It’s Time to Throw Off Our Digital Chains
As data-mining companies and government decision-making edge ever closer, it is not just our digital privacy that’s at risk, but our very capacity to organize in solidarity.
The market for biometric technology is estimated to be worth up to $50 billion by 2024, with security and government sectors of North America representing a significant share.
Discussions about digital privacy often evoke images of whistle-blowers, journalists, and intelligence agencies. But beyond this, it can sometimes feel as though the business model of corporate data mining presents few negative consequences in our daily lives. The omniscient machinery of state surveillance is rarely an issue visited upon us personally. Amazon, Google, and Facebook are overwhelmingly convenient, well-designed platforms that can be enjoyable to use. It is perfectly possible to worry about the surveillance state in the abstract but, at the same time, think of ourselves as having little to hide personally and, therefore, not much to worry about.
For these reasons, it is easy to tolerate technologies of surveillance in their various forms as a fact of life in the twenty-first century. Just like some people can experience the effects of climate change as pleasantly warmer weather, the insidious potential of mass surveillance often manifests itself as convenience and improved consumer experiences. The importance of systemic and collective privacy can start to fade from view — but at what cost?
Digital Oppression
While we struggle to articulate compelling defenses of privacy, those in power have had little difficulty understanding its significance. The structures of class society are being encoded into our experience of online life at a rapid pace, something that is only possible because of our political ambivalence about privacy’s value. Most recently, this disconnect was made clear in a report by the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty, which highlighted how technology is being used by governments in various oppressive ways in the digitization of welfare services.
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