Volunteered Surveillance

As the front end of the digitized commercial world, corporations, marketers, and advertisers are under the spotlight for taking advantage of some part of the big data provided by consumers via their digital presence and digital advertising. Now, collectors and users of that data have escalated the level of their asymmetric power with scope and depth of the instant and historical data on consumers. Since consumers have lost the ownership (control) over their own data, their reaction ranges from complete opposition to voluntary submission. This chapter investigates psychological and societal reasons for this variety in consumer behavior and proposes that a contractual solution could promote a beneficial end to all parties through transparency and mutual power.