The New Transparency Project, as part of its international cyber-surveillance workshop, is issuing a call for annotated bibliographies around issues pertinent to their workshop. Again, given that issues concerning cyber-surveillance likely resonate with readers of this space, I wanted to alert you to this call. These bibliographies are meant to serve as a resource for those attending the May 12-15 workshop in 2011 at the University of Toronto. The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2010. Such submissions should be a maximum length of 500 words, and acceptance notifications will be issued by September 30, 2010. The authors (at least three) invited to prepare annotated bibliographies will each be paid $2000 (Cnd.) in two equal instalments. The first upon acceptance of the assignment, and the balance upon the bibliography’s satisfactory completion. The full call follows below:

Digitally Mediated Surveillance: From the Internet to Ubiquitous Computing

Digitally mediated surveillance (cyber-surveillance) is a growing and increasingly controversial aspect of every-day life in ‘advanced’ societies. Governments, corporations and even individuals are deploying digital techniques as diverse as social networking, video analytics, data-mining, wireless packet sniffing, RFID skimming, yet relatively little is known about actual practices and their implications. It is now over 15 years since the advent of the World Wide Web, and of widespread use of the Internet for electronic commerce, electronic government and social networking. The impending emergence of the ‘Internet of things’ promises (or threatens) to further insinuate digital surveillance capabilities into the fabric of daily life. Media alarmists have fueled a general popular understanding that one’s life is an open book when one goes online, making one increasingly subject to unwelcome intrusions. The reality is more complex and contingent on a variety of technological, institutional, legal and cultural factors.

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