The downside of digital inclusion: Expectations and experiences of privacy and surveillance among marginal Internet users

Abstract

Increasing broadband adoption among members of underserved populations remains a high priority among policymakers, advocates, corporations, and affected communities. But questions about the risks entailed in the flow of personal information are beginning to surface and shine light on the tension between broadband’s benefits and harms. This article examines broadband adoption programs at community-based and public institutions in the United States in order to understand the ways in which privacy and surveillance issues emerge and are engaged in these settings. While adults who enroll in introductory digital literacy classes and access the Internet at public terminals feel optimistic about broadband “opportunities,” they encounter “privacy-poor, surveillance-rich” broadband. Users experience myriad anxieties, while having few meaningful options to meet their concerns.

Keywords

Broadband adoption data profiling digital divide digital inclusion privacy surveillance

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Acquisti

Grossklags

(2008) What can behavioral economics teach us about privacy? In: Acquisti

(ed) Digital Privacy: Theory, Technologies, and Practices. New York: Auerbach Publications, pp. 363–380.

Barocas

Selbst

(2015) Big data’s disparate impact. California Law Review 104, 2016. Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2477899 (accessed 11 September 2015).

Battelle

(2005) The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. New York: Portfolio.

Bond-Graham

Winston

(2014) From Fallujah to San Fernando Valley, police use analytics to target “high crime” areas. Truth Out, 5 March. Available at: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22357-predictive-policing-from-fallujah-to-the-san-fernando-valley-military-grade-software-used-to-wage-wars-abroad-is-making-its-impact-on-americas-streets# (accessed 26 September 2014).

Budka

Bell

Fiser

(2009) MyKnet.org: how northern Ontario’s first nation communities made themselves at home on the World Wide Web. The Journal of Community Informatics 5(2) Available at: http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/568/450 (accessed 13 May 2015).

Center for Democracy and Technology, Consumer Action Consumer Federation of America, The Cryptorights Foundation, Inc., National Workrights Institute, Privacy Journal and Pasquale FA (2010) Joint Comments of Public Interest Groups. Washington, DC: Center for Democracy and Technology. Available at: https://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/20100122_fcc_general.pdf (accessed 1 September 2015).

Chester

(2007) Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy. New York: New Press.

Christians

Carey

(1989) The logic and aims of qualitative research. In: Stempel

Westley

(eds) Research Methods in Mass Communication. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, pp. 342–357.

Dailey

Bryne

Powell

.; Social Science Research Council (US) (2010) Broadband Adoption in Low-income Communities. Brooklyn, NY: Social Science Research Council.

10.

Eubanks

(2011) Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

11.

Eubanks

(2013) Caseworkers vs. computers. Poptech, 11 December Available at: https://virginiaeubanks.wordpress.com/tag/automated-eligibility-welfare-rights-economic-justice/ (accessed 10 April 2015).

12.

Fisher

(2009) Target marketing of subprime loans: racialized consumer fraud & reverse redlining. Brooklyn Law Journal 18(1): 121–155.

13.

Fraser

(2003) Social justice in the age of identity politics: redistribution, recognition, and participation. In: Fraser

Honneth

(eds) Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange. New York: Verso, pp. 7–109.

14.

Gandy

(2009) Coming to Terms with Chance Engaging Rational Discrimination and Cumulative Disadvantage. Farnham: Ashgate.

15.

Gangadharan

(2012) Digital inclusion and data profiling. First Monday 17(5). Available at: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3821/3199 (accessed 29 September 2015).

16.

Gangadharan

(2013) Joining the Surveillance Society? Washington, DC: New America Foundation.

17.

Gangadharan

Dosono

Ngu

(2013) Virtually Unused: Virtual Private Networks and Public Internet Users. Washington, DC: New America Foundation.

18.

Gilbert

Masucci

(2011) Information and Communication Technology Geographies: Strategies for Bridging the Digital Divide. Kelowna, BC: Praxis (e)Press.

19.

Gilliom

(2001) Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Resistance, and the Limits of Privacy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

20.

Hardt

(2014) How big data is unfair. Medium, 24 September. Available at: https://medium.com/@mrtz/how-big-data-is-unfair-9aa544d739de (accessed 24 October 2014).

21.

Horrigan

and US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (2010) Broadband adoption and use in America. OBI Working Paper Series No. 1, February 2010. Washington, DC: FCC.

22.

Kang

(2009) Biden announces $4 billion in grants and loans in first round of funding for broadband expansion. Washington Post, 2 July. Available at: http://wapo.st/1IDr2le (accessed 6 April 2015).

23.

Kincheloe

McLaren

(1994) Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In: Denzin

Lincoln

(eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, pp. 138–157.

24.

Kvasny

(2006) Cultural (Re)production of digital inequality in a US community technology initiative. Information, Communication & Society 9(2): 160–181.

25.

Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (2014) Civil rights and Big data: background material. Available at: http://www.civilrights.org/press/2014/civil-rights-and-big-data.html (accessed 14 April 2015).

26.

Libert

(2015) Privacy implications of health information seeking on the Web. Communications of the ACM 58(3): 68–77.

27.

Lyon

(2001) The Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life. Buckingham: Open University.

28.

Macdonald

Cranor

(2008) The cost of reading privacy policies. I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society 4(3): 540–565.

29.

Marx

(1985) I’ll be watching you. Dissent 32: 26–34.

30.

Mayer

(2012) Safari trackers. The Center for Internet & Society. Available at: https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2012/02/safari-trackers (accessed 13 May 2015).

31.

Mayer

Mitchell

(2012) Third-party Web tracking: policy and technology. Security and Privacy, 2012 IEEE Symposium 413–427.

32.

Narayanan

(2011) There is no such thing as anonymous online tracking. The Center for Internet & Society. Available at: https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2011/07/there-no-such-thing-anonymous-online-tracking (accessed 24 October 2014).

33.

Nissenbaum

(2010) Privacy in Context Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford Law Books.

34.

Obama

(2011) Remarks by the President in State of Union Address. Available at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/25/remarks-president-state-union-address (accessed 24 April 2014).

35.

Ohm

(2010) Broken promises of privacy: responding to the surprising failure of anonymization. UCLA Law Review 57: 1701–1777.

36.

Pasquale

(2014) Black Box Society: The Secrets That Control Money and Information. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

37.

Pew Internet & American Life Project (2008) Online shopping. Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/2008/02/13/online-shopping/ (accessed 26 September 2014).

38.

Pew Internet & American Life Project (2010) 65% of Internet users have paid for online content. Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/files/old-media//Files/Reports/2010/PIP-Paying-for-Online-Content_final.pdf (accessed 26 September 2014).

39.

Pew Research Center (2013a) Anonymity, privacy, and security online, 5 September. Available at: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Anonymity-online.aspx

40.

Pew Research Center ( 2013b) Who’s not online and why, 25 September. Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/09/25/whos-not-online-and-why/ (accessed 26 September 2014).

41.

Pew Research Center (2014) Public perceptions of privacy and security in the Post-Snowden era, 12 November. Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2014/11/PI_PublicPerceptionsofPrivacy_111214.pdf (accessed 10 April 2015).

42.

Piven

Cloward

(1971) Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. New York: Pantheon Books.

43.

Science Magazine (2013) Online job ads report vs. Bureau of Labor Statistics report: half-full, half-empty. Science Career Blogs, 6 July. Available at: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sciencecareers/2012/07/online-job-ads-1.html (accessed 26 September 2014).

44.

Seifert

(2009) Testimony.hearing on oversight of the American recovery and reinvestment act of 2009: broadband, 2 April. Available at: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/congress/2009/NTIA_Seifert_Testimony_20090402.html (accessed 6 April 2015).

45.

Selwyn

(2004) Reconsidering political and popular understandings of the digital divide. New Media & Society 6(3): 341–362.

46.

Solove

(2002) Digital dossiers and the dissipation of the Fourth Amendment. Southern California Law Review 75: 1083–1168.

47.

Stoller

(2014) The plot to maim Google: how AT&T and Comcast plan to upend the Internet. Salon, 17 October. Available at: http://www.salon.com/2014/10/17/the_plot_to_maim_google_how_att_and_comcast_plan_to_upend_the_internet/ (accessed 29 September 2014).

48.

Super

(2014) An error message for the poor. The New York Times, 4 January, p. A19.

49.

Turow

Feldman

Meltzer

(2005) Open to exploitation: American Shoppers online and offline. Report, Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Available at: http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/35 (accessed 16 March 2015).

50.

US Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) (2009a) Broadband Technology Opportunities Program Notice of Funds Availability—Fact Sheet. Washington, DC: NTIA.

51.

US Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) (2009b) Exploring a Digital Nation: Home Broadband Internet Adoption in the United States. Washington, DC: NTIA.

52.

US Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) (2011) Exploring the Digital Nation. America’s Emerging Online Experience. Washington, DC: NTIA.

53.

US Federal Trade Commission (2012) Diploma mills, July. Available at: http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0206-diploma-mills (accessed 30 October 2014).

54.

US Federal Trade Commission (2014) In the Matter of Inquiry Concerning the Deployment of Advanced Telecommunications Capability to All Americans in a Reasonable and Timely Fashion, and Possible Steps to Accelerate Such Deployment Pursuant to Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as Amended by the Broadband Data Improvement Act. Washington, DC: FTC.

55.

Viseu

Cement

Aspinall

(2004) Situating privacy online. Information, Communication & Society 7(1): 92–114.

56.

Wofford

(2013) This veterans day, Help a vet avoid a GI Bill scam. U.S. News & World Report, 11 November. Availble at: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/carrie-wofford/2013/11/11/this-veterans-day-help-a-vet-avoid-a-gi-bill-for-profit-college-scam (accessed 30 October 2014).

57.

Woodhouse

(2015) Antifraud effort on food stamps hurts the poor, advocates say. Boston Globe, 27 March, p. A1.

58.

Dietrich

and National Consumer Law Center (2012) How Errors by Criminal Background Checking Companies Harm Workers and Businesses, April 2012. Washington, DC: National Consumer Law Center.