OPEN THE BOX

Citizen Ex Project by James Bridle, animation by Tactical Tech Every time you go online, you are connected through servers in different countries and jurisdictions. These virtual journeys are tracked, and your data, accurate or not, is stored around the globe. Citizen Ex is a browser plugin for Firefox, Chrome and Safari that reveals your ‘Algorithmic Citizenship’; in other words, it shows you what countries you appear to belong to, based on your travels online. The different virtual nationalities you take on may determine whether foreign intelligence agencies have the right to spy on your activities. Confessions of a Data Broker
Project & animation by Tactical Tech The buying, selling and analysing of our data is a massive industry, yet it is one we don’t know much about. Who are data brokers and how do they operate? This animation shows some of the findings from Tactical Tech’s anonymous interviews with those who buy and sell your data. In these off-the-record interviews, data brokers talked about whom they buy data from and how, which data is rubbish and which is gold, and how our data is turned into cash for a multi-billion-pound industry.

Data Anonymisation
 Animation by Tactical Tech How many times have companies claimed that they will anonymise your data? The suggestion of anonymisation is that it will promise us privacy if we give our data away. But how realistic is that promise? Through one case study using research into cabs in New York City, this animation shows how even anonymised data – if it is combined with data that’s already available in the wild – can easily be used to reveal who you are and where you go.

IC Watch Project by IC Watch, animation by Tactical Tech Many of us use social networking sites to find new jobs, get new clients or build new business relationships. In doing so, we share a lot of information about our personal and professional lives with a broad range of people that we will likely never meet. This visualisation focuses on the professional networking site LinkedIn, and illustrates how much it can show us about job-seekers and job-holders in one particular sector – in this case, the intelligence community. What can happen when information published for one purpose is used for another?

Inside Hacking Team
Project by Share Lab, animation by Tactical Tech We often hear about metadata – that is, data about data. Apart from the content of your communications, metadata can reveal what we are doing, with whom, when and where. This visualisation looks at the leaked emails of one organization and shows the amount of information that can be gleaned just by looking at metadata generated by sending and receiving emails. Even without the content of communications, we can get a detailed picture of the company, its dealings, social networks and internal politics. This technique can be applied to all of us – the more metadata our email provider has, the clearer their picture of us becomes.

Living with Algorithms
Animation by Tactical Tech Algorithms are used as a general term to explain the underpinnings of everything from big data to machine learning. One of the main functions of algorithms is to process the masses of our online data, using the patterns of our past behaviour to guess what we will do next – from what we might buy to whether we will commit a crime. This animation looks at how algorithms are applied in our daily lives and asks how reliable it is to use the past to predict the future.

Re:Log
Project by Open Data City, animation by Tactical Tech Whenever we can, we join free WiFi networks to get online when we are on the move. This animation – based on data gathered from a conference held in Berlin, Germany in 2013 – shows what the operator of these communication networks can see, what they can learn about who is in the space and their activities.

Serious Profiling
Project & animation by Tactical Tech If you use a smartphone, you have on online profile. Do you have one or many? Are you in control of your profile? Is it based on information you are giving away, or assumptions companies are making about you? This animation looks at the ways in which our online identities are created based on our actions online and offline, and how they are used by the data industry. As our profiles become more valuable, it also looks at the new clients for these profiles in the world of finance, insurance and politics.

The Monitored Life of National Councillor Balthasar Glättli
Project by OpenDataCity, animation by Tactical Tech As we go about our daily lives, we generate all kinds of information through our smart phones, all of which can disclose insights into our actions, habits and life patterns. We are usually unaware of how much our devices are sharing information about our movements, habits and social networks. This visualisation shows intimate knowledge of a Swiss politician’s calendar, professional engagements, family life, physical movements and social media habits. It also reveals the sheer volume of information that digital devices collect and transmit.

The Scoring Society
Project & animation by Tactical Tech From Dave Eggers’ The Circle to Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, fiction writers are beginning to paint a nightmarish scenario for us of the ‘scoring society’ – a neurotic world in which we are constantly rated through endless feedback loops and random point systems. This animation looks at how scoring is being applied to us based on our online activity – assessing our ‘risk factors’ for receiving a loan, insurance, a credit score, or even being a criminal or terrorist.

Trackography
Project & animation by Tactical Tech Whenever you browse a website, someone is looking over your shoulder. Almost every site visit is tracked by a third-party that shares and sometimes sells your data to others. And they might not always be visible to you. Trackography is an interactive visual tool that can show you the trackers present on the news websites you visit; which companies they, in turn, connect with, and where else your data may have travelled between those two points.

Data and Elections Project & animation by Tactical Tech How can our data be used by political parties to influence us? Even information we think of as anonymous – like what magazine we subscribe to or what we shop for – can be used to create a personal profile of us that helps political parties create adverts that are micro-targeted to us. This animation decodes some of the companies that are part of this growing trend in political influencing.

Browser Histories Project by Share Lab, animation by Tactical Tech Through a case study of just one individual, find out what your browser history might reveal about you. Who sees what you’re browsing, and what can they discover about you?

Data and the Home Project & animation by Tactical Tech The algorithms that control the devices that make up the Internet of Things – in our homes and our cities – need to be trained to ‘understand’ us. But do we understand, in turn, how these connected systems work? What happens to all the data that is accumulated by the devices in our homes?