COOKIES
THE SURVEILLANCE ISSUE
EDITORIAL TEXT - LANA DALLE
Privacy: a human right? They’ve always said that money can’t buy you love or friendship, but money apparently cannot buy you privacy anymore these days. The recent naked pictures leak of numerous female celebrities is still fresh in our minds, as the incident is already called ‘the biggest nude photo hacking scandal ever’. All these pictures and videos are still to be found on numerous websites, and it’s sad to conclude that they are probably there to stay. These young women are living in the lap of luxury, and yet with all the power they possess, they cannot prevent the hacking and spreading of their intimate pictures and/ or videos online. Is privacy on the internet really a thing of the past?
‘Is Big Brother watching us? And who is He?‘
If it can happen to celebrities, everyone’s vulnerable to it. This recent celeb incident is just one side of the story of privacy abuse in 2014. These privacy violations can easily happen to anyone using any form of technology. With our ‘title magazine’ crew, we dug deeper into the issue of hacking: how and why? How do regular people we cross on the street handle their privacy settings on the internet and their smartphone? How do people react on the possibilities of being hacked? What are their experiences and is it as easy as it seems to be nowadays? How much privacy do we really have on social media and cloud services?
Editor in chief Lana Dalle
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Reporters Eva Coolman Lana Dalle Liz Kappert Kirsten Plucker Leen Van Melkebeke
The recent hacking scandal, that up to this day still hasn’t got its closure, as new victims of celebrities are named almost every week, should be a wake up call for everyone using the internet. And especially everyone who has trusted their most intimate aspects of privacy into the hands of major companies like Apple, Facebook, Snapchat and Google. It’s not safe. All these recent privacy violations being covered in the media as something normal and inevitable, can’t help but make us wonder whether this behavior was meant to happen. Could it have been foreseen? Was George Orwell right in 1949 on his prediction on surveillance in the future, apart from the fact that he was just three decades wrong? Is Big Brother really watching us? And who is He? The inhabitants of Oceania in the famous science fiction novel Nineteen EightyFour, by George Orwell published in 1949, were watched and listened to at any time. Sounds familiar? Welcome to 2014.
Hacking - how and why? Internet security is the main topic of this magazine. In this video we discuss how hacking works. Watch our video here!
Video Crew Simon Karlsson Hanna Meyer Thuestad Stefan Hagen Tino Oksanen
Layout Lana Dalle Tino Oksanen Leen Van Melkebeke
Cover Photo Stefan Hagen
OPINION FILM REVIEW
The fight against Slut Shaming TEXT - LEEN VAN MELKEBEKE (c) LIORAKPHOTOGRAPHY
‘If Jennifer Lawrence and all those other celebrities didn’t want those nude pictures to be shared with the entire world, they shouldn’t have taken them.’ That is how the world responded a couple of weeks ago when over a hundred naked pictures of female celebrities were leaked on the internet. I say leaked, but I mean stolen. Breaking into a person’s own, private account goes further than invading their privacy. It is a federal crime. However, the hacker who did this shameful thing was not the only one who felt the wrath of the online and real world. The fact that these women made intimate pictures of themselves in the privacy of their own homes, seemed way more scandalous and outrageous to a lot of people. The online community has been slut shaming Jennifer Lawrence,
in particular, ever since the pictures were spread. ‘She is a bad role model and a slut who should be ashamed of these pictures.’ No. She did nothing wrong by choosing to take nude pictures of herself and putting them on her personal cellphone. One can only hope she will find the silver lining after all of this. Even celebrities like comedian Ricky Gervais and New York Times columnist Nick Bilton are giving the bad example by putting the blame with the victims instead of with the criminal who stole their property. In this society it is hard enough for women to get equal treatment and not have to deal with double standards. Even writing this article, I realize I am guilty of this by using the term “Slut Shaming”, because none of these women are sluts to begin with. We should all start casting the shame where it really belongs.
‘Nobody understands the cloud, it’s a f***ing mystery!’ TEXT - LANA DALLE
Sex Tape (**) The dangers of the online hard-drive in the form of an innocent Hollywood comedy Determined to give their love live the boost it needs, Annie (played by Cameron Diaz) and Jay (played by Jason Segal) decide after having a few drinks to tape a video on their iPad while having sex. As the footage is automatically synced to iCloud, their film goes viral in no time. Sex Tape combines iPads, iCloud and sex to tease a much discussed issue about how cloud services work. It is remarkable that a lot of people have little grasp of how iCloud operates, what data is available where and who is able to see it - and yet, almost everyone keeps using it. The electronic devices referred to in Sex Tape clearly are all Apple, which is obviously the brand that has had the most cases of hacking. The recent leaking of private pictures of female celebrities sparked initial sug
gestions that Apple’s iCloud service had been compromised to access the images and leak them across the internet. Seeing this movie made it even more clear how relevant the issue of our private files stored on our devices and not being safe from hackers, actually is. Cloud computing obviously contains multiple flaws, and it is a method everyone should all be very careful with. Even though checking this movie out doesn’t require a lot of highly intellectual thinking, it does set one very particular thing in perspective: uploading files to the cloud is child’s play, whereas getting it back contains a whole other story. The question remains whether there will be a sequel to this movie… Will Cameron Diaz be the next in line of the celebrity victims that have had their intimate pictures or videos leaked all over the internet due to a flaw in the Cloud? Sex Tape is in theatres right now. SMOCKA 4/2014 3
IN DEPTH TEXT - KIRSTEN PLÜCKER
Facebook Messenger, Horrifying but Inescapable Chatting on Facebook was never a problem. Until a few months ago, when Facebook decided they wanted to be the most popular chatting app in the market. In order to do this, they had to develop an app that could be direct competition to Whatsapp or Telegram. So they developed Facebook Messenger. Facebook Messenger is an app that you can download, apart from your ‘normal’ Facebook app. If you think this is easier to work with, you’re wrong. And if you think that there’s nothing really different from the old function, you’re also wrong. Because what most people don’t know, is that with accepting the terms of agreement, Facebook has access to almost everything on your mobile phone. For in4 SMOCKA 4/2014
stance, they can use a device’s camera and/or microphone. This may include the ability to take pictures and videos, record audio and record video. And all of this without you knowing.
But the list is much longer. Facebook can use your location, send text messages and get unlimited access to your contacts, calendars and so forth. And all of this because they “want to optimize the user’s experience”. And what’s even more annoying is that Facebook almost forces you to download the app. Because without Messenger, there is no way to get access to your messages. In the screen where you normally read them, you can only find the Download Facebook Messenger-advertisement.
Also, if you haven’t downloaded the app, you constantly get a notification on your Facebook logo. And this isn’t because there is a new message for you. It’s a constant reminder that you must install the Messenger app. It’s such an aggressive way of asking their users to get Messenger, that most people just cave in and get the app out of frustration. Although the app gets a lot of negative reviews (one and a half star in the Apple store) and you get 84 million hits when Googling “How to avoid Facebook Messenger”, it’s not the question if Facebook will get what it want, but when. With 654 million daily mobile users, Facebook only needs 2,3 percent of their daily users to download Messenger, in order to be more popular than Telegram (15 million daily users).
IN DEPTH
Do we live in Orwell’s 1984? TEXT - KIRSTEN PLÜCKER
Currently there’s a lot going on about ‘privacy.’ As you might have noticed not a day goes by or there is some scandal that has to do something with this topic. Look at the revelations of Edward Snowden, or the iCloud nude pictures of celebrities. The older generation keeps referring to George Orwell’s book 1984, where ‘Big Brother is watching us.’ We have access to our own personal files, no matter where we are, and we can identify criminals much easier. So, did 1984 actually come true? And if so, is this a bad thing? First of all, what is privacy? Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren cited a formulation in their ground breaking 1890 paper on privacy. ‘This said that each
person has a sphere of existence and activity that properly belongs to that individual alone, where he or she should be free of constraint, coercion, and even uninvited observation.’ As we would say today, everyone needs his or her own “space.” According to Wikipedia ‘privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively.’ As you might see, there are many ways for an individual or a group to ‘express themselves selectively’, but not all the time. Surveillance is all around us, camera’s on train stations, fingerprints in airports or facial recognitions in shopping malls. The list goes on. While issues of ‘government surveillance’ and ‘public
manipulation’ are definitely things we encounter in the 21st century, there is one thing completely different from George Orwell’s book, where civilians were watched and listened to at any time. In Ninety Eight Four, the main character Winston Smith, doesn’t stand a chance against the system. What we seen nowadays is the fact that everybody can be a whistleblower. So, are we living Orwell’s 1984 nightmare? Of course there are delicate issues that need to be solved and surveillance needs to have boundaries. But I think we need to get rid of the idea that the government is responsible for our privacy. We are. We need to learn how to manage information, in order to be critical of the system.
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PHOTO DOCUMENTARY PHOTOS - EVA COOLMAN
‘I am not bothered about websites using cookies. It’s a great way to get advertisements that interest you. But I don’t think the internet is a safe place, so I try to minimize my personal data on it.”
LAURA - GERMANY - 19
MARCUS - SINGAPORE - 19 LAURA - GERMANY - 19 ‘I check my privacy settings on Facebook all the time. It became sort of an obsession to protect my online privacy, I am so scared of all the problems one stupid mistake can cause.’
Privacy and the internet: a bad marriage?
TINA- GERMANY - 18
‘I guess I am too nonchalant. I’m not worried about my privacy on the internet. This will probably only change once I have a bad experience with it.’
EMMA - BELGIUM - 20
‘I am really careful with the pictures I upload on Facebook. I do not put a lot of pictures on there, because I hate the fact that anyone, also people I do not know, can see my pictures.’
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PHOTO DOCUMENTARY
MICHAEL - UNITED KINGDOM - 66 ‘I have nothing to hide and therefore, I do not care about my privacy on the internet. I am a businessman and an honest one at that, so it does not impact me. I am not on social media, but I do understand why other people are worried about their privacy.’
FRANK - THE NETHERLANDS - 31 ‘I am not scared the government or advertising companies will get a look into my personal data, I am more scared of what an individual person can do with my information. That is why I am really careful with what I post online.’
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PETER - IRELAND - 35 ‘With all the stuff that happened recently, I started wondering how much privacy I really have. I think I might have less privacy than I thought I do. I have actually been thinking about starting to use tor to go online.’
PERCIVAL - UNITED STATES - 36 ‘I am a public figure in Germany. I am a known singer, but I am also known for being extremely honest. That is why I do not give a fuck about what I or the people who work for me put on the internet. There is no privacy on the internet.’
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REPORTAGE
24/7 surveillance in nursing homes TEXT - LIZ KAPPERT
A leading chain of care homes for older people is planning to offer CCTV cameras in residents’ rooms to help stop abuse, neglect and theft by staff. After dozens of incidents in big cities like London and Amsterdam, citizens are outraged and want to see solutions. A British survey has been filled in by over 5000 people, which shows that more than 80% would like to see CCTV in all the rooms of the patients in nursing homes. This CCTV would then be linked to one ‘guard’ and to the families at home. In 2013, the world learned more about the cruelty inflicted on a resident in one of Britain’s leading retirement homes. The daughter of the resident decided to put her own hidden camera in her mom’s room, who had been in the home for a year. The reasons were the small bruises found on her. The videotape showed a gruesome scene, where the elderly woman was hit multiple times. Also in The Netherlands, several cases of cruelty against patients in retirement homes have appeared. Some were purposely inflicted by the staff and some were accidental, because the staff wasn’t checking the rooms regularly.
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A debate has been going on about this topic and it seems like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Marianne, one of the leading nurses in a retirement home -who would like to stay anonymous-, told us that this debate has always been going, but now it is top priority. ‘As a hard working nurse it is sad to see that people on the outside only want to see the few cases where it went wrong, but don’t want to see all the good things we do. But it is our responsibility to take care of the elderly and their family, so maybe this is necessary.’ Marianne already had two days of training where they discussed the possibilities of having CCTV in all the affiliates of the company that she works for. ‘At first, the idea sounded good and safe, but you have to realize that this also means there will be no privacy. No privacy when these men and women are getting changed, no privacy when they want to get some sleep. We really have to consider whether this is worth it.’ If CCTV is ever installed in the retirement homes, it will be optional for families and never obligatory. There will also be a button so the family can switch the camera off, when they are for instance, on visitation. There will always be
a fear of the videos leaking or ending up in the wrong place, which would be devastating for the elderly and destructive for the image of the nursing home that they are in. ‘When talking about filming a room 24/7, it is clear that it comes with so many risks, just look at all the videos that are leaked every year. Although, elder people are far less interesting to leak a tape from, it still is something that is feared.’ It is clear that Marianne does not support CCTV, because of the lack of privacy for the elderly. In her opinion there is only one solution that can create safety and happiness. ‘Stop cutting back on healthcare. We used to work with a staff of six for sixteen elderly residents, now most of the time there are three of us. It is just too much work and everybody is stressed, both the staff and the patients. We have already cut back on everything that can be cut back on. It literally is a matter of life and death now.’ Whether CCTV will ever be installed in nursing homes remains the question, but it is clear that something has to change in order to secure the safety of these patients.