We’ve all spent so much time and effort being worried about formal surveillance – all those street and lobby cameras – that we’re in danger of forgetting how much we cooperate in surveilling and being surveilled online

New research suggests that 25% of people in the UK suffer from some form of paranoia (1), probably because of a combination of urbanisation, globalisation, migration, wealth disparity and the media. So would it be right to assume that paranoia will worsen as we move towards complex personal surveillance, the result of the heavy use of social networking sites such as Facebook? While these sites are collecting data on their users, as my own research in Sweden illustrates, many of us are taking part in this on a seemingly voluntary basis, often unaware of its extent.

Formal surveillance means one CCTV camera per 14 citizens in the UK, or 200,000 such cameras in the city of Shenzhen in China. But parallel to the traditional forms of surveillance, there is a new voyeurism, rooted in an appetite for peer-to-peer surveillance. Watching friends, neighbours and colleagues for security purposes – and sometimes just for fun – seems to be getting common.

Take Adam’s Block. This was an open-access site webcasting a live video feed from the intersection of Ellis Street and Taylor Street in San Francisco for entertainment purposes. But some in the neighbourhood did not approve and the owner of the camera and site were threatened. “Adam” had to shut down the service for his own safety. In solidarity, others from the neighbourhood installed their own cameras, meaning eventually to network the cameras and live-cast at www.adamsblock.com under the name OurBlock.tv, as an example of citizen surveillance. The site, which says, it is “empowering citizens to fight crime and save lives” and called itself the “a global network of webcams” intended “to make a difference in your community”, aimed to have thousands of people and homes around the globe visually accessible via the web – voluntarily. This is not a unique example.

Google Street View, launched in 2007, provides images from countries such the US, France, UK, Japan and New Zealand and means to expand further. Although Google claims that those who thought it a breach of privacy can request that images be blurred, most people remain unaware that their houses or cars might be on display.

On the internet, surveillance is commerce. The number of Facebook users has soared, followed by MySpace and Twitter, much to the joy of marketers. Online industries look for new trends, and respond by incorporating social networking features, such as personal profiles, into sites such as YouTube. Perhaps the current social networking hype reveals a latent desire for a brother-to-brother fraternal gaze, or innocent “friendly encounters of the voyeuristic kind”. We could see it as “complicit surveillance” (2) mundanely committed by the individual, but sinisterly co-opted.

With about 300 million Facebook users, a speculative value of $15bn and advertisers eavesdropping on every move of members, Facebook deserves special attention for surveillance in the net-watched society. People use it for serious political campaigning and to post what they ate for dinner. Many may object to Facebook’s right to exploit user content for commercial purposes, but they go on using it for personal or practical reasons. A generation welcomed into the world by fathers holding digital video recorders might not question so much whether others should have access to personal details, only who they are and how many of them. Personal data outlives a Facebook persona. According to the updated terms of use, you acknowledge that “even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content”.

Facebook’s questionable use of user information did not go unnoticed. The Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) announced this year it would file a formal complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission about Facebook’s updated licences. More than 40,000 Facebook users joined forces with bloggers and consumer rights groups to protest a change in the terms of use that Facebook had secretly implemented, especially its decision to grant itself broader rights to users’ information, even after users cancelled accounts. EPIC’s complaint was supported by consumer and privacy organisations, and shortly before the official complaint was filed, Facebook announced that it would restore the original terms of use. Currently, the terms include the clause: “Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be available to others.”

Although Facebook seems low-key over advertising, it tracks user behaviour, making note of which fan sites are visited or how long is spent on a shopping site. In a heavily mediated social environment, what is private, what is public, and what is publicly permissible (on the basis of consent) are elusive and contested ideas. But lines can be drawn quickly, and Facebook is the laboratory environment in which to test the limits of tolerance. In 2007 it launched Facebook Beacon, which enabled members to see the net activities (even online purchases) of their friends. Many users considered the application to be “off-limits” and the political civic action group MoveOn.org launched a campaign against Facebook; it then switched the application to an “opt-in” programme and apologised to users.

Young users

Yet, the actual extent of commercial surveillance on Facebook remains murky. According to their privacy policy, Facebook retains the right to collect information about their members from other sources such as newspapers, instant messaging services and blogs “to provide you with more useful information and a more personalised experience”. By using Facebook, you also consent to have your personal data transferred to, and processed in, the US. Users are not notified when and how their data is used. In 2008 the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, a privacy group, filed a complaint against Facebook for violating 22 ∞counts of Canadian privacy laws (3).

The group also addressed vulnerability as many users in Canada are between 14 and 25. Most users, of course, accept Facebook’s default settings without considering what this means in privacy and data storage. While Facebook rejected the validity of concerns on the grounds that the sharing of user information is on a consensual basis, the report suggests that even if the users select the strongest privacy settings available, their information may still be shared more widely if their Facebook friends have lower privacy settings. A survey suggests that 45% of employers in the US admit to checking the social networking site profiles of prospective employees (4). The actual number might be higher.

The popularity of Facebook and the availability of personal demographic data have legal implications. In Australia in December 2008, Canberra area lawyers won the right to serve binding court notices to defendants via Facebook. In the US, some schools and colleges now try to control content on their students’ personal blogs or Facebook pages – some students have been expelled – raising serious questions about free speech.

We don’t know if abandoning online social networking territory will be an option. Because of global mobility and hectic lives, connecting with friends in a left-behind homeland or exchanging a few words with the next-door neighbour without leaving our sofa has advantages. Even more so, as my current research in Sweden illustrates, for many second and third generation migrants who enjoy meeting family and friends online.

Much of the responsibility for raising awareness seems to fall on civil society and citizen groups; web-savvy users have to continue a public negotiation process to control how we engage with technology and who uses what online, and to what ends. In the absence of effective regulatory mechanisms to limit the data-surveilling activities of companies, using online social media can be risky. The EU Commission warned this year that data-collection from such sites might lead to consumers being inundated with unsolicited advertising or their data being used by the governments in ways that compromise civil liberties.

With surveillance embedded in most aspects of everyday life from supermarket cards to website cookies, what matters now is not “us” being watched, but the information we “leak” (5). There is a complex, multi-layered interplay between the surveillant gaze – embedded in communication technologies – and in everyday personal communication routines at an individual level; this is giving way to a new surveillance, where the act is consensual and guilt (of convenience and pleasure with a cost) shared. Newer media technologies are restructuring the nature of information-sharing and communications on a day-to-day basis, with long-term influences we have yet to see.