Digital Commons Network^™

Keynote: Justifying Uberveillance- The Internet Of Things And The Flawed Sustainability Premise, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Imagine a world where everything was numbered. Not just homes with street addresses, or cars with number plates, or smart phones with telephone numbers, or email addresses with passwords, but absolutely everything you could see and touch and even that which you could not. Well, that world is here, right now. This vast expanse we call “Earth” is currently being quantified and photographed, inch by inch, by satellites, street cameras, drones and high altitude balloons. Longitude and latitude coordinates provide us with the precise degrees, minutes and seconds of the physical space, and unique time stamps tell us where a …

The Packbots Are Coming, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

High-tech robots called PackBots will be unleashed during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil to help boost security and examine suspicious objects. The Brazilian government purportedly spent US$7.2 million to buy 30 military-grade robots from designers iRobot that will police the stadiums throughout Brazil’s 12 host cities during soccer matches. PackBot is a hunk of metal with an extendable arm and tactile claw, jam-packed on-board sensors and a computer with overheat protection, nine high-resolution cameras and lasers and two-way audio. But is it overkill to implement wartime robots to a sporting event?

Location And Tracking Of Mobile Devices: Überveillance Stalks The Streets, Katina Michael, Roger Clarke

Professor Katina Michael

During the last decade, location-tracking and monitoring applications have proliferated, in mobile cellular and wireless data networks, and through self-reporting by applications running in smartphones that are equipped with onboard global positioning system (GPS) chipsets. It is now possible to locate a smartphone-user's location not merely to a cell, but to a small area within it. Innovators have been quick to capitalise on these location-based technologies for commercial purposes, and have gained access to a great deal of sensitive personal data in the process. In addition, law enforcement utilise these technologies, can do so inexpensively and hence can track many …

The Future Prospects Of Embedded Microchips In Humans As Unique Identifiers: The Risks Versus The Rewards, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Microchip implants for humans are not new. Placing heart pacemakers in humans for prosthesis is now considered a straightforward procedure. In more recent times we have begun to use brain pacemakers for therapeutic purposes to combat illnesses such as epilepsy, Parkinson’s Disease, and severe depression. Microchips are even being placed inside prosthetic knees and hips during restorative procedures to help in the gathering of post-operative analytics that can aid rehabilitation further. While medical innovations that utilise microchips abound, over the last decade we have begun to see the potential use of microchip implants for non-medical devices in humans, namely for …

Social Implications Of Technology: Past, Present, And Future, Karl D. Stephan, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael, Laura Jacob, Emily Anesta

Professor Katina Michael

The social implications of a wide variety of technologies are the subject matter of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT). This paper reviews the SSIT’s contributions since the Society’s founding in 1982, and surveys the outlook for certain key technologies that may have significant social impacts in the future. Military and security technologies, always of significant interest to SSIT, may become more autonomous with less human intervention, and this may have both good and bad consequences. We examine some current trends such as mobile, wearable, and pervasive computing, and find both dangers and opportunities in these trends. …

The Social Implications Of Covert Policing, Simon Bronitt, Clive Harfield, K. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Police agencies have been accused of suffering from an acute form of technophilia. Rather than representing some dreadful disorder, this assessment reflects the strong imperative, both in police agencies and the wider community, that police must have access to the latest technologies of surveillance and crime detection.

The last decade has witnessed the proliferation of low-cost surveillance technologies, some developed specifically for law enforcement purposes. Technology once the preserve of the military or secret intelligence agencies is now within the reach of ordinary general duties police officers. The new generation of police recruits is highly adept at using new technologies. …

The Social Implications Of Humancentric Chip Implants: A Scenario - ‘Thy Chipdom Come, Thy Will Be Done’, Rodney Ip, Katina Michael, M G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Radio frequency identification (RFID) chip implants for humans are no longer the tales of science fiction. Already preliminary findings have shown that the number of people willing to get chipped has increased since the technology’s commercial arrival in 2002, despite the fact that adoption rates have been very low. This investigation presents three case studies of the main users/ innovators of humancentric chip implants. The first case is of a British researcher in an academic institution who has conducted several implant experiments; the second case, is of a hobbyist and entrepreneur who has focused on the use of RFID implants …

Lend Me Your Arms: The Use And Implications Of Humancentric Rfid, Amelia Masters, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Recent developments in the area of RFID have seen the technology expand from its role in industrial and animal tagging applications, to being implantable in humans. With a gap in literature identified between current technological development and future humancentric possibility, little has been previously known about the nature of contemporary humancentric applications. By employing usability context analyses in control, convenience and care-related application areas, we begin to piece together a cohesive view of the current development state of humancentric RFID, as detached from predictive conjecture. This is supplemented by an understanding of the market-based, social and ethical concerns which plague …

A Research Note On Ethics In The Emerging Age Of Überveillance, M. G. Michael, Sarah Jean Fusco, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Advanced location-based services (A-LBS) for humancentric tracking and monitoring are now emerging as operators and service providers begin to leverage their existing infrastructure and invest in new technologies, toward increasingly innovative location application solutions. We can now point to humancentric tracking and monitoring services where the person (i.e. subject) has become an active node in the network. For example, in health applications through the use of embedded technologies such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) or in campus applications through the use of electronic monitoring techniques in the form of global positioning systems (GPS). These technologies, for the greater part, have been …

Microchip Implants For Humans As Unique Identifiers: A Case Study On Verichip, Katina Michael, M G. Michael, Rodney Ip

Professor Katina Michael

Microchip implants for humans are not new. The installation of pacemakers in humans and a great number of other medical innovations for prosthesis are now considered straightforward procedures. Today we have even realised the potential for microchip implants to be embedded inside the body of humans for the purpose of acting as unique lifetime identifiers (ULI). Tiny radiofrequency identification (RFID) devices are now being utilised to store a unique 16-digit identification number.

The Importance Of Scenarios In Evaluating The Socio-Ethical Implications Of Location-Based Services, L. Perusco, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Location-based services (LBS) are those applications that utilize the position of an end-user, animal or thing based on a given device (handheld, wearable, interwoven into fabric or implanted), executed for a particular purpose. LBS applications range from those that are mission-critical to those that are used for convenience, from those that are mandatory to those that are voluntary, from those that are targeted at the mass market to those that cater for the needs of a niche market. Location services can be implemented using a variety of access mediums including global positioning systems and radio-frequency identification, rendering approximate or precise …

Location-Based Services And The Privacy-Security Dichotomy, Katina Michael, L. Perusco, M G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Location-based services (LBS) rely on knowledge of a user’s location to provide tailored services or information by means of a wireless device. LBS applications have wide-ranging implications for society, particularly in the context of tracking and monitoring groups of individuals such as children, invalids, and parolees. Despite a great deal of attention paid to technical and commercial aspects of LBS technologies, consideration of the legal, ethical, social and technology momentum issues involved has been wanting. This paper examines some of the more pressing issues that are expected to arise from the widespread use of LBS. The outcome of this paper …

The Emerging Ethics Of Humancentric Gps Tracking And Monitoring, Katina Michael, Andrew Mcnamee, M G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is increasingly being adopted by private and public enterprise to track and monitor humans for location-based services (LBS). Some of these applications include personal locators for children, the elderly or those suffering from Alzheimer’s or memory loss, and the monitoring of parolees for law enforcement, security or personal protection purposes. The continual miniaturization of the GPS chipset means that receivers can take the form of wristwatches, mini mobiles and bracelets, with the ability to pinpoint the longitude and latitude of a subject 24/7/365. This paper employs usability context analyses to draw out the emerging ethical …

Location-Based Intelligence – Modeling Behavior In Humans Using Gps, Katina Michael, Andrew Mcnamee, M G. Michael, Holly Tootell

Professor Katina Michael

This paper introduces the notion of location-based intelligence by tracking the spatial properties and behavior of a single civilian participant over a two-week study period using a global positioning system (GPS) receiver, and displaying them on a geographic information system (GIS). The paper clearly shows the power of combining speed (S), distance (D), time (T) and elevation (E) data with the exact longitude and latitude position of the user. The issues drawn from the observation and the civilian’s personal diary are useful in understanding the social implications of tracking and monitoring objects and subjects using GPS. The findings show that …