Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 7.1
Eyebrowse
, created by Brennan Moore, Max Van Kleek, and David Karger (MIT CSAIL).
ordinary example is the Firefox extension Firesheep, which allows users to capture the
unencrypted login cookies of others on the shared Wi-Fi network, thereby substantiat-
ing the need for HTTPS. The hope is that participatory and educative tracking tools
such as these produce a more-informed public and blur the lines between a data class
that does not understand at a basic level how cookies function and a class of power users
savvy enough to exploit the resources at their disposal in the interests of constituting
their own data bodies. What becomes apparent after several hours of hands-on work
tinkering in search of the perfect combination of antitracking tools, however, is that
expert knowledge quickly becomes the aspirational goal, with legal and technological
complaints about data mining mollified by the temporary satisfaction of having joined
the elite data class. Nonetheless, an embodied experience of dataveillance tools and
techniques alerts the public to its role as a stakeholder for, Alberto Melucci notes, “as
mere consumers of information, people are excluded from the discussion on the logic
that organizes this flow of information; they are there to only receive it and have no
access to the power that shapes reality through the controlled ebb and flow of informa-
tion. ”
58
A tool such as Eyebrowse certainly gives its users access to data collection
