7. Surveillance & Capitalism

What is capitalism and how does it intersect with surveillance?

• economic system focused on profit through markets and production

• surveillance provides data for predicting + modifying behaviour to increase revenue and control markets

How is surveillance used to uphold the interests of capital, and how is it a source of capital?

• surveillance upholds capital by ensuring worker productivity and identifying potential risks (workplace surveillance)

• surveillance serves a source of capital through the collection + commodification of behavioural data for profit and market advantage (surveillance capitalism)

What is workplace surveillance?

• monitoring of employees using various methods (software, cameras, sensors) to ensure productivity, prevent waste, manage risks, and comply w/ regulations

What does workplace surveillance look to determine and achieve?

• tries to determine employee activity + productivity levels + attention + communication + potential future behaviour like raise-seeking or leaving

• aims to increase efficiency, control labour, enforce company goals, and gather data for security/legal compliance

What are 3 notable workplace surveillance examples in history?

• pre-industrial surveillance relied on unaided senses

• the Industrial Revolution saw bureaucratic centralization and surveillance methods like censuses

• the French Revolution used committees to monitor perceived threats

What does workplace surveillance look like in the modern workplace?

• tech-logging of labour, location tracking, computer activity (keystrokes, screenshots), communications, biometrics (fingerprints, eye movement)

What are 3 recent examples of workplace surveillance?

• companies using software for remote control of employee systems

• Amazon warehouse workers being tracked by sensors + scanners

• companies using webcams to monitor attention

What is surveillance capitalism?

• broader 21st-century political economy focused on using data to predict and modify human behaviour for profit + market control

What does Zuboff (2015) say about surveillance capitalism? What inspired Zuboff to start thinking and writing about surveillance capitalism?

• surveillance capitalism aims to predict + modify behaviour for revenue + market control

• inspired by Google’s business model and Han Varian’s work on computer-mediated transactions

What does Lyon (2019) say about surveillance capitalism?

• highlights the immense power + profitability of personal data

• ie. personal information is economically valuable

According to Zuboff (2015), what is the capitalist logic underlying surveillance capitalism? (How does it involve behavioural surplus, the logic of accumulation, and extraction?)

• accumulation of behavioural surplus (behavioural data) from everyday life, which is then commodified

• the logic of accumulation (fundamental principle of capitalism) in surveillance capitalism focuses on continuous data extraction to create new markets in prediction + modification

• an extractive project, due to its one-way capture w/o traditional reciprocity

What is the 4-step process of surveillance capitalism?

1. increased computer mediation of daily life generates behavioural data (behavioural surplus/data exhaust), which is extracted

2. surveillance capitalists analyze this data to create behaviour prediction and advertising models, selling certainty about future behaviour

3. data brokers aggregate and sell personal information

4. the process fuels a new logic of accumulation, where the goal is to know, predict, and modify behaviour for profit + market control

What is Lyon’s (2019) surveillance culture?

• the experience of surveillance in everyday life and people’s active engagement with it (eg. watching others through digital means)

How is surveillance culture connected to surveillance capitalism?

• surveillance capitalism provides the systems that enable many aspects of surveillance culture

• much of surveillance culture enables + normalizes surveillance capitalism

According to Zuboff (2015), how is surveillance capitalism a new expression of power?

• the ownership of the means of behavioural modification leads to subjugation and dependence

• the extraction process of behavioural surplus lacks reciprocity, creating dependence on platforms for everyday activities

According to Andrejevic (2007), how do the personalization and recommendation features of online platforms factor into surveillance capitalism?

• these features rely on data collection and analysis

• consumers’ active participation in this digital enclosure, where every action + transaction generates data, fuels surveillance capitalism

What do Zuboff & Lyon identify as the 3 problems and challenges of surveillance capitalism?

• asymmetry of knowledge + power, where surveillance capitalists know much about individuals while their own operations remain opaque

• legal lag in addressing SC’s rapid development, which can lead to the manipulation and undermining of democracy

• causes numbing, resignation, and algorithmic anxiety, fosters dependence, and erodes social trust

What are 3 ways we can resist surveillance capitalism?

• challenge information collection practices, challenge surveilling institutions, and resisting secrecy

• potentially done through the means of data politics and data dignity

What are Lyon’s (2019) data politics as a means of resisting surveillance capitalism?

• rights claims made by digital citizens about their data

• involves the optics of hope, which focus on everyday surveillance understandings + practices that offer possibilities for resisting surveillance

What is data dignity (Lanier) and how is it a means of resisting surveillance capitalism?

• individuals should earn value and have dignity concerning their personal data, but currently, people give away their data for free, fueling a shadow economy

• proposes that people should be paid for their data, and receive royalties when it’s used

• would shift the underlying economic model, where instead of surveillance capitalists freely extracting behavioural surplus, people would be compensated for their data

• aims to restore a sense of value + control over personal data