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June's Subject of the Month
SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM
Selector: Joshua Neds-Fox
Coined by Shoshana Zuboff in 2020's The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism, the term refers to the extraction, monetization, and weaponization of our digital data by capitalist institutions in the modern era.
"While surveillance is often associated with governments, today the role of the private sector in the spread of everyday surveillance is the subject of growing public debate. Tech giants like Google and Facebook are fueled by a continuous supply of user data and digital exhaust. Surveillance is not just a side effect of digital capitalism; it is the business model itself, suggesting the emergence of a new and more rapacious mode of capitalism: surveillance capitalism."
Lauer, Josh and Lipartito, Kenneth (Eds.) (2021). Surveillance Capitalism in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
"Surveillance capitalists treat the information generated by our online activity and our situated, physical activity (collected through the Internet of Things) as raw material available for extraction... once scythed and privatized by the surveillance capitalists, our information is sifted to predict and shape our future behavior. The shaping of our behavior by surveillance capitalists threatens individual autonomy, yes, but also popular sovereignty and democracy itself. This may sound hyperbolic, but Zuboff methodically explains how surveillance capitalism is undermining core democratic values and why the stakes are so high."
Skinner-Thompson, Scott. (2019, Sept 4). Reclaiming the right to future tense. The Law and Political Economy Project. https://lpeproject.org/blog/reclaiming-the-right-to-future-tense/
Shoshana Zuboff on Surveillance Capitalism
In this talk from the Institute of Art and Ideas, Shoshana Zuboff examines the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior.
This fireside chat puts Shoshana Zuboff in conversation with researcher/activist Chris Gilliard, Professor of English at Macomb Community College, whose recent work was directly inspired by Zuboff’s call to action, in order to discuss the reception to Zuboff’s book, its influence on civil society, and the way forward. Facilitators include Joe Westby, researcher and advisor at Amnesty International; and Nathalie Marechal, Senior Policy Analyst at Ranking Digital Rights.
Books
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by ISBN: 1541758005Publication Date: 2020-03-03In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.
Surveillance Capitalism in America by ISBN: 9780812299946Publication Date: 2021-10-15Surveillance Capitalism in America offers a crucial historical perspective on the intimate relationship between surveillance and capitalism. While surveillance is often associated with governments, today the role of the private sector in the spread of everyday surveillance is the subject of growing public debate. Tech giants like Google and Facebook are fueled by a continuous supply of user data and digital exhaust. Surveillance is not just a side effect of digital capitalism; it is the business model itself, suggesting the emergence of a new and more rapacious mode of capitalism: surveillance capitalism. Together, the chapters in this volume reveal the long arc of surveillance capitalism, from the violent coercion of slave labor to the seductions of target marketing.
Human Rights in the Age of Platforms by ISBN: 9780262039055Publication Date: 2019-11-19Scholars from across law and internet and media studies examine the human rights implications of today's platform society. What are the human rights implications of an online domain managed by privately owned platforms? According to the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, adopted by the UN Human Right Council in 2011, businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights and to carry out human rights due diligence. But this goal is dependent on the willingness of states to encode such norms into business regulations and of companies to comply. In this volume, contributors from across law and internet and media studies examine the state of human rights in today's platform society.
New Perspectives in Critical Data Studies: The Ambivalences of Data Power by ISBN: 9783030961794Publication Date: 2022-05-21This Open Access book examines the ambivalences of data power. Firstly, the ambivalences between global infrastructures and local invisibilities challenge the grand narrative of the ephemeral nature of a global data infrastructure. They make visible local working and living conditions, and the resources and arrangements required to operate and run them. Secondly, the book examines ambivalences between the state and data justice. It considers data justice in relation to state surveillance and data capitalism, and reflects on the ambivalences between an "entrepreneurial state" and a "welfare state". Thirdly, the authors discuss ambivalences of everyday practices and collective action, in which civil society groups, communities, and movements try to position the interests of people against the "big players" in the tech industry. The book includes eighteen chapters that provide new and varied perspectives on the role of data and data infrastructures in our increasingly datafied societies.
A World Without Privacy by ISBN: 9781107081215Publication Date: 2014-12-04Recent revelations about America's National Security Agency offer a stark reminder of the challenges posed by the rise of the digital age for American law. These challenges refigure the meaning of autonomy and the meaning of the word "social" in an age of new modalities of surveillance and social interaction, as well as new reproductive technologies and the biotechnology revolution. Each of these developments seems to portend a world without privacy, or at least a world in which the meaning of privacy is radically transformed, both as a legal idea and a lived reality
The Cambridge Handbook of Race and Surveillance by ISBN: 9781108416498Publication Date: 2023-03-02The Cambridge Handbook of Race and Surveillance cuts across history and geography to provide a detailed examination of how race and surveillance intersect throughout space and time. Weaving together narratives on how technology and surveillance have developed over time to reinforce racial discrimination, the book delves into the often-overlooked origins of racial surveillance, from skin branding, cranial measurements, and fingerprinting to contemporary manifestations in big data, commercial surveillance, and predictive policing. Lucid, accessible, and expertly researched, this handbook provides a crucial investigation of issues spanning history and at the forefront of contemporary life.
The Rise of Big Data Policing by ISBN: 9781479892822Publication Date: 2017-10-03Winner of the 2018 Law & Legal Studies PROSE Award, this title explores the consequences of big data and algorithm-driven policing and its impact on law enforcement. The Rise of Big Data Policing introduces the cutting-edge technology that is changing how the police do their jobs and shows why it is more important than ever that citizens understand the far-reaching consequences of big data surveillance as a law enforcement tool. After a series of high-profile police shootings and federal investigations into systemic police misconduct, and in an era of law enforcement budget cutbacks, data-driven policing has been billed as a way to "turn the page" on racial bias. But behind the data are real people, and difficult questions remain about racial discrimination and the potential to distort constitutional protections.
Radical Secrecy by ISBN: 9781517910433Publication Date: 2021-04-06When total data surveillance delimits agency and revelations of political wrongdoing fail to have consequences, is transparency the social panacea liberal democracies purport it to be? This book sets forth the provocative argument that progressive social goals would be better served by a radical form of secrecy, at least while state and corporate forces hold an asymmetrical advantage over the less powerful in data control. Clare Birchall asks: How might transparency actually serve agendas that are far from transparent? Can we imagine a secrecy that could act in the service of, rather than against, a progressive politics? Postsecrecy is the necessary condition for imagining, finally, an alternative vision of "the good," of equality, as neither shaped by neoliberal incarnations of transparency nor undermined by secret state surveillance. Not least, postsecrecy reimagines collective resistance in the era of digital data.
Data Privacy and GDPR Handbook by ISBN: 9781119594246Publication Date: 2019-11-05This authoritative and comprehensive guide includes the history and foundation of data privacy, the framework for ensuring data privacy across major global jurisdictions, a detailed framework for complying with the GDPR, and perspectives on the future of data collection and privacy practices. Comply with the latest data privacy regulations in the EU, EEA, US, and others; Avoid hefty fines, damage to your reputation, and losing your customers; Keep pace with the latest privacy policies, guidelines, and legislation; Understand the framework necessary to ensure data privacy today and gain insights on future privacy practices.
The Intelligent Marketer's Guide to Data Privacy: the impact of big data on customer trust by ISBN: 9783030037239Publication Date: 2019-02-20Firms are collecting and analyzing customer data at an ever increasing rate in response to evidence that data analytics (precision targeting, improved selling) generates a positive return. Yet efforts often ignore customers' privacy concerns and feelings of vulnerability with long-term effects on customers' trust, relationships, and ultimately financial performance. This book fills the void by taking a customer-centric approach to privacy.
How to Do Nothing by ISBN: 9781612197494Publication Date: 2019-04-09After the American presidental election of 2016, Jenny Odell felt so overstimunated and disoriented by information, misinformation, and the expressions of others, that reality itself seemed to slip away. How To Do Nothing is her action plan for resistance. Drawing on the ethos of tech culture, a background in the arts, and personal storytelling, Jenny Odell makes a powerful argument for refusal: refusal to believe that our lives are instruments to be optimised. She argues that nothing can be quite so radical as doing... nothing.
Privacy Is Power: why and how you should take back control of your data by ISBN: 9781612199153Publication Date: 2021-04-06An Economist Book of the Year. Every minute of every day, our data is harvested and exploited... It is time to pull the plug on the surveillance economy. Governments and corporations are spying on you and everyone you know. They're not just selling your data, they're selling the power to influence you and decide for you. Even when you've explicitly asked them not to. Privacy is as collective as it is personal, and it's time to take back control. Privacy Is Power calls for the end of the data economy and proposes concrete measures to bring that end about, offering practical solutions, both for policymakers and ordinary citizens.
Journals
Surveillance & Society (ISSN 1477 7487)
The international, interdisciplinary, open access, peer-reviewed journal of Surveillance Studies, Surveillance & Society exists to: publish innovative and transdisciplinary work on surveillance; encourage understanding of approaches to surveillance in different academic disciplines; promote understanding of surveillance in wider society; encourage policy and political debate about surveillance.
Internet Policy Review (ISSN 2197-6775)
Internet Policy Review is an open access and peer-reviewed journal on internet regulation. The journal is a resource on internet policy for academics, civil society advocates, entrepreneurs, the media and policymakers alike. Internet Policy Review contributes empirical research, analysis and current affairs coverage to contemporary debate about media, information technology, telecommunications and internet governance. Internet Policy Review’s expertise resides in its clear and independent analysis of inter-European and pan-European digital policy changes.
Big Data & Society (ISSN 2053 9517)
Big Data & Society (BD&S) is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes interdisciplinary work principally in the social sciences, humanities and computing and their intersections with the arts and natural sciences about the implications of Big Data for societies. The Journal's key purpose is to provide a space for connecting debates about the emerging field of Big Data practices and how they are reconfiguring academic, social, industry, business and government relations, expertise, methods, concepts and knowledge.
Cambridge Analytica
In one of the first major scandals of the surveillance capitalism era, Cambridge Analytica was found to have received and sold data from almost 90,000,000 Facebook users in the course of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.
Vox Explainer of the Cambridge Analytica scandal
“The people whose job is to protect the user always are fighting an uphill battle against the people whose job is to make money for the company,” Sandy Parakilas, who worked on the privacy side at Facebook, told the New York Times.
Politico: Meta (Facebook) pays $725 Million settlement in Cambridge Analytica case
The settlement is "the largest recovery ever achieved in a data privacy class action and the most Facebook has ever paid to resolve a private class action," according to the document.
Databases
- Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new windowCSA Sociological Abstracts abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,809 serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. Records added since 1963 contain in-depth and nonevaluative abstracts of journal articles.
- Communication and Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new windowCommunication & Mass Media Complete provides quality research solution in areas related to communication and mass media. CMMC incorporates the content of CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association) and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Penn State) along with numerous other journals in communication, mass media, and other closely-related fields of study to create a research and reference resource encompassing the breadth of the communication discipline.
- HeinOnline This link opens in a new windowHeinOnline is a scholarly database with online access to current and back issues of law journals, primary United States and international legal resources, and numerous topical law collections in PDF. The HeinOnline homepage provides a full listing of the collections subscribed to by WSU. It also provides a tool to search across the various resources.
- Criminal Justice Database This link opens in a new windowWith a focus on U.S. and international criminal justice journals, providing research support for students interested in careers in criminal justice, law enforcement, corrections administration, drug enforcement, rehabilitation, family law and industrial security.
- Business Source Complete This link opens in a new windowWith more than 1,200 journals, Business Source Complete is THE database for journal articles from all disciplines of business. Also includes additional full text content including financial data, books, conference proceedings, case studies, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses and more.
- PsycINFO This link opens in a new windowContains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, and technical reports in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business, and law.
Websites
Electronic Frontier Foundation - Privacy
The EFF covers myriad issues related to "defending civil liberties in the digital world." Find here numerous aspects touching on surveillance capitalism or dealing with privacy in online environments, including ONLINE BEHAVIORAL TRACKING, MANDATORY DATA RETENTION, and SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGIES.
American Civil Liberties Union - Privacy & Technology
"The ACLU works to expand the right to privacy, increase the control individuals have over their personal information, and ensure civil liberties are enhanced rather than compromised by technological innovation." NEWS ITEMS explore a range of issues related to surveillance and surveillance capitalism, and the site tracks relevant COURT CASES.
Electronic Privacy Information Center
"A public interest research center in Washington, DC seeking to protect privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic values in the information age." Covers issues of CONSUMER PRIVACY and DATA PROTECTION, among others, with policy suggestions and relevant headlines.
A free resource for anyone to quickly assess if they may have been put at risk due to an online account of theirs having been compromised (or "pwned") in a data breach. Personal online data literacy can help individuals understand the extent of their profile, the attack surface available to surveillance capitalists for exploitation.
Credits
Header Image: My Data Place by KAM hospitable, https://flickr.com/photos/hospi-table/2827358241, cropped, used in compliance with the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License (CC-BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/). Reuse of this image with or from this resource guide requires the inclusion of this license statement.