State surveillance depends on corporate data collection

Evidence

This was the deeper meaning of Edward Snowden’s revelations of US and UK security services’ data-gathering in 2013. Suddenly, citizens became aware that today’s pervasive state surveillance would be impossible without the continuous social-caching operations of commercial corporations. Since then, fears of a new “corporate governance of everyday life” have been growing. But other fears have started to overtake them, including the “fake news” scandals that have gripped politics since late 2016 in the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere. There are also fears that, because of polarizing forces online, “social media is ripping society apart”; fears from other commentators of a social dystopia driven by platforms’ search for advertising income; and, finally, the fear that the targeting of news via social media platforms represents “the most lethal political weapon ever invented.” Calls for the regulation of social media platforms and other information technology giants are becoming familiar. But none of these highly charged debates answers the underlying question on which this book will focus: should human beings in the twenty-first century accept a world in which their lives are unceasingly appropriated through data for capitalism? — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 40

Categorization

• XREF: This causal claim — that Snowden’s leaks revealed state surveillance’s dependence on corporate caching — is a touchstone the attention/ surveillance school frames differently; worth mapping the divergence. — connects to: States now depend on corporate data knowledge about their own citizens. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 88; Data colonialism is jointly driven by corporate and state power — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 162; Government-tech company surveillance collaboration is a global feature, not a Chinese anomaly — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 212 (+5 more)
• QUESTION: ‘Fake news’ and ‘social media ripping society apart’ get listed as distractors from the deeper data-appropriation question — worth asking whether those fears are actually separate phenomena or symptoms of the same extraction.

Broader Connections

• States now depend on corporate data knowledge about their own citizens. #corroborates (1.00) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 88
• Data colonialism is jointly driven by corporate and state power #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 162
• Government-tech company surveillance collaboration is a global feature, not a Chinese anomaly #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 212