As part of The Agenda, The Times's look at major issues facing the next administration, we have been examining the trade-offs, more than a decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, between security and privacy and civil liberties. Some readers have written in about the electronic data trail that all of us leave as we go about our lives, using the Internet and carrying smartphones.
Heidi Boghosian, a New Yorker and author of a book on surveillance scheduled for publication next year, “Spying on Democracy: A Short History of Government/Corporate Collusion in the Technology Age,†agreed to try to document her own data trail on one recent day. Her account, below, is nothing extraordinary â€" and that's the point. It is impossible to live in urban, wired America without leaving clues about ourselves, our movements and our views everywhere. And it is all but impossible to be certain who is looking at the resulting data or video and how much of it is accessible to federal, state or local government.
Ms. Boghosian is executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, a group of self-described radical lawyers and law students founded in 1937, and between her day job and her book research, she thinks far more than most people about surveillance and privacy. But the exercise of documenting her day was nonetheless informative, she said.
“Definitely, for me, going through the process reinforced my sense of the role corporations play in our daily lives,†she said. “And I don't think most people realize the extent to which corporations cooperate in turning over personal information to the government.â€
Here is the record she made:
A Day of Surveillance:
(1) 8:30 a.m.: Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) in hallway permits private landlord to monitor departure of tenant from apartment building at 173 Avenue A, New York, N.Y. A sign is poste d alerting tenants that their actions are being monitored.
(2) City-owned video surveillance camera, mounted atop a streetlight pole, records pedestrian and vehicular traffic on corner of Avenue A and 11th Street.
(3) 9:45 a.m.: Internet Protocol-based, closed-circuit television CCTV/video surveillance camera at Chase Bank A.T.M. on Second Avenue and 10th Street records clear image of person withdrawing money. I.P. video surveillance footage probably transmitted to a central monitoring room and digitally stored (allowing for advanced search techniques), or viewed over the Internet. Intelligent I.P. cameras with video analytics such as motion sensors, facial recognition and behavioral recognition are used to identify abnormal activity in and around banking locations.
(4) 10 a.m.: Customer Loyalty Card at East Village coffee shop Café Pick Me Up, Avenue A and 9th Street, likely allow the business to track and predict customer spending habits.
(5) 10:30 a.m.: iPhone (with G.P.S. tracking) in owner's back pocket allows phone owner's movement and location to be tracked (by government, if cellphone provider gives access) through day and evening, even if phone is turned off, as phone owner walks to Astor Place subway stop.
(6) 10:45 a.m.: Passed by “smart sign†(digital billboard with cameras that gauges demographics of passers-by) that delivers ads tailored to the demographics of the passer-by.
(7) 10:45 a.m.: CCTV in NY subway system monitor boarding #6 subway line to work.
(8) 11:11 a.m.: CCTV in elevator records ride to ninth-floor office in office building. Building security guard has four cameras behind front desk showing elevator, stairways and hallways.
(9) 11:20 a.m.: Facebook software tracks user activities on sites on Internet after logging in and reading a few comments. “Tag Suggestions†feature employs facial recognition technology and suggests name tags after uploading photos.
< p>(10) 11:30 a.m.: Cookies on Internet monitor all Internet searches throughout day on range of subjects; ads appear on screen related to items purchased on line (athletic shoes, face cream).(11) 1 p.m.: Credit card at Macy's Department store, used for quick purchase, has embedded RFID (Radio Frequency ID) chip, tracking consumer spending habits and providing that information to big business.
(12) 1:15 p.m.: Shoes in Macy's new shoe store all have RFID chips (unique identifier linked to database) in them.
(13) 1:30 p.m. Downloaded iTunes onto iPhone. Online music providers may share personal information with third parties.
(14) 2 p.m.: Video cameras and motion detectors in local supermarket track physical movements of customers (allegedly to aim for improved customer service) as customer drops in to pick up some fruit for lunch.
(15) 2:30 p.m.: Social security number and driver's license information, required by Fulton Street Verizon cellular s tore winds up in Verizon's digital database, as customer switches from AT&T. Allegedly needed Social Security number to conduct credit check even though customer has had a landline account with Verizon for many years.
(16) 3:30 p.m.: I.P. address may have been included on a bar code on a digital coupon while registering for at hotelcoupons.com to get a discount hotel deal.
(17) 4 p.m.: Continuous, systematic desktop monitoring surveillance of personal use of business computer to access site to order shoes could have been conducted had employer installed software to monitor my real time actions, purportedly to avoid discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits that may result from inappropriate e-mails sent within company.
(18) 6 p.m.: Dropped by anti-fracking protest on West 14th Street. Unmarked police van with tinted windows probably had NYPD Technical Assistance Response Unit (TARU) personnel recording protest activities, especially because several Occu py protesters were present. TARU provides investigative technical equipment and tactical support to all N.Y.P.D. bureaus and also provides assistance to other city, state and federal agencies. The unit employs several forms of computer forensics.
(19) 7:30 p.m.: CCTV cameras inside East Village restaurant while meeting friend for dinner after the protest.
(20) 9:30 p.m.: Surveillance cameras on several buildings passed on way home is captured on tape.
(21) 10 p.m.: Final check of Gmail, and a few Google searches, allow Google to collect even more data on consumer habits and personal interests.
