I believe that the rise of the surveillance state is a definite threat to democracy; although I believe it has a variety of positive aspects, the negatives greatly outdo the positives.
The meaning of “Surveillance State” that we are led to passively accept is one of safety in which our own personal information such as location and fingerprints for example are used to stop and prevent crimes from occurring.
Surveillance State is on a definite rise in the past few years and is expected to rise even higher in just a few years. It is stated by Marr (2016) that by 2020, 1.7 megabytes of completely new data will be produced every second, for every human being on the planet. Word Better. More data has been created in the previous two years than in the history of mankind; 50 Billion devices are connected to the internet and tens of millions of messages are being sent through applications like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp every second. 3.5 Billion Google searches are made every single day with around 1000 different computers being involved in fulfilling that one single search enquiry. This information discussed by Marr (2016) shows how data is going to continue to be passed around and grow in quantity over time, therefore the Surveillance State will greatly rise alongside it and this is considered by many to be a great threat to democracy.
According to Bunnik et al. (2016), “Big Data” is known as the processing, analytics and storing of the large assemblies of data that is being collected from different sources. It puts together unrelated pieces of information and “harvests” hidden information from these sources.
Andrejevic and Gates (2014) discuss how databases currently have more information than ever before and that said, databases are growingly having more uses for the information within them.
Needs Work
Data can be retrieved from almost anything technology related, an example of this would be smart televisions or watches and specifically your own smart phone. Your smart phone will track your location through it’s own GPS without you even knowing but applications on your phone also have access to your whereabouts. When you download an app onto your phone, you agree to their terms and conditions; many are unaware of what they are agreeing to on this app. They may now be sharing their contacts, location, photos and more with the application to use however they may want.
Stephen-Davidoitz (2017) discusses ‘Data Science’ in his work; the way in which their data science can spot patterns and predict the way in which one element will affect another through an algorithm. These algorithms, for example, can identify individual people’s faces in photos. An example of this would be in the Apple’s IPhone; their photo gallery has an album dedicated to people’s faces that occur regularly in your photos. Not only that but recently it came about by a twitter user who found out if you search in your photos the word ‘Brassiere’, your iPhone may have stocked up photos of you where your bra/bra strap is showing; this has happened for many IPhone users after they have checked to see if their iPhone has done the same.
It is also understood that algorithms can comprehend spoken word; this may be obvious to some due to applications like “Siri” on the IPhone or Amazon’s “Alexa. However, there have been reports of applications listening to everyday conversations without the user being aware. One example of this was posted to YouTube through the Username “Neville”. In this video, he discusses how he believes his iPhone and mainly his Facebook application is listening to us. To prove this point, for one day he and his wife openly discuss their cat which does not exist and how they need to buy cat food for said cat. Only a couple days later, an advertisement appears on their Facebook for cat food, possibly proving the point that Facebook is listening to our conversations.
On the other hand, a surveillance state has redeeming factors when in the right hands. An example of this would be “Google Flu”. Lazer Et Al. (2014) discuss this in their work about when Google attempted to predict Flu outbreaks however their results were mainly overestimated and ended up being a failure. Google observed that when people in large masses in one location were googling their flu symptoms then there was most likely to be an outbreak of this. Although this failed, the concept of this could be strengthened to protect citizens rather than exploit them for money or information like some companies are supposedly doing.
“Cookies” are what funds websites and software’s that are provided for us without cost. However, by agreeing to Cookies on these websites we are having our online activity tracked and then sold to corporations to observe and use to their advantage. Heymen and Pierson (2011) refer to Cookies as first being developed to provide the website a memory. How long you spend on a page, a username and ads that you click on are all information that are being processed by the Cookie.
Penn (2011) discusses how these Cookies will have important cooperation’s or client’s that want this information that is your online activity and use it to their advantage. For example, by looking at somebody’s purchase of a screwdriver on amazon, this person may now face a variety of “DIY” based advertisements on the side of websites they are visiting.