>>You can't change your face like you can change
your password.
Your face is always with you.
Your face is always visible.
So facial recognition in theory leads to a kind of
continual state of surveillance,
whether you like it or not.
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>>The more we normalise those invasive
technologies, the less we are likely to actually
question and criticise the intention behind
surveillance technologies.
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Someone somewhere is keeping a record of
everything that happens in our life and there's no
essence of the core individual.
>>Privacy is usually pretty high up on their list of
concerns when it comes to digital media.
But then, they get on Facebook,
where everything they do online is tracked.
They carry around a phone with them that collects
huge amounts of data about them throughout the course
of the day, even when they're sleeping.
>>We would do more to protect our privacy if we
could.
Sometimes we simply don't know how.
What is important is that we have more choice in how
our data is collected and used.
Those digital traces are quite revealing of us.
>>Surveillance capitalism is making money off the
harvesting and processing of personal information
about people.
The fact that these huge, very expensive tech
companies can run, quote-unquote,
"for free" shows just how valuable that data is.
>>Data is generated by every swipe, every click,
every time we turn a piece of technology on.
And that data can be used to track,
monitor both people and what they're doing but
also, more interestingly, how people are feeling and
their kind of mental states as well.
>>Personal data doesn't necessarily have to
directly identify us.
You can identity an individual from about 10
different data points, so your geographical
location, your occupation, your salary level,
all of these things can be readily identifiable.
As soon as you can link a piece of data to a person,
then the value goes to the roof.
>>To say to somebody, "Well, you know if you don't like
the data collection, just get off the grid",
it's a huge ask.
What would you do?
Many people, they wouldn't be able to do their work.
Many people wouldn't be able to be in contact with
friends and family.
>>We are effectively wilfully giving over a
whole heap of our personal information and data to
private companies like Facebook and Tic Toc and
Instagram and the like.
In many ways that's used as a justification for
increasing the way in which our data is able to
be captured by government.
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There is a very big difference between people
wanting to hand over photos of their weekend
via Instagram and giving very sensitive information
to government in a way that could be used against
them in, for example, a criminal prosecution.
>>I don't think people have any idea how intrusive the
data collection is and the techniques that are used
to make sense of that data and put it to use.
When you talk to people about data collection,
they almost always think about it through the lens
of interpersonal monitoring - oh,
somebody at Google, they're not going to be
interested in looking at my searches.
First of all, it's machines that are looking
at our data.
And second, what they're doing is they're
aggregating it and they're looking for overall
patterns that can be used to predict our behaviour
in order to be able to engage in forms of
influence.
>>There are serious questions to be asked by
an individual when they are using those
technologies in terms of, who's keeping my data?
How is my data being used?
These are massive global corporations.
The control of these apps and companies should be an
international collaborative effort and
should not be left by individual government.
>>The very big companies who have really founded their
business models on collecting data,
chances are probably very low that they would change
their business model by themselves.
Our cybersecurity group at Monash tries to combine
technical, very mathematical research on
cryptography with very practical applications.
It's perfectly possible to build solutions in a way
that data is not stored over a long time or not
even stored at all.
>>The question of what to do about dataveillance is
really tricky.
It's something that the industry, governments,
state agencies and civil society need to do
together.
And one of the things we're trying to do with
our research at Monash is work out ways that we can
get those partnerships working between all of the
bodies that really need to start thinking about this
seriously.
>>The Australian Government is reviewing the Privacy Act.
There's a number of measures that the
government could take to better protect our data.
One is to increase transparency of practices,
so that is to require companies to explain more
fully and in a more understandable way which
of our data are used, in what circumstances they're
collected, who they're disclosed to and what
happens with them also at the end of the data
lifecycle, you know, whether they'll be deleted
and so on.
>>Very often, there's a good justification for
collecting data.
For example, study effects of behaviours of people,
for example, induced by the COVID-19 situation,
where research can use the data to really understand
how the effects of the virus, where,
how it was distributed.
And then there's models to predict how we need to
behave to get rid of the virus.
>>If someone had told us a year ago that we need to
leave our name every time we go into a café and sit
down, you know, to have a flat white,
we would have been quite horrified,
and we probably would not have done it.
But now, we see it as something that is
necessary for the protection of public
health and also necessary simply for us to allow us
to go into a café.
That shows that privacy is not an absolute value.
>>During COVID, we've seen a really drastic increase in
the level of surveillance of just people in their
everyday lives and our concern is that it won't
disappear at the same rate that it appeared.
What we want to do is have a conversation about the
type of community and society we want to have as
we come into a period where the COVID numbers
are reducing.
>>COVID has accelerated a lot of trends that were
already in place.
So the idea of being in a kind of post-touch,
distanced environment suddenly makes these
technologies really, really attractive.
>>I was looking at a company that can detect whether or
not you're wearing your mask correctly,
so you try to enter into the facility,
you've got the mask below your nose,
it says it's not going to let you in until you
adjust your mask.
The ability to detect symptoms and manage
behaviour and to facilitate touchless forms
of interaction, those are all capabilities that are
being built into smart camera systems and all
ways in which the facial recognition industry has
seen the COVID moment as a way of imagining a whole
host of marketing opportunities.
>>And we're finding more and more that facial
recognition is also creeping into our everyday
devices.
You might unlock your smart phone with your face
for example.
And when you're doing something like that,
it's very easy to lose sight of the more
dangerous uses of facial recognition.
>>We tend to think about facial recognition in
the register of identification - oh,
I can be identified.
But there's a whole additional dimension
that's being looked at.
Much of the debate around facial recognition
technology is around bias and accuracy.
Bias and accuracy are both addressable issues.
I think we're going to have to move to the next
level of thinking what does it mean to change our
fundamental understanding of how we can be
recognised in public because there are
companies who are working on trying to predict
behaviour and response based on the information
that they collect about faces.
>>If we've got technologies that can maybe discern
what mood we're in or how we're feeling,
this raises the issue of mental privacy.
As well as privacy issues about being identified all
the time, is it right for technologies to be
actually kind of saying what we're feeling all the
time?
Do we have a right to people not knowing if
you're feeling angry or sad or nervous?
>>You go into the mall - oh, there are the cameras.
And we just kind of seem to accept that.
We've grown used to it.
But those cameras are soon going to be smart and
that's kind of escalating what those cameras can do.
And the fact that we're already used to them and
that we don't see the smartness behind them
makes it easier to add that extra layer of
activity and data collection to them.
>>This is the right time, you know,
to think about regulation and when smart cameras
should be used and for what purposes.
Who should have access to the information?
How long should it be kept?
Can it be disclosed?
Can it be used for other purposes?
And so on.
>>If we develop a good understanding of what the
technology is, we are in a position to be able to
make sense of it and protect ourselves from
data exploitation.
>>Surveillance is something that really alters the way
we feel about the world that we live in.
If we feel like we're walking down the street
and being watched and scrutinised,
that's going to drastically alter the
experience that we have while we're walking down
that street.
And so it's something that we need to be very careful
with and only use where it's strictly necessary.
>>In some ways, we need to kind of move beyond
pointing out what's happening,
we know what's happening, and think about ways of
working out regulations and guidelines and public
education.
I think there's a lot of work to be done here in
terms of raising awareness,
but also raising the kind of public literacies
around dataveillance and surveillance.