Community, Political Culture and the Surveillance of Public Placesコミュニティー、政治文化と公共の場の監視

Street-Level Imaging in Comparative Perspectiveストリート・レベルイメージの比較

Presentation to the International Society of Criminology, Kobe, Japan August 5, 2011

What is Political Culture? • “The sum of the fundamental values, sentiments and knowledge that give

form and substance to political processes” (Lucian Pye)

• “Political culture is the pattern of individual attitudes and orientations toward politics among the members of a political system. It is the subjective realm which gives meaning to political actions” (Gabriel Almond)

– Cognitive aspects– Affective aspects– Evaluative Aspects

Social Capital (Robert Putnam)

Refers to “a culture of trust and cooperation which makes collective action possible and effective…it is the ability of a community to develop the “I” into the “we.” A political culture with a fund of social capital enables a community to build political institutions capable of solving collective problems.”

Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993)Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000)

Political Culture and Personal PrivacyAlan Westin “Privacy and Freedom”

UK: Deferential Democratic balanceGermany: Authoritarian Democratic balanceUS: Egalitarian democratic balance

Barrington Moore “Privacy: Studies in Social and Cultural History”Empirical survey data on ‘trust’ in organizations

Harris-Westin surveysZureik et al. Surveillance, Privacy and the Globalization of Personal Information (2010)

Level of Trust in Government and Corporations (Ipsos-Reid 2006)

Comparative attitudes to community surveillance

A possible theoretical relationship

An example: identity cards

Problems with Prior Studies Many cultural generalizations based on anecdote:

e.g. “The Englishman’s home is his castle”

Lack of equivalence in survey data

Abstract notions of trust often divorced from specific practices

Breakdowns by other demographic variables often not possible

Much of our survey data does not address the private sector

The Case of Community Street-View Technologyコミュニティー・ストリートビュー　テクノロジーとは Common set of practices and a common time-frame

Related to an attribute of privacy that is historically sensitive – the home

Question: Can we generalize about variable national responses to street view technology and thereby draw insights into political culture and community?

ストリートビューテクノロジーに対する様々な国の対応を比較し、政治文化の違いとの関係性について一定の憶測を測れるか ?

Current Products and Services

• Google Street View• Microsoft Streetside• Mapjack• EveryScape

Google’s Response

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/privacy.html

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/privacy.html

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/privacy.html

Function creep…

Alternative Responses

A popular and valuable tool that outweighs any and all privacy considerations because no privacy in public spaces

A need to balance the social value against a limited interest in privacy in public spaces through blurring and opt-out mechanisms

The moral equivalent of “staring” constantly and anonymously requiring resistance – the “asymmetry of the gaze”

The “googlization of everything”

Street view, community and political culture

A story of cultural variation being overwhelmed by a technological imperative

BUT:The cultural interpretation of identificationThe cultural interpretation of public and private

space The cultural expression of privacy advocacy

www.privacyadvocates.ca

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