TY - GEN
T1 - “You Gotta Watch What You Say”: Surveillance of Communication with Incarcerated People
T2 - 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Making Waves, Combining Strengths, CHI 2021
AU - Owens, Kentrell
AU - Cobb, Camille
AU - Cranor, Lorrie Faith
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank our study participants for making this work possible. We would like to thank Jay Aronson, The Pennsylvania Prison Society, Families Outside, the Prison Policy Initiative, and Abigail Marsh for supporting this study and its goals. We would also like to thank Sandy Kaplan, Os Keyes, the University of Washington Security & Privacy Lab, and our anonymous paper reviewers for their helpful feedback in the writing process. This project was supported in part by the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security (CUPS) Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University and a gift from CyLab.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 ACM.
PY - 2021/5/6
Y1 - 2021/5/6
N2 - Surveillance of communication between incarcerated and non-incarcerated people has steadily increased, enabled partly by technological advancements. Third-party vendors control communication tools for most U.S. prisons and jails and ofer surveillance capabilities beyond what individual facilities could realistically implement. Frequent communication with family improves mental health and post-carceral outcomes for incarcerated people, but does discomfort about surveillance afect how their relatives communicate with them? To explore this and the understanding, attitudes, and reactions to surveillance, we conducted 16 semi-structured interviews with participants who have incarcerated relatives. Among other fndings, we learn that participants communicate despite privacy concerns that they felt helpless to address. We also observe inaccuracies in participants' beliefs about surveillance practices. We discuss implications of inaccurate understandings of surveillance, misaligned incentives between end-users and vendors, how our fndings enhance ongoing conversations about carceral justice, and recommendations for more privacy-sensitive communication tools.
AB - Surveillance of communication between incarcerated and non-incarcerated people has steadily increased, enabled partly by technological advancements. Third-party vendors control communication tools for most U.S. prisons and jails and ofer surveillance capabilities beyond what individual facilities could realistically implement. Frequent communication with family improves mental health and post-carceral outcomes for incarcerated people, but does discomfort about surveillance afect how their relatives communicate with them? To explore this and the understanding, attitudes, and reactions to surveillance, we conducted 16 semi-structured interviews with participants who have incarcerated relatives. Among other fndings, we learn that participants communicate despite privacy concerns that they felt helpless to address. We also observe inaccuracies in participants' beliefs about surveillance practices. We discuss implications of inaccurate understandings of surveillance, misaligned incentives between end-users and vendors, how our fndings enhance ongoing conversations about carceral justice, and recommendations for more privacy-sensitive communication tools.
KW - Communication
KW - Ict
KW - Prison
KW - Privacy
KW - Surveillance
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85106743453&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85106743453&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3411764.3445055
DO - 10.1145/3411764.3445055
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85106743453
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
BT - CHI 2021 - Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 8 May 2021 through 13 May 2021
ER -