Women under Surveillance

This is your phone on feminism | How to fix our disturbingly unequal relationship with smartphones

Posted by Christian

… btw, looking forward to the upcoming CrypoParty @ Glasmoog on 26 November 2019, where we will have a workshop, exchange and conversations to emancipate from technologically conditioned powerlessness!

This is your phone on feminism

Here are some of the ways our unequal relationship with our smartphones is like an abusive relationship: 

They isolate us from deeper, competing relationships in favour of superficial contact – ‘user engagement’ – that keeps their hold on us strong. Working with social media, they insidiously curate our social lives, manipulating us emotionally with dark patterns to keep us scrolling.

They tell us the onus is on us to manage their behavior. It’s our job to tiptoe around them and limit their harms. Spending too much time on a literally-designed-to-be-behaviorally-addictive phone? They send company-approved messages about our online time, but ban from their stores the apps that would really cut our use. We just need to use willpower. We just need to be good enough to deserve them.

They betray us, leaking data / spreading secrets. What we shared privately with them is suddenly public. Sometimes this destroys lives, but hey, we only have ourselves to blame. They fight nasty and under-handed, and are so, so sorry when they get caught that we’re meant to feel bad for them. But they never truly change, and each time we take them back, we grow weaker.

They love-bomb us when we try to break away, piling on the free data or device upgrades, making us click through page after page of dark pattern, telling us no one understands us like they do, no one else sees everything we really are, no one else will want us.  

It’s impossible to just cut them off. They’ve wormed themselves into every part of our lives, making life without them unimaginable. And anyway, the relationship is complicated. There is love in it, or there once was. Surely we can get back to that if we just manage them the way they want us to?

 Nope. Our devices are basically gaslighting us. They tell us they work for and care about us, and if we just treat them right then we can learn to trust them. But all the evidence shows the opposite is true. This cognitive dissonance confuses and paralyses us.

Voyeurism

Posted by Christian

In hidden corners across South Korea, tiny cameras are surreptitiously recording thousands of women when they are at their most vulnerable.

Women have come to fear that cameras could be anywhere: perched inside the toilet bowl of a public restroom, disguised as a smoke detector in a shop’s fitting room, even rolled into a plastic bag at the lip of a trash can.

In Seoul, the capital, the proliferation of such hidden cameras — and the images they record, which often end up on pornographic websites — has often been described by reporters as an epidemic.

The city announced a crackdown on Sunday, increasing the number of municipal employees assigned to search public bathrooms for hidden cameras to 8,000 in October from the 50 currently at work.

“It is to help citizens to feel safe when they use the public restrooms, free from concerns about spy cams,” the Seoul Metropolitan Government said in a statement.

The city has promised to inspect every one of its 20,554 public restrooms daily, an enormous undertaking that underscores the scope of the problem.

NY Times article

 

south-korean-women-protest-against-spy-cam-porn

Women under Surveillance Symposium

Posted by Christian

Please scroll down for English version

Symposium
2. & 3. Dezember 2015
Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln
Filzengraben 2, 50676 Köln

http://wus.khm.de

 

Das zweitägige Symposium Women under Surveillance tritt vermeintlich neutralen Definitionen von Überwachung entgegen. Es führt einen künstlerischen und interdisziplinären Dialog über Überwachung im Digitalzeitalter. Dieses Bezugsfeld wird dabei mit einem besonderen Fokus auf dessen Bedeutung für Frauen diskutiert.

Das Symposium bringt Vorträge, Performances, Installationen und Filmscreenings zusammen, die sich mit Themen wie Datensammlung oder Kontrollobsessionen im Namen der Sicherheit auseinandersetzen.

Ziel ist die reine Diskussion, ob exzessive Überwachung notwendig und zielführend ist angesichts einer zunehmend unsichereren Welt, hinter sich zu lassen und stattdessen anhand geschlechtsspezifischer historischer Überwachungskomplexe, wie beispielsweise der Regulierung der Autonomie der Fortpflanzung und der Sexualität, die Frage zu stellen, wer von wem beobachtet wird, wie, warum und zu welchen Kosten?

 

Konzeption und Organisation: Prof. Julia Scher, Christian Sievers, Dieuwke Boersma und die Surveillant Architectures Group an der Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln. Filmprogramm kuratiert von Christa Pfafferott. Design von Stephanie Glauber.

Im Rahmen des Symposiums präsentiert GLASMOOG – Raum für Kunst & Diskurs an der Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln „Tektite Revisited“, ein Ausstellungs- und Filmprojekt der Filmemacherin Meghan O’Hara und des Kunsthistorikers James Merle Thomas.

 

Referenten / Performer:
bankleer (KünstlerInnengruppe, Berlin)
chicks on speed (KünstlerInnengruppe, Köln/Hamburg)
Sophie Maintigneux (Bildgestalterin, Professorin für Bildgestaltung, KHM)
Karin Michalski (Vertretungsprofessorin für Kunst- und Medienwissenschaften/Gender, KHM)
Lívia Nolasco-Rozsas (Kuratorin, ZKM Karlsruhe)
Meghan O’Hara (Filmemacherin, California State University, Monterey Bay, Seaside, CA) & James Merle Thomas (Kunsthistoriker und Kurator, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA)
Christa Pfafferott (Autorin und Regisseurin, Hamburg)
Angela Richter (Regisseurin, Schauspiel Köln)
Katrin Schlösser (Filmproduzentin, Professorin für kreative Film- und Fernsehproduktion, KHM)
Dirk Schulz (GeStiK – Gender Studies, Universität zu Köln)
Mark von Schlegell (Autor und Kulturtheoretiker, Köln)
Mi You (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin, Kunst- und Medienwissenschaften, KHM)
und Studierende der KHM

 

 

 

The two-day symposium Women under Surveillance counters neutral definitions of surveillance to establish a platform for artistic and interdisciplinary dialogue along the lines of women and surveillance in our digital age.

Lectures, performances, installations and film screenings go deeper into the critical means of collecting data and monitoring processes in the name of security and the general interest of the “public”.

The symposium aims to move beyond the discussion whether excessive surveillance is a necessary and productive practice in an increasingly insecure world.

Rather, in taking the gendered history of surveillance strategies as its starting point—such as the regulation of women’s productive autonomy and sexuality—the symposium engages artistically and critically with questions as: “Who is being watched by whom, how, why and at what expense?”

 

Konzeption und Organisation: Prof. Julia Scher, Christian Sievers, Dieuwke Boersma and the Surveillant Architectures Group at Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Filmprogram curated by Christa Pfafferott. Design by Stephanie Glauber.

As part of the symposium, GLASMOOG – Raum für Kunst & Diskurs at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne presents “Tektite Revisited”– an exhibition and film project by filmmaker Meghan O’Hara and art historian James Merle Thomas.

 

Speakers & Performers:
bankleer (artist group, Berlin)
chicks on speed (artist group, Cologne/Hamburg)
Karin Michalski (professor for art and media studies/gender, KHM)
Lívia Nolasco-Rozsas (curator, ZKM Karlsruhe)
Meghan O’Hara (filmmaker, California State University, Monterey Bay, Seaside, CA)
& James Merle Thomas (art historian and curator, University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, CA)
Sophie Maintigneux (cinematographer, professor for artistic cinematography, KHM)
Christa Pfafferott (author and film director, Hamburg)
Angela Richter (director, Schauspiel Köln)
Katrin Schlösser (film producer, professor for creative film and TV production, KHM)
Dirk Schulz (GeStiK – Gender Studies in Cologne, University of Cologne)
Mark von Schlegell (author and theorist, Cologne)
Mi You (assistant researcher, art and media studies, KHM)
and students of the KHM

Women_under_Surveillance_invite

Surveillance Self-Defense for LGBTQ kids

Posted by Christian

lbqt ssd

More timely than ever, now that Germany again wants to retain everyone’s data.
Forward this to anyone who might need it…

The latest addition to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self-Defense series is a set of tools and instructions aimed specifically at LGBTQ kids, who have unique threat models (being outed) and adversaries (homophobic friends, parents, pastors).

EFF’s guide gives already marginalized and threatened kids the ability to explore information related to LGBTQ issues with a much lower risk of censorship (by parental or school censorware, which typically blocks information related to sexuality) and discovery by snoops.

Tips and tools to help you more safely access LGBTQ resources, navigate social networks, and avoid snoopers.
If you lack proper support and access to LGBTQ resources, this guide teaches you how to explore such resources online in a safer way to help avoid accidental outing to your peers, family, or online advertisers as a result of online tracking or nosy snoopers.

* An Introduction to Threat Modeling

* Choosing Your Tools

* Creating Strong Passwords

* How to: Circumvent Online Censorship

* How to: Encrypt Your iPhone

* How to: Use Signal – Private Messenger

* Protecting Yourself on Social Networks

* Communicating with Others

(via BoingBoing)

Gendered surveillance

Posted by Christian

Main-Spying

When teacher Catharine Higginson, 45, discovered by accident that her husband James, 42, had installed an app on her phone which allows him to track her movements, read her texts and even listen to her conversations she didn’t plan to divorce him as her friends urged, for being creepy and intrusive.
Instead, the mum of three from Dorking, Surrey, says it makes her feel loved and safe

This is beyond creepy (via) . Make sure you get the undertones about the power structures at play here. It reads like an advert for personal tracking apps.

It also completely ignores the huge problem of women being utterly exposed to stalkers through spyware just like the one celebrated in that article. Women (it’s always women) seeking shelter from stalkers now routinely have to go through a digital quarantine, to make sure they’re really safe. See Surveillance Begins at Home and Digital Detox At The Shelter.

Another example why the NSA’s undermining of security standards is so harmful. Everyone’s mobile phones are unsafe by design. All of them have backdoors for law enforcement built in, but it’s impossible to restrict the use of those to only the ‘good guys’. As a result, creeps and criminals exploit them, too. This isn’t just about privacy, it’s about being safe from physical harm. People get killed because of this.

Semesterapparat for Women under Surveillance

Posted by Christian

Semesterapparat
Women under Surveillance
KHM WS 2014/15

Exposed. voyeurism, surveillance and the camera
These selected essays:
1. Looking Out, Looking In, Voyeurism and its affinities from the beginning of photography, Sandra S. Phillips

3. Voyeurism and Desire, Sandra S. Phillips

4. Celebrity and the Public Gaze, Sandra S. Phillips

5. Surveillance, Sandra S. Phillips

6. Up Periscope! Photography and the surreptitious image
Simon Baker

9. Dare To Be Famous, Self-Exploitation and the Camera, Richard B. Woodward

10. From Observation to Surveillance, Marta Gili

Rosalind Krauss
Essay: Cindy Sherman: Untitled
Especially the first two chapters, about the film stills and the horizontals. All of it is great. Available in the original English and in German.

CTRL [Space]: Rhetorics of Surveillance, from Bentham to Big Brother, Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne, and Peter Weibel, ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002)
All the essays are worth a read but start with these two essays:
Victor Burgin, “Jenni’s Room”, 228-235

Peter Weibel, “Pleasure and the Panoptic Principle”, 207-223

Beatriz Colomina: Sexuality & space
Essay by Beatriz Colomina: The Split Wall, Domestic Voyeurism,
p. 72-128