Week 3 - Self Tracking Privacy And Autonomy

Question 1

What can we measure through self-tracking apps?

Answer 1

Biometric data (calories, pulse, blood pressure, glucose levels, temperature, menstrual cycle etc.), states (mood, sleep, active, fertile), behaviour/ activity (steps, sleeping patterns, miles, productivity, efficiency, spending patterns, sexual activity, social activity), miscellaneous (pictures, music, films, books, geo-location etc.)

Question 2

What is the conceptual tension that exists in self-tracking?

Answer 2

One the one hand; disclosing personal information will empower you, and thus increase autonomy. On the other hand; privacy is a key condition for leading an autonomous life.

Question 3

When is collecting data empowering?

Answer 3

Collecting data is empowering when it is for yourself, it stops being so when it is shared because privacy is a key condition for leading an autonomous life

Question 4

Which are the three dimensions of privacy?

Answer 4

Decisional, informational and local

Question 5

What is informational privacy?

Answer 5

Control access: being able to have reasonable expectations and control over who has access to your information and to what extent (Westin 1967). Necessary for autonomous self-presentation in different social contexts.

Question 6

What is decisional privacy?

Answer 6

E.g. right to abortion in the US. Being able to have reasonable expectations and control over who can interfere with your decisions and actions.

Question 7

What are privacy norms?

Answer 7

Common, dynamic, social rules of behaviour and social expectations about what we share with whom and in what context (Nissenbaum 2009). They enable you to maintain different social relations.

Question 8

What are the techno-norms?

Answer 8

1. Sharing is rewarded and encouraged (others cheer you on)
2. Gamification: exercise is a competition with (known) others (badges, awards, ranking)
3. Nudges you to collect data: waterproof, unobtrusive/ invisible
4. Fitness data is not viewed as medical data

Question 9

Hypernudging =

Answer 9

The algorithmic real-time personalization and reconfiguration of choice architectures based on large aggregates of (personal) data.

Question 10

Nudge =

Answer 10

A form of choice-architecture that changes the behaviour of people in a predictable way without forbidding any other options or changing their economic incentives. Libertarian paternalism. Psychological mechanisms/ manipulative.

Question 11

Name an example of tracking that has become a liability?

Answer 11

Clue period tracking, conceive and pregnancy apps became a liability after roe v wade got overturned.

Question 12

Where has the increase in public-private partnerships come from? Why are they dangerous?

Answer 12

Tech expertise makes that its impossible to go around big tech companies. There’s always a chance of danger with these partnerships because companies have different goals (profit) than those of the public. Big tech has increasingly infiltrated the health sphere, they’ve become unavoidable and even more so since corona.

Question 13

What are the risks of big tech expansionism?

Answer 13

1. No public returns.
2. Dominance: changing values and practices, tech experts vs. health care professionals.
3. New dependencies: dependency on data, expertise, technological infrastructure.

Question 14

Which are the positives and which are the negatives of self-tracking?

Answer 14

Positives: adequate method to shed light on particular aspects of oneself & can be used to strengthen one’s autonomy. Self-knowledge, self-improvement, self-control.

Negatives: often cancel out these benefits by exposing too much about oneself to an unspecified audience, thus undermining the informational privacy boundaries necessary for living an autonomous life

Question 15

The Quantified Self/ quantification of the self =

Answer 15

a means to grasp insights about one’s self based on objective data, generated by quantifying aspects of yourself with the assistance of digital devices and applications that measure aspects of one’s body and activities.

Question 16

Which types of […]veillance does self-tracking entail?

Answer 16

Self-surveillance, co-veillance and surveillance.

Question 17

Why is the fostering of decontextualization through self-tracking culture problematic from a privacy perspective?

Answer 17

Because the culture of self-tracking breaks down informational privacy boundaries that otherwise enable autonomous self-presentation within different social contexts.

Question 18

Quantified Self-Movement (QSM) =

Answer 18

an expansive self-tracking community founded in 2007 by Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf

Question 19

What is the biggest difference and/or concern between medical date shared with a doctor and medical data tracked on an app?

Answer 19

A patient [with a doctor] can rely on legal protection, informed consent, codes of conduct, social norms, even the physical boundaries such as the structure of the physician’s office as a closed-off space. With self-tracking these boundaries are difficult to enforce because they are completely lacking or not yet adapted.

Question 20

Prosumers =

Answer 20

Self-trackers are prosumers. They produce data and mutually consume each other’s data.