Deleuze’s (1992) modulation is frequently invoked to explain power relations in hyper-connected, sensorised environments. However, attempts to articulate the harmful implications of modulation—a critical step in the process of considering the need for legal intervention—have been modest. In this paper, we theorise four harms arising from the exercise of modulatory power: subsumption, amplification, vibration, and alienation. To do so, we outline the core features of Deleuzean modulatory power (Deleuze 1992), illustrated through contrasts with Foucauldian discipline (Foucault 1995, 1988). Then, drawing on Julie Cohen’s (2013, 2015, 2018, 2019) modulation as a two-way flow of predicted and prescripted modes of governance and knowledge production, we explore and situate our harms in the sensorised and smart home, employing Google’s patented vision as a concrete example (Fadell et al. 2020). We contend that modulation harms arise from the continuous flow and constant agitation of insistent modification (D’Amato 2019) enabled by sensorisation. The core power act that gives rise to modulation harm is the ability to harness, direct, and provide “frequency” to flows of sensor data to achieve continual behavioural modification and shape social norms about the purposes and benefits of such modification. The overarching harm we identify is subsumption, the infrastructural enclosure of all sensorised environments that enables social shaping to take place anywhere, which gives rise to the other modulation harms. Amplification harms regard auto-regulatory norms as an unquestioned facet of an automated human life. Vibration harms arise from the automated ability to prescribe changes in affect. Alienation harms regard subtle denials of access to informational networks. We show that the Google sensorised home both modulates and disciplines occupants concurrently, but more importantly, these concurrent power acts can take place wherever an individual is tethered to the modulation infrastructure and sensor data can be harnessed.
{"title":"Modulation Harms and The Google Home","authors":"Mark Burdon, Tegan Cohen","doi":"10.24908/ss.v19i2.14299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v19i2.14299","url":null,"abstract":"Deleuze’s (1992) modulation is frequently invoked to explain power relations in hyper-connected, sensorised environments. However, attempts to articulate the harmful implications of modulation—a critical step in the process of considering the need for legal intervention—have been modest. In this paper, we theorise four harms arising from the exercise of modulatory power: subsumption, amplification, vibration, and alienation. To do so, we outline the core features of Deleuzean modulatory power (Deleuze 1992), illustrated through contrasts with Foucauldian discipline (Foucault 1995, 1988). Then, drawing on Julie Cohen’s (2013, 2015, 2018, 2019) modulation as a two-way flow of predicted and prescripted modes of governance and knowledge production, we explore and situate our harms in the sensorised and smart home, employing Google’s patented vision as a concrete example (Fadell et al. 2020). We contend that modulation harms arise from the continuous flow and constant agitation of insistent modification (D’Amato 2019) enabled by sensorisation. The core power act that gives rise to modulation harm is the ability to harness, direct, and provide “frequency” to flows of sensor data to achieve continual behavioural modification and shape social norms about the purposes and benefits of such modification. The overarching harm we identify is subsumption, the infrastructural enclosure of all sensorised environments that enables social shaping to take place anywhere, which gives rise to the other modulation harms. Amplification harms regard auto-regulatory norms as an unquestioned facet of an automated human life. Vibration harms arise from the automated ability to prescribe changes in affect. Alienation harms regard subtle denials of access to informational networks. We show that the Google sensorised home both modulates and disciplines occupants concurrently, but more importantly, these concurrent power acts can take place wherever an individual is tethered to the modulation infrastructure and sensor data can be harnessed.","PeriodicalId":47078,"journal":{"name":"Surveillance & Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45141082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Brayne’s Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing","authors":"Daniel Konikoff","doi":"10.24908/ss.v19i2.14718","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v19i2.14718","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47078,"journal":{"name":"Surveillance & Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48887260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The prison and the factory","authors":"G. Sewell","doi":"10.4324/9781351180566-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351180566-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47078,"journal":{"name":"Surveillance & Society","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88843606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper argues that ISA mass surveillance of citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a turning point for Israel, both in its formation as a surveillance society and in revalidating its security-oriented, militaristic tendencies.
{"title":"Israel’s Mass Surveillance during COVID-19: A Missed Opportunity","authors":"Avi Marciano","doi":"10.24908/SS.V19I1.14543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24908/SS.V19I1.14543","url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues that ISA mass surveillance of citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a turning point for Israel, both in its formation as a surveillance society and in revalidating its security-oriented, militaristic tendencies.","PeriodicalId":47078,"journal":{"name":"Surveillance & Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45646769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article tackles one of the latest—but nonetheless baffling—displays of public apathy towards surveillance: that of much of the Israeli public towards the decision to recruit the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) to do COVID-19 contact tracing during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The case of a secretive state agency being authorized to do surveillance on its citizens for a strictly non-security-related matter seems to realize many of the dangers that surveillance/privacy scholars warn about with regards to surveillance expansion, function creep, and the creation of a surveillance state. I contribute to existing literature about apathy towards surveillance and the privacy paradox by offering the term “nontargets” as an explanation. This term suggests that, alongside social groups that are likely to be targeted by a given surveillance application, there are certain recognizable nontargets that most likely will not bear the brunt of the surveillance, at least not in the short- and medium-term, and thus do not fear it. In the case at hand, which is examined using a qualitative context-bound study, I suggest that Jewish-Israelis are such a nontarget group with regards to this novel Shin Bet surveillance, which explains a significant part of their apathy towards it.
{"title":"Nontargets: Understanding the Apathy Towards the Israeli Security Agency’s COVID-19 Surveillance","authors":"Shaul A. Duke","doi":"10.24908/SS.V19I1.14271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24908/SS.V19I1.14271","url":null,"abstract":"This article tackles one of the latest—but nonetheless baffling—displays of public apathy towards surveillance: that of much of the Israeli public towards the decision to recruit the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) to do COVID-19 contact tracing during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The case of a secretive state agency being authorized to do surveillance on its citizens for a strictly non-security-related matter seems to realize many of the dangers that surveillance/privacy scholars warn about with regards to surveillance expansion, function creep, and the creation of a surveillance state. I contribute to existing literature about apathy towards surveillance and the privacy paradox by offering the term “nontargets” as an explanation. This term suggests that, alongside social groups that are likely to be targeted by a given surveillance application, there are certain recognizable nontargets that most likely will not bear the brunt of the surveillance, at least not in the short- and medium-term, and thus do not fear it. In the case at hand, which is examined using a qualitative context-bound study, I suggest that Jewish-Israelis are such a nontarget group with regards to this novel Shin Bet surveillance, which explains a significant part of their apathy towards it.","PeriodicalId":47078,"journal":{"name":"Surveillance & Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46974461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Data harvesting and profiling have become a de facto business model for many businesses in the digital economy. The surveillance of individual persons through their use of private sector platforms has a well-understood effect on personal autonomy and democratic institutions. In this article, we explore the consequences of implementing data-rich services in the public sector and, specifically, the dangers inherent to undermining the universality of the reach of public services, the implicit endorsement of the platform operators by the government, and the inability of members of the public to avoid using the platforms in practice. We propose a set of good practices in the form of design principles that infrastructure services can adopt to mitigate the risks, and we specify a set of design primitives that can be used to support the development of infrastructure that follows the principles. We argue that providers of public infrastructure should adopt a practice of critical assessment of the consequences of their technology choices.
{"title":"Data Management for Platform-Mediated Public Services: Challenges and Best Practices","authors":"Agnieszka Rychwalska,Geoffrey Goodell,Magdalena Roszczynska-Kurasinska","doi":"10.24908/ss.v19i1.13986","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v19i1.13986","url":null,"abstract":"Data harvesting and profiling have become a de facto business model for many businesses in the digital economy. The surveillance of individual persons through their use of private sector platforms has a well-understood effect on personal autonomy and democratic institutions. In this article, we explore the consequences of implementing data-rich services in the public sector and, specifically, the dangers inherent to undermining the universality of the reach of public services, the implicit endorsement of the platform operators by the government, and the inability of members of the public to avoid using the platforms in practice. We propose a set of good practices in the form of design principles that infrastructure services can adopt to mitigate the risks, and we specify a set of design primitives that can be used to support the development of infrastructure that follows the principles. We argue that providers of public infrastructure should adopt a practice of critical assessment of the consequences of their technology choices.","PeriodicalId":47078,"journal":{"name":"Surveillance & Society","volume":"26 8","pages":"22-36"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138504073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The political drive to develop digital identity systems, in particular in the Global South with financial and technical support provided by international development actors, is accelerating during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are different reasons for this redoubling of attention to digitizing identities. These include an increased emphasis on digital social protection during the pandemic and the emergence of proposals for digital vaccination/immunity certificates to facilitate the reopening of societies and restoration of economies, which it is argued would need to be supported by robust digital identity infrastructures. Without evaluating the merits of claims about the capacity of digital identity systems to address the various challenges posed by COVID-19, in this paper I instead make a theoretical observation before raising a policy concern. First, I draw attention to the rise of India’s Aadhaar as an exemplar of developmental digital identity, which has intensified during the pandemic, and what this might mean for concepts of surveillance. I then conclude with a call to the development community to take more seriously investments in data protection regulatory capacity in countries where they are supporting digital identity projects.
{"title":"Aadhaar in a Box? Legitimizing Digital Identity in Times of Crisis","authors":"Aaron K. Martin","doi":"10.24908/SS.V19I1.14547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24908/SS.V19I1.14547","url":null,"abstract":"The political drive to develop digital identity systems, in particular in the Global South with financial and technical support provided by international development actors, is accelerating during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are different reasons for this redoubling of attention to digitizing identities. These include an increased emphasis on digital social protection during the pandemic and the emergence of proposals for digital vaccination/immunity certificates to facilitate the reopening of societies and restoration of economies, which it is argued would need to be supported by robust digital identity infrastructures. Without evaluating the merits of claims about the capacity of digital identity systems to address the various challenges posed by COVID-19, in this paper I instead make a theoretical observation before raising a policy concern. First, I draw attention to the rise of India’s Aadhaar as an exemplar of developmental digital identity, which has intensified during the pandemic, and what this might mean for concepts of surveillance. I then conclude with a call to the development community to take more seriously investments in data protection regulatory capacity in countries where they are supporting digital identity projects.","PeriodicalId":47078,"journal":{"name":"Surveillance & Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42919307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Surveillance is never only about surveillance but is embedded in the broader social context, both domestically and internationally. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the surveillance practices of non-Western countries have often been analyzed from the perspective of the West, impacting domestic surveillance policymaking and public perception. However, we rarely know how Western societies’ surveillance practices and discourses may impact how people in non-Western societies understand their own domestic surveillance. Combining data from varied sources, this article examines domestic surveillance during COVID-19 in China and explores how Chinese residents perceive it, with a focus on perceptions that are in relation to the West.
{"title":"Chinese Public’s Support for COVID-19 Surveillance in Relation to the West","authors":"Chuncheng Liu","doi":"10.24908/SS.V19I1.14542","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24908/SS.V19I1.14542","url":null,"abstract":"Surveillance is never only about surveillance but is embedded in the broader social context, both domestically and internationally. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the surveillance practices of non-Western countries have often been analyzed from the perspective of the West, impacting domestic surveillance policymaking and public perception. However, we rarely know how Western societies’ surveillance practices and discourses may impact how people in non-Western societies understand their own domestic surveillance. Combining data from varied sources, this article examines domestic surveillance during COVID-19 in China and explores how Chinese residents perceive it, with a focus on perceptions that are in relation to the West.","PeriodicalId":47078,"journal":{"name":"Surveillance & Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49275609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marcella Siqueira Cassiano, K. Haggerty, Ausma Bernot
Pandemics bring the specter of death, disruption, and despair, but historically they have also been engines for social transformations visible at almost every level of society For scholars interested in understanding contemporary surveillance dynamics, the COVID-19 pandemic encourages thinking about how different forms of monitoring have altered aspects of the global infectious disease response and what these developments might suggest about the evolving practices of surveillance and governance more generally Here, Cassiano et al focus on China, where the virus is assumed to have originated and where--given China's population profile--rapidly spreading infections pose stark morbidity and mortality risks
{"title":"China’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Surveillance and Autonomy","authors":"Marcella Siqueira Cassiano, K. Haggerty, Ausma Bernot","doi":"10.24908/SS.V19I1.14550","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24908/SS.V19I1.14550","url":null,"abstract":"Pandemics bring the specter of death, disruption, and despair, but historically they have also been engines for social transformations visible at almost every level of society For scholars interested in understanding contemporary surveillance dynamics, the COVID-19 pandemic encourages thinking about how different forms of monitoring have altered aspects of the global infectious disease response and what these developments might suggest about the evolving practices of surveillance and governance more generally Here, Cassiano et al focus on China, where the virus is assumed to have originated and where--given China's population profile--rapidly spreading infections pose stark morbidity and mortality risks","PeriodicalId":47078,"journal":{"name":"Surveillance & Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48461172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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