Chapter 8
Accountability in a House of Mirrors
Deborah G. Johnson
Surveillance and transparency are framed together, in this volume, as forms of
accountability by emphasizing that each involves, at its core, watchers, those who are
watched, and accounts (used to make judgments and decisions about the watched).
Framing transparency as a form of accountability is not unusual; that is, transparency is
commonly viewed as a mechanism for holding individuals and organizations
accountable. Surveillance, however, is not generally understood to be accountability, at
least not in its positive sense. Transparency is seen as a check on power; it is a
mechanism for watching those with power to make sure they are using it in a responsible
manner. By contrast, surveillance is a mechanism used by those with power to keep track
of those without power. Often it seems that surveillance is viewed as unjustifiable or
illegitimate accountability. This is suggested in Foucault’s dense, theoretical analysis as
well as in more concrete criticism of common practices such as electronic monitoring of
employees or CCTV on public streets. In surveillance, the powerful ‘account for’ the less
powerful for some purpose, that is, when the powerful have some interest in the behavior
of the less powerful.
Each of the five case studies plays out the accountability theme using the house of
mirrors metaphor to explore the complexities of accountability practices. This chapter
brings the case study analyses together in a fuller analysis – a rethinking – of the notion
Chapter 8: Accountability in a House of Mirrors
of accountability. The analysis is tilted towards surveillance because surveillance is a
more awkward fit with the accountability frame. How, the question is, is our
understanding of surveillance, especially its problematic character, informed by treating it
as a form of accountability? How does the house of mirrors metaphor help to reveal the
similarities and differences in sociotechnical systems?
Accountability is a Social Practice involving Shared Norms
There are good reasons to be skeptical about at least some accountability practices. That
is, some of those who ‘accept responsibility’ seem simply to go through the motions; they
publicly acknowledge that they should account for what happened, but their acceptance
of responsibility seems ‘pro forma.’ The person or organization goes through the
motions, doing what is publicly expected, but this does not amount to much. Worst, the
accounts given in public may hide self-interested or corrupt behavior or may draw
attention away from deeper injustices and illegalities. When, for example, oil companies
such as BP tout their ‘green’ policies as initiatives in the name of corporate social
responsibility, a degree of skepticism about their motives seems appropriate. Or, when
Richard Nixon famously defended his role in Watergate by saying that he was
“responsible but not to blame”, he seemed to acknowledge his accountability for the
incident while treating accountability as essentially vacuous.1
1
Watergate refers to an incident in which several men broke in to the offices of the Democratic National
Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex. The FBI was able to connect payments to the
burglars to a slush fund used by a Committee to Re-elect President Nixon so the break in was thought to be
an intelligence-gathering mission for Nixon’s re-election campaign.
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Despite reasons for skepticism, accountability practices are important. The idea that
individuals, representatives, and organizations are accountable for their behavior is
deeply embedded in Western thought and practice, and in the idea and practices of
democracy. Even more profoundly, many believe, or seem to believe, that there is an
ultimate moral reckoning (an accounting) with regard to what one does throughout one’s
life – how one has behaved, what kind of a person one is. In this respect, notions of
accountability can profoundly shape the way individuals understand their lives. And,
accountability is at the very heart of democracy in the sense that the sovereignty of the
ruled means at a minimum that they are entitled to an explanation (an accounting) from
those who rule.
Accountability is also important because it has currency. It is now touted as the solution
to problems in many different domains. For example, in education, accountability is seen
as a new strategy for improvement. Here, accountability is coupled with assessment and
performance evaluation and is often targeted specifically for public schools (Kress, et. al.
2011, Conner and Rabovsky 2011, Gunzenhauser and Hyde 2007). In international
relations, accountability is discussed frequently in relation to foreign aid and to the
activities of non-profits (Park 2010, Winters, 2010). And more broadly, in public
administration, accountability is increasingly seen as an effective strategy for avoiding
government regulation while at the same time targeting and measuring progress towards
social goals (Anderson, 2009, Martin and Frahm 2010).
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Although they are often implicit and go unnoticed, accountability practices are
commonplace. Wherever there are norms and expectations, individuals or groups may be
held to account for failure to conform. If one fails to fulfill obligations to family, friends,
employers, etc., one may be asked to explain, and if no explanation, or an inadequate
explanation, is given, one may be criticized, blamed, or, simply judged to be unworthy,
e.g., not such a good person, friend, employee. One is being held accountable for one’s
behavior.
So, what are we to make of accountability? How do accountability practices operate?
What makes them work? Many scholars have discussed the elusive nature of the concept
of accountability and its interpretative flexibility. Some trace the roots of the concept or
its ‘real’ meaning; others argue for restricting usage or making the concept useful for
particular purposes or contexts.
Although scholars differ on the details and emphasize different aspects, there is a rough
consensus about key element. Bovens (2007) claims that “the most concise description of
accountability would be ‘the obligation to explain and justify conduct’.” He goes on to
specify more carefully that:
“Accountability is a relationship between an actor and a forum, in which the
actor has an obligation to explain and to justify his or her conduct, the forum
can pose questions and pass judgement, and the actor may face
consequences.”
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Chapter 8: Accountability in a House of Mirrors
Mulgan is much more concerned with ongoing changes in (usage of) the concept of
accountability that he believes have resulted in a “weakening of the importance of
external scrutiny.” Nevertheless, Mulgan (citing Jones, 1992) suggests that the one sense
of accountability on which all are agreed is “that associated with the process of being
called ‘to account’ to some authority for one’s actions.”
The normative aspect of accountability is salient in both Bovens’ and Mulgan’s accounts.
At the heart of accountability for Bovens is an obligation to explain and justify conduct;
for Mulgan the account giver recognizes an authority to which the account must be given.
Accountability practices work when those involved share the norms, i.e., they
acknowledge that an explanation is owed or that the recipient is entitled to one.
Accountability practices are problematic when there is disagreement about the norms,
that is, varying ideas about who or what is owed to whom. For example, when a public
official doesn’t believe he or she should have to explain private behavior to constituents,
or when an employee believes that his or her employer should accept some absences from
work without explanation. In these cases the individual being held to account doesn’t
accept their accountability.
That accountability involves shared norms helps, in part at least, to understand the
performative dimension of accountability. Those involved may accept their obligation but
merely go through the motions of fulfilling it. An elected official may recognize that she
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owes her constituents an explanation of her behavior, so she makes a speech in which she
presents ‘the state of the district’. If, however, the speech is superficial and says little
about the most serious issues of the district, the official might be described as performing
the ritual of accountability without really accounting.
Particular norms and expectations vary with the context. Sometimes a justification is
required only when there is a failure to behave in a particular way (e.g., failure to get
work done, failure to comply with a law). Other times, periodic reporting on behavior is
expected regardless of failure or lapses, as in the case of political campaigns being
required to report quarterly on the donations they receive or a parolee being required to
report to their parole officer on a monthly basis.
What counts as an adequate explanation or defense also varies with context and may even
vary over time as cultural concepts of human nature and social obligation change. For
example, in the last century in the U.S. at least, ideas about what fathers owe their
children have changed, that is, expectations about what fathers can be held accountable
for in relation to their children have changed – informally as well as legally. We might
say here that ‘accountability practices’ with regard to being a father have changed.
Those who are obliged to account for their behavior and those who are owed an account
may be individuals or collectivities (organizations, governments, companies). An
employee may, for example, be expected to account to a particular supervisor for work
not completed on time, and campaigns are required to report their donations to the
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Federal Elections Commission (FEC). Also, multiple entities may be obliged to provide
or owed an explanation/justification. In the case of the employee, an explanation may be
owed to the company as well as the supervisor, and in the case of campaign finance, the
FEC is the first recipient of campaign finance reports but the FEC posts the reports for
viewing by the public, and this in turn results in innumerable recipients.
That accountability practices are embedded in a context of norms and expectations is not
inconsistent with the triad of accountability used in this volume, but the triad does not
explicitly specify the role of norms. Norms are always at work but the extent to which
and the ways in which they are shared varies in complicated ways. If we were looking
for a theoretical ideal-type – a paradigm – of accountability, then the paradigm would be
that watchers and watched share norms with regard to what kind of behavior had to be
explained, when an explanation/justification is owed, and what counts as an appropriate
or adequate explanation. These shared norms seem to be what makes accountability
work. They allow us to evaluate whether a politician’s speech is superficial or if an
employee’s work is incomplete or late.
Despite the importance of shared norms, in many accountability practices, norms seem to
be only vaguely understood. As well, watchers and watched may have different norms or
may interpret the same norms differently. Watchers may not be aware that they are being
held to account or how they are being held accountable, e.g., Secure Flight. Differences
between the norms of the watched and the norms of the watchers are repeatedly
illustrated in the case studies.
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It would be a mistake to think that the ideal type of accountability, especially shared
norms, has ever, or could ever, exist. Those who are accountable and those to whom they
are accountable, i.e., those who owe explanations and those who are entitled to an
explanation, generally share norms broadly, but there is typically variation in the
interpretation of the norms. This is seen in examples referred to before. An elected
official may acknowledge accountability to the public for behavior relevant to the
position but have a different interpretation of relevance than segments of his or her
constituency. An employee may recognize that her employer has a right to monitor her
work but not a right to test for drugs. Norms change over time and some may recognize
or embrace the change more quickly than others.
So, it may be difficult to identify accountability practices in which all those involved
share precisely the same understanding of the norms. The purpose of specifying an ideal
type is not simply to look for instantiations. Rather the point is to use the paradigm as a
backdrop against which to see variability in the understanding of norms. Of particular
interest here is variation resulting from technological instrumentation. Accountability
practices constituted in information technology and the Internet are different from those
constituted in other material forms. The instrumentation constitutes (materializes) norms
in particular ways and this affects the norms of an accountability practice. Norms may
shift, may be obfuscated, may be newly interpreted, etc.
Accountability is Sociotechnical
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Chapter 8: Accountability in a House of Mirrors
In the case studies in this volume, the house of mirrors metaphor is used to delineate the
complexities of accountability practices when they are instrumented with information
technologies. Those who view information technology and the Internet as inherently
transparent might expect harmoniously shared norms in accountability practices that are
instrumented with information technology. That is, if watchers and watched alike have
access to the workings of a system – as, for example, with open source software when all
users can see the source code – then both are more likely to understand the norms of the
system. However, the case studies suggest otherwise. Whatever possibilities are
afforded by information technology, hidden and secret norms are among the array, as are
obfuscated and poorly articulated norms.
In trying to understand the significance of the material, technological components of
accountability practices, Bovens use of ‘forum’ (as the audience to whom an
explanation/justification is owed) is quite telling. Accountability is, according to Bovens,
“a relationship between an actor and a forum …”. ‘Forum’ conjures up an image of the
ancient Roman forum, a public square of the city, a built environment in which people
assemble, i.e., are physically present. Here a citizen would present an
explanation/justification in the form of a speech to an assembled crowd. The material
environment of the forum shapes the nature of accountability. An account presented to a
physically present audience (the watchers) is shaped by the presence and composition of
the audience. An oral presentation depends on the speaker’s voice and mastery of
persuasive techniques, and, of course, the presenter’s ability to respond to the immediate
feedback the audience may provide.
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The image of the ancient Roman forum stands in stark contrast to modern forms of
accountability. Contrast standing before a crowd to sending a report to the FEC with the
report subsequently posted on the Web. Contrast a speech before a physically present
audience to providing the required information to an airline representative when
purchasing a ticket, and having an anonymous set of actors, behind the scenes, decide
whether you are ‘cleared for travel’, or not. The materiality of accountability practices
makes a difference, though, of course, materiality is only one among many elements that
shape accountability practices.
In the case studies, the house of mirrors metaphor helps to reveal how information
technology and the Internet affect who is accountable to whom, that for which the
watched can be held to account, and what consequences can be rendered. Campaigns and
candidates have always been understood to be accountable to ‘the public’ but just what it
means to be accountable to the public is a matter of practice; it is, at least in part, a matter
of the materiality of practices. When campaign finance disclosure is constituted in
information technology and the Web, new accountability relationships are created, both
in the sense that campaigns and candidates are more immediately accountable to a
broader array of watchers and also in the sense that donors come into view so they too
can be scrutinized by an array of watchers. [We might think of this as comparable to
expanding the size of the ancient forum to include all citizens and then putting a spotlight
on those in the crowd to whom the explanation/defense refers.]
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When accountability practices are materialized in information technology and the
Internet, individuals and organizations can be held to account for types of behavior
inconceivable without the technology. Information technology constitutes unique forms
of information, new categories of behavior inconceivable without the technology and
inaccessible even to the subjects themselves. Think here of clickstream, search inquiry
histories, email traffic, online identities, etc.; these are new terms of accountability. And
it is not just new types of information that come into play; individuals and organizations
are classified into groups based on patterns of which they could not be aware. Data
mining tools identify patterns and categories of behavior that are largely inaccessible
without the tools. Individuals and organizations are classified and treated as members of
groups that behave in certain ways, without their knowledge that they are members of
such a group. This was most salient in the house of mirrors analysis of Google, but it is
present in other cases. In Secure Flight, ARC, and CFD, subjects are classified based on
their behavior fitting patterns of which the subjects may be entirely unaware.
The materiality of accountability affects the norms of accountability in other ways as
well. The architecture of a system may, for example, influence the norms by which
individuals or organizations are held accountable. A subtle and intriguing example here
is Facebook’s requirement that users designate their gender and that they designate it as
male or female. In doing this, Facebook’s architecture reinforces the norm of gender as
binary. One’s gender identity can only be one or the other, male or female; there are no
other possibilities. In this respect, system architecture is far from neutral with regard to
the norms of accountability.
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Facebook also illustrates how the norms of peer-to peer accountability can be shaped not
just by user profiles, but through connectivity and the availability of photos. For example,
the norm with regard to binge drinking seems to be elevated and rendered acceptable by
its glorification in photos. Peers see each other engaging in the activity; the photos
suggest their bravado, etc.; and this validates binge drinking as a norm. Similarly, the
value of international travel may be elevated as Facebook users post pictures from their
trips and discuss their travel adventures in other countries. International travel becomes
less exotic and more normalized. Be it binge drinking or international travel, the
behavior is, in a sense, normalized in Facebook, so that peers may hold each other
accountable for engaging (or failing to engage) in these activities.
The material or technological component of accountability practices also affects what
consequences can be rendered in the name of accountability. In the ancient forum,
consequences in the form of cheers or jeers could be rendered as well as an array of other
possible behavioral responses during the speech or afterwards, e.g., shunning, stoning.
The case studies provide diverse examples of consequences rendered. In Secure Flight a
traveler is either cleared for travel or not. In CFD elections are impacted, donors may be
intimidated. In ARC, one is allowed to give blood or not. These consequences are
afforded by information technology. Of course, travelers can be stopped, elections
impacted, and blood donors rejected without information technology, but the materiality
of practices makes a difference in what and how consequences are delivered.
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When it comes to consequences, Google’s search engine is, perhaps, the most interesting
case. Typically we think of accountability leading to negative or positive consequences –
punishment/reward, praise/blame, exonerated/put in jail. Google does not render
consequences of this kind exactly. Rather it delivers search results and advertisements.
Whether or not this should even be considered accountability is a matter to be taken up in
a moment.
None of this is to say that information technology, the Web, and the Internet, are, in
themselves, determinative of accountability practices. Information technology and the
Internet are components in accountability practices and they shape the nature and
workings of accountability practices but they are, as mentioned earlier, only one
component in complex sociotechnical systems. Who is accountable to whom, what they
are accountable for, and what consequences may be rendered are all affected by the
materiality of accountability practices as well as other factors.
House of Mirrors Accountability
In trying to capture the problem with ‘pervasive personal data collection’, Solove (2001)
argues that the Big Brother metaphor is misguided. He argues instead for Kafka’s The
Trial as the appropriate metaphor. Here Solove implicitly suggests that surveillance is a
form of accountability for a trial is a process through which actors are held accountable
for seemingly illegal behavior; the defense is an explanation/ justification of the behavior
at issue.2 Of course, in Kafka’s The Trial, the accused, Josef K, has a bizarre and
2
The defense may involve denying that the accused engaged in the behavior at issue or it may involve
conceding that the accused engaged in the behavior and demonstrating that there were exculpatory reasons
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enigmatic experience. He doesn’t know who is in charge of the process and what, if any,
authority is behind it; he doesn’t know of what he is accused. Solove suggests, in effect,
that we think of surveillance as a bizarre and fractured form of accountability –
accountability without knowing to whom and for what you are accountable and without
knowing what the consequences might be for failure to adequately account.
The idea that surveillance is a fractured form of accountability is consistent with the
house of mirrors metaphor and analyses. While The Trial metaphor illuminates the
experience of data subjects, the house of mirrors metaphor describes the processes by
which such experiences are produced. The case studies show that fractured and enigmatic
accountability is produced by complex operations, operations in which information about
data subjects is processed and transformed from an entry point to a rendering through
information technology. Information is bounced, combined, highlighted, and shaded for
varying purposes and with varying outcomes. Regardless of whether the watched are
aware of data being collected, it is effectively impossible for them to understand how and
where the data might move, how it may be combined and used, how they might be
rendered, and what consequences will result. This seems fairly close to Josef K’s
experience.
Rendering in Secure Flight leads to certain travellers being prevented from boarding a
plane, but the traveler stopped at the airport doesn’t know how the decision to stop her
was made, what data was used to make the decision, and who – what agencies or
for the behavior. In the former case the defense provides an explanation; in the latter case, the defense
provides both an explanation and a justification.
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individuals – was involved. When airline workers are unable to explain why the traveler
has been targeted, the traveller’s experience is that of facing anonymous accusers in an
opaque environment. A blood donor may be similarly puzzled when he arrives at a new
site to give blood and is rejected; the donor has no idea that information revealed on the
donor questionnaire many years earlier was stored and is now being used.
The house of mirrors analyses show how individuals engage in seemingly simple acts,
e.g., submitting a search term, donating to a campaign, buying an airline ticket, and later
experience consequences that seem to come out of nowhere. In a world configured
around information technology, the operations of accountability take place behind the
scenes. Invisible processes produce results – consequences – that are inexplicable to the
subject, and certainly not what the subject expected when they gave out the information
or behaved in some way. A California citizen makes a donation to support the
referendum against gay marriage, and several weeks after the vote on the referendum, the
donor is harassed at his home by those who opposed the referendum. A Google user
enters a search term and during the next several months, whatever search term she enters,
she receives results and advertisements that she can’t quite understand.
Accountability and Surveillance/Transparency
The paradigm of accountability suggested above is that accountability is a relationship
between an actor and a forum in which the actor has an obligation to explain and to
justify his or her conduct. As mentioned earlier, the usefulness of the paradigm is not to
differentiate between practices that are accountability and those that are not; rather, the
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paradigm provides a basis – a set of elements – for examining the variation in
accountability practices. None of the five case studies fits the paradigm neatly and
cleanly; rather, each case study can be seen as a distinctive variation on the paradigm.
Actor-Forum
In all of the cases, we can identify an actor and a forum. In CFD, campaigns and
candidates (the actors) account to the public (the forum) through the FEC. In Secure
Flight, airline passengers are the actors and the TSA is the forum in which the passengers
are held to account. In Google’s search engine operations, users are accountable to
Google. In ARC potential blood donors are the actors and ARC is the forum, with ARC,
in turn, accountable to the public. Although Facebook involves a complexity of actors
and forums, users generally think of themselves as the actors and their friends as the
forum.
Importantly, the analysis of several of the cases revealed multiple audiences, with
multiple accountabilities being constituted simultaneously. In CFD, although ‘the public’
is the forum, the public is a wide array of groups each with different interests including,
but not limited to corruption deterrence – the ostensive purpose of CFD. And, in CFD,
although campaigns and candidates are the primary actors, donors become actors held
accountable in public forums. Secure Flight and Google seem to involve the most stable
forums because information about the operation of these systems and about the actors is
kept secret. Secrecy limits access to data and therefore restricts the forums in which
actors can be held to account. In ARC, the forum also seems restricted because donor
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data stays within ARC. However, the data moves (is accessible) internally from location
to location, so this is a case of one forum with many sub-forums. As already mentioned,
there are multiple forums in Facebook: friends, Google, advertisers, applications
developers, etc. Users are accountable in different ways, i.e., by different criteria in
relation to each of these forums.
Obligation to Explain
The obligatory aspect of accountability is revealing, especially when it comes to
surveillance. Although ‘obligation’ often carries moral connotations, the obligations – if
we can call them that – at issue in the case studies are not exactly moral; nor are they
absolute or categorical. The pull on actors to explain their behavior, or let themselves be
accounted for, is conditional and conventional. If you want to run for office, then you are
obliged to report how you raise and expend funds. If you want to fly on an airplane, then
you will have to allow the Secure Flight system to process information about you. If you
want to give blood or use Google or Facebook, then you have to fill out the
profile/questionnaire. And so on.
To say that the obligations at issue are conventional is not, however, to say that they are
always informal. In at least two of the cases, the obligation is specified in legislation.
Indeed, the obligation to explain seems to be on firmer ground in government systems in
which the obligation is somewhat formally specified. In CFD and Secure Flight, the
obligation of actors to account for their behavior derives from legislation and falls within
the authority of a government agency. In both cases, there are official documents and a
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historical record describing the justification for the accountability practice. The public
understands why campaigns and candidates are required to report on donations, and the
public understands why the TSA surveils airline passengers. To be sure, citizens
(candidates, travellers) can and do contest the way these systems operate. They question
whether the FEC collects the best possible information for deterring corruption, or they
question whether Secure Flight is effective at identifying terrorists. Nevertheless,
citizens and travellers seem to accept the authority of the agencies at issue to do what
they do, and in this respect, the actors involved recognize an obligation to comply and
explain their behavior.
Importantly, even in these two cases with formal authority, there is a difference in the
nature of the obligation. In CFD there is an obligation to explain, i.e., to provide
information about one’s activities, but in Secure Flight, there is, at best, an obligation to
let information be collected about one’s activities. This goes back to the differences
between transparency and surveillance. In transparency the actor accepts or
acknowledges an obligation to explain; in the very act of explaining, the actor
acknowledges the forum’s right to an explanation – its right to pass judgment. In
surveillance, however, the actor doesn’t exactly act. Even when surveillance is done in a
way that the watched know they are being watched, the language of obligation seems
odd. Typically in surveillance practices, the watched feel the conditional nature of the
situation, but they feel it more as a requirement than as an obligation. If one wants to give
blood, one is required to fill out the questionnaire; if one wants to use the Google’s
search engine, one must allow one’s behavior to be tracked. So, the nature of the pull on
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actors to explain or allow their behavior to be accounted and the conditional character of
expected behavior (i.e., what one must do if one wants the service) varies from case to
case.
Whether formal or informal, the conditional arrangement in each case study has evolved
through unique historical, social, and political processes. For example, and by contrast,
CFD has a rich legislative history leading to the current requirements, and Facebook has
a history involving user protests that have shaped the way Facebook operates today.
ARC is a quasi-governmental organization so some aspects of its mode of operation are
specified formally, though it has a good deal of latitude in implementing the general
requirements. In Google and Facebook, the nature of the actor’s obligation and the
authority of the forum are less formal and therefore less stable. The right of both
organizations to record, manipulate, and use information is legal, but they have not been
legislated. Rather these arrangements have evolved. They have been worked out in the
marketplace, but it is much too simplistic to presume that that is all there is to it for both
companies have evolved in environments in which neither government nor the public
understood the technologies involved, the nature of the operations, or the likely
consequences of operating one way or another. Rather than saying that users recognize
the ‘authority’ of these companies, it seems more accurate to say, as mentioned earlier,
that users recognize the power of each company to require users (not to explain but) to let
data about them be gathered and used, in order to get the service. They recognize the
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power of Google and Facebook to conditionally require them to comply, in effect the
power to say if you want the service, you must do …
Google is an interesting case here. Remember Google doesn’t want its users to adjust to
norms or do anything other than what naturally occurs to them when they engage in
searches. Google isn’t interested in judging its users or doling out punishments and
rewards, at least not in a moral sense. Of course, it does distribute special offers to some
groups and not to others but it makes no (moral) judgment in doing so. We can’t say that
Google has no interest in the way its users behave because it is very interested in
knowing how users behave so that it can deliver search terms and advertising. Google
has an interest in being able to predict its users’ behavior so that it can deliver
advertisements that will lead to purchases, and in this activity. Thus, Google accounts for
the behavior of its users and its users seem to accept this, though there is the issue raised
in the case study as to how much users understand about the data being collected or how
it is being used.
Conclusion
The obligatory element of accountability highlights the differences between surveillance
and transparency. Surveillance appears to be accountability without an obligation to
explain. Rather than obligatory, surveillance involves a requirement to be accounted for
and often a requirement that must be fulfilled in order to get access to a service. It is as if,
unbeknownst to one, one is brought forward for examination by a forum: the forum
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draws conclusions and doles out consequences. Yet all of this happens without your
knowledge. It happens – to use a term coined by Haggerty – to your electronic double.
As explained at the beginning of this chapter, accountability practices are important for
many reasons. Among other things, they shape how we understand ourselves and how
we think about our lives. Accountability practices are embedded in many, if not all,
domains of life and are importantly connected to our sense of what we are entitled to
expect from others (individuals and organizations), and what they can require or expect
of us. Many accountability practices are now being configured with information
technology and the Internet, and the new configurations have consequences. The case
studies are unambiguous in showing that accountability practices configured with
information technology and the Internet are far from transparent, even when the practices
are designed to create transparency.
Using the house of mirrors metaphor, the five case studies suggest that accountability
practices instrumented with information technology and the Internet can be constituted in
ways that obscure and obfuscate the operative norms. In turn watchers and the watched
can operate with very different norms and expectations, different from one another and
different from the reality. Sometimes this results from secrecy but even in systems that
make no claims to secrecy, much is hidden from users. The result is that accountability
practices instrumented with information technology and the Internet can easily lead to
systems of accountability that are experienced as bizarre, enigmatic, and fractured by
those who are held to account.
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Among other things, accountability in a house of mirrors undermines trust. Individuals
and organizations trust when they have expectations and their expectations are met. That
is, when expectations are met, individuals and organizations believe they can rely on the
systems constituting their world. When expectations and experience conflict, trust is
eroded. When citizens or system users are held to account but they have no way of
accurately understanding that they are being held to account and by whom for what, they
are rendered powerless.
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Chapter 8: Accountability in a House of Mirrors
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