Project Abstract
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As technology advances at a phenomenal pace, society is becoming immersed in a world dependent on computer infrastructures, technology and the internet to perform both complex & trivial tasks. With this shift towards a digital world, governments, corporations and institutions are without a doubt gaining additional powers to survey the personal activities and habits of the global population. Because of this technilogical progression, large databases and the sharing of data between organisations has become a frequent occurrence on a both a local and global scale. Individual’s privacy and personally identifiable information is inevitably being compromised.
The Unveillance Cube therefore challenges the utilisation of surveillance techniques. As an anti-surveillance installation it was formed to raise awareness of digital surveillance by unveiling surveillance within institutional networks. This particular installation visualises The University of Plymouth’s (UOP) network usage and is performed within the university campus, thus providing spectators the opportunity to experience this typically sensitive and close guarded information.
The project itself is programmed in Visual Basics and is performed using a standard UOP laptop which is one of the technologies that enables the extensive surveillance of individuals on the university network. The project rearranges this technology creating an inverted surveillance application, transforming the state of the laptop from one of a watching nature into a performance apparatus.
The performance aspect of the installation is dynamically driven by processing live data from the university network traffic logs. Utilising the previous 24 hours activity the processing algorithm provides an audio-visual experience to the viewer through the use of 160 LEDs and 3 onboard sounds, transferring this data into an understandable form of which the spectator can engage with. This process transforms the data into a tangible object which reflects the extent of surveillance taking place within the university.
Exhibiting the Unveillance Cube
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Well today went pretty well, after spending a few hours showing off the unveillance cube in the Scott building on the university campus i received a few good comments from both passers buy and lecturers.
The initial setup and running went very smooth, the Internet connected well and maintaining a stable connection. The darkness of the room worked out to be better than was first expected, however, in hindsight a darker location would be slightly better as the cube would display much more vivid colours. This should be achievable in the final assessment on the 29th of May.
UOP Research
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While starting to plan my presentation one aspect of the project that was lacking in hard evidence was the extent of surveillance that the university employees.
I mentioned a couple of months ago that the universities online policies stated that individuals activity and emails were logged, so i needed to find out exactly what information gave them access to such information.
After contacting a member of staff within the Information and Communication Technology department i was able to get a clear definition of the data which is logged.
According to the source The University records the following:
User Logins to all University owned workstations
- User ID / Logon Name
- Date
- Time
- Workstation
In my opinion this gives the university a great deal of information. Not only do they know who logged into specific machine, they can accurately pinpoint your location to he exact building and room number and even the desk that you are sitting on.
Furthermore website activity is also logged, this includes both users utilising University owned workstations and for even individuals logged on to the network via Eduroam or the VPN service. Surveyed details include:
- Visited URL’s
- IP address
- Date and Time.
The correlation between IP address and user login is then provided by recording a third data set obtained from DHCP activity. This data includes:
- IP address
- Workstation ID
- Date and Time
This information quickly highlights the extensiveness of the UOP surveillance just relating to online activities. If further research were to be carried out i would expect to find some more scary facts where emails are concerned.
Live Demo in Scott Buidling 18th May
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For anyone following this blog, the Unveillance Cube will be running on Monday the 18th of May from 9:30am - 12ish. The location is the Scott building just inside the ground floor doors nearest to the Roland Levinski building.
All welcome.
RRD Files Successfully Transferring, Converting and Being Processed!
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So after many weeks or battling with server issues, file transfers and other small niggles the UOP Network Traffic data is now being processed. The data is now passed from the university network server to the iDAT server and fetched to my server where it is converted and processed to provide the relevant information to run the cube visualisations.
Big thanks to Bogdan Ghita and Chris Saunders for making most of this possible.
Visual Explanation
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Although the projects is very simple to look at aesthetically, understanding the process and concept behind the scenes is probably one of the hardest points to convey and in such a short space of time.
Above you can see a simplified diagram which will be printed full size A3 and positioned appropriately within the installation. The reason i have taken this approach is that it simplifies the narration of the project. Breaking each section down into smaller segments whilst linking them together in a structed form. With the labels and additional keys provided, the user can understand further without having to read masses of text.
Choosing a name
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The name of the project is crucial. Creating a name whereby the user can instantly get a feel for the project is a must due to is simplicity. It needs to be a combination of relevant keywords relating directly to the project.
To begin this thought process I started with the obvious keywords. The following steps required me to look for at alternative words with a distinctive similar meaning.
Surveillance:
eagle eye, eye, inspection, spying, supervision, surveyance, tab, tap, track, vigil, vigilance, watch
Visualise:
bring to mind, create, envisage, envision, reflect, view, vision
Reveal/Show:
appear, disclose, display, indicate, reveal, unveil, bare, disclose, expose, uncover, unmask
Some of the strongest ideas:
Unveilance Cube - Unveiling Surveilance
Cubeance - Surveillance Cube
Revube - A Revealing cube
Observacube- Observation Cube
To be continued….
UOP Laptop Acquired!
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Yesterday after a few meetings with Dennis and Bob from the Babbage I.T desk, I’ve finally managed to get my hands on a University of Plymouth Laptop. This now completes the circle with my idea making it much more conceptually tight.
As this is one of the machines that many of the students and lecturers have access to on a daily basis, it is also one of the methods which gives the university access to our personal browsing activity.
Video Footage
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Below you will see some of the most recent footage of my project in action. Currently the video is displaying a visualisation algorithm which I produced a few weeks back so still has a few tweaks and changes before making it the final version.
The next step is to continue refining the visualisation and include sound which will also be linked to the data. Initial thoughts are to use the system “Click sound” as this will tie in perfectly with the data relating to user activity.
Building Complete!!
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Finally after over a month in the planning and production my project is complete, well complete in the physical sense in that I only need to refine the programming of the light within the box (plus i need to drill a hole for the cable, to allow the back door to be attached).
Below you can see a shot of the box in a dark environment.
As you can see the colour intensity really works well and the distribution of light within the box is more than I ever anticipated.
