Problematizing Corporate Data Collection Foucaults Panopticon Surveillance is

Problematizing Corporate Data Collection

Foucault’s Panopticon Surveillance is a form of discipline

Gandy’s “Panoptic Sort” • Modern institutions engage in surveillance through collection, sorting, and classifying data and behaviours • People are slotted into categories but they don’t know which ones or why • This form of surveillance is more restrictive of personal autonomy because the watched don’t know who is watching or what they are watching for • There is no true leisure in this regime because there is never respite from surveillance

Corporate Argument • Corporations argue that their free speech should trump any individual’s privacy. They define lists of customer’s for sale to third parties as “free speech” • Should the rights of individuals be privileged over the rights of corporations?

Technology Debates • Location of data - multinational companies, offshore outsourcing, cloud computing • Helpful or harmful? – Biometrics, DNA, iris scans – GPS and RFID – Micro video cameras

NSA Leaks • June 2013 - PRISM program gives access to user data upon request • Oct 2013 - NSA secretly tapping into Google and Yahoo data centres: http: //www. youtube. com/w atch? v=ZVlh. MU_juxs

Fallout from 9/11 Convergence of public and private surveillance Data collected for advertising and corporate purposes can be accessed by the government

POLICY REVIEW

EU Policy vs. US Policy • Privacy is a basic right • Everyone has a right to control their own “personal data” • One law for all member countries (EU Information Directive) • Individual countries have own additional laws • Sectoral, not universal • Favours industry • Laissez faire, selfregulation • Privacy can be waived • Discussion dominated by Google, Facebook, AOL etc. • Earlier protections revoked by The Patriot Act