The paid telecom bill now also buys a digital strip search for surveillance

Evidence

The reversal meant that although federal laws protected the privacy of a telephone call, the same information transmitted by internet immediately enters the ISPs’ surplus supply chains. This roust finally signaled the end of the myth of “free.” The Faustian pact that had been sold to the world’s internet users posed surveillance as the bitter price of free services such as Google’s Search and Facebook’s social network. This obfuscation is no longer tenable, as every consumer who pays his or her monthly telecom bill now also purchases the privilege of a remote and abstract but nevertheless rapacious digital strip search. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 537

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the structural irony that consumers now pay money to be surveilled — the collapse of the ‘free services’ bargain where surveillance revenue moved from advertising into directly billed data products.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s surveillance-capitalism thread and to Marx’s original primitive accumulation / enclosure narrative. — connects to: Established telecom firms pivoted to compete for surveillance revenues — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 518

Broader Connections

• Established telecom firms pivoted to compete for surveillance revenues #complicates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 518