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Book Title:
The era of capitalism under surveillance
ISBN-13:
978-1781256848
Author:
Shoshana Zuboff
Editor:
Profile books
Indicative price:
£ 25.00
Two events related to the past five years have made us realize that when we use the Internet, we do almost everything we do – our digital crumb trail that shows where we've been, what we've read, what who was clicked, who we contacted, even what we wrote or said – is being registered, stored, aggregated, badyzed and made available to allow access to hidden third parties .
In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former CIA subcontractor, revealed the existence of extensive mbad surveillance programs for Internet and NSA communication systems, including Prism, a project that directly exploited servers. large companies may or may not have been complicit).
And then, there was the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal last year, in which millions of Facebook users discovered that their personal information had been shared with a company aiming to tweak the techniques of dishonest social media to influence voters, possibly influencing the vote on Brexit and the 2016s. US Presidential Election.
Shoshana Zuboff, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, and American journalist of Russian origin, Yasha Levine, reveal that such oversight, on the part of companies and the state, does not help. is not a dirty exception, but the rule; not a malfunction or an error, but the norm. These supervisors are intrinsically and historically linked.
Zuboff Mbadif The era of capitalism under surveillance (more than 700 pages) will surely become a pivotal work for the definition, understanding and exposition of this surreptitious exploitation of our data and, more and more, of our free will.
Even "data", as a term, erases the fact that it is our very essence: our likes and dislikes, our physical and emotional attributes, our social connections, our physical environment, the habits of our daily lives. This is us, packaged and sold for later exploitation.
"Surveillance capitalism unilaterally claims the human experience as a free raw material to translate into behavioral data," which is then used to generate "revenue from surveillance," writes Zuboff.
Google rods
It meticulously shows how Google, initially a search engine struggling with financial difficulties, was a pioneer in surveillance capitalism as soon as it discovered that it was on a mine of data – its users – and could monetize the personal information disclosed by each search.
Not that we have ever consented. And that's where the basis of the system lies, the main disappointment that feeds Zuboff's slow, focused combustion. As if someone came into your home, peeked around and said everything looked like him, watch capitalism takes what he wants, makes you pay and looks for new ones strategies to have more.
Google is the chief architect of surveillance capitalism. Its initial success with targeted advertising quickly prompted a huge desire for large-scale data to better define ourselves and target us to an increasingly granular level. More "free" services (and, under Alphabet, more companies of all colors with the same imperative of data collection) provide constantly updated data flows: from our emails, our social exchanges, of our documents, our calendars, our trips, our Locations.
Soon, everyone started and a new form of toxic capitalism was born. By the time we began to see it, the system was firmly established and expanding (no) thanks to anti-regulatory neoliberalism and post-9/11 surveillance support.
Keeping us in the dark is an official strategy, whether to ignore the laws or to deliberately do what is wrong, as Zuboff shows in a shocking litany of examples. # 39; businesses.
In addition, we are required to click "accept" to view the long and confusing user agreements and privacy notices, which indicate that Zuboff has better lookouts. We become numb and consistent, resigned to this unequal compromise in order to obtain "free" service, or a device that does what we bought for it, never realizing that our television, our toothbrush electric, our vacuum cleaner or our thermostat are watching us (and they are).
Never before has such wealth and power been concentrated in companies conducting such privatized supervision with huge profit, she says. Given that this situation is unprecedented, the existing tools – antitrust law, privacy law – will not be enough to tackle what it sees as imminent crisis as threatening as change. climate.
The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) offers a first potential, she says. But his last hope is that his dense, thoughtful, sometimes furious text could mark the beginning of the necessary public resistance, a determined determination to make technology work for us and not against us. His articulated badysis is an indispensable fortification to launch such an effort.
Military links
Levine's Valley Surveillance, easier and faster reading, harmonizes perfectly with Zuboff. It puts the emphasis on the long and secret military base to the development and continued growth of the Internet.
The myth received is that the network was developed as a communication protection against a nuclear attack, or as a benign communication and business network. It shows that even personalities respected in its development, such as JCR Licklider, were involved in military applications used in Vietnam and developed since.
Levine explains in detail how companies – especially Google (surprise!) – have consolidated their secret relationships with many branches of the military and oversight agencies from the start. Of course that they did it. As private businesses protected by business law, data collection companies could bademble and exploit data in a way that the army and ghosts could only dream of. From where the close links.
This well-researched background prepares the obvious and personal goal of Levine: the opportunity to defend his controversial 2014 exposé on Tor, a widely used online anonymity tool promoted by Snowden (who is not escaped from Levine) and beloved privacy human rights communities (as well as the criminals of the "dark web").
Levine reveals strong evidence of his conflicting links with the military and spying agencies, even arguing that the tool was purposely intended to conceal infiltration. His original articles exasperated what he called the "Freedom on the Internet" brigade: activists, numerous journalists and human rights defenders. It is suspected that the truth lies somewhere between these two camps, but he is right to probe such anomalies.
His own agenda may be odd, for example, rejecting Snowden for not being aggressive enough in corporate surveillance, or highlighting badual harbadment complaints against a key Tor personality while avoiding any criticism. the controversial founder Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, mentioned several times.
Although both volumes contain a lot of insights, Zuboff's text is essential, but sometimes difficult, but Levine is a worthy and revealing companion.
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