Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more

Recommended product

Popular links

Popular links


Auditing Corporate Surveillance Systems

Auditing Corporate Surveillance Systems

Auditing Corporate Surveillance Systems

Research Methods for Greater Transparency
Author:
Isabel Wagner, De Montfort University, Leicester
Published:
March 2022
Availability:
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Format:
Adobe eBook Reader
ISBN:
9781108950060

Looking for an inspection copy?

This title is not currently available for inspection.

$77.00
USD
Adobe eBook Reader
£60.00 GBP
Hardback

    News headlines about privacy invasions, discrimination, and biases discovered in the platforms of big technology companies are commonplace today, and big tech's reluctance to disclose how they operate counteracts ideals of transparency, openness, and accountability. This book is for computer science students and researchers who want to study big tech's corporate surveillance from an experimental, empirical, or quantitative point of view and thereby contribute to holding big tech accountable. As a comprehensive technical resource, it guides readers through the corporate surveillance landscape and describes in detail how corporate surveillance works, how it can be studied experimentally, and what existing studies have found. It provides a thorough foundation in the necessary research methods and tools, and introduces the current research landscape along with a wide range of open issues and challenges. The book also explains how to consider ethical issues and how to turn research results into real-world change.

    • Guides readers through the corporate surveillance landscape, describing in detail how corporate surveillance works, how it can be studied experimentally, and what existing studies have found
    • Presents a careful balance of material digestible for computer science students and non-technical readers and more technical material with depth and detail for an advanced reader
    • Features research methods for the study of black-box systems, allowing readers to learn in detail how to design, run, and analyze experiments so that statistically significant causal statements can be made about corporate surveillance
    • Provides guidelines for ethical considerations
    • Lecture slides for instructors can be found on companion website

    Reviews & endorsements

    'The book is an excellent resource that reviews, categorizes, analyses and systematically compares current research publications addressing privacy vs. surveillance and the technical methods used by both sides. This book is an IEEE S&P Systematization-of-Knowledge paper (SoK) in book-length. Compiling such a complete list of research papers and systematizing them is valuable, as it has unfortunately become rare today. Every aspect of privacy research is covered in detail. For instance, Chapter 4 looks at how privacy research is designed and in one subsection focuses on how eight papers phrase their research questions that all pertain to characteristics of corporate surveillance (Table 41, page 59). I really enjoyed the book as it serves as a comprehensive collection of research and gives readers the resources to understand corporate surveillance ecosystems.' Edgar Weippl, University of Vienna

    'Isabel Wagner's book on Auditing Corporate Surveillance Systems is a thorough and comprehensive treatise of the evolution of web tracking and how researchers have attempted to reclaim privacy for web users. It is an excellent resource for those who not only wish to get up to speed with the current state of the art, but also want to build future privacy-enhancing systems with real-world impact.' Nick Nikiforakis, Stony Brook University

    See more reviews

    Product details

    March 2022
    Adobe eBook Reader
    9781108950060
    0 pages
    This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Corporate surveillance and the need for transparency
    • 2. Technologies for corporate surveillance
    • 3. Methods of corporate surveillance
    • 4. Experiment design
    • 5. Data collection
    • 6. Data analysis
    • 7. Transparency for corporate surveillance methods
    • 8. Transparency for corporate services
    • 9. Effectiveness of countermeasures
    • 10. Making it count: towards real-world impact
    • 11. Future directions in transparency research.
    Resources for
    Type
    Author's Companion Website
      Author
    • Isabel Wagner , De Montfort University, Leicester

      Isabel Wagner is an Associate Professor in the Cyber Technology Institute at De Montfort University. She is a Senior Member of IEEE and ACM. Her research in privacy, computer networks, and experimental research methods is the foundation for this book on transparency and web measurement. She has given tutorials on this topic, for example at WWW 2020, and taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses on experimental methods to study corporate surveillance.