Privacy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Privacy is no longer simply the right to be alone in the digital age. Privacy is now a contested territory, an arena in which technology companies, government agencies, advertisers, and everyday individuals fight over the right to decide what is done with data. At every step we take, whether using Navigation Apps, scrolling through social media, or seeking health information, we leave a trail of data, or breadcrumbs, that are scraped, harvested, analyzed, and monetized in ways most people using technology never understand. Reflecting on the data economy, this is not a glitch, but the very system within which we operate.’ Welcome to the age of *surveillance capital*’.

 

Professor’ Shoshana Zuboff’(Harvard) describes we have entered the age of *surveillance capitalism*. This new organizing logic collects, extracts and commercializes personal data. Humans' lifetime experiences become a free source of raw material to be turned into profit. When we talk about *surveillance capitalism*, we are talking about a powerful, largely invisible machine that shapes questions of privacy, consent, autonomy, and democracy. 

 

Grasping Surveillance Capitalism

 

Surveillance capitalism is the commercialization of individual experience. Big Tech companies—Google, Meta, Amazon, and others—are continuously accumulating vast quantities of personal data on their users: search histories, location data, voice commands, biometric data, and social and commercial interactions. This data is not only used to improve a service, but more importantly, to anticipate—and shape—future behavior.

 

The predictions are sold to advertisers, political campaigns, and a host of other third-party vendors. Significantly, this model operates on an asymmetry of knowledge and power: individuals know very little about what data is being collected from them and how it is used, whereas companies know everything about their users.

 

This model has moved significantly beyond targeted advertising. It has grown into pricing insurance, determining employment decisions, police surveillance, and even influencing elections.

 

The Devaluation of Privacy

 

Privacy as a *human right*—expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the Indian Constitution—becomes illusory inside a regime of data extraction at scale. Surveillance capitalism flourishes in darkness, implicitly excluding informed consent and relying on obscure terms and conditions that, for the most part, go unread.

Even when people try to protect their data, they are often outpaced. An app can track users in the background long after permissions have been revoked. Facial recognition systems scan public spaces without knowledge or consent. Smart devices unintentionally record conversations. This all leads to a "panopticon effect"in which people act differently just knowing that they might be observed.

 

The Psychological Price of Constant Surveillance

 

Surveillance capitalism not only impacts our data – it also can impact our minds and the way we act. When users know that they are constantly being watched, they can be pressured to engage in *self-censorship*, have anxiety, and lack spontaneity.

 

Psychologists argue that constant surveillance erodes one’s *sense of agency and identity*. Social media algorithms (that use surveillance data) try to reward the user by only providing content that validates their existing belief systems, therefore creating echo chambers and fostering polarization. In addition, digital manipulation based on personalized psychometric profiles—for instance, Cambridge Analytica—was able to successfully nudge voting choices, product preferences, and emotional manipulation.

 

We are now heading toward a world where surveillance is both external, as well as an internalized phenomenon. We are now shifting into an arena where the difference between persuasion and manipulation is disintegrating.

 

The Real-World Impacts

 

1. Cambridge Analytica and Electoral Manipulation

 

One of the archetypal examples of surveillance capitalism was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where the data of 87 million people was collected from Facebook, without consent, and then used to interfere with various elections, including the 2016 U.S. Presidential, and the Brexit vote. This case made evident the ways in which predictive data models could manipulate consumer behaviours—or as was done nefariously, the fate of an entire democracy.

 

2. China’s Social Credit System

 

In China, surveillance capitalism meets state control. The state deploys AI smart surveillance along with data collection to support a social credit system where individuals receive an often-numbered score based upon their behaviours, financial background, and even friendships. If an individual has a low score, he or she can be prevented from travel, prohibited from being hired in certain jobs and shamed by a social scorecard. Although state controlled, the system highlights the extent to which surveillance can determine opportunities and freedoms in real life.

3.Aadhaar and Digital Identity in India

 

India's *Aadhaar system*—the largest biometric ID program in the world—was intended to be a system for accessing welfare and promoting digital inclusion. But when Aadhaar was adopted by public services, banks, and telecoms the governmental side of the database caused serious privacy risks (e.g., data leaks, surveillance, misuse of biometric data).

 

In 2017, the *Supreme Court of India* held that *privacy is a fundamental right,* but the Aadhaar infrastructure raises challenging questions about how data protection will manifest in developing democracies.

 

The Contribution of Civil Society and Digital Literacy

 

While legal frameworks are important, *public awareness, activism by civil society organizations*, and campaigns to empower citizens are also crucial in addressing the challenges of surveillance capitalism. There are many organizations doing good work in advocating for rights relating to privacy including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Mozilla Foundation, and India's Internet Freedom Foundation.

 

Digital literacy is also important. People should know how algorithms work, what data they produce, and how they should protect themselves. Schools, universities, and governments should invest in education to help users take the next step in their digital lives responsibly.

 

Lastly, media literacy helps a citizen to see the manipulation and misinformation involved with a society that depends on recommendation engines based on surveillance.

 

Is Ethical Technology Possible?

 

Surveillance capitalism is not the only possibility for online user engagement: there are *alternative business models* and technologies where users enjoy privacy and actual control over online engagement: 

 

- With *Privacy centered browsers* such as Brave and Firefox, the technology neither tracks user behavior nor sells data. 

- With *decentralized platforms* Unlike Mastodon and Solid, users own their data and can connect with each other without worrying about being surveilled by a central entity.

- The end-to-end, encrypted communication app Signal has made privacy a main feature of the tech (albeit they do charge for the app). 

 

Do some tech companies - such as Apple - help users by marketing privacy as a feature? Sure, but some contend that this commercially driven marketing has more to do with disassociation from the "evil" meaning of online engagement rather than a true philosophical shift. 

At the end of the day, if ethical technologies and technologies truly concerned with privacy are going to snowball into development and adoption, users (demand!), investors (excitement!) and regulators (intervention!) need to be involved.

 

Resisting the Invisible Empire

 

We're living in an age of surveillance capitalism and this is well beyond our understanding and acquiescence—without ever really knowing the depth of our complicity. We've been conditioned and controlled through our phones, fitness trackers, smart homes and social media so that everything we say or do is sucked-up, refined, measured and analyzed into making choices for us.

 

However, the good news is that there is a growing global effort behind protecting our right to privacy, demands for transparency, ethical technology, regulation and practice-change that is mounting. Governments are making legislative changes, civil society is mobilizing, and public consciousness is rising in response to the now-dominant surveillance model.

 

To think that protecting our privacy is only a matter of stopping a data breach, turning off Location Services on our devices, etc., trivializes the significance of what is actually at stake: *our autonomy, democratic liberties, and the very essence of human dignity* in a world that is increasingly algorithmically driven and profit motivated.

 

In other words, if surveillance capitalism is the infrastructure of control, then the fight for privacy represents the movement of resistance, and it needs participants, advocates and courage.

 

ARTICLE BY- ANANYA AWASTHI