Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
use, but it can be read as a snapshot account of dataveillance practices and the tactics, techniques,
and technologies deployed to negotiate them in the era of big data, a battle that will almost
certainly persist for the foreseeable future.
3. Adobe Statement for the Privacy Privacy Roundtables Project filed with the Federal
Trade Commission (January 27, 2010), http://www.ftc.gov/os/comments/privacyroundtable/
544506-00085.pdf (accessed July 25, 2010). Clearspring Technologies, one of the larger
content-sharing companies, and the developer of the AddThis platform, discloses its use of Flash
cookies in its privacy policy for AddThis, but not on the privacy policy for the company itself.
See http://www.addthis.com/privacy (accessed November 14, 2010).
4. At the time of this writing, the “What They Know” section of WSJ.com continues to be regu-
larly updated. See http://online.wsj.com/public/page/what-they-know-digital-privacy.html
(accessed February 7, 2011).
5. The concepts of “ personal ” and “ nonpersonal ” are, as one would expect, somewhat mutable
in the context of dataveillance. The single cookie assigned to each machine is not automatically
attached to an individual identity so, while sexual preference might in certain legal statutes be
defined as “personal,” in the context of information security it would be considered nonpersonal.
Personally identifiable information (PII), on the other hand, includes social security numbers,
genetic information, biometric data, date of birth, and in some cases vehicle registration
numbers, bank numbers, and IP addresses, although the increasingly widespread use of proxies
makes the last more complicated. Much of the data-privacy legislation to date restricts the use
of PII and presumes the safety of anonymization.
6. The Adobe AudienceManager platform, which is based on Demdex, invites companies to
create a data bank based on both their own ad campaigns and data acquired from third parties.
See http://www.demdex.com (accessed February 10, 2011).
7. John Battelle,
The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed
Our Culture
(New York: Portfolio, 2005), 6. The structural logic behind online behavioral
advertising would be the “panoptic sort,” Oscar Gandy's descriptive formulation for the system
that “operates to increase the precision with which individuals are classified according to their
perceived value in the marketplace and their susceptibility to particular appeals.” Oscar H.
Gandy,
The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1993), 2.
8. Julia Angwin, “ The Web ' s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets, ”
Wall Street Journal
(July 30, 2010).
Meglena Kuneva, cited in Marc Davis, keynote presentation, Privacy, Identity, Innovation annual
conference (Seattle, 2010), http://vimeo.com/14401407 (accessed November 12, 2010).
9. Scott Thurm, “ Online Trackers Rake In Funding, ”
Wall Street Journal
(February 25, 2011),
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704657704576150191661959856.html
(accessed November 12, 2010).
