Überveillance: Identification, Location, and Condition
Long title: Überveillance: Continuous Identity Checking, Persistent Location Tracking, and Pervasive Condition Monitoring
Abstract: As the concept of contactless transactions through an Internet of Things gathers momentum due to the global COVID-19 pandemic health crisis, government agencies and innovators are investing in mobile solutions in an attempt to automate processes that enable socio-cyber-physical ecosystems. These include automatic number plate recognition and automated facial recognition technologies that identify vehicles and people that are on non-essential travel; location tracking applications that ensure individuals who should be in quarantine are self-isolating; contact tracing solutions that record proximity of participating devices of citizens to support manual tracing processes; and condition monitoring technologies that enable temperature checks among other sensor-based inspections. These instances of process automation, as facilitated by a range of mobile applications, have prompted public and academic discourse and debates concerning the role of the ‘human’ in complex and dynamic socio-technical ecosystems.
In 2006, MG Michael coined the term überveillance to describe a technological trajectory which incorporated humans into an Internet of Things and People, by the adoption of embedded surveillance devices (e.g. implantables) in an end-to-end global interconnected network architecture where the human was the last mile, as opposed to Fiber-to-the-Home. Embodied computing technologies, such as implantable technologies in living things, thus become the final security and privacy frontier in a context where every object and subject is identifiable, locatable, triggerable and traceable.
In this seminar MG Michael will briefly define überveillance as originally conceived in 2006. Katina Michael will expand on the definition, offering examples of überveillance in practice, and Roba Abbas will critique the use of the term in peer reviewed literature.
We welcome a discussion on bioethical implications of uberveillant technologies after the presentation.
A note on presenters: MG, Katina and Roba have been teaching and researching together since 2006. The disciplines they span in qualifications include philosophy, theology, history, information and communication technology, law and business. While the research team is closely knit, each acknowledges differences and highly respects independence of thought, constantly challenging one another.
Defining Überveillance - MG Michael
Überveillance in Practice - Katina Michael
Critiquing Überveillance - Roba Abbas
Concluding Remarks - Katina Michael
**The following linked paper, among many authored by our speakers, provides background: “Überveillance and the Rise of Last-Mile Implantables: Past, Present, and Future. Embodied Computing: Wearables, Implantables, Embeddables, Ingestibles, p.97. Michael, K., Michael, M.G., Perakslis, C. and Abbas, R., 2020.
Biographies:
Dr M.G. Michael Ph.D. (ACU), M.A (Hons) (MacqUni), M.Theol (SydUni), B.Theol (SCD), B.A. (SydUni), DipProfCouns (AIPC) is a theologian and historian with cross-disciplinary qualifications in the humanities and who introduced the concept of überveillance into the privacy and bioethics literature. Michael brings with him a unique perspective to emerging technologies. His formal studies include ancient history, theology, general philosophy, political sociology, ethics, linguistics, and government. In 2005 Michael began as a tutor the School of Computing and Information Technology at the University of Wollongong, retiring in 2019 as an honorary associate professor. During this time, he guest-lectured and researched in a diverse number of interdisciplinary areas, also coordinating Information and Communication Security Issues and delivering talks on Location-Based Services, IT & Citizen Rights, Principles of eBusiness, IT & Innovation, and the Social Impact of Technology. Between 2007 and 2008, MG was part of the first known initiative to deliver tertiary-level liberal studies courses to a refugee camp through the Australian Catholic University.
The focus of MG’s current research extends to modern hermeneutics and the Apocalypse of John; the historical antecedents of modern cryptography; the auto-ID trajectory; data protection, privacy and ethics related issues; biometrics, RFID and chip implants; national security and government policy; dataveillance and überveillance; and more broadly the system dynamics between technology and society. Michael has previously been a member of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and is a life member of the Australian Privacy Foundation (APF). He has guest edited numerous special issues and acted as proceedings editor of four national security workshops sponsored by the Australian Research Council’s Research Network for a Secure Australia (RNSA). He has co-authored two full length technical reference volumes in identification, location-based services and the social implications of microchip implants and 4 workshop proceedings on national security.
Katina Michael is a professor at Arizona State University, holding a joint appointment in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Computing, Informatics and Decisions Systems Engineering. She is also the director of the Society Policy Engineering Collective (SPEC) and the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society. Katina is a senior member of the IEEE and a Public Interest Technology advocate who studies the social implications of technology. She has held 13 annual workshops in the social implications of national security space and chaired 3 international symposia on technology and society (ISTAS) in Wollongong, Toronto and Phoenix. She is the Senior Editor of the socio-economic impact section in IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine and was the editor in chief of the award-winning IEEE Technology and Society Magazine. In 2019 she took on the role of working group chair for the IEEE P2089 standard. In 2017, she received the Brian M. O'Connell SSIT Distinguished Service Award.
In the 1990s, Katina was employed as a senior network planner at Nortel Networks and systems analyst at Andersen Consulting and OTIS. In 2002 she entered academia as a lecturer at the University of Wollongong and in 2013 became a member of the executive team in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences as the Associate Dean – International, overseeing 8 partner and twinning arrangements for the University in the UAE, Malaysia, Singapore, China and Hong Kong. Katina completed a Masters degree in transnational crime prevention in the Faculty of Law with a UOW postgraduate scholarship in 2007, and was later invited to teach cybercrime in the law school. Her PhD was on systems of innovation in the automatic identification industry. She is presently working her way through a Certificate at a snail’s pace at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (IOCS) at Cambridge University.
Roba Abbas is a lecturer with the School of Management, Operations and Marketing at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Over the last 10 years, she has taught students from across disciplines, including in the Faculty of Informatics; the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, and her home base, the Faculty of Business and Law. She has a PhD in location-based services regulation and has received internationally competitive and local grants for research addressing global challenges in areas related to co-design and sociotechnical systems, operations management, robotics, social media and other emerging technologies. From 2005 to 2010, she was a product manager with Internetrix, Wollongong. Her current research interests include methodological approaches to complex socio-technical systems design.
Roba was the Associate Editor for the IEEE Technology and Society Magazine between 2016 and 2020, and is presently the Co-Editor of the new transdisciplinary publication, the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society. Roba has volunteered with the IEEE in various roles for over a decade. She is the Technical Program Chair for the IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS20) to be held in Arizona, USA in November 2020. She is also involved with the IEEE Standards Association, and is currently the IEEE Australia Council Student Activities Coordinator.