COMPETENCIAS CLAVES

Two tendencies, (1) the increase in personal information, and (2) the facilitation of the distribution, and revelation of personal information, which underline most of the issues concerning privacy, will be discussed. A basic understanding of these tendencies will prove invaluable for understanding the effects on privacy caused by lifelog technology.

4.2.1.1 Increase in personal information

One of the reasons as to why lifelogs generate idiosyncratic challenges is the manner in which they gather data, which can lead to unprecedented amounts of personal information being available digitally. There are five ways in which lifelogs can increase personal information:

1) Lifelogging devices lessen the effort needed to create personal data about oneself or others. Unlike many other devices capturing similar kinds of data, lifelog devices and applications capture this information automatically, such as the Vicon Revue or the Narrative Clip. The pictures they can take, which can reach a staggering number of 3000 a day, exist for the sole purpose of lifelogging. For instance, taking a photo using a smartphone requires a

9. Limited Government: Privacy rights against government demand that state power is limited and unobtrusive, as liberal democracy requires.

10. Toleration: Privacy rights demand that government tolerate differences among individuals and groups. 11. Autonomy: An aspect of liberty, privacy fosters the development and exercise of autonomy.

12. Individualism: Privacy fosters individualism, and it is not fairly condemned as a purely individualistic value at odds with ideals of a cooperative, efficient democratic community” (Allen 2012, 5-6).

82

set of actions that can be avoided when using lifelogging devices: typically when using the camera on a smartphone, one first has to locate one’s phone, position it in one’s hands, unlock it, activate the camera, point the camera and then one can press a button to snap the picture. Cameras such as Narrative Clip or the Vicon Revue only require activation and deployment once, and after that they capture data autonomously.

2) Some data sources are created solely for the purposes of lifelogging. This is most evident with devices that are developed exclusively for this, such as the aforementioned Vicon Revue and Narrative Clip. In addition, data can also be harvested from sources that are already currently available, and sometimes firmly embedded into society, but which are not initially designed to provide the user with information about their past. These data sources were originally designed and primarily used for other purposes than lifelogging, and their usefulness to lifelogs is only a by-product. Data sources are suitable insofar as their data can convey information about the lifelogger or the environment in which he is situated when lifelogging. As more devices create digital data suitable for lifelogging, and more activities take place on the WWW leaving digital traces, more devices become suited to the purposes of lifelogging. Indeed, in order to create lifelogs, existing devices might suffice and no

additional data sources may need to be developed.46 Yet some existing data sources are not

yet exploited to convey personal information about an individual. For instance, energy consumption in the home reveals significant information about someone’s lifestyle, but is not

used for these purposes.47 To transform a device into a lifelogging device, some devices will

require modification. For different reasons, the smartphone is a likely candidate to become a lifelogging device (this is more extensively explained in 2.3.1 Brief history and current state

of lifelogs). Transforming a smartphone into a lifelogging device can be as simple as

installing an application. Already lifelog applications are available for the smartphone. 3) Lifelogs can create novel information from existing data by processing data, e.g. augmenting data with semantic meaning to improve information retrieval. For instance, if one captures photos in an archive, but one cannot query the content of the photos, the archive

46 _{For instance, for voice, location, image, movement and body signals a wide range of sensor devices is at hand,}

including dictaphones, smartphones, digital cameras, heart rate monitors, and other wearable devices that enable us to record these types of signals. Also digital or non-wearable devices can deliver information to lifelogs. Existing data such as search queries, e-mails, visited websites, financial transactions, and domestic energy meter readings can be equally useful as contributing to lifelogs.

47 _{By processing data from energy meter readings one can discover living patterns, e.g. the times and}

83

would be of little use as an automated biography as it would become too burdensome to retrieve relevant information. Suppose one is looking to retrieve the name and location of a restaurant in which one had lunch with an acquaintance a couple of months ago. Sifting through a collection of photos would be time consuming and impractical. Allowing search queries, such as using terms from human language, e.g. ‘lunch’ or ‘Dublin 1’, demands the augmentation of lifelog data with semantic meaning. Instead of having only a photo, one would need tools to dissect information from the photo. Instead of just collecting and storing data, developers need to quantify and qualify data to improve information retrieval, so that the lifelog becomes more useful to the average lifelogger. In doing so, lifelogs can increase the amount of personal information digitally available, even when lifelogs would only use existing data.

4) The processing of data from different data sources taken together allows for the creation of more information than one could have obtained from individual data sources

processed separately.48 By collecting data from different sources, such as adding GPS

coordinates and recorded Bluetooth signals to photo images, lifelogs can offer more exact information about a person than these data sources could reveal separately (Byrne et al. 2007). The collection of data by lifelogs provides unprecedented possibilities for gathering a depth and variety of (personal) information untenable when using the data sources separately. Again, even when lifelogs only collect data that exist irrespectively of lifelog technology, the fact that lifelog technology brings together several sources of data makes it possible to retrieve more information than when processing data sources separately.

5) The lifelog technology most likely requires duplicates of existing data. Unless the lifelog only uses devices especially created for the lifelog, such as wearable cameras, to create the lifelog, data from several sources need to be copied and transferred to the lifelog. For example, instead of having data from smart energy meters on the internal storage of the meter or in a cloud from the company offering smart meters, these data are also stored within the lifelog. As a result, a larger quantity of personal data is available digitally.

48 _{Capturing can improve by combining sources of data. Some lifelogging devices can react to their environment}

when combining sources of information. The Vicon Revue combines the data from an accelerometer, a magnetometer, an infrared motion detector, a light colour and intensity sensor, a temperature sensor and a 3 megapixel sensor. This information can be found at: http://viconrevue.com/product.html. By using sensors which sense different conditions of the physical world, they can detect new situations of potential interest as a cue to start taking photos.

84

Conclusion: Lifelogs can increase the amount of personal information in at least five

different ways: (1) they lessen the effort needed to gather data; (2) they can be a reason to transform devices with the purpose of creating personal information or develop novel devices; (3) lifelogs create novel personal information to improve information retrieval; (4) the bundling of data sources enhances the ability to create personal information; (5) lifelogs could require duplicates of existing information.

4.2.1.2 Facilitating the revelation and distribution of data

The digitising of personal information can have far-reaching consequences relevant to privacy as it determines both what information can be disclosed as well as distributed. Five ways are presented in which lifelogs influence the flow of information.

1) First of all, the centralisation of information facilitates the retrieval in the sense that it is accessible without having to go through different platforms. A well-functioning lifelog gathers and organises data in a way one can retrieve the information about aspects of one’s past without much effort. Digital storage can lessen the effort necessary to retrieve

information: for instance, there is no need to visit one’s parent’s house to retrieve some photo albums. Even in the digital realm, in which one may have to use different platforms to access data, e.g. web-based email services, social networking sites, e-banking websites, online medical records, lifelogs facilitate access to personal information, as one only has to access a single platform, the lifelog, that contains all this information. The concentration of

information lessens the resources and time required for retrieval.

2) The second consequence of lifelogging is that temporal limitations to distribution of personal information are alleviated in several ways. Unlike analogue archives in the possession of governmental agencies or public institutions, lifelogs have no closing times. Especially when lifelogs are stored on clouds, i.e. available through a network most typically the Internet, they become accessible at any moment from anywhere with a decent Internet connection. Temporal limitations are also alleviated with regard to the gathering of data. Sensors function around the clock, and there are sensing devices that can capture data at any time of the day. Finally, and maybe most importantly, unlike analogue sources such as print, digital data does not decay. Compared with previous information technologies, such as hard copy print, the duration of ordinary digital information is extended drastically (Mayer- Schönberger 2009). Mayer-Schönberger (2009, 56) mentions that digital data can be stored on any device with sufficient and accessible digital storage, and shared without any loss of

85

quality in contrast to analogue copies that often suffer from huge losses of information when being duplicated.49

3) The third point here is that spatial limitations to distribution are being alleviated. By using servers connected to the Internet, personal information can be accessed from anywhere and distributed to anywhere. Internet connections most likely will only further proliferate in the foreseeable future. In addition, devices equipped with sensors are becoming increasingly portable, sophisticated and connected. As a result, one can obtain data in remote areas or under unfavourable conditions. So information can be created virtually anywhere as well as accessed from and distributed to anywhere. Moreover, the storage of this information requires less physical storage space than is needed when storing hard copy paper files. There may barely even be a need to physically possess personal storage space because cloud storage allows the storage of the main body of information on distant servers.

4) Fourthly, data gathering devices have become more ubiquitous. An increasing amount of portable devices (such as smartphones and other wearable devices) as well as devices embedded in the environment (such as ambient intelligent devices) are becoming suitable for lifelogging. This means that a growing number of devices produce information that can reveal some information about the lifelogger or others in his or her environment. Moreover, more activities are carried out online, producing a trail of data that is suitable for lifelogs. It becomes increasingly difficult to find aspects of life that are or can be completely guarded from being captured digitally.

5) Finally, also networking technology has become more pervasive. Lower prices for storage, processors, and Internet connections, will facilitate the use of lifelogs and increase the availability of digital information. The devices needed to create or access lifelogs will

49 _{There are, however, a few remarks to be made which might prove important to the durability. File formats}

change so a format can become outdated while the ability to read or convert it might not be available. The piece of data would be identical to what it was but ultimately becomes useless. Moreover, even though hard drives might last for years they will fail at some point in time. If storage space is damaged and there are no back-ups available, then data is lost. Although more digital information seems to be stored for longer when it is digitised, in extraordinary situations analogue data has been conserved for centuries and millennia. For example, a Madonna painted on canvas has been dated back to the 13th _{century (Time Magazine 1955) and the Etruscans}

left behind a book that is dated back to 600 BC (BBC 2003). It is questionable if digital information would be preserved for this amount of time. The infrastructure and knowhow to read and recognise a hard drive as something that stores information might disappear in time. Someone who finds the remains of a computer in the distant future might not recognise it as such. A book or a painting has remained recognisable as such for millennia. Even though we are unable to read the Etruscan book, we are aware that it is a book storing some kind of information. Hence, although more information might last longer during, data might remain less durable than some exceptional pieces of analogue information.

86

become increasingly available. After all, lifelogs can be created by only using the Internet and a smartphone. Increased access to these things facilitates the creation, spread, and duplication of lifelog information.

Conclusion: These five tendencies allow one to lifelog at anytime and anywhere and

to access and share information from anywhere at any time with little burden to either the sharer or the person accessing this information. Moreover, it facilitates the creation of duplicates. Indeed, because of these tendencies digital data can proliferate.