Technology and Democracy: Surveillance and Transparency as Sociotechnical Systems of Accountability

这个跨学科研究项目由科学，技术和社会计划资助，旨在更好地了解监视的社会后果。 在日益复杂的信息技术的推动下，监视日益普遍，这是有据可查的。然而，民主社会对个人行为的如此多的跟踪、监控和分类的社会影响却不太为人所知。 与此同时，人们对透明度政策的兴趣日益增加，要求政府和公司的做法更加透明。 透明度被视为消除监督负面影响的一种补救办法。 该项目重新定义了监督和透明度，将其视为问责制。 问责制提供了一个新的透镜，通过它来观察这两个系统的规范结构，并将被理解为涉及：（1）个人或组织;（2）该个人或组织的帐户，专注于特定的活动领域;（3）使用帐户进行决策的团体，组织或个人。 此外，监督和透明度将作为社会技术系统进行分析：社会结构和文化意义构成了信息技术系统，反过来又被信息技术系统所构成。 这一框架将指导五个案例研究的编写，为分析和交叉比较提供基础。 这五个案例涉及政府、企业和非营利组织。 一个跨学科的学者团队将分析这些案例，并进行跨案例比较，从而对透明度和监视的社会影响产生新的见解。 这些分析将研究创建系统的基本原理如何转化为实际工作; IT如何影响这种转化;以及系统如何影响科学和工程中代表性不足的群体。

This interdisciplinary research project, funded by the Science, Technology, and Society Program, seeks to better understand the social consequences of surveillance. The growing prevalence of surveillance, facilitated by increasingly sophisticated information technologies, is well documented. However, the social implications for democratic societies of so much tracking, monitoring, and sorting of individual behavior is less well-understood. At the same time, interest in transparency policies is growing in calls for more transparency of government and corporate practices. Transparency is seen as a remedy for the negative effects of surveillance. This project reframes surveillance and transparency in viewing them both as systems of accountability. Accountability provides a novel lens through which to view the normative structures of these two systems and will be understood to involve: (1) an individual or organization; (2) an account of that individual or organization, focused on a particular domain of activity; and (3) a group, organization, or individual that uses the account to make decisions. Further, surveillance and transparency will be analyzed as sociotechnical systems: the social structures and cultural meanings constitute, and are in turn constituted by, the information technology systems in which they are realized. This framework will guide the creation of five case studies which will provide the basis for analysis and cross-comparison. The five cases cover government, corporate and non-profit organizations. An interdisciplinary team of scholars will analyze the cases and do the cross-case comparisons, yielding both new insights into transparency and new understandings of the social implications of surveillance. These analyses will examine how the rationales for creation of systems gets translated into their actual workings; how IT has an impact on that translation; and how the systems affect underrepresented groups in science and engineering.