data body 2.0 (excerpt of visualizing the network)

(Engels)

At this moment, we are in a transition of conventional analog identification to digital virtual identification. Hereby, a mutual trust between government and civilians plays an essential role. The lack of a pure form of identification can result in an emergence of many restrictions and legislation based on movement in the physical and virtual space.

In this paper, personal information is defined as “all the information that is possibly available of one person”. This information encompasses things such as: name, address, location, income, expenses, depths and biometrical- en DNA information, but also information like eating habits, sexual orientation, political opinion, religious beliefs and physical appearance. For short, it reveals intimate, private, economic en political issues in the life of a person. All the unique features that can be registered will form the identity of a natural person.

Within social studies, identity is considered a process of becoming. Stuart Hall (1994) makes a distinction between two influences on the production of identity. Firstly, he states that [1994:394] identity is being produced by differences between cultures based on similar histories; like slavery, colonization and migration. Secondly, he states that [1994:394] a cultural identity is formed by a reproduction of the past. Thus, the telling of stories and myths. So, when is stated that “All the unique features that can be registered will form the identity of a natural person.”, we have to keep in mind that the (virtual) identity is never fixed, but rather dynamic: it is continuously becoming (completed by unique elements).

Computers have brought several advantages to cope with these issues. These advantages do not necessarily apply to the privacy of civilians nor to the control of the government. Thanks to technology, the government can enforce tons of complicated legislations upon civilians, which is only possible within a process of fast decision making and calculation power. When somebody is speeding for example, the authority will take notice by means of technology (speed sensors). Which will lead to a punishment (speeding ticket). For the authority it seems impossible to grasp total control, though. Technology works both ways (Spam, internet piracy, hacking).

Due to the lack of control for both civilians and government, they have to cope with the following issues: it has been more difficult to (1) discover what personal information is stored where and by whom and (2) what it is used for. The Dutch legislation on the protection of personal information elaborates on these issues. It states [WBP, 2006], in a nutshell, that personal information can only be used for the purpose the civilian has meant it to be used for. And, if this is the case, it should be accurate and complete. The appearance of a digital virtual identity has a tendency to bring fear upon us. Fear of big brother and anarchy. Based on the impact that exposing your digital identity could potentially unveil. Based on what bad things might happen.

The digital virtual identity can be thought of in terms of a body, which incorporates a collection of personal information. The ‘founder’ of this data body is Steve Kurtz (2006), who is a member of the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). He writes in Utopian Promises – Net Realities an essay, where a virtual body is considered as one of five utopian promises. Kurtz (2006) states: “The virtual body is a body of great potential. On this body we can reinscribe ourselves using whatever coding system we desire. We can try on new body configurations. We can experiment with immortality by going places and doing things that would be impossible in the physical world.” (Kurtz, 2006) The data body is a ‘fascist sibling’ of the virtual body. “(…) a much more highly developed virtual form, and one that exists in complete service to the corporate and police state.” (Kurtz, 2006) One could define the data body as an embodyment of (personal) information, which is linked to one person.

Haggerty and Ericson (2000) elaborate on a body that is similar to that of the data body. “The observed body is of a distinctively hybrid composition. First it is broken down by being abstracted from its territorial setting. It is then reassembled in different settings through a series of data flows. The result is a de-corporealized body, a ‘data double’ of pure virtuality.” (Haggerty and Ericson 2000:613) They mention the concept of the data body again when they state: “It is not so much immediately concerned with the direct physical relocation of the human body […], but with transforming the body into pure information, such that it can be rendered more mobile and comparable.” (Haggerty and Ericson 2000:613)

evolutionary step

Figure 1. Evolutionary step

The notion of completeness in relation to data bodies has inspired the idea behind this concept. The data body, which is illustrated in figure 1 has a rather negative image, because its troubled relationship with man, technology and society. Troubled, because man could be seen as the shadow of the data body. The shadow connotes the lack of agency over the data body within the realms of control, surveillance, and discipline. The evolutionary step illustrates the evolution of the data body. As shown, the evolution of the data body starts later. It is therefore less evolved, less sophisticated and less complete than that of man. This unsophisticated (caveman) property could be inconvenient for man, because of its impact on daily life. For example, a data body is corrupt, which is the equilivant of an error in a database. As a consequence, the person who is linked to this database is prohibited to travel across boundaries.

There is a theoretical solution to fear of the impact that data bodies could have. The completion of the data body. How? There should be a mutual trust between government and citizens. On the one hand, should the government agree to full transparency towards the aggregation and recording of personal information. On the other hand, should the citizen agree to partly give up his/her privacy. Technology should be the key for making sure the data body is complete and in that way sophisticated enough to resemble man.

References:

  • Haggerty, K.D., Ericson, R. V. (2000). The Surveillance Assemblage. British Journal of Sociology, 51,(4),(pp. 605-622).
  • Hall, Stuart (1994). Cultural Identity and Diaspora in Colonial Discourse and Post Colonial Theory. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (Eds). Cambridge: Harvester Wheatsheaf. (pp. 394).
  • Kurtz, S. (2006). Essay: Utopian Promises – Net Realities (http://www.well.com/user/hlr/texts/utopiancrit.html), 14 mei
  • WBP, Wet Bescherming Persoonsgegevens. (Dutch Privacy Act of personal data) (2006).http://www.cbpweb.nl/downloads_wetten/WBP.PDF?refer=true&theme=purple
January 30, 2010 | Bas Bisseling | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

project: MyDatabody, visualizing the network

(Engels)

A growing amount of personal information about a growing amount of people becomes publicly available online. When Google-ing someone’s name, it’s normal these days that a whole list of data pops up that could consist of, among others: career related data, past activities, holiday pictures, blogging and commenting, Social Network (SN) profile data, etc. At first it were merely youngsters that have been familiar with using the internet their whole life that did not really care about privacy (or did not realize the importance) and put all their information out there, available and for grabs for everybody. Not long ago also older generations have joined in and are uploading more and more personal content to the web. These are some interesting trends that will probably become more prominent in the near future.

This project has aimed at creating new insights in this phenomenon of publicly available online personal data. After a first brainstorm session about the current situation of peoples’ ‘online lives’, we all agreed that the visualization that we were supposed to develop would have to serve several relevant goals. First of all we wanted to enhance people’s awareness about privacy online, not by condemning their behavior, but by visualizing something and leave the judgment to the users themselves. A second and very important goal which is closely related to the first is that our visualization must give insights in the amount and extensiveness of people’s data online. As a result our visualization will provide people with the possibility to compare different groups of internet users. So our application provides people with interesting new insights in the different ways people use MySpace. With this application we can create insights in how users with specific cultural or demographic characteristics use MySpace in a different way.
After discussing the subject of personal data available online and putting it together with the goals, we started going through possible ways of visualizing our ideas. It did not take long before we were all very enthusiastic about a metaphoric visualization that could show ones detailed and personal publicly available data. The idea originated from a theory: the data body. A data body is all the data available online of someone. It can exist of for instance: background information, comments, interests, general info, etc. In the case of our visualization the data body is everything that is filled in on a MySpace profile.
We got even more enthusiastic about our idea when we did a brief desk research on the concept data body or applications and visualizations available online that depict somebody’s profile extensiveness. It turned out that most of the SN’s we knew did not have any indication for the completeness. Some of the SN’s we looked at indicate the completeness by a percentage. In the most innovative case (LinkedIn) we found the profile completeness depicted in a bar chart. After this finding and some more brainstorm sessions we were all very confident to take our

confident to take our idea to the next level; we decided to make the depiction interactive, give it a global touch, and even make it social by depicting a user with geographical (inter)related friends. Also, we agreed on the form of our application; we were going to make a widget that would trigger people to click on and play with.

Based on all our initial thoughts, desk research findings, and early conceptualizing we have set up the following problem statement for his project:
“No visualization tool/plugin exists to visualise a so-called data body of a person’s profile on a social network”
We will tackle this problem by firstly describing all relevant theory. This includes theory on social networks in general, online identity theory, network theory, and theory concerning the data body. Secondly we will describe the functional design of our application. In this part a detailed overview of MyDataBody is provided. Subsequently after the theory and functional design we will explain the major design choices we have made during the conceptualizing stage of our project.

During the process of conceptualizing and reading the relevant theory we also started setting up a scraper to collect as many MySpace profiles as possible. This process and the structuring of the raw data is described in the Implementation chapter. Finally before the conclusion we describe how we have actually built MyDataBody and for who the application is potentially relevant.

This concept document came about in a professional get together with Maya Aujla, Daphne Ben Shachar, Piet Walraven, James Mostert, Bram Slits and myself.

December 10, 2009 | Bas Bisseling | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

data body 1.0 (DPG en Nederlandse wetgeving.)

(Dutch)

Op dit moment zitten we in een overgang van conventionele, analoge identificatie naar digitale virtuele identificatie. Daarbij speelt het wederzijdse vertrouwen tussen de overheid en de burger een centrale rol. Dit vertrouwen wordt problematisch als de identiteit niet met zekerheid kan worden vastgesteld. De technieken kunnen immers nog steeds niet aantonen dat ‘jij wel diegene bent die je beweert te zijn’. Het ontbreken van deze zuivere identificatie kan veel gevolgen hebben voor het vrij bewegen in de virtuele en fysieke ruimtes. De persoonsgegevens die aan verschillende instanties of organisaties worden verstrekt, worden in databanken opgeslagen. Daarmee zijn ze gemakkelijk te verwerken en voor verschillende instanties of personen beschikbaar te stellen.

Dankzij computers kan de overheid tal van ingewikkelde wetten doelmatig uitvoeren en de burger optimaal van dienst zijn. Ook particuliere organisaties en bedrijven kunnen door geautomatiseerde gegevensverwerking efficiënter werken. Maar tegelijkertijd is het minder makkelijk geworden om te achterhalen welke persoonsgegevens door landen, organisaties en bedrijven zijn vastgelegd, waar die gegevens voor worden gebruikt en aan wie ze worden doorgegeven. Dit is in de wetgeving vastgelegd. De persoonsgegevens die worden gebruikt, moeten juist en volledig zijn. Ze mogen ook alleen worden gebruikt voor het doel waar de burger ze voor verstrekt heeft. Sommige gegevens zijn vertrouwelijk en moeten zodanig worden behandeld, dat ze uitsluitend worden vastgelegd door de persoon of instantie die ze nodig heeft. Ze mogen niet verder worden verspreid dan noodzakelijk is. Het zijn immers persoonlijke gegevens.

Een voorbeeld waarin de privacy van de burgers in het geding komt is de ophanden zijnde overeenkomst tussen de Verenigde Staten en de Europese Unie. Er wordt onderhandeld over het verstrekken van passagiersgegevens (PNR) door luchtvaartmaatschappijen aan Amerikaanse autoriteiten in het kader van terrorismebestrijding. Drie belangen komen samen; de financieel-economische belangen van de luchtvaartmaatschappijen; de uitwisseling van persoonsgegevens in het belang van de veiligheid en de handhaving van de principes van de bescherming van persoonsgegevens in de wet bescherming persoonsgegevens. De passagiers dreigen essentiële rechten te verliezen als er geen controle meer kan zijn op het gebruik van de passagiersgegevens door de Amerikaanse autoriteiten. Als de belangen van de luchtvaartmaatschappijen en de Amerikaanse autoriteiten zwaarder wegen dan de privacy van een passagier, dan kunnen de passagiers ook geen beroep meer doen op de rechtsbescherming in geval van foutief gebruik van hun persoonsgegevens. [PNR-dossier 2007]

Aan de hand van deze casus komen we tot de onderzoeksvraag: Is de wet voor bescherming van persoonsgegevens nog wel toereikend in de digitale wereld van nu? En zo nee, op welke onderdelen zou de wet dan nog verbeterd kunnen worden? Klik hier voor de scriptie.

September 3, 2009 | Bas Bisseling | Tags: , | No Comments »

Is the databody the next step towards becoming an Übermensch

(Engels)

“All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann)

Nietzsche did not prefer men as an average being. In ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ he claims to consider men as a necessary step between the evolution of apes towards the Übermensch. In this book, Nietzsche refers to Zarathustra, a mythical Persian prophet who proclaimed to be the founder of Zoroastrism (Persian state-religion). This religion carried out a dualistic message between good and evil. According to Zarathustra, the best decision was to choose the spiritual being, which was forbidden to be portrayed. This was the one and only god (a divine Übermensch), and all the other gods were half-gods. evolutionary process The concept of the Übermensch brings me to the notion of the databody, which is a body of personal data (an extensive profile) that is constructed by means of connecting databases. This body could be the next stage towards the realization of Nietzsche’s’ Übermensch. Steve Kurtz introduced the databody, which he referred to as the fascist sibling of the virtual body.

With the virtual body came its fascist sibling, the data body-a much more highly developed virtual form, and one that exists in complete service to the corporate and police state. (Steve Kurtz)

This concept and the notion of the Übermensch have fascist connotations. To clarify the notion of the databody and to relate it to men, I will be making use of a metaphor and will be referring to the image. To my opinion, the databody has more authority in making decisions that involve the government’s approval, then its human counterpart. For example, in case of an incorrect administrative data entry, a database gets corrupted (a corrupt databody) and someone could be denied to cross the border. This is why I am relegating to men as sometimes living in the shade of the databody. To conclude, the databody got rid of (bestially) emotions, which makes it less evolved than men kind, but – in Nietzsche’s sense – made a big step towards becoming an Übermensch.

August 11, 2009 | Bas Bisseling | Tags: , , | No Comments »