Built to lie: Investigating technologies of deception, surveillance, and control

ABSTRACT

This article explores technological systems that dissimulate by design. Examples include untrustworthy hotel and workplace thermostats, digital applications to spy on workers and family members, and commercial and law-enforcement systems that surreptitiously collect mobile phone data. Rather than view such cases as exceptional, I argue that deceptive communication systems are hidden articulations of normal technological orders. If deception in itself is not the primary problem with such systems, then transparency alone cannot be the solution. As troubling as institutional opacity might be, an analysis of deceptive systems reveals more fundamental problems: imbalances in power and widespread acquiescence to corporate and state efforts to control individuals, groups, and their data. By moving beyond a quest for (or belief in) technological veracity, scholars could redirect attention to power inequalities and the pressing question of how to live together ethically.

KEYWORDS:

• Communication
• dark side
• deception
• malware
• surveillance

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Bill Staples and the participants of the 2015 “States of Surveillance” symposium at the University of Kansas for their insightful suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1. It should also be noted that transparency is a value-laden concept that in practice often privileges the relatively white and affluent while designating others as opaque and therefore dangerous (Hall 2015).

2. As banal as thermostats and climate control systems might appear, those without access to them face greater health risks, especially in extreme weather situations (Rogot et al. 1992; Poulter 2012), and reliance on them could contribute greatly to costly energy expenditures and destructive climate change (Oatman 2015; Rosenthal and Lehren 2012).

3. As evidence that not everyone is as compliant, a number of websites offer suggestions for hacking standard thermostats to afford a wider range of user discretion over temperature settings (e.g., Henry 2013).

4. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice changed its policy to require federal agents to obtain a warrant before deploying Stingray devices, but this policy change does not apply to local or state police forces (Fandos 2015).

5. This trend can be witnessed with related applications like Apple's iBeacon, which allows businesses to identify, track, and advertise to potential customers through their mobile phones (Ranger 2014).