CHRISTIAN FUCHS - ICT&S - Universität Salzburg

Christian Fuchs: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Societyelectronic surveillance has been intensified. The European Commission passed the DataRetention Directive (2006/24/EC) on March 15, 2006, which requires all member statesto pass laws that guarantee that information and communication service providers storesource, destination, and other data on a communication for at least 6 months. InDecember 2007, the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and the Austrian PeoplesParty (ÖVP) changed the Security Police Act (Sicherheitspolizeigesetz) so that allinformation and communication providers are required to pass on personal data ofusers, if the police ask for it.There are two major influences on the character of contemporary surveillance society: apolitical and an economic one. On the one hand, new imperialism has produced asituation, in which war and terror potentially reinforce each other, and the West reactsby increasing surveillance. This results in a contradiction between freedom and securityand the short-sighted belief that more surveillance solves societal problems. On theother hand, not only the state, but also corporations have an interest in gatheringpersonal data in order to develop personalized advertising strategies that targetindividual tastes and related tastes by aggregating and assessing user data.studiVZ, MySpace, and Facebook are the platforms that our study focused on.When registering, users must agree that studiVZ can store their usage behaviour, cansend them emails and messages about news that concern studiVZ, can send up to fiveadvertisement emails and messages per months to them, and that profile information isanalyzed for providing personalized advertisements. The latter three points can bedeactivated once one is registered by changing the privacy settings. This is an opt-outandnot an opt-in-process. The privacy policy of studiVZ states that users agree thatusage data are saved for a maximum of six months. The users also agree that this dataand their clickstream are analyzed for being provided with personalizedadvertisements. Users can opt out of personalized advertisements. Profile data can beused for personalized advertisements. There is an opt-out from this option. The usersagree to receive advertising and technical messages per mail and message service,unless s/he opts out. The users agree that their data are provided to the police if this isnecessary for public safety or law enforcement.By signing up to Facebook, users agree to its terms of use and thereby grant thecompany a license for using and selling all content that is uploaded to the platform.Facebook stores personal data and usage data. These data are also used forpersonalized services. Facebook automatically uses targeted advertising. Facebook isallowed to automatically collect information on users from other websites and topublish these data on the users’ Facebook profiles. Facebook is allowed to share userdata with its advertising clients. It may pass on data to authorities for crime preventionor law enforcement.MySpace allows targeted personalized advertising that is automatically activated. Userscan opt out, but doing so is very difficult. There is no menu setting in the privacyoptions that allows doing so, only a link in the privacy policy that users have to follow.Third party advertisers are allowed to collect information from profiles. Users can optout, but again doing so is very complicated and only possible by following a link in theprivacy policy. MySpace may share personal information, such as email addresses, with109