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Our next speaker this evening
is an artist and a composer,
and she works at the interface of social,
political and technological
infrastructure.
She's gonna talk to us about the
potential of sound and how we
can how it engages with
the political questions.
So please give a big round of applause to
Jasmine. Go fund.
Thank you.
It's some.
Can you hear me?
Sorry. Oh, yes.
Now I can hear me.
It's an absolute pleasure to be
here today. And I'm very
impressed looking at around at how many
people are sitting and waiting to listen
to a presentation on a Saturday
evening.
This is indeed a special Congress,
sir. Hi, my name is Jasmine.
Good Fund.
I am an artist who works primarily with
sound.
I also make electronic music.
And today I will be talking about
one project.
It's called Listening Back.
It's an add on further Firefox
and Chrome browsers
that translates cookies into sound
while you browse online.
Anyone can
get a download and install a
flyer for Firefox or
via the Chrome store
for the Chrome browser.
And so the way that this works is
that every time a cookie is
inserted onto my computer or
deleted from my computer or
updated, a sound is triggered.
And those sounds that you could hear just
now were Google cookies.
And it's interesting to note that the
Google analytic cookie is
actually the most common
cookie across the entire World Wide
Web and our personal computers.
So I'm just going to load another page.
So that kind of stuttering sound that
you just heard and that you'll be hearing
again during this presentation
is actually
the limit.
Well, my system reaching
its limit. And that's because.
Browser add ons were never intended to
process large amounts of sound.
So when I was.
When I was in the development phase
of this project,
a lot of some Web sites were crashing
the browser due to the sheer
amount of.
Kooky activity.
Generating sound at one time, so I had
to set a cap on how many cookies
could trigger sound at once,
and it's currently set to forty three.
It's interesting to note that the
Internet Engineering Task
Force, which is the defacto
standardization body
for the Internet, has written
a proposed standard for cookies.
And actually this is a really interesting
document. It's more than just a
technical document and traces a five
and a half year process in writing
a standardization for a rapidly
expanding tracking technology.
And in it, they suggest
that browsers should be able to host
at least 50 copies per domain
and at least 3000
cookies in total.
So that's a lot of cookies
and cookies.
Actually, just one of many
different online tracking technologies
that I implemented through the technical
protocol of the worldwide web.
Personal data is thereby captured,
collected, aggregated, compiled
and sold.
Such data can include
IP address, type of computer
or mobile phone operating
system. The add ons we have installed
our searches, our likes.
The websites we visit, what we buy, what
we watch and how long a curse
lingers on a page.
Some of the less known
online surveillance technologies
include Web bugs, Audio
Bacon's Web, RTC, IP, Discover
a third party, Hage TTP requests
and device fingerprinting.
The device fingerprinting method
can be broken down into a further subset
of tracking techniques,
including canvas, browser,
font, audio, context
and battery API fingerprinting.
But when I started this project,
I had only ever heard of cookies.
Because.
Our access to the World Wide Web is
visually mediated through screen
devices.
The Web browser, as an interface
for the World Wide Web, mocks
a point where technology becomes
apparent to the user.
Online monitoring technology such as
cookies largely obscured
from the user, making these systems
difficult to approach, analyze
and understand.
By son of flying this largely
invisible tracking technology.
So that is by transforming the data
generated by cookies into sound.
I'm interested in Sound's ability
to interrupt the visual surface
and highlight a disconnect
between the graphical interface of
the worldwide web and the socio
political implications of
background algorithmic processes
of data capture.
So here Sound is functioning
as a mediator of the invisible.
By enabling the opportunity to listen
back to otherwise in perceivable
monitoring infrastructures, I ask
what is the potential of sound as a means
for a failing asymmetrical
relationships of power inherent
to surveillance societies?
And how does it feel to be routinely
monitored?
When I use the word feel, I'm
interested in how our understanding
of data is affected by experiencing
it through sound.
How does a potentially emotional and
bodily experience of data
influence our understanding?
So sound is a method of knowledge and
thinking.
Or to put it in another way.
Knowledge and understanding through
sensing experience.
I'd like to credit the program that I
collaborated with for this project.
Max Braden and Brian MacLeod,
who further helped me with some
modifications.
Anton MacIntyre, who along with Brian,
helped me get it on to a demo
itself for Firefox.
So that actually just happened in the
last couple of weeks, but it's been on
the Chrome store for a little while.
Mac suggested that we use the Tumbler
Dock J.S. Library.
For designing the sounds.
So that's the library I used for
programing, the sounds.
And I just signed specific signature
sounds for some of the most
commonly used, all the largest
web platforms such
as Google, Facebook.
I think you get the picture.
Amazon, YouTube and
some of the third party cookies that
I found to be most commonly used across
a lot of different websites, such
as the one you can hear right now.
Probably most of you know the difference
between first and third party cookies.
Because there definitely some way nerdy.
Tokyo talks at this.
Congress.
But just in case.
A first party cookie is any cookie
that has the domain name of the Web site,
your own. So for example, with The
Guardian dot com.
Any cookie that has and in my name
got in dot com is a first party
cookie and any cookie with any other
domain name is a third party
cookie. And that's what you can hear
right now.
It's a third party cookie that's
constantly updating on my computer
via the Guardian Web site
that's called Chaotic.
Stayed on that.
It's used for targeting and advertising
across five thousand nine hundred and
twenty six different Web sites
of the system in session cookies are
another subset of cookies
where the session cookie is deleted
from your computer when you close the
browser or log out of a session
or close the tab, whereas persistent
cookies are there for as long as they've
been programed to be there for.
Unless, of course, you plead your case.
And so this can be anything from
seconds to
minutes to hours.
Today is two months, two weeks.
And here in the top 100 Web sites found
using this cookie out of the
five thousand nine hundred and twenty
six.
So far, interested in doing
cookie research?
I can actually recommend cookie PDA
as quite a thorough database.
Now, as I mentioned before,
a sound is triggered whenever a cookie is
inserted, deleted
or updated.
But not every time a cookie is read by
the browser or Web site.
So the data I had access to for this
project was determined by the browsers
API.
That is what information Google or
Mozilla provide to third party
developers.
So in this case, it's every
time a cookie is inserted, deleted or
updated, but not when a cookie is read
by the browser or web server.
And what was insightful to me was
the extent to which certain technical
processes are hidden even
from tech savvy programmers,
because these processes of online data
extraction are in fact well kept
business secrets.
Max, who I collaborated with, found
a way to hack into the Chrome API
and access the data for how often a
cookie is read by the browser.
But since there is already an
extraordinary amount of cookie activity.
Just from each time the cookies inserted,
deleted or updated, I decided
not to use the data for
when a cookie is being read
because I also knew I wanted to be able
to make the listening back out on
available for anyone to download
by the Chrome store.
On what?
As it was important for me that anyone
could have access to it if they desired.
Now, this project has consequently
directed my attention to the history
of the Internet cookies themselves.
And from within this recent historical
framework surfaces a
direct link between the
invention of cookies in 1994,
the origins of automated online
data collection, the commercialization
of the worldwide web and the emergence
of contemporary modes of surveillance
capitalism.
So surveillance capitalism
is a term that's been.
Is a term that's been recently popular,
popularized by Shiv Sena,
zoo boss.
That was published at the beginning of
this year, The Age
of surveillance, capitalism.
And embrace
her extremely briefly.
It refers to the online data burqa
industry as headed by corporations
such as Google.
In this big industry, in this industry,
big data is a surveillance asset
and profits are derived from a
unilateral surveillance of users of
online platforms in which the aim
is to modify human behavior,
predict and control markets,
which I think.
Most of us are familiar with
by now.
And this image, which I love,
I should credit, comes
from Internet of Ships,
Twitter fame.
So if you happen to be
on Twitter, I can recommend following
Internet of shit because it's not only
hilarious, but very poignant.
And so another important condition to
this culture of surveillance, capitalism
is the agency of technology to
monitor in real time,
which provides an unprecedented,
extraordinary infrastructure
for radically distributed opportunities
for observation, interpretation,
communication, influence,
prediction and ultimately
control.
Now, I believe that the technical
and commercial origins of the online
data broker industry lie
with the invention of the cookie.
In 1994.
And at this time, the worldwide web
was a stateless infrastructure.
So Stateless is a computer engineering
term used to describe
the situation in which
every time a Web site is visited,
there is absolutely no recall
of previous visits, preferences,
logging information or use
around a.
Without a state mechanism to store
records of browsing activity,
online shopping as we know it today
would not have been possible.
And this is actually a very important
point because this is where it all
begins.
So, of course, advertisers were tracking
customers before the Web.
But this is the origins of online
tracking and automated.
So online shopping before cookies would
have been analogies to using a vending
machine as you could only
buy one product at a time and there would
have been no automated feature to
remember your personal information.
So a stateless web meant that every visit
to a Web site was like the first
and any commercial transaction would
have to be handled from start to finish.
In just one single session.
Presented with this online condition
of memory loss, Netscape
Communications programmer.
Live on to a developed
state mechanism while working
on a contra e-commerce
application for
North American telecom giant
MCI.
The seven million dollar contract was
for a new shopping cart application
for online stores.
Developed together with John G.
And Andrea over a six
month period.
So remember, the standardization process
took five and a half years, whereas the
development of the cookie itself was only
six months.
Until we name the state mechanism
a cookie after a Unix
protocol already in use code, magic
cookie.
And incidentally, there are various
origins stories going around
about the nine magic cookie.
Probably the most famous one is that it
was invented by CODIS in San Francisco
who were working late into the night,
as you do.
And so they ordered and
food from Chinatown.
And with that came a fortune cookie.
And apparently that's the namesake for
the magic cookie.
But most of these stories have been
debunked, but did manage
to trace it back to 1979.
Unix programmers manual.
And imagine cookie functions as an opaque
identifier that is sent
back and forth between different pieces
of software unchanged.
So I still don't know why it's called a
magic cookie.
And if anyone has any information
about that, I would love to know.
So similar to the magic cookie, the
Internet cookie is defined by its
invisibility.
So remember, the magic cookie is an
opaque identifier
and the Internet cookie or hate
mail cookie is a small reference file
that is sent via a Web server
to a browser and then placed by the
browser on the user's computer.
And every time the user loads the Web
site, for example, the browser sends
the cookie back to the server to notify
the Web site.
So Cookie is like a reference number or
a day that travels between Web servers,
Web browsers and personal computers.
The Internet cookie allows Web service to
identify users without disclosing
what and how much information is
being collected.
Its content is therefore at the
discretion of the Web server.
Inherent to the technical protocol of
the cookie is a lack of transparency
that aligns knowledge and power in the
hands of their creator.
And importantly, the cookie provided
a means to reliably implement
a virtual shopping cart.
So cookies literally gave birth
to the virtual shopping cart.
And significantly, for the first time,
a protocol for online automated
data collection.
Technically termed persistent client
state object and loom on
to a painting to denote as
such.
So, as you can see, invented them onto a
current a sunny Facebook.
Cookies transform the worldwide
web from a system of discontinuous
visits to a culture of persistence
connectivity.
Version No Point 9 Beta
of Mistake Netscape was released
on October 13th, 1994
and supported state management.
This was followed by the commercial
release of the Netscape Navigator browser
in 1995, which
introduced cookies silently
as a default setting.
Not enough about you.
I do remember the Netscape Navigator
browser.
And someone's put together
this video.
By the way, the longer a sound plays
for it means the longer it's been
programed to be on your computer.
So it wasn't until nineteen ninety six
that the privacy implications of cookies
first became known to the public,
and I should note here.
This was very much due to the
standardization process because
they were raising concerns about the
privacy implications, particularly of
third party cookies.
And this led to some newspaper articles
such as the San Jose Mercury
News headline Web Cookies,
Maybe Spying on you.
The extraction of user generated data
in exchange for advertising revenue
has subsequently developed into a
business model.
Key to the sustainability of the Internet
platforms.
But son of defying a largely
invisible tracking technology.
The listening back plugin critiques
a lack of transparency inherent
to online monitoring technologies
and the broader context of opt
in default cultures intrinsic
to contemporary modes of online
connectivity.
So what I mean by default culture
is, for example, with the browser
the way to get in with the operating
system, or perhaps you download it
from the web and the first time you use
it, you are by default
opted in to being tracked
by third party cookies.
But every browser
offers the option to block third
party cookies.
And this in no way affects
the functionality of the World Wide Web.
I found that not many people know about
it. And also it's
hidden down in a lot of sub menus.
So, for example, with the Chrome browser
you have to go to says.
And then scroll down to
advanced and
then under privacy and security.
It's inside settings
and then cookies inside data.
And he can block third party cookies.
It states that some sites may not
work properly, but I've never, ever
had a problem.
By blocking third party cookies.
So you can hear how a lot of the ongoing
sound is third party cookies.
Typically most third party
cookies are there when you load a
package.
And this is not always the
case, but often the third party
cookies are usually the
regular ones.
So I thought it was important.
To be able to listen to the wind
farm and hear the difference between
third and third party cookies.
So there is a.
Interface that is plug in.
And you can change the scale
if you like.
And then you can 10 said putting cookies.
Up and down.
So if you wanted to listen to
the Web without third party cookies.
We can turn it down and vise versa.
So it's not blocking the cookies, it's
just turning on the volume
of the sound.
And then here you can enter
the domain name for a cookie
and turn
up and down or change the octave.
So I could put out the log is.
I've used a for life performance and
installation.
How am I doing?
I can show you another couple of sides,
because another on this side sees a lot
of cookies are actually flying
search engines.
So she might even close
the Guardian.
So I made a special SFX.
Which actually also has that same
tiny cookie.
I served on.
And this one's quite fun to play around
with.
And then what if.
By engaging.
Mode of examination, his
project asks what is the potential
of a sound of sound as
a tool for transport?
And it has been a very entertaining talk.
We have some type of questions from the
questions you have through microphones
here from the aisles.
Feel free to approach and ask a question
for number one.
Thank you. Thank you for my views.
I have question how you composed and
decided on a week each week before which
website and what cookie will
sound.
That's a very good question.
I mean, in a way, a lot of it was sort of
intuitive because I do
work a lot with electronic
sound and music.
And so I just made sounds that I liked.
But another deciding factor was,
say, for this generic cookie sound
because the cookie activity
is so constant.
I wanted to make a sound, but
you didn't find two annoying and
therefore turn it off immediately,
because I think it's important to sort of
engage with it for a while.
So it's trying to find a balance between
yet just to find a sound that you can
listen to over
and over.
And then it was just
it just made sense to make individual
sounds for the main platforms because I
knew everybody would be going
to those platforms.
And I guess for the Amazon one,
I did kind of try and make it a
bit more scary than usual,
especially because I've performed this
sometimes, you know, on a P.A.
system, in a club with a subwoofer.
And then there's a lot of bass in that
sound that's quite overwhelming.
And I guess the decision with
I chose like for case that worked
together. So, you know, no
matter what you put it in or still be in
tune except for that generic cookie
sound, which you can't choose
because that's fine. If you're listening
to a lot of different data, it helps
if it's in tune.
Otherwise it can be really confusing to
try and work out what sound
belongs to what data.
So no matter what you do, you're not
going to. It's not going to.
It's sort of going to be truthful
for number two.
Thanks for a wonderful presentation.
As you mentioned, there are lots of other
forms of tracking techniques that can go
on on a Web page,
for example, JavaScript fingerprinting.
Do you have any plans to roll out
different and, you know, increasingly
creative sounds for those kinds
of practices?
I think that would be a great idea,
actually.
Just sort of
you'd have to try to add all the
different tracking technologies.
I mean, I think you'd have to have an
interface where you could turn them off
like the individual data sets,
because otherwise it would just be way
too much sound,
which might be nice for a moment.
But then if you want to sort of try and
listen to how much say Web Bacon's
a president or device fingerprinting,
you don't have any actual plans.
And if anyone wants to collaborate,
I'd be happy to collaborate.
But yeah, have thought about and I think
that would be a nice idea.
3.
Yes. So thanks for the talk.
It was great.
I have a question that is related to the
first one you got.
Did you like Explorer
trying to use some of the randomness that
is in these cookies to make the sounds
more unique?
There were so so like all of these
cookies contained a lot of like junk
basically that is like unique to each
person. Junk.
Well, data, I guess.
Did you try using tried to use any
of that to like generate more unique
sounds?
Well, the data that I have access
to. I mean, I can show you.
So this background page
shows you in a way what data
I have access to,
and so override is when it's updating
or it's inserted or deleted.
I actually focused so far
on the different domain names.
As for creating sounds
and also then the length
that a cookie is programed today
on your computer, that also affects the
length of the sound.
But next I worked
with was said that couldn't be longer
than a couple of seconds just because of
the CPSU.
And like I was saying,
the browser add ons not really meant
for. I'm processing a lot of sound,
but there's a lot of other information
that you could signify,
such as the date and time
or if it's a session
cookie or a persistent cookie.
As you can see, it's really hard to know
what. I don't know how well you can see
it. It's really hard to decipher actually
what a cookie is doing,
which is part of this sort of lack of
transparency. So even if you have access
to this background page,
which I guess we all do have access to,
when you look at the devil,
I mean, it's impossible
to understand what it means
or I find it impossible to understand
and what it mean.
So this junk or noise that you're talking
about. I'm not exactly sure
what that is.
Or if I would have access to apply the
API,
I was always thinking like just using,
for example, the barbell gear, the what
the like, the value of the barbell.
I feel like ignoring whatever it's
supposed to mean, just using it,
using it to generate a basic idea.
Yeah, that's something I could do.
And then it would be more individual
every sound.
Yeah. That's a good idea.
Yes.
Like number two.
Thanks. Thanks a lot for this beautiful
talk. I was wondering, you have a
favorite, musically speaking Web site,
a favorite musically speaking.
So, yeah. So like your website which
remade itself or just
generally music.
So with your plug in, when
you go to that website, it makes some
beautiful sound.
Oh, OK.
I did quite like Expedia.
Number one,
I have maybe two questions or a
suggestion and the question the first is
I'd find it very interesting to
make something similar which doesn't
display or doesn't
want your nice third party cookies,
but a third party content in general.
So scripts and images and everything
else that's loaded from a third party
website.
And the question
maybe just
out of personal interest is which side
have you found that has the most
obnoxious, loudest and just longest
sound created by that?
I don't know.
We'll start with the second question
first. So when I was developing at
one of the websites that was crashing,
the browser was Vogue, actually.
And I mean,
for the first question, I just I mean,
it was important for me that it was just
a sign of occasion of the data.
So not to have a visualization.
So sorry. That was hard to formulate.
I meant the same thing,
but with third party content in general.
So scripts that are loaded from other
sites that these could also have a
audio represents kind of like the other
question, just like other tracking.
Yeah. No, I think it would be great to
develop it in that way.
Yeah.
I'll take a last question from microphone
number two.
I do think that when you scroll down the
website, there was a lot of noise.
Yeah. I don't have much technical
background, but I was just wondering why
there will be so many cookies
loading up when you do such
action. Well, it's hard to say.
I mean, there's a few websites that do
that. That what if dot com 1, which
is a flight search engine, is one that
does.
And whether that is because they're
tracking your every single move
on the page or if it's
just sometimes
with some, which it probably is.
I would say because I think I imagine
they would generate a lot of their
revenue from data
and selling data.
But sometimes you get Web sites like,
say,
Torture Ban, and that
also has this constant cookie.
And I don't think I mean, like I
said, again, I can only speculate.
I don't think it's necessarily because
they're collecting so
much data on you because I assume
they're making money by selling tickets.
But sometimes it's kind of
I suppose not as someone who's a
programmer, but a clumsy way of
designing your sort of back end
infrastructure because cookies
aren't just used for tracking
like they are a state mechanism.
So
the contents of that actually contents of
that question, because I can't tell
even if I like look back
at this background page, which
is as much information as I can get for
what cookies are happening when I scroll.
It doesn't make any sense to me.
So that's all the time we have.
Thanks again. It doesn't for great talk.