AUTHOR
Richard Cozzens

ABSTRACT

In 2008, I presented a paper at ETHICOMP titled “Feasibility of Web-Based Training.” The paper was based on research I conducted as the CATIA V5 Workbook * (Cozzens 2000) was first published and released. Data collection continued as I developed a web-based training site CATIA V5 Workbook.com in 2003 **. Until about 2006, the number of customers purchasing the book and using the web-based training increased. Throughout the world over 150 colleges and universities utilized the book for their CAD (Computer Aided Design) course curriculum. The web-based training site had about 1,500 users. The research conducted indicated that web-based CAD training was a feasible method of training given the training had the right components.

In 2010, I presented a paper at ETHICOMP titled “Quality Web-Based CAD Training.” The paper was a continuation of the 2008 paper. In the paper, I reviewed the history of the development of the market for CAD web-based training, discussed the market decline, and finally looked at the continuing need and benefit for this specific type of quality web-based training. In the paper, it was mentioned that web-based CAD training would never completely replace face-to-face training. With advanced web-based curriculum and technology, it had become a viable substitute for traditional training.

It is clear that technology is changing the way web-based training in general is managed and accessed. An example, a recent article in Time Magazine (2010) Philip Rosedale stated “Anything that can be made and recorded becomes essentially free.” Anita Hamilton in another Time Magazine article stated, “What’s certain is that the $4 billion college text book market is ripe for a digital makeover.” The market is changing and will continue to change.

Interestingly, I attended a conference recently “Solid Works World 2011” in San Antonio, Texas.”*** A conference like this usually has at least four to five web-based CAD training vendors. This year there was only one web-based CAD training vendor “SolidProfessor.” There are two main reasons for this decline in market share. The first is a mature and shrinking market. The second reason is what I refer to as the phenomena of CAD training using social media platforms such YouTube, podcasting, and blogs. Training on YouTube is essentially free and the quality is getting better as the content grows. Web-based CAD training is also being accepted as a viable method of training. At the “SolidWorks World 2011” conference, I had the opportunity to attend several training sessions. In those training sessions, references to YouTube Channels, podcasts, and blogs were listed as external references and/or additional training for the specific SolidWorks tool being presented in the session. January 2011, I attended a UACTE (Utah Association for Career and Technical Education) Conference. At this conference, the training for all the state CAD instructors included how to access and use free web-based training material. All the instructors were eager to view and sample the training. Most of the instructors were eager to implement the training into their class rooms.

Keeping this in mind, in this paper I describe changes implemented in my web-based CAD training used at a university level for students. I have also implemented these changes into the training outside of the university such as the SolidWorks training I conducted at ITSON (Insituto technologico De Sonora) in Ciudad Obregon, Mexico last May. I am implementing these changes into my YouTube and eLearning (blackboard) accounts as well. This paper takes into account the results of the on-going research and also current trends in CAD training market. During this training, students have access to social media platforms such as YouTube which includes tools and techniques (see figure below for details). During the semester, students will be interviewed and will also be requested to give a feedback on the usefulness of this training. This paper uses Double Loop Learning by Aygris to best describe the different phases of this on-going research. This will help to provide an insight into web-based training in general by reevaluating the underlying assumptions (as stated in the theory) from the results of the on-going research in web based CAD training.

The contribution of this paper is to better understand the effectiveness and feasibility of web-based CAD training using various social media platforms such as YouTube, podcasting, and blogs.

REFERENCES

Cozzens, R. “Effectiveness of Web-based Training.” Proceedings of ETHICOMP 2008, Pavia Matua, Italy.

Cozzens, R. “Quality Web-Based CAD Training.” Proceedings of ETHICOMP 2010, Tarragona, Spain.

Rosedale, P., “The Future of Content,” Time Magazine, November 11, 2010.

Hamilton, A., “Global Business,” Time Magazine, November 11, 2010.

Batista, Ed, 2006. “Double-Loop Learning and Executive Coaching” online at http://www.edbatista.com/2006/12/doubleloop_lear.html, accessed 01.23.2011.

AUTHOR
Karolina Churska-Nowak and Piotr Pawlak

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, more and more spreading the thesis according to which the proper functioning of modern democracy is dependent on the same processes and phenomena that we observe on the open market. Representatives of political science, in particular specialists in the field of political marketing, highlight the numerous similarities between the sphere of politics (in a democratic political culture, the type involved) and the market economy (among them: B. I. Newman, P. Kotler, N. Kotler, A. Lock, P. Harris). Leaving aside the debate about justifiably of that thesis, we must agree with the fact, that political marketing is a constant element of present political life. One can argue about the origins of this phenomenon, seeing some signs of political marketing in some behaviors of the rulers or leaders since ancient times (eg, use of the phenomenon of solar eclipse), but according to most scholars, we can talk about political marketing with real player, only in terms of the democratic system (Cwalina, Falkowski, 2006). Bruce I Newman said in the late 90’s, that politics enters into the ‘age of fabricating the images’ (Newman, 1999). Thus, the modern political marketing is primarily a multi-dimensional use of mass media in order to create the desired (by the candidate and his election team), the image of the candidate and his fixation in the minds of recipients (readers, viewers, listeners and Internet users).

Political marketing in the XXI century is characterized by a marked shift of activities – from forcing ideological (even less popular) election slogans expressing the rigid belief of the party, to act more flexible, taking into account the particular needs and moods of society. Under this concept, the role of political marketing is going out to meet social expectations. An obvious prerequisite for an effective political marketing campaign are media. This is a permanent feature of contemporary political struggle, which plays an important role in the mechanisms of power. John Thompson (Thompson, 1994) places the media in one of the four, identified by their forms of governance. He extracts the economic power, political, based on coercion and symbolic. Economic power is organized within firms and corporations, whose main objective is to achieve financial gain and production. Political power is associated with nation-states, with clearly defined borders and centralized administration. Authority based on coercion takes the form of military and paramilitary forces, combined with the structures of the state. The symbolic power in the ability to use symbolic forms, generally understood as an expression, which transfers information and symbolic content, in order to intervene and influence the course of actions and events (Cwalina, Falkowski, 2006). In this sense the forms of power, the media are mainly part of the latter. Most of the mass media has been quite extensively studied and described in terms of their suitability for operations as marketing (both in the wider understood economy, and politics). Internet, which as a mass medium in full, we can talk about since the early 90’s (Castells, 2003), also has not gone unnoticed for analysts who examine political marketing. However, given the special nature of this medium, ‘the power of communication’ of the Internet is expressed primarily by it’s network services. The most common network services is of course the World Wide Web, in which there are constantly appeared new proposals. In recent years, more and more popular became various social networking sites. This is a relatively young medium, most recently also used for various marketing purposes.

Nowadays, political marketing more often became present in the cyberspace. The use of Internet as advertising platform is something different than traditional media marketing. Relative to TV, radio or posters, it’s much more cheaper – expressed in the size of consumers audience. Marketing specialists can reach larger number of consumers, spending less money than in the other kinds of promotion. Social networks are specific carrier of advertising, which is now universally used by the politicians in their campaigns. But using of social networks for closely advertise purposes is connected with various ethical dilemmas. Main aim of paper is to describe benefits of the use of social networks in political marketing, as well as to consider the moral and ethic side of that phenomenon. The case study here will be Facebook and ‘NK’, and their use in the local governments elections in Poland (21 November 2010). The aim of paper is to specify fluid border between public (political) and personal sphere of human activity in the cyberspace. If this border is possible to set up? The problem of social network in political life is connected with the political blog’s phenomenon, it will be another matter that we want to bring up.

REFERENCES

Bomberg E., Peterson J., Stubb A. (2008), The European Union: How Does it Work, New York.

Castells M., (2003), The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society, Oxford University Press.

Cwalina W., Falkowski A. (2006), Marketing Polityczny. Perspektywa Psychologiczna, Gdansk.

Dahl R. A. (2000), O demokracji, Kraków.

Dobek-Ostrowska B. [red.] (2007), Media masowe na ?wiecie. Modele systemów medialnych i ich dynamika rozwojowa, Wroc?aw.

Dobek-Ostrowska B. [red.] (2002), Transformacja systemów medialnych w krajach Europy Srodkowo-Wschodniej po 1989 roku, Wroc?aw.

Hallin D., Mancini P. (2007), Systemy medialne. Trzy modele mediów i polityki w uj?ciu porównawczym, Kraków.

Lees-Marshment J. (2009), Political Marketing: Principles and Applications, Routledge.

Miko?ajczak A., Mausch H. [red.] (2005), The EU enlargement: a chance for all, Gniezno.

Moran M., (1987), The politics of banking, London.

Newman B. I., (1999), The mass marketing of politics: Democracy in an age of manufactured images, Thousands Oaks.

O’Cass, A. (2001), Political Marketing, [in:] “European Journal of Marketing”, Vol. 35, N. 9/10, pp. 1003-1025.

Thompson J.B., (1994), Social theory and the media, [w:] Crowley D., Mitchell D. [ed.], “Communication theory today” (pp. 27 – 49), Cambridge.

AUTHOR
Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman

ABSTRACT

Sexual racism is a form of social segregation on the basis of race. Like all forms of social segregation, sexual racism has two faces: that of exclusion (= spacial segregation) and that of exploitation (= role segregation). On the one hand, sexual racism is manifested in the race-based denial of sexual affirmation or activity; on the other, sexual racism is manifested in the offer of sexual affirmation or activity, but only on racially subordinating terms.

Since the social scientific analysis of data from websites that facilitate searches for sexual partners, has concluded that black heterosexual women and black homosexual men who identify as bottom are the least sought-after online, I focus on the sexual racism that perpetrated against members of these two social groups and on the distinctive moral wrongs committed and the distinctive moral harms that obtain, precisely because this sexual racism is perpetrated online.

When perpetrated against black heterosexual women, online sexual racism has the following content. On the one hand, it is manifested (a) in white heterosexual men’s reluctance to affirm black heterosexual women’s sexual appeal and (b) in white heterosexual men’s reluctance to engage in sexual activity with black heterosexual women. On the other hand, it is manifested (a) in white heterosexual men’s eagerness to affirm the sexual appeal only of black heterosexual women who have phenotypically whiter traits (in addition to their phenotypically blacker traits), and (b) in white heterosexual men’s eagerness to engage in sexual activity only covertly and only with hypersexualised, hyperaccessible, and superdisposible black heterosexual women.

When perpetrated against black homosexual men, online sexual racism has the following content. On the one hand, it is manifested (a) in white homosexual men’s reluctance to affirm black homosexual men’s sexual appeal and (b) in white homosexual men’s reluctance to engage in sexual activity with black homosexual men. On the other hand, it is manifested (a) in white homosexual men’s eagerness to affirm the sexual appeal only of, and to engage in sexual activity only with, black male bodies that are (a) all brawn, (b) with no brains, and (c) not bottom. In other words, the black male body must conform to three criteria in order to qualify as a specimen of black male sexual attractiveness: (a) it must have the wherewithal to fuck furiously, (b) it must not be distracted from fucking furiously, and (c) it must fuck furiously.

Taken together, I argue that these two plights, of the the black heterosexual female and the black homosexual male, constitute the morally wrongful white male online ambivalence to black femininity. In order to get access to the good of sexual affirmation and activity, black homosexual men and black heterosexual women require to ‘sign up to’ or to ‘play along with’ the racially subordinating terms of white male sexual attraction to them. Where they can and do achieve this, it is morally harmful (a) because it inhibits their exercise of the freedom of sexual self-definition (a freedom that white males exercise online without constraint), (b) because it lends credibility to the racially subordinating terms, by evincing that blacks are accurately represented in those terms and that blacks enjoy, or at least are comfortable with, being represented in those racially subordinating terms, and (c) because it involves the participation of the black person in her or his own oppression, and in the oppression of blacks generally. By contrast, where blacks will not, cannot, or simply do not play along with the racially subordinating terms of white male attraction to them, there is an imbalance of power in any interracial sexual interaction those blacks enter, rendering them vulnerable, for instance, to a greater willingness to engage in sexual activity that may prove detrimental to their health.

For its part, the internet exacerbates this moral wrong in three unique, and hitherto little discussed, ways. First, the solitary nature of searching for sex online deprives those subject to a relentless barrage of exclusionary attitudes of the most basic mechanism for coping with racism: the ears and the embraces of empathetic others. Insofar as solidarity and mutual support among the excluded is much more available in offline spaces where people search for sex, the internet renders searching for sex uniquely harmful to the victim of sexual racism.

Second, because, online, entry to interpersonal interaction is anonymous and unilateral exit from it is easy, people can, and people do, express, their exclusionary views with greater candour and greater vehemence, than they might, in a face-to-face, or otherwise personalised, encounter. This increase in candour and vehemence leads advertisers and searchers to forget the moral importance of how things seem to others, especially the way in which impoliteness can amount to moral disrespect.

Third, the emphasis that is placed, both by website designers (who invite advertisers to specify their race, and the race of those they are willing to meet for sexual interaction, from a drop-down menu of conventional racial groupings) and by advertisers (who use use text in their advertisements and private messages to express exclusionary racial preferences), on the physical body that sits behind the computer screen, increases the salience and significance of bodily capital in society. Bodily capital is the degree to which the body that a person inhabits corresponds with whatever ideals of beauty dominate in society.

As ever-greater concentrations of bodily capital become more acceptable to demand from the persons whom we deign to encounter and with whom we deign to enter into intimate interpersonal interaction, companionate capital, something that no one person can accumulate by herself, but which must rather be realised in the interpersonal activity of jointly deliberating about, jointly agreeing, and jointly executing shared goals over a significant period of time, ceases to be valued and ceases to be produced.

This is of great moral concern. since (a) companionship (quite independent of any concomitant sexual pleasure derived from the body of one’s companion) is necessary for having self-esteem, and thus for the pursuit of a conception of the good, and so for human flourishing, and (b) inter-group companionship between members of a group subordinate and stigmatised in society and members of a group dominant in that society is necessary for the complete destigmatisation of the subordinate and stigmatised social group.

ABSTRACT

Anderson, Elizabeth S. 2010. The imperative of integration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Daniels, Jessie. 2009. Cyber racism: White supremacy online and the new attack on civil rights. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Holt, Thomas J., & Kristie R. Blevins. 2007 Examining sex work from the client’s perspective: assessing johns using on-line data. Deviant Behavior 28:333-354.

Feliciano, Cynthia, Belinda Robnett, & Golnaz Komaie. 2009. Gendered racial exclusion among white internet daters. Social Science Research 38:39–54.

Green, Adam Isaiah. 2008. The social organization of desire: The sexual fields approach. Sociological Theory 26(1):25-50.

Grekin, Elly. 2009. Ethnic identity in an online world. MA thesis, Ohio State University,

Hakim, Catherine. 2010. Erotic capital. European Sociological Review 26(5):499–518.

Hitsch, Günter J., Ali Hortaçsu, & Dan Ariely. 2010. What makes you click?: Mate preferences in online dating. Quantitative Marketing and Economics 8(4): 393-427.

Hughes, Donna M. 2005. Race and prostitution in the United States. Available here: http:// www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/pubtrfrep.htm.

Kang, Jerry. Cyber-race. Harvard Law Review 113:1130-1208.

Kudler, Benjamin Aaron. 2007. Confronting race and racism: Social identity in African American gay men. MA diss. Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Massachusetts.

Levitt, Steven D., & Stephen J. Dubner. 2005. Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything. William Morrow.

McKeown, Eamonn, Simon Nelson, Jane Anderson, Nicola Low, & Jonathan Elford. 2010. Disclosure, discrimination and desire: Experiences of Black and South Asian gay men in Britain. Culture, Health & Sexuality 12(7):843–885.

Nakamura, Lisa. 2002 Cybertypes: Race, ethnicity, and identity on the internet. Routledge.

Paul, Jay P, George Ayala, & Kyung-Hee Choi. 2010. Internet sex ads for MSM and partner selection criteria: The potency of race/ethnicity online. Journal of Sex Research. 47(6): 528–538.

Paulsen, Ronald. 2010. The practice of bodily differentiation: Overweight and internet dating on the market of intimacy. Sociologisk forskning. 41(1):5-28.

Phua, Voon Chin, & Gayle Kaufman. 2003. The crossroads of race and sexuality: Date selection among men in internet “personal” ads. Journal of Family Issues 24:981-994.

Plummer, Mary Dianne. 2007. Sexual racism in gay communities: Negotiating the ethnosexual marketplace. PhD dissertation, University of Washington.

Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Robinson, Russell K. 2008. Structural dimensions of romantic preferences. Fordham Law Review 76:2787-2819.

Robnett, Belinda, & Cynthia Feliciano. forthcoming. Patterns of racial-ethnic exclusion by internet daters. Social Forces.

Rudder, Christian. 2009a. How your race affects the messages you get. oktrends: Dating research from OkCupid. Available here: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whetherpeople- write-you-back/.

– – – 2009b. Rudder same-sex data for race vs. reply rates. oktrends: Dating research from OkCupid. Available here: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/same-sex-data-race-reply/.

— – 2009c. How races and religions match in online dating. oktrends: Dating research from OkCupid. Available here: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/how-races-and-religions-match-in-onlinedating/# match-discussion

Shrage, Laurie. 1992. Is sexual desire raced?: The social meaning of interracial prostitution. Journal of Social Philosophy, 23: 42–51.

Sweeney, Kathryn A., & Anne L. Borden. 2009. Crossing the line online: Racial preference of internet daters. Marriage & Family Review 45:740–760.

Yancey, George. 2009. Crossracial differences in the racial preferences of potential dating partners. The Sociological Quarterly 50:121–143.

AUTHOR
L. Jean Camp and Kalpana Shankar

ABSTRACT

There is a growing body of technology studies literature on the mutual shaping of technology and the “user” (Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003) and how the designer mediates that process. Also, there is a great deal of interest in the creative abilities of users of new technologies to shape, adapt, and resist the design and use of technology in all its phases. Individuals bring their previous experiences, concerns, and anxieties to the process of evaluating and adopting new technologies for their own use; designers, of course, do the same to the design process. Designer and user cultures can potentially clash (Forsythe 1996). In the realm of technology for aging, or gerontology, where the (usually) young male designers are in the business of designing for an aging, often female population, more research is needed (Oudshoorn, Rommes, and Stienstra 2004).

In this paper, we build upon and extend the work of Oudshoorn, Pinch, and others in privileging the use and users by turning our attention to the mutual construction of aging and technology and the processes by which older adult users frame, adopt, adapt, and resist pervasive technology in the home. We present results from a four year study on in-home ubiquitous computing, or ubicomp, for aging in place. Beginning with an interest in creating privacy-sensitive technologies with an eye to end-user control of data, our research developed a suite of prototypes to enable information control of home-based ubicomp by older adults and their family/informal caregivers. After an initial series of focus group evaluations with older adults in which they examined and critiqued these prototypes, we altered, rejected, or stabilized them. Still emphasizing end-user control of privacy, we created a touch screen control panel that would give the end user the ability to examine, control, and block the transmission of presence, motion, and related data generated by the prototypes. Using either a suite of prototypes and the control panel, a suite of prototypes without the control panel, and a “control group” that received a smart phone and a paper calendar, we implemented an eight-week in-situ study of use in the homes of eight elders. We collected brief daily interviews, in-depth weekly interviews, and quantitative information on use and non-use of the prototypes and the control panel we had designed through which the research participants could interact with and manage the prototypes.

Drawing upon results from these studies, we discuss the mutual shaping of aging and technology in two interrelated ways. First, we reflect upon and critically examine our own design assumptions and our construction of a framework of risk and privacy in home based computing, and how this framework reflected and was shaped by our views of aging in the home and the nature of privacy. To give a brief example, much of the research on technologies in the homes of elders focuses on detecting anomalies in activities of daily living (ADLs). Several of the prototypes were designed to give subtle indications of ADLs, depending on where they were placed in the home. While elders did not object to this use, they would much rather use the technology to detect an emergency, such as a fall. However, some of the elders who had themselves been informal caregivers, were appreciative of being able to “see” if someone had gotten up in the morning without having to phone every day. This highlights the possible differences, and tensions, between designers, older adults, and potentially informal caregivers when choosing technologies for aging in place.

In the second section, we also explore how the focus groups and in-situ studies challenged our framings by revealing the ways in which the older adults worked around our technologies and how they perceived privacy. For example, several of the prototypes we developed were “bidirectional” paired technologies, where the older adult would have a reciprocal view into the lives of the people (family members or friends) who had the paired technology. While some elders enjoyed the reciprocal nature of these prototypes that could give them insights into their children’s lives, several were uncomfortable with asking their children to permit this. The elders felt that they might intrude. However, when probed further, they admitted that while they liked the idea but would not ask about it. This suggests that there is a delicate balance of power and negotiation that must be navigated to make these prototypes useful.

Lastly, we explore how non-use and resistance were expressed, primarily in the in situ studies. The users’ framings of privacy (and how they shifted over the course the project), the language of the control panel, and the perceived utility or nonutility of the various prototypes proved to be important considerations. We also consider the role of the various caregivers who received the paired technologies and their potential role in shaping use and non-use. We conclude by discussing the contributions of these findings to designing for values.

REFERENCES

Forsythe, D.E. (1996). New bottles, old wine: hidden cultural assumptions in a computerized explanation system for migraine sufferers. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 10,4, 551-574.

Oudshoorn, N., Rommes, E., and Stienstra, M. (2004). Configuring the user as everybody: gender and design cultures in information and communication technologies. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 29, 1, 30-63.

Oudshoorn, N. and Pinch, T. (2003). How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technologies. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

AUTHOR
Alberto Cammozzo

ABSTRACT

Face recognition techniques and use

Face detection is used to automatically detect or isolate faces from the rest of the picture and –for videos– track a given face or person in the flow of video frames. These algorithms only spot a face in a photo or video. They may be used to enhance privacy, for instance blurring faces of passers-by in pictures taken in public (as Google Street View does). Activist app SecureSmartCam automatically obfuscates photos taken in protests to protect the identity of the protestors. Face detection is used in digital signage (video billboards) to display targeted ads appropriate to the age and sex or mood of people watching. Billboards can also recognize returning visitors to engage interaction with them.

Face matching automatically compares a given face with other images in some archive and selects those where the same person is present. This technology is based on several sophisticated biometric techniques, to match any face even in a video stream with a database of already known faces. It is often used by surveillance services in courthouses, stadiums, malls, sHYPERLINK “http://www.praguepost.com/news/8380-monday-news-briefing.html” transport infrastructures or airports, sometimes combined with iris scan or tracking. Combined with the wealth of publicly available pictures from social networking, matching poses privacy issues: from a single picture it is possible to link together images belonging to a single person. A face matching search engine using Fickr, Picasa and Youtube and social network’s repositories is now absolutely feasible, as demonstrated by prototype softwware or products planned for release. The privacy issues are huge: indiscriminate face matching would allow anyone to match a picture taken with a cellphone with the wealth of pictures he can find on-line: a stalker’s paradise. The “creepiness” of such a service has been acknowledged by Google’s executive Eric Schmidt. Also false positives are worrying: what happens if you are mistaken with some fugitive criminal by one of the many law-enforcement cameras? Or enter a casino being recognized as a problem gambler?

Face identification allows to identify someone linking together pictorial with identity data. Automatic identification requires that the matched face is already linked with identity data in a database. Manual identification happens when identification is either through voluntary enrollment or by someone else with “tagging”. By manually tagging someone you make possible her subsequent identification. Facebook and Picasa already implement automatic face matching of tagged faces, with significant privacy consequences.

Identity verification allows to automatically perform matching and identification on a face that has been previously identified. Certain computer operating systems allow biometric identity verification instead of using traditional credentials. Some firms or schools use face recognition for their time attendance systems. This poses serious threats to privacy if biometric identification data leaks out of the identification systems, since many systems are interoperable: standardized facial biometric “signatures” allow identification even without actual pictures. It is conceivable to plan a global biometric face recognition database.

Privacy issues

Major privacy issues linked to pictorial data and face recognition can be summarized as follows:

(1) unintended use: data collected for some purpose and in a given scope is used for some other purpose in a different scope, for instance surveillance cameras in malls used for marketing purposes;

(2) data retention: the time of retention of pictures (or information coming from matched faces) should be appropriate for the purpose they are collected, and any information has to be deleted when expired. For instance digital signage systems should have a very limited time-span, while time attendance systems or security systems have different needs to reach their intended goal;

(3) context leakage: images taken in some social context of life (affective, family, workplace, in public) should not leak outside that domain. Following this principle, images taken in public places or public events should never be matched without explicit consent, since the public social context assumes near anonymity, especially in political or religious gatherings;

(4) information asymmetry: pictorial data may be used without explicit consent of the person depicted, or even without the knowledge that that information has been collected for some purpose. I may have no hint that there are pictures of me taken in public places and uploaded in repositories; as long as pictures remain anonymous my privacy is quite preserved, but if face matching is applied, this breaks privacy contexts. Someone may easily hold information about me I do not know myself.

Privacy enhancing techniques

Even if matching is the major threat, research on face recognition privacy enhancing techniques concentrates on identification. One possible approach to enhance privacy is splitting the matching and identification tasks [Erkin et al, 2009], partial de-identification of faces [Newton, Sweeney, Malin,2005] or revocation capability [Boult,2006], in order to reinforce people’s trust. Some attempts have been made to develop opt-out techniques to protect privacy in public places: temporary blinding of cctv cameras, wearing a pixelated hood or special camouflage make-up. These and other obfuscation techniques [Brunton Nissenbaum, 2011], like posting on-line “wrong” faces, aim at re-balance information asymmetry.

REFERENCES

Mikhail J. Atallah, vol. 5672 (Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009), 235-253

T. Boult, “Robust Distance Measures for Face-Recognition Supporting Revocable Biometric Tokens.,” in Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, IEEE International Conference on, vol. 0 (Los Alamitos, CA, USA: IEEE Computer Society, 2006), 560-566.

Finn Brunton and Helen Nissenbaum, “Vernacular resistance to data collection and analysis: A political theory of obfuscation,” First Monday, May 2, 2011

Zekeriya Erkin et al., “Privacy-Preserving Face Recognition,” in Privacy Enhancing Technologies, ed. Ian Goldberg

Elaine M. Newton, Latanya Sweeney, and Bradley Malin, “Preserving Privacy by De-Identifying Face Images,” IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 17, no. 2 (2005): 232-243.

Harry Wechsler, Reliable face recognition methods: system design, implementation and evaluation(Springer, 2007).

AUTHOR
William Bülow and Misse Wester

ABSTRACT

The ethical issues in relation to new developments in information technology are framed in terms of privacy (Van Den Hoven 2008; Rössler 2005; Nissenbaum 1998). Privacy is held to be an important value in western liberal democracies and other values, such as democratic rights, liberty, dignity and autonomy are fundamental to most people, and having a private sphere is a necessary condition for being able to exercise these rights. That is, individuals ought to be able to control information about themselves and how it is being used in order to lead autonomous lives.

Due to new developments in informational technology, a large amount of personal data is stored by different actors in society. While the phenomena of collecting personal data is not new there are mainly two things that have changed in the past decade or so: first, more information is being collected than ever before and secondly, information is not just stored but is subjected to some sort of analysis (Lyon, 2006). Information about individuals isare collected as they act in the normal course of their public lifes. Information is shared in transactions with retailers, mail order companies and medical care. Also, everyone who is using the internet, paying with a credit card are giving up his or her privacy on daily basis (Rössler 2005). However, in social networks, where personal information s released voluntarily, questions of autonomy are more complex as the concept of privacy takes on a different dimension. Social networks are voluntary in the sense that users choose to reveal information about themselves, but at the same time enables other users to share personal information to an unintended audience. These issues will be discussed in this paper. We argue that this other dimension raises new kind of ethical problems and dilemmas in relation to autonomy and privacy interests, especially when the concept of privacy is extended to younger generations.

In order to clarify the ethical aspects of developments in information technology, it is important to indentify how different sorts of information stored about individuals related to the issue of privacy. The protection of informational privacy is held to be important because it is an intrinsic part of our self-understanding as autonomous agents to have control over our own self-presentation and self-determination (Rössler 2005). That is, how we want to present and stage ourselves, to whom and in what context. By the means of controlling the access of information about ourselves to others, we are simultaneously regulating the range of very diverge relations within which we live our lives. The threat to informational privacy posed by prevailing and emerging ICT, then, consists in the potential of reducing the individual’s ability to control information about themselves. In the case of social media however, individuals choose to share information about themselves in a very active way. For example, Facebook has over 500 million users that share personal information with other users (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics; accessed on March 1st, 2001). In the year 2010 about 30 % of uses were between 14 and 25 years of age and this group is very active in sharing all kinds of personal information. As information released on the Internet is difficult to regain control over, this younger group might share information now that will later be problematic for their personal integrity. How is the concept of privacy being used to protect future needs?

In Sweden, the Data Inspection Board (DIB) introduced stricter demands in 2008 for public schools to install surveillance cameras in order to increase the safety for the students. The DIB states that cameras can be used in schools at night and over weekends, when school is not in session, but permission for all other usage must be subject to close scrutiny. The underlying reasoning of the DIB is that the integrity of young individuals must be strictly observed since they are not able to foresee the consequences of compromising their integrity (DIB decision 2008-10-01). Combining this view: that younger generations need protection from consequences they cannot foresee, with the increased sharing of personal information on social networks – where does that lead? The reasoning of the DIB resembles a common discussion about autonomy found in the philosophical literature: the one concerning paternalism. That is, the claim that it is sometimes justified to interfere in persons’ behaviour against their will, defended and motivated by the claim that the person will be better of protected from potential harm (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paternalism/). While paternalism can be justified in some contexts, it may be questioned whether one really can or should hinder students from using social networks. Facebook is an important part of the everyday experience of students and is a basic tool for and a mirror of social interaction, personal identity, and network building among students (Debatin et. al. 2009). However, information shared on Facebook can sometimes conflict with future preferences and privacy interests of the students. The information which a person openly shares at a certain time of his life might be information which the persons later on in his life want to control the access to.

Based on this sort of reasoning we will address the following questions: do we have a certain obligation to protect the future privacy interests of students now using social networks? How can such interests be protected? Also, how are these claims compatible with the claim that students should be able to interact and willingly share information about themselves on social networks? Clearly these problems are important to address in relation to the widespread use of social networks.

REFERENCES

Debatin, B. Lovejoy, J. P., Horn, A-K., Hughes, B. N. (2009). Facebook and Online Privacy: Attitudes, Behaviours, and Unintended Consequences, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 15, 83-108

Data Inspektionen (DIB) decision 2008-10-01; http://www.datainspektionen.se/Documents/beslut/2009-10-02-Bromma_gymnasium.pdf, avaliable in Swedish

Dworkin, G., Paternalism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/paternalism/; accessed 2011-03-03.

Lyon, D. (2006), Surveillance, power and everyday life, Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies, Oxford University Press.

Nissenbaum, H. (1998), Protecting Privacy in an Information Age: The Problem of Privacy in Public, Law and Philosophy, 17, 559-596

Rössler, B. (2005), The Value of Privacy, Cambridge, Polity Press.

van den Hoven, J. (2008), Information Technology, Privacy and the Protection of Personal Data, in. van den Hoven, J and Weckert, J (eds). Information Technology and Moral Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Wester, M & Sandin P (2010) Privacy and the public – perception and acceptance of various applications of ICT, In Arias-Olivia M, Ward Bynum T, Rogerson S, Torres-Coronas T (eds).

The “backwards, forwards and sideways” changes of ICT, 11th International conference on the Social and Ethical Impacts of Information and Communication Technology (ETHICOMP), p 580-586.