The New Transparency is associated with the Surveillance Studies Centre.
A key component of our project are the research seminars we regularly hold throughout the academic term to draw other co-investigators, students, and partners together for round-table discussions.
The seminars are organized by Sachil Singh. For seminar dates/times, plus other SSC/New Transparency events, see the event calendar.
Tags: SSC Seminar Series
Helen Nissenbaum
Professor
New York University
Media, Culture, and Communication & Computer Science
Director, Information Law Institute and
2013 Brockington Visitor
Tuesday, March 19
Mac-Corry Hall, Room D207
12.30pm-2pm
Data obfuscation promises relief against powerful machinations of aggregation, mining, and profiling. As a form of DIY privacy protection it circumvents the individual's dependence on corporate and governmental actors, whose interests often are served by practices of unfettered surveillance. Promising as it is, however, obfuscation raises scientific, ethical, and political questions, questions this seminar will address.
Everyone welcome!
This seminar is followed by:
This session is primarily targeted towards graduate students (and other interested folks) and offers personal engagement with Helen Nissenbaum. Bring your questions!
Amelia Cheston, MA Candidate, Department of Sociology, Queen's University
Consumer surveillance, seen in the social sorting capabilities of loyalty marketing, is gendered. Men and women are targeted in different ways by different marketing schemes, depending on the calculated value of their digital profiles. The Canadian findings from the 2006 Globalization of Personal Data survey are interrogated for a background analysis of gender and loyalty, using supplementary evidence from interviews with loyalty marketing executives.
Everyone welcome!
Amanda Glasbeek, Associate Professor, Department of Social Science, York University and
Emily van der Meulen, Assistant Professor, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Ryerson University
This talk draws on primary data from a Toronto-based, mixed-methods study with 50 women, and offers insights on the paradox of visibility engendered by CCTV. Glasbeek and van der Meulen's work considers the differential impacts video surveillance has on women for whom the city may be a site of leisure, entertainment, survival, danger, pleasure, insecurity, and/or labour.
Everyone welcome!
Tags: CCTV, gender, SSC Seminar Series, Toronto
Özgün Topak, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, Queen's University
The Greece-Turkey border has become the main point of irregular entry into the EU. While surveillance at many levels has expanded over the years, the humanitarian crisis has also escalated. This presentation discusses the ways in which surveillance operates at the Greece-Turkey border, how it is resisted and its impacts on the migrants' subjectivities.
Everyone welcome!
Tags: border, Greece, Ozgun Topak, SSC Seminar Series, Turkey
Valerie Steeves, Associate Professor, Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa
Findings from qualitative interviews with young people between the ages of 11 and 17 and their parents suggest that young people feel that they are under constant surveillance online by parents, teachers and corporations, and that many of their ordinary social interactions are being reconstructed as dangerous and risky.
Everyone welcome!
Tags: children, SSC Seminar Series, University of Ottawa, Val Steeves
Jay Handelman, Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research, School of Business, Queen's University
Consistent with traditional concerns about surveillance, a current trend in Retailing is the analytics of “Big Data” as companies analyze mountains of consumer data in order to track and anticipate the consumer’s every move. However, consumer research reveals at least three other domains of consumer behaviour that speaks to the multi-directionality of surveillance. “Micro-Emancipation”, “Reverse Panopticon”, and “Democratized Consumer Activism” represent different domains of consumer research which present complexities to our understanding of surveillance.
Everyone welcome!
Tags: business, consumer, Jay Handelman, SSC Seminar Series
Malcolm Thorburn, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University
This seminar addresses some concerns that have arisen recently about national identification schemes (such as the now-abandoned UK scheme). It distinguishes between (1) identification, (2) surveillance (understood very narrowly), and (3) profiling. Although identification is the object of most concern in the English-speaking world, Thorburn argues that it is actually the least problematic of the three.
Everyone welcome!
Tags: Law, Malcolm Thorburn, national identification, profiling, SSC Seminar Series
Ian Warren
PhD
Senior Lecturer in Criminology
Deakin University
Wednesday, September 19
This presentation examines the administrative powers enabling Australian police and private security agents to ban disorderly or violent people from designated urban business and entertainment zones. These approaches to securitization are slowly reconfiguring the idea of public space, while generating demands for new forms of mass population surveillance to enforce zonal bans.
Everyone welcome!
Gary T. Marx will offer an overview of his recently completed book, which suggests a conceptual framework for analyzing the structure, means and goals of surveillance and the attributes of types of personal information. Basic contexts of surveillance involving coercion, contracts, care and "public" and information will be discussed as well as "some metamethod moral mandates for students of surveillance and society".
Everyone welcome!
Tags: Gary Marx, SSC Seminar Series
