Protesters are designing anticounter-surveillance tools against surveillance capitalism

Evidence

Perhaps most poignant is the Backslash Tool Kit: “a series of functional devices designed for protests and riots of the future,” including a smart bandana for embedding hidden messages and public keys, independently networked wearable devices, personal black-box devices to register abuse of law enforcement, and fast deployment routers for off-grid communication. Backslash was created as part of a master’s thesis project at New York University, and it perfectly reflects the contest for the third modernity that this generation faces. The designer writes that for young, digitally native protesters, “connectivity is a basic human right.” Yet, he laments, “the future of technology in protests looks dark” because of overwhelming surveillance. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1562

Categorization

• SEED: An article could profile the emerging ‘third modernity’ protest-tech toolkit — encryption-by-body, black-box police-abuse recorders, off-grid routers — as a design movement answering platform surveillance.
• XREF: connects to: Digital protest platforms covertly harvest signatories’ data for commercial profit — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 911; Activists and artists now build counter-surveillance tools to achieve invisibility — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1561; Resistance to surveillance capitalism requires deliberately creating friction against its smooth flows — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1657 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Resistance to surveillance capitalism requires deliberately creating friction against its smooth flows #exemplifies (0.88) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1657
• Yellow vests functioned as a counter-surveillance protest technology #exemplifies (0.82) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 335
• Covert framing of Muslim surveillance as anti-terrorism suppressed public protest #complicates (0.75)