Gaining access to CCTV images is far more difficult than the legislation suggests it ought to be

Under the 1998 Data Protection Act, citizens have the right to access CCTV images of themselves. One researcher, Keith Spiller, sought to test out how easy it actually is to gain access to the footage, and sought to deliberately stand in site of CCTV cameras for two minutes at a time. He found it far more difficult to gain access to the images than the legislation suggests it ought to be

‘Putting everything up there’: framing how we navigate the intricacies of privacy and security on social media

Posting commentary via social media can have very real consequences, and these can drive how users navigate the world of social media. The aim of this article is to develop a deeper appreciation of how users comprehend their security and privacy within their social media interactions. I turn to Anderson’s work on street life in attempting to draw upon the decisions made in navigating particular environments—especially those with associated risks. This I argue is similar to how users rationalize their social media behavior to protect themselves and/or view others. Both are learned behaviors that are at times habituated, reactionary, or temporary in the face of heightened threats. Using findings from 27 interviews with UK social media users, I present three codes that may be useful in framing just how users navigate and comprehend their experiences of social media privacy and security

Farmers' markets as assemblage: social relations, social practice and the producer/consumer nexus in the north east of England

Farmers' markets have recently enjoyed some academic attention and situated within this is a valuable reading of the contexts that surround markets, of particular interest have been the nascent forces that have encouraged the re-emergence of food markets. Prior to the more recent growth interest towards food production and sourcing, opportunities to engage with alternative means of food sourcing were somewhat limited in a British context.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

UK Experience of Freedom of Information as a method of enquiry

This chapter considers Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as a viable tool for academic research. To date, journalist, campaigners or concerned consumers have been to the forefront in using FOIs to gain information on issues as diverse as politician’s expenses, the cost of policing a royal event or the levels of food hygiene in restaurants. Yet this line of enquiry appears to be infrequently used by academic researchers. The chapter concentrates on the UK and will offer 5 areas for consideration. Firstly, we consider the value of FOIs as a research tool. Secondly, we reflect upon some of the limitations to using FOIs in research. Thirdly, we locate the FOIA within a broader process of modernising digital information and highlight some of the challenges that can present for researchers via this trend. Fourthly, we review effective use of FOI in research. Finally, we offer some observations from our own nascent research project that is using FOIs as a key methodological approach. The chapter concludes by stressing the usefulness of the FOIA for researchers to produce democratising and politically impactful research. The chapter’s aim is to highlight the practicalities of applying this method of enquiry and to further its contribution to academic research

Prolonging Life: Appreciations of a Secondhand ‘Capital’ Machine

In this paper I look at a farm that diversified its business and within this process bought a secondhand sausage vacuum filler. I do this in order to question how this machine came to be understood and valued by the farmers who bought it. The themes discussed include the role of the machine in changing the working practices of the farm, as well as factors unknown when buying secondhand—purchasers can only ever truly know the reliability and levels of performance of the machine retrospectively. While much work has considered the secondhand cultures of goods such as clothes, brick-a-brac, or cars, the departure I make here is to consider goods bought and used in commercial contexts. I consider the calculations made when a secondhand commodity is invested with the risks and tensions of expanding a business. There are critical and additional pressures resting on the machine: for example, if the machine fails to work, it may be detrimental to the business. The paper focuses on the appreciations of two farmers and how the machine they bought was used and appreciated. </jats:p

‘What does terrorism look like?’: university lecturers’ interpretations of their Prevent duties and tackling extremism in UK universities

The UK Counter Terrorism and Security Act (2015) (CTSA) calls for a partnership between the government, individuals, organisations and communities to prevent the radicalisation of individuals and to prevent their participation in terrorist and illegal activities. As part of this strategy, universities have a statutory duty placed upon them to remain vigilant to signs of extremism. Based upon 20 interviews with UK university lecturers, the paper examines reactions of the academic community to this governmental mandate. Key to our understanding is the deputisation of lecturers into a security regime and how they perform the duty of identifying and monitoring extremism. Equally, forms of resistance are evident in how lecturers understand their new roles and for universities themselves a conservative approach to risk may be gaining traction. We argue there is confusion around the CTSA based upon the ambiguous language in which it is presented and the conservative and defensive reactions that have subsequently produced concern amongst lecturers and UK universities

The Politic of Everyday Counterterrorism: online performances and responsibilities of the Prevent Duty in UK Higher Education Institutions

The Prevent Duty mandates that public authorities must work to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. In this paper we review how 158 UK HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) have responded to this new duty by examining their public facing webpages and Prevent policy documentation. In doing this we draw upon de Certeau’s notions of the everyday to highlight how such initiatives are presented publicly to viewing audiences, and how messages seep into and deepen security measures within UK Higher Education. In reviewing the performative element of Prevent, specifically how information is displayed, we find that the majority of UK HEIs have approached their new roles through the prism of ‘compliance’ and/or ‘safeguarding’. The paper argues presentations of safeguarding, reassurance and reluctance offer a telling insight into how the Duty has been adopted in HEIs everyday practice

IRISS (Increasing Resilience in Surveillance Societies) FP7 European Research Project, Deliverable 4.2: Doing privacy in everyday encounters with surveillance.

The main idea of IRISS WP 4 was to analyse surveillance as an element of everyday life of citizens. The starting point was a broad understanding of surveillance, reaching beyond the narrowly defined and targeted (nonetheless encompassing) surveillance practices of state authorities, justified with the need to combat and prevent crime and terrorism. We were interested in the mundane effects of surveillance practices emerging in the sectors of electronic commerce, telecommunication, social media and other areas. The basic assumption of WP 4 was that being a citizen in modern surveillance societies amounts to being transformed into a techno-social hybrid, i.e. a human being inexorably linked with data producing technologies, becoming a data-leaking container. While this &ldquo;ontological shift&rdquo; is not necessarily reflected in citizens&rsquo; understanding of who they are, it nonetheless affects their daily lives in many different ways. Citizens may entertain ideas of privacy, autonomy and selfhood rooted in pre-electronic times while at the same time acting under a regime of &ldquo;mundane governance&rdquo;. We started to enquire about the use of modern technologies and in the course of the interviews focussed on issues of surveillance in a more explicit manner. Over 200 qualitative interviews were conducted in a way that produced narratives (stories) of individual experiences with different kinds of technologies and/or surveillance practices. These stories then were analysed against the background of theoretical hypotheses of what it means in objective terms to live in a surveillance society. We assume that privacy no longer is the default state of mundane living, but has to be actively created. We captured this with the term privacy labour. Furthermore we construed a number of dilemmas or trade-off situations to guide our analysis. These dilemmas address the issue of privacy as a state or &ldquo;good&rdquo; which is traded in for convenience (in electronic commerce), security (in law enforcement surveillance contexts), sociality (when using social media), mutual trust (in social relations at the workplace as well as in the relationship between citizens and the state), and engagement (in horizontal, neighbourhood watch-type surveillance relations). For each of these dilemmas we identified a number of stories demonstrating how our respondents as &ldquo;heroes&rdquo; in the narrative solved the problems they encountered, strived for the goals they were pursuing or simply handled a dilemmatic situation. This created a comprehensive and multi-dimensional account of the effects of surveillance in everyday life. Each of the main chapters does focus on one of these different dilemmas