Selling You As Data [MUSIC PLAYING] [Video pans over the skyline of a large city before cutting to show the busy traffic filled streets of the city.] NARRATOR: The most detailed documenting of our lives is done by technology companies. [Julia Angwin (journalist and technology researcher) sits at an outdoor table in a park typing on her laptop.] Two years ago, tech researcher Julia Angwin decided to investigate how much these companies track our behavior daily. [Large numbers of people mingle in a park and walk around downtown, crossing the street at a set of crosswalks. Julia Angwin sits with her laptop in a park.] Her findings give us one of the best pictures yet of just who is watching us online, every minute of every day. [Julia Angwin being interviewed. As she speaks the video cuts between shots of her being interviewed and groups of people on their electronic devices in parks, sitting at outdoor tables, and walking on the street.] JULIA ANGWIN: When I talk about the underbelly of the information revolution, I'm really talking about the unseen downside of the information revolution. You know, we obviously have seen all the benefits of having all this information at our fingertips. But we're just awakening to the fact that we're also being surveilled all the time. We're being monitored in ways that were never before possible. [MUSIC PLAYING] [Several different individuals typing into search engines on their smartphones, searching for the sites “www.google.com” and “www.apple.com”. The video is sped up to give the impression that they are typing extremely quickly.] NARRATOR; Every time we browse the internet, what we do can be collated and sold to advertisers. JULIA ANGWIN: So basically, online there are hundreds of companies that sort of install invisible tracking technology on websites. [MUSIC PLAYING] [A girl walking through a park looking at her phone, someone typing www.amazon.com into a search engine on their smartphone. Julia Angwin being interviewed.] They've installed basically a serial number on your computer, and they watch you whenever they see you across the web, and build a dossier about your reading habits, your shopping habits, whatever they can obtain. [People typing on their phones and computers in a sped-up fashion. One person types “Facebook” into their search engine.] And then there's a real market for that data. They buy and sell it, and there's an online auction bidding for information about you. [The video cuts back and forth between people furiously typing on their laptop keyboards in a sped-up fashion and flashes of computer screens with the websites “Tumblr”, “PayPal”, “ESPN”, “Twitter”, and “Ebay” displayed.] NARRATOR: And so the people who know your browsing habits can also discover your deepest secrets, and then sell them to the highest bidder. JULIA ANGWIN: So let's say a woman takes a pregnancy test and finds out she is pregnant. Then she might go look for something online. [A woman is sitting in a park looking at her phone. The screen darkens and the woman becomes a pixellated image. The terms “26 years old”, “New York City”, “2-3 weeks pregnant”, and “pregnancy tests” appear on top of the image of her. Those phrases then disappear and a circle of dollar signs appear and surround her image. The circle of dollar signs then disappears and is replaced with a graphic of connected white circles each with a smaller graphic in the middle including a baby stroller, a baby bottle, toy ABC blocks, baby clothes, supplements, pills, the international symbol for female, a toy pyramid, and baby essentials.] NARRATOR: By making pregnancy-related searches, this woman has become a hot property for the people looking for a good target for advertising. The process of selling then begins. Within seconds, she is identified by the companies watching her. Her profile is now sold multiple times. She will then find herself bombarded with ads relating to pregnancy. [The video cuts back and forth between the woman in the park and Julia Angwin being interviewed.] JULIA ANGWIN: She may well find that she'll be followed around the web by those-- by ads. And that's really a result of that auction house. Now, they will say to you that they know who-- they know she's pregnant, but they don't know her name. But what's happening is now that, more and more, that information is really not that anonymous. You know, it's sort of like if they know you're pregnant and they know where you live, yes, maybe they don't know your name, that's just because they haven't bothered to look it up. [Three people sitting in a park using their laptops, one is sitting at a table and two are laying in the grass. The screen darkens and the images of the three people become pixellated. The phrase “data subjects” appears in a white box over the image of each of the people, disappears, and reappears once more.] NARRATOR: We continually create new information about ourselves. And this information gives a continual window into our behaviors and habits.