As we’ve each separately done research on the topic of Surveillance Capitalism, we’ve made progress on the subtopics that we view more favorably on and will be including in our project.
Surveillance capitalism operates through corporations’ unmatched knowledge and power that they receive from their surveillance. They accumulate vast domains of new knowledge from us, but not for us. They predict our futures for the sake of other’s gain, not ours, and most importantly to add to this point: the rise of surveillance capitalism over the last two decades went largely unchallenged. (Zuboff. 2019a, p.11).
In the world, there is a growing concern for government surveillance and the rapid innovation leading technology to spy on our daily lives. An instance where technology had to be accelerate was in response to BLM protest, in which extensive aerial surveillance was carried out by law enforcement to point out people in crowds. They scanned the contents of millions of social media posts, forwarding crucial information to police departments so agents could track and surveil protests. Additionally, major technology companies maintain their own databases of user information, which law enforcement agencies can later access (New Technology 11). There has been much advancement in facial recognition technology that has chance the way that government can recognize someone. New York has began using biometric facial recognition technology and it has led to over 3,000 arrest due to facial searches.
There a message that David Carroll uses, which is the main difference between U.S and China surveillance programs is China is honest about their dystopian environments, however the U.S “camouflages it” and pretends that these programs hold up civil liberties (New Technology 2). The U.S has had trouble in the past in regards to surveillance abuse, such as when NSA began spying on civil right leaders such as MLK. The question that arise from the past of the government intervening to now is that whether will be able to manage a balance of law enforcement correctly with valuing citizens rights.
Third-party brokers sell our data, data we give them for free- which online companies use to personalize our online experience. These third-party brokers make money on every concept that can be pushed onto us by an advertisement, and even if only half of the people seeing the advertisements actually purchase the items, this is millions more sales than they would have bought items without these personalized ad experiences.
As Shoshana Zuboff states right from her book, Surveillance Capitalism:
“Thus, surveillance capitalism
is not the same as algorithms or sensors, machine intelligence or platforms, though it depends on all of these to express its will. If technology is bone and muscle, surveillance capitalism is the soft tissue that binds the elements and directs them into action.”
Surveillance capitalism was created for big corporations to take over the economy, but also take over almost all of our privacy and individual thought. It makes us subject to all the constraints that these corporations give us.