A Tale of Surveillance Part I

An examination of “The Externalities of Search 2.0: The Emerging Privacy Threats when the Drive for the Perfect Search Engine meets Web 2.0” by Michael Zimmer

Imagine yourself as Alice, falling down the rabbit hole and curiously getting lost in an alternate dimension. You see and discover many new things that have been created by the imagination of yourself and others. Now imagine yourself as Hansel and Gretel, cautiously finding your way, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind you. Though you trust these breadcrumbs to lead you home, they are gobbled up just as soon as you turn your back.

One can say that our new lives online are similar to those of fairy tale characters. A large contribution to our virtual lives is the ability to search on the Web. The concept of Search 2.0 encompasses a rabbit hole of knowledge and our personal trails of breadcrumbs. In other words, Search 2.0 strives to deliver the most relevant results possible by accumulating a vast database of content and using a collective of the user’s information to personalize the search. Michael Zimmer describes these tactics as perfect reach and perfect recall that compose the perfect search.

Though it may seem immoral for the Web to collect and store our information from other “Web 2.0 applications” (Zimmer) and search history, without having information about the user, the search engine would not perform as effectively. For example, knowing the proximity of the user is important for finding results relevant to the user’s area of interest.

After reading Zimmer’s article, I was inspired to “Google” myself. In doing so, I discovered my trail of breadcrumbs on the first ten pages of the search results and the first three pages of the image search. I uncovered everything from the artists I am linked to on my Reverbnation page to the promotions for a theatrical production I was involved in over three years ago. Based on my previous searches and the engine’s recognition of my location, the search engine found me, or rather my online identity. However, if I were to travel to China and use a computer there, the results that appear after searching the same two names would not likely find a student from Guelph, Ontario to be quite as relevant.

However, there is still something uneasy about losing touch with your personal information and knowing that somewhere down the rabbit hole, there is a cyber community working to organize and distribute your information as needed. “The prevalence of open flows of personal information on and across Web 2.0 platforms have prompted both general concerns over user privacy, as well as explorations into whether expectations of privacy online are shifting towards acceptance – or at least ambivalence – to the sharing of personal information in these contexts, especially among younger users” (Zimmer). Does Search 2.0 invade our right to search in private? Perhaps, by being conscious of the monitoring of online activity, one may hesitate to search an embarrassing question or guilty pleasure for the sake of his or her virtual reputation.

It seems that upholding one’s reputation is more important that the actual issue of diminishing online privacy. Most social networking users are not concerned about privacy when uploading their personal information. Quite contrarily, by selectively choosing what is displayed, the public view is the main concern.

This is where the idea of participatory surveillance comes into the picture.