Presentation slides from a talk myself (Andrew McStay) and Vian Bakir gave at the University of Toronto, March 2016. Get in touch if you have thoughts.

1. Veillant Media:
‘Veillant Panoptic Assemblage’ and
‘Emotiveillance’
Vian Bakir and Andrew McStay
Bangor University
Wales, UK

2. Abstract
• Vian Bakir and Andrew McStay will present work they are doing in the area of
‘Veillance’ – Mann’s term for mutual watching.
• Vian is interested in how sousveillance works across media to challenge official
versions of events and hold power to account in the secretive area of national
security. She is concerned that this potential for resistance is being compromised
by weak civic structures and through the ever-growing surveillant state operating
through what she terms the ‘Veillant Panoptic Assemblage’.
• Andrew is researching how emotions are both being watched by ourselves, and
corporate and governmental actors. What he terms as ‘emotiveillant technologies’
and ‘empathic media’ are wide-ranging and being deployed in advertising,
education, health, gaming, marketing, policing, retail, security, sport and other
domains. Drawing on interview and UK-wide survey data, Andrew will outline
conceptual principles of empathic media, what they portend for the future, and
important but non-obvious critical questions for ethical businesses, regulators and
privacy groups.

3. Terminology (Steve Mann)
• Veillance - processes of mutual
watching/monitoring by surveillant
organizations & sousveillant individuals.
• Surveillance - monitoring from position of
power by those who are not a participant
to the activity being watched
• Sousveillance - monitoring from position
of minimal power, and by those
participating in the activity being
watched
• Equiveillance - equality between
surveillant & sousveillant forces, or
a‘transparent society’.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z82Zavh-NhI
• wearcam.org/veillance/veillance.pdf
• http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/veillance

5. Premature sousveillance
Impactful sousveillance
Suppressed sousveillance Hoax sousveillance
Sousveillance -
monitoring
from position
of minimal
power, and by
those
participating in
the activity
being watched

6. By 2013
• Twitter – over 500
million total users
• Google - over 500
million total users
• FaceBook – over 1
billion total users

7. DATA-PSST!
Debating &
Assessing
Transparency
Arrangements -
Privacy,
Security,
Sur/Sous/Veillance,
Trust
http://data-psst.bangor.ac.uk/

8. 1. Different aspects of transparency
2. How do these affect privacy, security,
surveillance and trust?
3. What different actors think of
existing/desirable transparency
arrangements?
4. Build a typology of transparency types
DATA-PSST!

9. Transparency Type
Citizen Control over Personal
Visibility
Extent of Oversight of
Surveillant Entity
Liberal Transparency High
High (to ensure no unwanted
prying into citizens’lives)
Liberal Translucency High
Socially/ legally agreed
limitations
Radical Translucency
Low (everyone has signed
away their control to maximize
social good)
Socially/ legally agreed
limitations
Radical Transparency
Low (everyone has signed
away their control to maximize
social good)
High (to ensure concurrent
citizen & state/ corporate
openness)
Forced Transparency
None (state/corporate-imposed,
secret control)
Insufficient to win social trust
Bakir, V. & A. McStay. 2015. Assessing Interdisciplinary Academic & Multi-Stakeholder Positions on Transparency
post-Snowden. Ethical Space, 12 (3/4): http://www.communicationethics.net/espace/index.php?nav=feature

10. http://www.cogitatiopress.com/ojs/index.php/mediaandcommunication/article/view/277

11. Post-Snowden
Compromised sousveillance?
Towards a veillant panoptic assemblage
• Surveillant ‘assemblage’
&‘panopticon’ inform each
other
• state re-appropriation of
citizens‘communications for
disciplinary purposes
– includes data from
sousveillance
• Eg selfies
• Eg whistle-blowing

12. Equiveillance
… veillance infrastructures are extensive
and the power requirements to enact
change from below are marginal. This type
of system would likely protect whistle-
blowers, encourage public fora and
debate, and implement participatory
projects and innovations to the system.
Even the powers of oversight in this
configuration are likely to be seen from
below and subject to evaluation.
(Mann & Ferenbok 2013: 30)

13. From ‘veillant panoptic assemblage’
to ‘equiveillant panoptic assemblage’
Equiveillance:
• …. This type of system
would likely protect
whistle-blowers, encourage
public fora and debate, and
implement participatory
projects and innovations to
the system.
• protect whistle-blowers:
• Snowden not technically a
whistleblower – didn’t follow
national security whistleblower
protocols -stranded in Russia
• Obama’s multiple indictments of
national security whistleblowers
under Espionage Act [1917]
• whistle-blowing is discouraged,
channeled & remains a weak
formal mechanism to enact change
from below

14. From ‘veillant panoptic assemblage’ to
‘equiveillant panoptic assemblage’
Equiveillance:
• …This type of system
would likely protect
whistle-blowers,
encourage public fora
and debate, and
implement participatory
projects and innovations
to the system.
• encourage public fora & debate
– intelligence agencies manipulate
press via secrecy
• withhold information
• prior constraint
• whistle-blower prosecution
• harass non-compliant press
• self-censorship by journalists
– and propaganda
• spread intelligence-sourced,
disguised, propaganda
• Provide minimal critical reportage of
intel agencies
– MSM weak force for accountability
• http://hij.sagepub.com/content/early/20
15/01/29/1940161214566693.abstract

15. From ‘veillant panoptic assemblage’ to
‘equiveillant panoptic assemblage’
Equiveillance:
• …This type of system
would likely protect
whistle-blowers,
encourage public fora
and debate, and
implement participatory
projects and innovations
to the system.
• implement participatory
projects
• US/UK review groups/oversight boards set up
to study intel agencies’ surveillance consulted
wider legislature & NGOs
• What weight was given to concerns expressed
by these broader voices?
– Eg UK’s Intelligence & Security Committee
presumes to know public opinion but
seems to discount it
– See Public Feeling on Privacy, Security and
Surveillance: A Report by DATA-PSST and
DCSS (Nov 2015)
– weak force for accountability?

16. From ‘veillant panoptic assemblage’ to
‘equiveillant panoptic assemblage’
Equiveillance:
• …This type of system
would likely protect
whistle-blowers,
encourage public fora and
debate, and implement
participatory projects and
innovations to the system.
• innovations to the
system
• tech industry campaigns for change
to surveillance & transparency
laws/practices
• Some leading tech companies
implemented end-to-end encryption
• STRONG accountability mechanism –
intel agencies worry about internet
‘going dark’

17. So where are we now (2016)?
• Far from ‘equiveillant panoptic assemblage’
• Instead: ‘veillant panoptic assemblage’ • protect whistle-blowers -
WEAK - discouraged,
channeled
• encourage public fora and
debate –WEAK – MSM in
thrall to security state.
• participatory projects -
WEAK – just for show?
• innovations to the system
– STRONG
– big tech cos
– Neo-liberal corporate
activism
– Brand maintenance

18. Empathic Media:
The Surveillance of Emotional Life
o Outline
o Emotiveillance?
o Technologies: sentiment, respiration, heart, face,
voice, skin and brain
o Ends: advertising, marketing, entertainment
(gaming/movies), employment, national security
and more
o Methods
o Survey findings

19. Collect it all
o What the advertising and media giants say …
o Programmatic logic/Data Management Platforms
o Emotion-sensitivity inevitable (if one does it, they
all will)
o Transparency
o Immoral, or just a different view of data flows
(seamless/frictionless UX and consumer
experience)?
o But… consent mechanisms, pseudoanoymisation
problems, unintended outcomes, etc.

20. In public spaces…
See McStay (2015) Empathic Media: Advertising that Tracks Your Mood

21. … and over at Wimbledon

22. I asked people in the UK (n=2000+)
Advertising agencies have developed outdoor
ads equipped with cameras that scan onlookers’
faces to work out our emotions towards the ad.
If our reactions are not positive the ad changes
itself to be more appealing. Which of the
following best represents your feelings about
this?

23. Responses offered…
1. I am not OK with my data about me being collected in
this way.
2. I am OK with data collection about my emotions in
this way as long as the information is anonymised and
cannot be associated with me, my email address,
phone number or any other possible means of
personally identifying me.
3. I am OK with data collection about my emotional
state in this way and OK for this data to be linked with
personal information held about me.
4. Don't know.

24. They said…
1. I am not OK with my data about me being collected in
this way. (-%)
2. I am OK with data collection about my emotions in
this way as long as the information is anonymised and
cannot be associated with me, my email address,
phone number or any other possible means of
personally identifying me. (--%)
3. I am OK with data collection about my emotional
state in this way and OK for this data to be linked with
personal information held about me. (-%)
4. Don't know. (-%)

25. Contact details
• Vian Bakir, Professor of Political Communication & Journalism
– v.bakir@bangor.ac.uk
– Twitter: @VianBakir1
• Andrew McStay, Reader in Advertising & Digital Media
– mcstay@bangor.ac.uk
– Twitter: @digi_ad