A laptop with its webcam taped over. Image: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0 CC BY-SA 4.0 During the past five years, a trend has emerged that can be spotted in most cafés, libraries and corporate headquarters – the covering up of cameras on our personal devices. Once deemed a paranoid precaution, placing a sticker or tape over cameras on our laptops, tablets and even smartphones has now become a relatively commonplace measure. Over a third of Americans now cover up at least some of the cameras on the devices they own, according to a survey published by YouGov last year. The webcam sticker’s rise to ubiquity can be traced back to Edward Snowden’s NSA-leaks in the summer of 2013, after which an unprecedented public discussion of digital surveillance and privacy took place. Among the headlines were stories of how Edward Snowden and Mark Zuckerberg put stickers on their webcams, which led to a decline in public trust in the little eye above our screens. It was the first time that reports were published on how the American intelligence service, with its GUMFISH plug-in, could monitor people by hijacking their webcams. Since then, the webcam sticker has become a symbol for a growing distrust with technology and our attempt to uphold a sense of privacy. It has come to represent a physical means of protection against an unknown evil in tools we use everyday.
Last month, a landmark piece of privacy regulation came into effect in the European Union, which could have wide-reaching implications not just for how our data is used online but also for our privacy. Several years in the making, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) arrives only months after the Cambridge Analytica revelations. Both news stories have – in each their own way – thrown new light on how little control we have over our data and devices. An extensive 2014 Pew Research survey revealed that there is a widespread sense of powerlessness over digital privacy: while 74% of Americans believe that being in control of their data is very important to them, only 9% feel like they have “a lot” of control over how much information is collected about them online. Is there any hope that we might regain a sense of trust and empowerment, or are we heading towards total alienation and apathy?
3 things about this photo of Zuck:
Camera covered with tape
Mic jack covered with tape
Email client is Thunderbird pic.twitter.com/vdQlF7RjQt
