Surveillance and the Vanishing Individual: Power and Privacy in the Digital Age

This book investigates the impact of the spread of digital technologies and practices, especially mass surveillance, on privacy and personhood. Lindau argues that the quest for prediction, certainty, and control at the heart of the state's security apparatus destroys an essential component of human dignity and fundamentally undermines liberalism.

ISBN-13: 9781538173510

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers - Inc.

Publication Date: 12-16-2022

Pages: 330

Product Dimensions: 5.98(w) x 8.97(h) x 0.71(d)

Juan D. Lindau is professor of Political Science at Colorado College. He primarily teaches courses on Comparative Politics and Latin American Politics and actively participates, outside the department, in the History/Political Science major and the International Political Economy major. His primary scholarly interests are the drug war, migration, and the impact of the internet and digital technology on politics. He has written articles and essays for Political Science Quarterly and for Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, Foro Internacional, and for the International Political Science Review as well as for a number of edited collections. He is the author of La elite gobernante mexicana (Mexico D.F.: Joaquin Mortiz, 1993) and co-editor, with Timothy Cheek, of Market Economics and Political Change: Comparing China and Mexico (Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998). In addition, with Curtis Cook, he edited Aboriginal Right and Self-Government: The Canadian Experience in North American Perspective (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2000). He has received the Lloyd E. Worner Teacher of the Year award and the A.E. and Ethel Irene Carlton Professorship.

Table of Contents

Introduction Chapter 1: The Transition from the Industrial to the Digital Age Additional Reasons for the Failure to Confront the Consequences of the Digital Age New Configurations of Power in the Digital Age The Emergence of New Digital Economic Identities The Impact of the Internet on Political and Associational Activity Conclusion Chapter 2: Interdisciplinary Discussions of Privacy and its Loss Socio-cultural Understandings of Privacy Rationalization for the Loss of Privacy in the Digital Age The “I Have Nothing to Hide Rationalization” The “I Am Irrelevant” Rationalization The Trump Rationalization Public Defenders of Mass Surveillance Conclusion Chapter 3: Philosophical Debates About Privacy Arguments About Privacy’s Subsidiarity to Other Rights and Interests Conclusion Chapter 4: Privacy as a Legal and Constitutional Right The Fourth Amendment and Privacy The Legal and Constitutional Protection of Privacy in Other Countries International Law and Privacy Conclusion Chapter 5: National Security and the Expansion of Digital Surveillance National Security and State Surveillance State Constituencies Favoring Surveillance in the United States The Left and the Right and Mass Surveillance Conclusion Chapter 6: The Legal Architecture Governing Mass State Surveillance The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) EO 12333 Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act The Snowden Revelations and the USA FREEDOM Act Additional Legal Decisions Restricting Surveillance in the United States Conclusion Chapter 7: Features of State Surveillance in the United States The U.S. Government’s Policing of the World Wide Web and the Growth of the Surveillance Industrial Complex A Typical Example of the Fruits of the Surveillance Industrial Complex: Facial Recognition Another Example of a Flourishing Surveillance Industrial Complex Project: Cloud Surveillance The Role of Higher Education in State Surveillance Conclusion Chapter 8: Surveilling the Most Vulnerable: The State and Refugees, Migrants, Dissidents and Minorities State Surveillance of African Americans Other Ethnic Minorities and a Variety of Dissidents Contemporary FBI Surveillance of Other Non-Violent Dissidents Conclusion Chapter 9: Global Digital Mass Surveillance Practices Nationalism, Militarism and State Surveillance The Understandings Embedded in Smart Cities/Safe Cities Initiatives A Case Study: The Drug War and State Surveillance in Latin America Conclusion Chapter 10: Representative Examples of State Surveillance Around the World China Russia India Israel The United Kingdom France Germany Brazil Mexico Nigeria South Africa Thailand Vietnam Conclusion Chapter 11: The Rise of “Surveillance Capitalism” Google/Alphabet Facebook/Meta Amazon Terms and Conditions and the Exploitation of an Obsolete Regulatory Environment Corporate Surveillance and Workers Conclusion Chapter 12: Conspiracy Theories and Other Impacts of the Social Media Platforms Social Media, the QAnon Conspiracy Theory and the Spread of Misinformation about the COVID-19 Pandemic Social Media, Conspiracy Theories, and the January 6, 2021 Riot in the U.S. Capitol Facebook’s Impact on Politics in the Global South The Rise of Objections to the Social Media Companies Conclusion Chapter 13: Surveillance Tools and the Coronavirus Pandemic: A Case Study Concerns about Pandemic Surveillance The Bio-Surveillance Approach to COVID-19 in the West Other Western Democracies The East Asian and Chinese Approaches to Bio-Surveillance During the Pandemic Other Examples Limits on the Efficacy of Tracking and Tracing Apps on Cell Phones Conclusion Chapter 14: Conclusion and Epilogue The Continued Expansion of State Surveillance Surveillance and Politics The Continuing Acceptance of Corporate Surveillance Despite the Growth of Criticism Regulatory Remedies to “Surveillance Capitalism” at the End of the Second Decade of the Digital Age The Technology Companies and Antitrust Measures Epilogue Show More