Location: Student Innovation Hall, 1600
Bio: Karen Levy is a research fellow at New York University’s Information Law Institute and the Data and Society Research Institute; beginning in fall 2016, she will be an assistant professor of Information Science at Cornell University and associated faculty at Cornell Law School. Dr. Levy researches how law and technology interact to regulate social life, with particular focus on social and organizational aspects of surveillance. Much of her research analyzes the use of monitoring for social control in various contexts, from long-haul trucking to intimate relationships. She is also interested in how data collection uniquely impacts, and is contested by, marginalized people. Dr. Levy holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University and a J.D. from Indiana University Maurer School of Law.
“Beating the Box: Resistance to Electronic Surveillance in the U.S. Trucking Industry”
How and why do people resist (perceived or actual) invasions of their privacy? Empirically, we know relatively little about resistance practices, and we lack developed theoretical frameworks to help us understand how and why it occurs. But resistance is fast becoming an important focus for scholarly attention, as surveillance becomes more pervasive, wholesale opt-out becomes less feasible, and circumvention strategies are criminalized. This paper takes a grounded approach to developing new theoretical and empirical knowledge about resistance to surveillance, based on an in-depth ethnographic study of digital monitoring in the United States trucking industry. I discover a wide range of resistance practices truckers use to foil regulatory and organizational surveillance of their work behaviors – ranging from material interventions to creative data manipulations, organizational strategies to collaborative evasion tactics that enlist seemingly disinterested third parties. These strategies reveal a variety of motivations for resistance action, shed light on the shortcomings of digital law enforcement, and contribute to our theoretical understanding of resistance to surveillance.
Details:
April 14th
1:00-2:00