scholarly journals Metadata, Jailbreaking, and the Cybernetic Governmentality of iOS: Or, the Need to Distinguish Digital Privacy from digital privacy

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-103
Author(s):  
Thomas N Cooke

Digital privacy tends to be understood as the “top-down” regulation and control of personal information on the behalf of corporate and governmental institutions, realized through various policies and practices. While smartphone manufacturers increasingly innovate and alter their policies and practices to reflect new and ongoing cyber challenges, they tend to emphasize the protection of personal information in the form of content data. On the other hand, there is metadata: the measurements and math of content data. Abundant and ubiquitous in their discrete movements, they are the most precious commodity in the world of big data mobile analytics. Smartphone metadata are also one of the most pressing privacy concerns precisely because it is exceedingly difficult to see, study, and analyze. However, there is another realm through which digital privacy exists: a realm where the inability to see and study metadata is unacceptable. This entirely differently realm is comprised of jailbreakers—a network of hacktivist programmers injecting software-based “tweaks” into Apple mobile devices in ways that reveal metadata to users and allow users to control them. By doing so, jailbreakers allow users to build previously unrealized relationships with metadata and thereby radically distinguishing “top-down” Digital Privacy from “bottom-up” digital privacy. Although Apple has routinely resisted jailbreaking citing fears over device instability, user security vulnerability, and Terms of Use violations, this article reveals that many key privacy-first jailbreaking tweaks undermine Apple’s ability to monopolize metadata flows. Theorised through a cybernetic governmentality, this intervention demonstrates the extents to which Apple goes to reify its profit-first vision of information protection, one which insulates many metadata flows from its users. Through this theoretical approach, we as analysts can critically glean awareness of the politics of the (in)visibility and (il)legibility of metadata and the role they play in the discourse on digital, mobile data protection.

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-50
Author(s):  
Silvia Doria

The world of working is changing and the technological transformations are playing a relevant role in this change. In particular, new technologies are making the physical boundaries of traditional offices increasingly permeable, allowing the diffusion of New Ways of Working (Demerouti et al., 2014; Koops and Helms, 2014), such as smart working. This paper, based on a qualitative research and discursive interviews, intends to reflect on the introduction and top-down management of smart working within a banking institution. At the same time, it aims to grasp the role attributed to and played by technology in its implementation. Starting from the two reconstructed stories, I shall show if and how the innovations introduced whereby technologies enable us to work remotely, are changing existing power relations and what control dynamics emerge from the field.


Author(s):  
Tziporah Stern

Privacy, or the right to hold information about oneself in secret (Masuda, 1979; O’Brien & Yasnof, 1999), has become increasingly important in the information society. With the rapid technological advances and the digitalization of information, retrieval of specific records is more rapid; personal information can be integrated into a number of different data files; and copying, transporting, collecting, storing, and processing large amounts of information is easier. Additionally, the advent of the World Wide Web and the fast-paced growth of the Internet have created further cause for concern. The vast amounts of digital information and the pervasiveness of the Internet facilitate new techniques for gathering information—for example, spyware, phishing, and cookies. Hence, personal information is much more vulnerable to being inappropriately used. This article outlines the importance of privacy in an e-commerce environment, the specific privacy concerns individuals may have, antecedents to these concerns, and potential remedies to quell them.


2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Dobson

This article provides insights into the client−practitioner interaction, as understood through the eyes of those working at the front-line in a Drop-in Centre for homeless clients. Through a case-study analysis of ‘official’ techniques and informal approaches, it is argued that conditional practices are present in contemporary support practices. However, the picture is fragmented, with practitioners arguing for, but also deviating from, conditional strategies that aspire to shape client behaviour. Choices about appropriate responses are occasionally permeated by ‘top−down’ policy messages that aim to responsibilise and generate change in clients. However there is evidence of ‘bottom−up’ drivers informed by experiences of working with clients at the grassroots. These ‘practice realities’ shift an analysis of conditional tactics from just a moralising and disciplining approach, and suggest a more complex set of events at the front-line. Insights add to ongoing commentary about an apparent policy emphasis on rectifying the behaviour of citizens at the sharp end. Conclusions highlight the role of complexity for understanding therapeutic and disciplining elements in policies and practices. Such debates are especially relevant where they connect to the care and control of individuals understood by practitioners as both transgressive and vulnerable.


Daedalus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 140 (4) ◽  
pp. 49-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Coye Cheshire

Every day, individuals around the world retrieve, share, and exchange information on the Internet. We interact online to share personal information, find answers to questions, make financial transactions, play social games, and maintain professional and personal relationships. Sometimes our online interactions take place between two or more humans. In other cases, we rely on computers to manage information on our behalf. In each scenario, risk and uncertainty are essential for determining possible actions and outcomes. This essay highlights common deficiencies in our understanding of key concepts such as trust, trustworthiness, cooperation, and assurance in online environments. Empirical evidence from experimental work in computer-mediated environments underscores the promises and perils of overreliance on security and assurance structures as replacements for interpersonal trust. These conceptual distinctions are critical because the future shape of the Internet will depend on whether we build assurance structures to limit and control ambiguity or allow trust to emerge in the presence of risk and uncertainty.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110003
Author(s):  
Jason Anthony Cain ◽  
Iveta Imre

As the utility of social media platforms for interacting with large populations, as well as understanding how they interact, becomes an increasingly interesting area, privacy concerns could present a barrier to engagement. This study employs a survey method to explore social media user frustrations with terms of service agreements and concerns over privacy and personal information shared on them. Findings support that concerns over control, collection, and access to personal information associate with decreased intensity of social media use and correlate to frustration with terms of service agreements regarding personal information use. Given the relationship between use and privacy concerns, leaving privacy concerns unaddressed might also lead to a reduction of use if these concerns continue to grow among users.


EDIS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Demian F. Gomez ◽  
Jiri Hulcr ◽  
Daniel Carrillo

Invasive species, those that are nonnative and cause economic damage, are one of the main threats to ecosystems around the world. Ambrosia beetles are some of the most common invasive insects. Currently, severe economic impacts have been increasingly reported for all the invasive shot hole borers in South Africa, California, Israel, and throughout Asia. This 7-page fact sheet written by Demian F. Gomez, Jiri Hulcr, and Daniel Carrillo and published by the School of Forest Resources and Conservation describes shot hole borers and their biology and hosts and lists some strategies for prevention and control of these pests. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fr422


Author(s):  
Y. Arockia Suganthi ◽  
Chitra K. ◽  
J. Magelin Mary

Dengue fever is a painful mosquito-borne infection caused by different types of virus in various localities of the world. There is no particular medicine or vaccine to treat person suffering from dengue fever. Dengue viruses are transmitted by the bite of female Aedes (Ae) mosquitoes. Dengue fever viruses are mainly transmitted by Aedes which can be active in tropical or subtropical climates. Aedes Aegypti is the key step to avoid infection transmission to save millions of people in all over the world. This paper provides a standard guideline in the planning of dengue prevention and control measures. At the same time gives the priorities including clinical management and hospitalized dengue patients have to address essentially.


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