Doctoral Dissertation Research: “Sound and Surveillance: Recording and Privacy in the 21st Century”

在过去的十年里，主要的科技公司分享了他们对用户隐私的承诺。这些承诺是为了解决公众对私营公司的监控能力及其对隐私、机构和主权的影响日益增长的担忧。基于民族志田野调查，本研究的目的是（1）调查美国科技公司的数据收集实践，(2)探讨了用户和隐私权倡导者对各种形式的监视进行争议或抵制的方式，以及（3）分析了私营公司试图建立一个所有人都被不断记录的世界的理由。这项研究的重点是非创造性的录音实践，调查日常技术设备的录音和收听能力，以及它们对公民的影响。第一个案例研究是关于所谓的“智能城市”--根据参与城市化的科技公司的说法，这是一个“未来”的互联城市--它收集了大量关于公民日常生活的数据。第二个案例研究是在“智能家居”设备亚马逊回声，配备了一个名为“Alexa”的语音助手。Echo等设备不断“开启”和监听，通过不透明的做法收集用户的声音数据。该项目将政策、法律的文本，如使用条款、营销话语以及媒体和社交媒体上的话语视为人种学数据。此外，它还使用传统的实地调查方法，例如在非营利组织、会议和公共场所（主要是在纽约市和弗朗西斯科湾区）进行的采访和参与者观察。民族志工作收集了三个主要观点的定性数据：隐私倡导者，科技公司工作人员和技术“用户”。其目的是观察和询问人们如何构思和构建技术，人们如何与之互动，以及这些互动对隐私概念的影响。该项目旨在将相互竞争的观点汇集在一起，从而抵制当前的两极分化趋势，并对参与隐私战争的主要群体进行相关分析。通过将隐私视为一个复杂的、非霸权的概念，并质疑公共与私人之间的界限，这项工作可以为在个人自由和公共利益之间取得平衡的政策提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In the past decade, major tech companies shared their commitment to the privacy of their users. These pledges were made to address growing concerns from the public about the surveillance capabilities of private companies and their impact on privacy, agency, and sovereignty. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the purpose of this study is to (1) investigate the data-gathering practices of tech companies in the U.S., (2) examines the ways in which users and privacy advocates have contested or resisted forms of surveillance, and (3) analyze the justifications of private corporations in their attempts to build a world in which everything and everyone is being constantly recorded. This research is centered on non-creative recording practices, investigating the recording and listening capacities of everyday technological devices, as well as their impact on citizens. The first case study is on the so-called “Smart Cities”—the connected city of “the future,” according to tech companies involved in urbanism—that gathers massive amounts of data on citizens in their daily lives. The second case study is on “Smart Home” device Amazon Echo, equipped with a voice assistant named “Alexa.” Devices such as Echo are constantly “on” and listening, gathering sonic data from users through opaque practices. This project treats policy, legal texts such as terms of use, marketing discourses, and discourses in the media and on social media as ethnographic data. In addition, it uses traditional fieldwork methods such as interviews and participant observation conducted in non-profit organizations, at conferences, and in public spaces, primarily in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area. The ethnographic work gathers qualitative data on three main points of view: those of privacy advocates, tech company workers, and “users” of technology. The aim is to observe and inquire about the way people conceive of and build the technology, how people interact with it, and the impact of these interactions on notions of privacy. This project seeks to bring competing viewpoints together, thereby resisting current contemporary tendencies towards polarization, and provides relevant analysis of the main constituencies involved in the privacy wars. By looking at privacy as a complex, nonhegemonic concept, and interrogating the very notion of the boundary between the public and the private, this work can serve to inform policy that strikes a balance between individual freedom and the public good.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.