Chapter 5 Information Privacy
The book defines privacy as a social arrangement for controlling access, where it is harmed when outsiders set the access rules for you.
M3GAN functions as a continuous sensor suite, with always-on microphones, cameras, and telemetry. These are akin to the everyday systems that the book mentions, such as web cookies or websites that retain search and voice history. These examples show how convenience can produce an electronic trail, whether it be for personalization or being exposed to a third party. M3GAN shows the same kind of tracking, but focused on a child. Once there are digital records, control shifts less from the person and more towards anyone who gets access.
The doll bonds with Cady and starts to collect faces, voices, and behavior. A child can’t give informed consent, so it is up to the adults and the people who designed M3GAN. This means that the default is to opt out, which means that collection and sharing occur by design. In addition, there is also the added feature of people simply not knowing. It was heavily implied that no one knew about perpetual pets that could listen to kids and train off of that data. The results of this mirror the chapter’s critique that opt-out steadily converts personal behavior into commodities shared across multiple organizations.
Data permanence and its legal consequences are everywhere in the film’s premise. The book shows how consolidated records, such as medical history, telematics, can improve service, but can also be objects that can be retrieved, shared, sold, stolen, or subpoenaed later. Recordings of conversations, locations, and behaviors in M3GAN create the kind of enduring collection that can escape its original purpose. Relying on intention alone is useless, as once retention exists, there are many ways of accessing it, such as warrants.
M3GAN’s learning also increases profiling risk. M3GAN actively learns from Cady what she cares about, what counts as a threat, and what upsets her. M3GAN then acts on that data that she collected, leading to consequences. Without proper security and guidelines, M3GAN is free to act however she deems fit, which, in the movie, leads to disastrous consequences.
The connections that allow updates, remote control, and cloud features also create attack opportunities. If those channels aren’t well protected, or if the company uses them without clear consent, the device can cause physical and psychological harm. Throughout the movie, it’s clear to see that the lack of security concerning these channels leads to M3GAN being able to access the entire database of the company and do with the data what she pleases.