Sussing out the surveillance society

by Nicole Findlay

Facebook, MySpace, MSN, and Second Life have blurred the boundaries between public and private life by dramatically increasing the opportunities to share – and to have shared — the minutia and watershed moments of our lives.

David Matheson, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of philosophy, navigates the ambiguous world of privacy and personal information in a networked world that seems to be creeping ever closer to a surveillance society.

“I’m currently exploring the connection between our distinctly human interest in selective self-presentation — the ability to manage our privacy by revealing and concealing different pieces of personal information about ourselves in different contexts — and dignity,” said Matheson. “I believe this may help to explain and validate the common sentiment that the rise of various surveillance systems in our networked society threatens to depersonalize us.”

Matheson argues that there are basic principles that delineate personal and non-personal information. Where concerns regarding privacy are concerned, personal information, as opposed to its non-personal counterpart, derives its central value from the role it plays in enabling the individual to tell her own unique story, for herself and on her own terms. As such, personal information constitutes what the Supreme Court of Canada has identified as a “biographical core” of information whose disclosure would affect the individual’s “dignity, integrity, and autonomy.” The danger of permitting the networked society to become a surveillance society, Matheson urges, is that it may detract from our dignity, integrity, and autonomy as human beings by the widespread diminishment of individual control over personal information.

Matheson is also one of 23 multi-disciplinary researchers participating in On the Identity Trail, an international project that examines the philosophical, social, legal, personal, and technological impact of changing notions of privacy, identity, and anonymity. The results of the research are expected to influence North American and European social policy and legal reform.

His contributions to the field have recently been recognized by the International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society. The journal’s editorial board selected Matheson as the recipient of the International Award for Excellence for his published paper, “Virtue and the Surveillance Society.” The award included an invitation to present a plenary address before the Fourth International Conference on Technology, Knowledge, and Society at Northeastern University this January.