analyzed the Panopticon in his 1975 work Discipline and Punish as a metaphor for how modern societies discipline populations,

AI surveillance does not merely watch people, it classifies them.

1. Surveillance Capitalism

  • The line between corporate and government surveillance is blurry since governments buy data from companies.
  • Shoshana Zuboff- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism- AI makes highly accurate estimates of what we will do next, what we want, and how we will respond.
  • Behavioral predictions are then sold to advertisers.
  • AI systems that generate predictions can be used to nudge you toward doing what advertisers (and others) want you to do.

    • The Three Operations within Surveillance Capitalism

  • Extraction
  • Prediction
  • Modification

    • 2. Philosophy of Privacy: What Is It, and Why Does It Matter?

  • Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis published The Right to Privacy in the Harvard Law Review in 1890.
  • Alan Westin's influential account (1967) defines privacy as the control individuals have over information about themselves.
  • Charles Fried (1968) argued that privacy is fundamental to human relationships.

    • The "Nothing to Hide" Fallacy

  • Privacy is not about hiding wrongdoing.
  • The "wrongdoing" standard depends on who's watching.
  • The chilling effect.

    • Privacy as a Right vs. Privacy as a Preference

  • Is privacy as a fundamental right or a mere preference?
  • As a preference, privacy is a kind of consumer value.
  • People prefer privacy to some degree, but they also value the conveniences that come from sharing data
  • On the other hand, privacy can be viewed as a fundamental human right grounded in personhood and autonomy.
  • Coerced consent is not genuine consent

    • 3. Facial Recognition Technology

    Law enforcement agencies use facial recognition to verify id at borders; id suspects; and crowd monitoring. AI can generate many false leads leading to false arrests.

    The Fourth Amendment and expectation of privacy.

  • Under the traditional Katz test (1967), a search occurs when the government violates a "reasonable expectation of privacy."
  • Courts have held that people in public spaces have no reasonable expectation of facial privacy.
  • This may not account for facial recognition at scale.
  • AI can record and store all of your public activities.
  • In Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Supreme Court held that police need a warrant to obtain extended CSLI.
  • Predictive policing and mass identification usurps the presumption of innocence.

    • Questions for evaluating AI surveillance:

  • Who is watching?
  • What is collected?
  • Is the person aware of the surveillance?
  • Can the person opt out?
  • What decisions are made from the data?
  • Can the person contest errors or misuse?
  • Does the system chill lawful behavior?