There is significant discussion in the media today about how big technology corporations like Facebook and Google are using online data to predict and control human behavior in this “Age of Surveillance Capitalism” (Shoshana Zuboff, 2019). And governments around the world have taken notice e.g. GDPR, Zuckerberg’s Senate Testimony, etc. But while governments are focused on cracking down on corporations, who is holding Big Brother accountability for their use of modern surveillance technology?
CCTV cameras have been around for decades – the traffic camera on a busy street or a security camera outside your local bank– but, embedded with facial recognition software and connected in a systematically organized network, modern state surveillance infrastructures offer an unparalleled ability to monitor populations on an individual level.
Imagine the CCTV camera outside your house connected to millions of cameras around your country. These cameras constantly record every minute of every day – archived and displayed in centralized, state-controlled monitoring centers where the feed is enriched with personal data on the recorded individuals. Data about your criminal history or even your religious practices. This is not a “Black Mirror” episode, but currently operational in the world today.
From a digital anthropologist perspective, THE question is: How does the use of this technology influence people’s behavior and relationships?
Furthermore, is it the technology itself that influences people’s behavior or is it the policies around this technology?
While I believe it is ignorant to assume the neutrality of technology given the underlying intentionality behind the development of mass surveillance systems (Grimes & Feenberg, 2013), I do believe the agency of the technology is primarily driven by State policies.
Consider China:
According to the Economist, China will install over 500M CCTV cameras by 2021. While the materiality of those cameras will likely influence behavior (wouldn’t you behave differently if you saw a camera recording you?), combined with governmental policies regarding “social good” or “sate security,” the system acquires a higher level of influence. The cameras thereby not only represent the presence of the state, but also “promises of hope, possibility and fear” (Hetherington and Campbell, 2014).
Additionally, China plans to implement a Social Credit System in 2020. Simply put, companies and individuals will be scored based on “good” and “bad” behavior which will be used to gain “reward” or restrict “resources.” This policy, empowered with the ability to monitor individuals’ actions through surveillance enables an incredible power to influence and control populations.
This brings up long-discussed question about the role of The State? And is that culturally dependent?
Considering cultural relativism and challenging Western critique, Bing Song, Director of the Berggruen Institute China Center, argues that China has a long “governance tradition of promoting good moral behavior [that] goes back thousands of years.”
But is there ever a point when technology affords governments, corporations or people TOO much power to do the things they have always done?
I don’t know, but it is probably worth discussing else we risk entering The Age of Surveillance Totalitarianism.
References:
Hetherington, K. and J. M. Campbell (2014). Nature, infrastructure, and the state: Rethinking development in Latin America. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 19 (2), 191-194.
Grimes, Sara M. & Andrew Feenberg. 2013. “Critical Theory of Technology”, in The SAGE Handbook of Digital Technology Research, edited by Sara Price et al. London: SAGE: 121-129.
Song, Bing. 2019. “The West May Be Wrong About China’s Social Credit System” in New Perspectives Quarterly Vol. 36 Issue 1, 33-35.
The Economist. (2018, October 24). China: facial recognition and state control | The Economist. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH2gMNrUuEY
Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. London : Profile Books 2018.
“Big Brother Is Watching” by Alexir563 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
anthropology of infrastructure 2019 