Global Entry, TSA PreCheck, NEXUS — which allows approved travelers to move through expedited processing lanes with less scrutiny. These programs require a background check, an in-person interview, and payment of a fee ($100 for Global Entry). The population that can clear these bars and afford the → Chapter 7: Border Control and Biometric Databases
10:04 PM
Jordan is home. The apartment key fob logs an entry event. Jordan's phone connects to the home WiFi and uploads a queue of data to multiple apps. Total location pings for the day: approximately 340. Data points generated: thousands. → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
2:54 PM
Jordan leaves the warehouse, clocking out via the biometric system. Jordan's phone reconnects to the cell network and sends a burst of pings to apps that have been waiting for foreground or background location permission. → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
Jordan rides the bus to campus. A mounted camera in the bus reads license plates of vehicles passing through the intersection where Jordan's stop is located. Jordan's transit card is logged again. Jordan receives a text message that carries metadata: the sender's number, Jordan's number, the carrier → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
4:00 PM to 5:45 PM
Jordan attends Dr. Osei's seminar on social theory. Jordan's phone is in their bag. It continues to ping background apps, log WiFi networks in the building, and record accelerometer data indicating Jordan is seated and stationary. → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
5:47 AM
Jordan's iPhone sends a background signal to Apple's servers, confirming the device is active and reporting its location (GPS, to within 8 meters) to apps with background location access: Google Maps (2 pings), a weather app (1 ping), and a food delivery app (1 ping). The phone's location is registe → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
5:52 PM
Jordan searches Google Maps for the address of a friend's apartment. Google records the search query, the device identifier, the account, the location at the time of the search, and the destination query. The search is associated with Jordan's complete Google profile, which includes: six years of lo → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
6:12 AM
Jordan opens Instagram. The app records the time, the device identifier, the account, and the location. A behavioral profile note: Jordan opens Instagram in bed, before getting up, on 89% of mornings in the past three months. → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
Jordan arrives at the friend's apartment building. A Ring doorbell camera on the building entrance captures Jordan's face. The image is uploaded to Amazon's cloud. Jordan rings the intercom; the intercom system logs the ring event. → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
6:23 PM to 9:17 PM
Dinner. Jordan's phone is in a pocket or on a table. The friend's Alexa device is in the kitchen. The accelerometer data shows Jordan is stationary. The phone's microphone access has been granted to six apps; whether any of them are sampling audio during this period is not visible to Jordan. → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
6:41 AM
Jordan leaves the apartment. The building's electronic key fob system logs an exit event: Unit 4B, timestamp 6:41:33 AM. Jordan's phone's GPS engine begins triangulating from satellite signals plus two nearby cell towers (Tower ID 7441 and 7442, carrier AT&T) and a WiFi positioning system that maps → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
7:03 AM
Jordan stops at a coffee shop. The phone detects the coffee shop's WiFi network (the phone does not connect, but its WiFi probe requests — broadcast automatically as the phone searches for known networks — are logged by the coffee shop's WiFi infrastructure). Jordan pays with a debit card: the trans → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
7:14 AM
Jordan boards a city bus. The transit authority's card reader logs the fare payment (SmartTrip card, account number, timestamp, route). The city's traffic management system cameras capture the bus's location every 30 seconds. A transit authority analyst could place Jordan on Bus Route 44, stop 12, a → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
7:31 AM
Jordan arrives at the warehouse. The employer's biometric timeclock scans Jordan's fingerprint (or handprint) and logs the clock-in: Employee ID, timestamp, location. The warehouse's WiFi network logs Jordan's device connection. Jordan's phone continues sending location pings to background apps. → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
7:31 AM to 2:47 PM
Jordan works. The warehouse's security cameras capture Jordan's movements through the facility approximately every 8 seconds. The warehouse management system logs every scan of every product Jordan handles: item barcode, timestamp, employee ID, location in the facility. Jordan sends two text message → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
9:31 PM
Jordan's Uber ride home is requested. Uber logs: the request time, the pickup location (to the meter), the destination, the driver's ID, the route taken, the duration, the payment. The ride-sharing company's algorithm records this data to a profile that now includes hundreds of previous rides. → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
A
A distribution strategy
how would you get this resource to the students who need it? Consider: where they are, what media they use, what trusted intermediaries (professors, student organizations) might help distribute → Chapter 33 Exercises: Art and Activism Against Surveillance
Accountability gap
The structural condition in which surveillance systems collect, process, and act on data while remaining insulated from meaningful oversight, legal challenge, or democratic accountability. Accountability gaps arise when surveillance programs are classified, when automated decisions are opaque, or wh → Glossary of Key Terms
The use of statistical profiles derived from population-level data to make predictions and decisions about individuals. Actuarial surveillance treats people as instances of a risk category rather than as individuals with particular circumstances; insurance pricing, credit scoring, and pretrial risk → Glossary of Key Terms
Administrative surveillance
The routine collection and processing of personal information by governments and institutions for bureaucratic purposes such as taxation, census-taking, and identification. David Lyon distinguishes administrative surveillance from more coercive forms, though the two categories often blur when admini → Glossary of Key Terms
Affective computing
Technologies designed to detect, interpret, and respond to human emotional states, typically through analysis of facial expressions, vocal tone, physiological signals, or behavioral patterns. Affective computing has been deployed in job interviews, classroom monitoring, and customer service contexts → Glossary of Key Terms
The use of software systems to monitor, direct, evaluate, and discipline workers in real time, replacing or supplementing human supervisors with automated decision-making. Algorithmic management systems can track keystrokes, monitor delivery routes, score customer interactions, and determine pay — o → Glossary of Key Terms
The process of modifying a dataset so that individuals cannot be identified from the data alone or in combination with other reasonably available information. True anonymization is technically difficult; studies have repeatedly demonstrated that ostensibly anonymous datasets can be re-identified usi → Glossary of Key Terms
Answer: a
The pipeline: (1) face detection (finding faces in an image), (2) alignment (normalizing the face image), (3) feature extraction (producing a mathematical representation of the face), and (4) matching (comparing the representation against a database). Each stage has distinct error modes. → Chapter 35 Quiz: Facial Recognition
Answer: b
Warren and Brandeis argued for privacy as "inviolate personality" — a right grounded in the person rather than in property relationships. This was the conceptual break from prior legal thinking. → Chapter 31 Quiz: Privacy as a Right
Answer: c
Justice Stewart wrote that "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places." Justice Harlan's concurrence established the two-part "reasonable expectation of privacy" test that remains controlling. → Chapter 31 Quiz: Privacy as a Right
Answer: d
HIPAA was not relevant to the *Carpenter* decision. The Court's reasoning focused on comprehensiveness, intimacy, and involuntariness of CSLI collection, distinguishing it from the limited phone records in *Smith*. → Chapter 31 Quiz: Privacy as a Right
App permissions generally:
Regularly audit all app permissions using the privacy settings menus. - Revoke microphone and camera access for apps where these are not core to the app's function. - Review which apps have access to contacts, calendar, and health data. → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
Read or review the basic premise of *The Minority Report* (Philip K. Dick, 1956) - Review the chapter's discussion of predictive policing and the Chicago Strategic Subject List → Exercises — Chapter 38: The Future of Surveillance
Behavioral residue
The traces of behavior — clicks, searches, locations, purchases — left by individuals in the course of digital activity, which are collected and used as raw material in the data economy. → Chapter 11: The Data Economy — Your Attention Is the Product
Behavioral surplus
Shoshana Zuboff's term for the portion of behavioral data collected by technology platforms that exceeds what is needed to improve products or services, and which is instead used to train predictive models and sold in behavioral futures markets. Behavioral surplus is the raw material of surveillance → Glossary of Key Terms
Behavioral targeting
Advertising approach that uses behavioral data to reach individuals who have demonstrated specific interests, intentions, and characteristics, rather than broad demographic categories. → Chapter 14: Behavioral Targeting and Real-Time Bidding
Behavioral:
Online activity level: High - Primary device: Mobile - Shopping behavior: Research-heavy, price-sensitive, rarely converts on first visit - Response to email marketing: Low open rate - Estimated "lifetime value": $1,200 (low — young, low income, price-sensitive) → Chapter 11: The Data Economy — Your Attention Is the Product
Biometrics
Physiological or behavioral characteristics that can be used to identify individuals, including fingerprints, iris patterns, facial geometry, gait, voice, and DNA. Unlike passwords, biometric identifiers cannot be changed if compromised, making biometric surveillance databases a particularly consequ → Glossary of Key Terms
Body camera (bodycam)
A wearable recording device typically affixed to a law enforcement officer's uniform to document police-civilian interactions. While introduced as an accountability tool, body camera footage is often controlled by police departments, raising questions about selective activation, footage access, and → Glossary of Key Terms
Boolean logic in surveillance
The use of "if-then" conditional rules to trigger surveillance responses, flag records, or generate alerts. Many algorithmic surveillance systems use Boolean or rule-based logic layered atop statistical models; understanding Boolean logic helps analysts and auditors trace why particular decisions we → Glossary of Key Terms
Breaking facial symmetry
algorithms expect the left-right symmetry of a typical face; extreme asymmetrical patterns disrupt this expectation - **Obscuring the nose bridge** — a key reference point for face detection; covering or visually disrupting it defeats many detection algorithms - **High-contrast patterns** — geometri → Chapter 33: Art and Activism Against Surveillance
A tracking technique that identifies individual browsers by compiling a unique profile of device attributes — screen resolution, installed fonts, browser plugins, time zone, and hundreds of other signals — without placing any file on the user's device. Browser fingerprinting is more persistent than → Glossary of Key Terms
Bulk collection
The mass interception or retention of communications data from entire populations or large segments of a population, rather than targeted collection directed at specific suspects. Bulk collection programs, such as those revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013, raise fundamental questions about whether ma → Glossary of Key Terms
Bypass censorship
used extensively by journalists, activists, and ordinary people in countries with internet censorship (China, Iran, Russia) - **Access to .onion services** — hidden services that operate entirely within the Tor network, making both the user and the server difficult to identify - **Strong track recor → Chapter 32: Counter-Surveillance: Encryption, Anonymization, and Obfuscation
A California state law enacted in 2018 (substantially strengthened by the CPRA in 2020) that grants California residents rights including the right to know what personal information is collected about them, the right to delete personal information, and the right to opt out of the sale of personal in → Glossary of Key Terms
The second chapter turns to a population that is among the most surveilled and the least able to contest that surveillance: children. School monitoring software, cafeteria biometrics, remote proctoring, COPPA's inadequate protection, and the developmental stakes of growing up comprehensively watched → Part 8: Capstone and Synthesis
Chapter 38: The Future of Surveillance
Looking forward, this chapter examines the surveillance trajectories currently underway: the shift from reactive to predictive surveillance, the AI systems that amplify as well as inherit bias, the expanding biometric frontier (gait, voice, cardiac signature, DNA), the social credit logics spreading → Part 8: Capstone and Synthesis
Chapter 39: Designing for Privacy
This chapter turns from analysis to response. Ann Cavoukian's Privacy by Design framework, differential privacy (with a Python implementation of the Laplace mechanism), federated learning, end-to-end encryption, the EU AI Act, CCOPS municipal ordinances, and algorithmic auditing requirements represe → Part 8: Capstone and Synthesis
Chilling effect
The inhibition of legally protected behavior — speech, assembly, association, religious practice — caused by surveillance or the awareness of being watched. The chilling effect is a First Amendment doctrine but also a sociological phenomenon: people change their behavior when they believe they are o → Glossary of Key Terms
COINTELPRO
The Federal Bureau of Investigation's covert program of surveillance, infiltration, and disruption targeting domestic political organizations, operating from 1956 to 1971. COINTELPRO targeted civil rights organizations, antiwar groups, and socialist organizations; its tactics included planting infor → Glossary of Key Terms
Commercial surveillance
The systematic collection, processing, and monetization of personal data by private corporations for advertising targeting, behavioral prediction, credit assessment, and related commercial purposes. Commercial surveillance has expanded dramatically with the rise of internet-connected devices, social → Glossary of Key Terms
Comparison framework:
What technologies of monitoring were/are used? - What were the metrics of performance? - Who had access to performance data? - What were the consequences of poor performance? - What worker resistance existed? → Chapter 26 Exercises: Performance Reviews and the Measured Employee
Freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous 2. **Contract** — Processing necessary to perform a contract with the data subject 3. **Legal obligation** — Processing required by law 4. **Vital interests** — Processing necessary to protect someone's life 5. **Public task** — Processing for offici → Chapter 31: Privacy as a Right: Legal Frameworks and Constitutional Protections
Consent (informed)
A legal and ethical requirement that individuals must be meaningfully informed about data collection practices and must voluntarily agree to them, without coercion and with genuine understanding of what they are agreeing to. Most academic analysts argue that surveillance capitalism's consent mechani → Glossary of Key Terms
Consumer Rights Under CCPA/CPRA:
*Right to Know:* Right to know what personal information is collected, used, sold, or disclosed, and to whom. - *Right to Delete:* Right to request deletion of personal information. - *Right to Opt Out:* Right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information for cross-contextual behavioral → Appendix E: Legal Frameworks Quick Reference
Contact shadow profile
A behavioral record maintained by a platform on an individual who has never created an account, built from data provided by users who have that individual's contact information. → Chapter 13: Social Media as Observation Tower
Context collapse
The flattening of distinct social contexts in digital communication, such that information shared in one context (with friends) becomes visible in others (to employers or law enforcement). Defined by danah boyd, context collapse is a mechanism by which social media surveillance extracts information → Glossary of Key Terms
A small text file placed on a user's device by a website to store information about their visit, preferences, or identity. First-party cookies are set by the visited site; third-party cookies are set by other entities (typically advertisers) whose code is embedded in the page. Third-party cookies ar → Glossary of Key Terms
COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act)
A US federal law enacted in 1998 that requires websites and online services directed at children under 13 to obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information. COPPA's age-13 threshold is easily circumvented, and its enforcement has been criticized as inadequate relative to t → Glossary of Key Terms
Counter-surveillance
Practices, technologies, and strategies designed to detect, prevent, or disrupt surveillance. Counter-surveillance ranges from technical tools (Tor, Signal, ad blockers) to behavioral practices (wearing hats or sunglasses to defeat facial recognition) to activist interventions (documenting police su → Glossary of Key Terms
Credit scoring
The use of algorithms to generate numerical scores predicting the likelihood that an individual will repay debt, using inputs including payment history, account types, credit utilization, and inquiry history. Credit scores function as a surveillance infrastructure for financial institutions; what va → Glossary of Key Terms
Critics argue:
Art remains in galleries, appealing to already-sympathetic audiences; it doesn't reach the populations most affected by surveillance - Making surveillance aesthetically interesting or beautiful may aestheticize rather than critique it - Art provides emotional catharsis that substitutes for political → Chapter 33 Exercises: Art and Activism Against Surveillance
A company that collects personal information from diverse sources — public records, loyalty programs, social media, transaction data — aggregates and analyzes it, and sells profiles to third parties, typically without direct relationships with the individuals profiled. Data brokers are a largely unr → Glossary of Key Terms
A privacy-by-design principle holding that systems should collect only the minimum data necessary for a specified purpose, retain it only for as long as necessary, and not repurpose it for other ends. Data minimization is a core principle of the GDPR and a counterweight to the "collect everything" l → Glossary of Key Terms
Coined by Roger Clarke (1988), dataveillance refers to the systematic monitoring of individuals or populations through the analysis of their data trails, rather than through direct observation. Dataveillance includes credit monitoring, loyalty card tracking, internet browsing analysis, and any other → Glossary of Key Terms
searching for things you're not actually interested in to pollute your profile - **Location spoofing** — apps that allow you to present a false location to apps that request it - **Randomized browsing** — browser extensions that generate random browsing activity in the background → Chapter 32: Counter-Surveillance: Encryption, Anonymization, and Obfuscation
Deep fake
Synthetic audio or video content generated by machine learning models that depicts real individuals saying or doing things they did not say or do. Deep fakes have significant implications for surveillance: they undermine the evidentiary status of video footage, can be weaponized in harassment campai → Glossary of Key Terms
Defenders argue:
Art changes culture; culture change is the precondition for political change - Art reaches people through affect (emotion, aesthetic experience) where argument alone fails - Documentation (Paglen's photographs) creates the public record that makes accountability possible - Art builds solidarity amon → Chapter 33 Exercises: Art and Activism Against Surveillance
Age range: 20-24 - Gender: M/F/Unknown (brokers typically infer from name) - Race/ethnicity: Inferred from name, neighborhood demographics, and purchasing patterns (used in some datasets; explicitly prohibited in others but present through proxy variables) - Household income bracket: $25,000-$35,000 → Chapter 11: The Data Economy — Your Attention Is the Product
The building must comply with fire safety codes (inspectors must be able to assess conditions) - Resident RA (Residential Advisor) staff must be able to respond to emergencies - The university has a legal duty of care for students - Residents have varying needs and preferences for privacy → Chapter 2 Exercises: The Panopticon
Differential privacy
A mathematical framework for releasing statistical information about a dataset while protecting individual privacy, achieved by adding calibrated random noise to query responses. Differential privacy, formalized by Cynthia Dwork (2006), allows aggregate analysis without exposing individual records; → Glossary of Key Terms
Digital enclosure
Andrejevic's concept describing an environment in which participation requires disclosure — engagement with the social space requires generating the surveillance data the platform monetizes. → Chapter 13: Social Media as Observation Tower
Digital exhaust
The data generated incidentally as a byproduct of digital activities — location signals from phone towers, browsing history, purchase timestamps — which, while not deliberately shared, constitutes a detailed behavioral record. Digital exhaust forms a significant portion of the raw material collected → Glossary of Key Terms
Discipline mechanisms:
How did the Taylor-era foreman discipline workers? - How does the algorithmic manager discipline workers? - What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach from the perspective of: (a) the employer, (b) the worker, (c) the legal system? → Chapter 28 Exercises: Algorithmic Management — When the Boss Is an AI
Discriminatory surveillance
The disproportionate or intentional targeting of surveillance at particular communities based on race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, or other protected characteristics, often without individualized suspicion. Discriminatory surveillance is both a historical pattern (lantern laws, COINT → Glossary of Key Terms
Discussion format:
Each position presents for 5 minutes - Cross-examination: 10 minutes - Open discussion: 15 minutes - Synthesis: what would a genuinely satisfactory resolution look like? Is one available? (10 minutes) → Exercises — Chapter 39: Designing for Privacy
Disparate impact
A legal doctrine and analytical concept holding that a practice or policy can be discriminatory even if it was not designed with discriminatory intent, if its effect falls disproportionately on protected groups. Disparate impact analysis is central to evaluating algorithmic systems for racial, gende → Glossary of Key Terms
Distributed surveillance
Surveillance conducted by multiple actors across a decentralized network rather than by a single central authority. Networked home cameras, neighborhood apps, and crowdsourced crime-reporting platforms distribute surveillance function across communities, creating a participatory surveillance infrast → Glossary of Key Terms
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with cameras, thermal sensors, or other instruments to monitor individuals, crowds, or geographic areas. Drone surveillance has been used by law enforcement for border patrol, protest monitoring, and crime investigation, often operating in legal gray zone → Glossary of Key Terms
E
Effect on mass interception:
Cable-level interception: captures encrypted ciphertext — useless without keys - Legal orders to companies: companies cannot produce what they don't have (no keys) - Limitation: metadata remains accessible; device-level attacks (Pegasus) can bypass → Chapter 9 Key Takeaways: Intelligence Agencies and Mass Interception
Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA)
A US federal law enacted in 1986 that establishes standards for government access to electronic communications and stored data. ECPA was written before modern internet services existed and contains significant gaps and ambiguities that courts and Congress have struggled to resolve, including the con → Glossary of Key Terms
Privacy in home environments - Trust — being monitored feels like not being trusted - Stress from constant evaluation - Difficulty separating work and personal life → Chapter 4 Exercises: The Industrial Eye
Encryption
The process of encoding data so that it can only be read by parties with the appropriate decryption key. End-to-end encryption, used by Signal and similar applications, ensures that even the service provider cannot read message content. Encryption is a foundational privacy protection technology, and → Glossary of Key Terms
Environmental DNA (eDNA)
Genetic material shed by organisms into their environment — water, soil, air — that can be collected and analyzed to determine which species (including humans) are present in a location. Environmental DNA collection is an emerging form of passive biological surveillance with applications in ecology, → Glossary of Key Terms
Epidemiological surveillance
The systematic collection and analysis of health data to monitor the distribution and determinants of disease in populations. Epidemiological surveillance is public health's most essential tool, but it involves substantial collection of sensitive personal information, raising tensions between indivi → Glossary of Key Terms
Evaluation criteria:
Accurate use of surveillance concepts from the chapter - Quality of structural reasoning (vs. individual/intentionalist analysis) - Engagement with counterarguments - Clarity and specificity of reform proposal → Chapter 16 Exercises
A US federal law enacted in 1974 that protects the privacy of student education records and gives parents (and students over 18) rights to access, correct, and limit disclosure of those records. FERPA's protections have been tested by the expansion of educational technology platforms that collect de → Glossary of Key Terms
Estimated credit score range: 620-680 - Credit card utilization: High (inferred from thin credit file) - Student loan debt: Present (inferred from age and education data) - Investment accounts: No - Recent major purchases: Electronics, athletic wear, fast food → Chapter 11: The Data Economy — Your Attention Is the Product
A US federal law enacted in 1978 establishing a special court (the FISA Court) that authorizes surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes, operating under procedures substantially different from ordinary criminal court. FISA's broad authorities, and the secrecy surrounding FISA Court orders, wer → Glossary of Key Terms
For each item on your list:
Who holds the data? (Your device? The app company's cloud? Your employer?) - Did you read the privacy policy before using it? - Is the data shared with third parties? (Check the privacy policy if you don't know.) - How long is the data retained? - Have you ever used the data to make a decision or ch → Chapter 20 Exercises
Forensic surveillance
Retrospective surveillance that uses stored data to reconstruct past behavior, movements, or communications, often in the context of criminal investigation. The availability of large volumes of historical digital data has dramatically expanded forensic surveillance capabilities; investigators can no → Glossary of Key Terms
Format:
Each group: 3 minutes of testimony - School board questions: 15 minutes - Public comment period (open to all): 10 minutes - Board deliberation: 10 minutes → Exercises — Chapter 37: Children Under the Gaze
Kantor, Jodi, and David Streitfeld. 2015. "Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace." *New York Times,* August 15. - Kantor, Jodi, and Arya Sundaram. 2022. "The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score." *New York Times,* August 14. → Appendix B: Landmark Studies in Surveillance Research
Function creep
The gradual expansion of a surveillance system's purpose beyond its original stated scope. Function creep is a near-universal feature of surveillance technologies: systems built for one purpose (tracking infectious disease contacts, monitoring highway traffic) are regularly repurposed for additional → Glossary of Key Terms
G
Gait recognition
A biometric surveillance technique that identifies individuals based on the distinctive pattern of their walk, observable from video footage even when the subject's face is obscured. Gait recognition is in deployment in China and under research in the United States and Europe. *(Chapter 7)* → Glossary of Key Terms
The European Union's comprehensive data protection law, in force since May 2018, which establishes rights for EU residents including the right of access, right to erasure, right to data portability, and right to object to automated decision-making. The GDPR's extraterritorial reach and substantial p → Glossary of Key Terms
Geofence warrant
A type of search warrant that compels a technology company (typically Google) to provide law enforcement with records of all devices present within a defined geographic area during a specified time period. Geofence warrants are controversial because they are not targeted at specific suspects but rat → Glossary of Key Terms
Graph data
Data about the relationships among users in a social network, which can be analyzed to reveal community structure, influence, and personal characteristics. → Chapter 13: Social Media as Observation Tower
Group Assignments:
**Group 1 (Government):** Argue that the third-party doctrine applies. Prepare a 5-minute opening argument and responses to anticipated objections. Use *Smith v. Maryland* and distinguish or limit *Carpenter*. - **Group 2 (Defense):** Argue that *Carpenter*'s reasoning extends to social media record → Chapter 31 Exercises: Privacy as a Right
**Gaggle representative:** Present the product's safety benefits, data practices, and terms of service - **District safety administrator:** Explain the safety rationale for the adoption - **Privacy advocate:** Present civil liberties concerns about the system - **Parent of a student with LGBTQ+ iden → Exercises — Chapter 37: Children Under the Gaze
Surveillance directed downward through organizational or social hierarchies — employers watching employees, governments watching citizens, parents watching children. Hierarchical surveillance is the dominant mode theorized by Foucault and Bentham; it is the panoptic gaze directed from positions of p → Glossary of Key Terms
Hikvision and Dahua
the world's two largest video surveillance equipment companies — supplied cameras and integrated systems to Xinjiang authorities. Both companies were added to U.S. export control lists in 2019, and to U.S. sanction lists in subsequent years, based on their Xinjiang connections. Both companies had, p → Case Study 10.1: The Uyghur Surveillance State — Technology, Ethnicity, and Human Rights
Intelligence gathered through interpersonal contact, including informants, undercover agents, and human sources. HUMINT represents one pole of the surveillance spectrum, contrasted with SIGINT (signals intelligence); surveillance programs that rely on community informants — including COINTELPRO's us → Glossary of Key Terms
I
Ice cores
samples drilled from glaciers and ice sheets in Greenland, Antarctica, and other cold regions — contain air bubbles trapped at the time the ice formed, preserving atmospheric composition from thousands to hundreds of thousands of years ago. → Chapter 23: Weather Surveillance and Climate Monitoring
Use a secondary device for sensitive communications while investigating. - Contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) or techsafety.org before taking action. - Do NOT remove stalkerware without safety planning. - On iPhone: Settings > Privacy & Security > Safety Check. → Key Takeaways — Chapter 19
Right of access (know what data is held) - Right to rectification (correct inaccurate data) - Right to erasure ("right to be forgotten") - Right to restriction of processing - Right to data portability - Right to object to processing - Rights related to automated decision-making and profiling → Appendix E: Legal Frameworks Quick Reference
Individuation
each subject becomes a distinct, classifiable object of knowledge 2. **Permanence** — the record is continuous, creating self-discipline across time 3. **Visibility** — the watched are permanently seeable; the watcher remains shadowed - **Normalizing gaze**: surveillance does not just observe — it d → Key Takeaways — Chapter 2: The Panopticon
**FBI Director:** Argue that exceptional access to encrypted communications is necessary for law enforcement and national security. Ground your argument in specific cases where encrypted communications prevented investigation. - **Cryptographer:** Argue that backdoors are technically impossible to i → Chapter 32 Exercises: Counter-Surveillance
Internet of Things (IoT)
The expanding network of internet-connected physical objects embedded with sensors, software, and communication capabilities that collect and share data. IoT devices including smart speakers, connected appliances, fitness trackers, and industrial sensors generate continuous streams of behavioral dat → Glossary of Key Terms
Intrusion upon seclusion
physically or electronically intruding into someone's private space 2. **Public disclosure of private facts** — publishing true but private information 3. **False light** — publishing information that creates a misleading impression 4. **Appropriation** — using someone's name or likeness for commerc → Chapter 31: Privacy as a Right: Legal Frameworks and Constitutional Protections
J
Jordan Ellis
22-year-old first-generation college student majoring in sociology at a mid-size state university (fictional: Hartwell University). Mixed-race (Black and white), uses they/them pronouns. Works part-time at a logistics warehouse. Has a smartphone, uses social media casually, recently applied for an i → Continuity Tracking Document
Jurisdictions (choose two):
European Union (GDPR framework) - United Kingdom (Information Commissioner's Office guidance) - California (California Consumer Privacy Act / AB 1215 facial recognition ban) - Oakland, California (surveillance oversight ordinance) - Australia (Privacy Act / state surveillance legislation) - Canada ( → Chapter 16 Exercises
Government surveillance of political organizations implicates First Amendment associational rights (established in cases arising from COINTELPRO). - Library surveillance — government monitoring of library records — implicates First Amendment interests in intellectual freedom. - Surveillance that det → Appendix E: Legal Frameworks Quick Reference
Key findings:
Traffic to the privacy-sensitive articles declined by approximately 30% in the months following the Snowden revelations. - The decline was not explained by seasonal patterns, general Wikipedia traffic trends, or the political salience of individual topics. - The effect was most pronounced for articl → Chapter 6: The National Security State — From COINTELPRO to PRISM
Key FISA Sections:
*Title I (Traditional FISA Orders)*: Authority for surveillance of specific foreign powers or their agents, under relatively stringent procedural requirements. - *Section 215 (now amended)*: Authorized bulk collection of phone metadata under the theory that business records could be compelled if "re → Appendix E: Legal Frameworks Quick Reference
Key GOES capabilities:
**Visible imagery:** High-resolution cloud images (at 0.5 km resolution for the primary channel) updated continuously - **Infrared imagery:** Cloud top temperature measurement, enabling detection of thunderstorm intensity and fog - **Water vapor imagery:** Direct measurement of water vapor in the up → Chapter 23: Weather Surveillance and Climate Monitoring
Key limitations:
Displacement: crime may move to uncovered areas, reducing net effect - Operator bias: human operators disproportionately surveil Black men - Type specificity: most effective against premeditated property crime; least effective against impulsive and domestic violence → Chapter 8 Key Takeaways: CCTV and the Surveilled City
Key rights under CCPA/CPRA:
**Right to know** — What personal information is collected, how it's used, and with whom it's shared - **Right to delete** — Request deletion of personal information - **Right to opt out of sale/sharing** — Businesses cannot sell or share your data without allowing you to opt out - **Right to correc → Chapter 31: Privacy as a Right: Legal Frameworks and Constitutional Protections
Colonial and antebellum laws in New York City requiring enslaved Black people to carry lanterns when moving through the city after dark, making them perpetually visible and identifying them as subjects of suspicion. Simone Browne analyzes lantern laws as an early biometric surveillance technology ap → Glossary of Key Terms
Lateral surveillance
Surveillance of peers by peers, often facilitated by digital platforms — neighbors watching neighbors, friends monitoring friends, romantic partners tracking each other. Lateral surveillance redistributes the surveillance gaze beyond institutional actors and implicates ordinary people as both watche → Glossary of Key Terms
Lawfulness, fairness, and transparency
Processing must have a legal basis; it must be done fairly; data subjects must be informed 2. **Purpose limitation** — Data collected for one purpose cannot be used for incompatible purposes without new legal basis 3. **Data minimization** — Only data necessary for the specified purpose should be co → Chapter 31: Privacy as a Right: Legal Frameworks and Constitutional Protections
Laws to map:
HIPAA - FERPA - COPPA - ECPA - GLBA (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) - FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) - VPPA (Video Privacy Protection Act) → Chapter 31 Exercises: Privacy as a Right
Legal theory — disparate impact:
What protected characteristic is allegedly being discriminated against? - What facially neutral employment practice produces the disparate impact? - Do you need to prove discriminatory intent? Why or why not? - What statistical standard applies? (Research the "4/5ths rule" used by the EEOC) → Chapter 29 Exercises: HR Analytics and Predictive Hiring
Lifestyle and Interests:
Interest segments: Music streaming, social media, fast food, budget travel - Political affiliation: Leaning Democratic (inferred; 65% confidence) - Religious affiliation: Unknown/not inferred - Presence of children: No - Pet ownership: Unknown → Chapter 11: The Data Economy — Your Attention Is the Product
Liquid surveillance
Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon's concept of surveillance in late modernity as mobile, flexible, and permeating all social domains rather than residing in fixed institutional structures. Liquid surveillance flows between sectors (commercial, governmental, social) and adapts to changing technological c → Glossary of Key Terms
Location permissions:
Review all apps with location access (Settings > Privacy > Location Services on iOS; Settings > Location on Android). - Revoke location access for apps where it is not necessary for the app's core function (weather apps need location; games generally do not). - Change "Always" location access to "Wh → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
logic
a set of justifications, institutional arrangements, and legal tools that can be picked up by any sufficiently powerful state actor and pointed in any direction. The targets change; the logic persists. → Chapter 6: The National Security State — From COINTELPRO to PRISM
M
Mark Andrejevic
"Participatory surveillance" and "digital enclosure" framework (*iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era*, 2007; "Surveillance and Alienation in the Online Economy," 2011) - **Thomas Mathiesen** — "Synopticon" concept (Chapter 2 connection) - **Kosinski, Stillwell, and Graepel (2013)** — → Key Takeaways: Chapter 13 — Social Media as Observation Tower
Metadata
Data about data — information describing the attributes of a communication or file rather than its content. In telecommunications, metadata includes who called whom, when, for how long, and from where. Security agencies and legal actors have long argued that collecting metadata is less intrusive tha → Glossary of Key Terms
Metadata is data about communications: who called whom, when, for how long, from where — rather than the content of calls - The NSA's "just metadata" defense rested on the idea that content is more sensitive than patterns - The Stanford University research example demonstrates that patterns alone ca → Chapter 6 Quiz: The National Security State
Mosaic theory
The principle that individually innocuous pieces of information, when assembled together, can constitute a comprehensive and invasive surveillance picture. Mosaic theory has been cited by courts and civil liberties advocates to argue that aggregated metadata warrants the same Fourth Amendment protec → Glossary of Key Terms
A methodological approach that maps and measures relationships and flows between entities (people, organizations, devices) in a network. Law enforcement agencies use network analysis to identify "associates" of suspects; marketing companies use it to identify influential social nodes; social scienti → Glossary of Key Terms
normalizing gaze
the way that surveillance produces not merely compliance but the internalization of norms. The examined individual does not simply obey a rule; they come to understand themselves through the categories that examination imposes. → Chapter 2: The Panopticon — Bentham's Dream, Foucault's Nightmare
notifiable disease
one of the approximately 120 diseases and conditions designated for mandatory reporting by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) — it is required to report the case to the state health department. The reporting physician may also have an independent obligation. → Chapter 24: Epidemiological Surveillance — Tracking Disease and Population
O
Obfuscation
A privacy protection strategy involving the deliberate injection of misleading, irrelevant, or false information into surveillance data streams to make individual records harder to isolate or interpret. Obfuscation strategies include browser plugins that generate fake browsing traffic, burner phone → Glossary of Key Terms
The two paradigms for acquiring data subject consent: opt-in requires affirmative consent before data collection begins; opt-out places the burden on the individual to proactively refuse collection, with collection as the default. Most commercial surveillance systems use opt-out or "implied consent" → Glossary of Key Terms
Options:
**Map your surveillance:** Document and map the surveillance infrastructure of a specific area (your campus, your neighborhood, your workplace). Mark camera locations, note what they observe, identify who operates them. Create a visual representation of the surveillance geography. - **Data portrait: → Chapter 33 Exercises: Art and Activism Against Surveillance
P
Panopticism
Michel Foucault's theoretical analysis, derived from Jeremy Bentham's panopticon design, of a modern power mechanism in which the possibility of constant observation induces subjects to regulate their own behavior. Panopticism describes not just prisons but schools, hospitals, factories, and any ins → Glossary of Key Terms
Panopticon
Jeremy Bentham's late-18th-century architectural design for a prison in which a central observation tower is surrounded by a ring of cells, each visible from the tower. The panopticon's key feature is that inmates cannot know whether they are being observed at any given moment, inducing them to beha → Glossary of Key Terms
Part B Guidance:
Question 16 should reference the normalization of surveillance and the difficulty of contesting background conditions - Question 17 should address power (watcher defines wrongness), freedom (chilling effect), and equity (surveillance falls unequally) - Question 18 should clearly distinguish few→many → Chapter 1 Self-Assessment Quiz: What Is Surveillance?
Participatory surveillance
Mark Andrejevic's term for surveillance systems in which users actively participate in generating the data that surveillance collects, as in social media platforms. → Chapter 13: Social Media as Observation Tower
Passive acoustic monitoring
The use of sensors and recording equipment to detect and analyze sounds in an environment — typically for wildlife monitoring — without active signal transmission. Passive acoustic monitoring applied to birdsong is a case study in how environmental surveillance technologies generate data about non-t → Glossary of Key Terms
People analytics
The application of data analysis to human resources functions, including hiring, performance management, retention, and workforce planning. People analytics uses employee data — productivity metrics, communication patterns, survey responses — to generate insights and recommendations, raising questio → Glossary of Key Terms
Performative surveillance
Surveillance that is not primarily about gathering information but about communicating power, demonstrating capacity, and inducing behavioral compliance through the knowledge that surveillance occurs. Security theater at airports and visible CCTV cameras in public spaces often function performativel → Glossary of Key Terms
Platform surveillance
The collection of user behavioral data by social media platforms, search engines, and other digital intermediaries through the operation of their services. Platform surveillance is distinguished by its scale, its integration with social life, and the degree to which users are unaware of or unable to → Glossary of Key Terms
The extension of surveillance and law enforcement to target individuals not for what they have done but for what statistical models predict they might do. Pre-crime logic is embedded in predictive policing systems, terrorist watch lists, and some forms of social benefit fraud detection. *(Chapter 8) → Glossary of Key Terms
Predictive policing
The use of algorithms to forecast where crimes are likely to occur or who is likely to commit crimes, used to allocate police resources. Predictive policing systems trained on historical crime data have been shown to encode and amplify existing racial disparities in law enforcement. *(Chapter 8)* → Glossary of Key Terms
A US National Security Agency program, disclosed by Edward Snowden in 2013, that collected internet communications — including email, chat, video, photos, and stored data — from the servers of major American technology companies including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. PRISM operated under → Glossary of Key Terms
Privacy by design
An approach to systems engineering and policy development that builds privacy protections into the design of technologies, systems, and institutional practices from the outset, rather than treating privacy as an add-on compliance requirement. Privacy by design was developed by Ann Cavoukian and is n → Glossary of Key Terms
Privacy paradox
The observed tendency for individuals to express strong privacy preferences in surveys while behaving in ways that reveal little actual concern for privacy in practice — accepting data-intensive apps, posting personal information publicly, or trading data for convenience. Researchers debate whether → Glossary of Key Terms
Privacy protection designed in before events occur 2. **Privacy as the default setting** — Maximum privacy without user action; sharing requires affirmative choice 3. **Privacy embedded into design** — Privacy integral to system architecture, not added on top 4. **Full functionality — positive-sum, → Key Takeaways — Chapter 39: Designing for Privacy
Profiling
The practice of constructing an analytical model of an individual or category of individuals from data, which is then used to predict behavior, assess risk, or make decisions. Profiling ranges from marketing segmentation to terrorist watch-listing; in all cases, it involves treating predictions abou → Glossary of Key Terms
Prohibited AI Practices include:
Real-time remote biometric identification in publicly accessible spaces by law enforcement (with narrow exceptions) - AI systems that exploit vulnerabilities of specific groups - Social scoring by public authorities (directly targeting Chinese-style social credit systems) - Predictive policing based → Appendix E: Legal Frameworks Quick Reference
A movement and practice involving the continuous self-monitoring of bodily functions, activities, and behaviors using wearable sensors, apps, and other tracking technologies, with the goal of self-optimization. The quantified self represents a form of voluntary self-surveillance; the data generated → Glossary of Key Terms
R
Re-identification
The process of linking anonymized data back to identifiable individuals, typically by combining the dataset with auxiliary information. Re-identification research has consistently demonstrated the fragility of anonymization; Netflix viewing records, hospital data, and location traces have all been r → Glossary of Key Terms
Real-time bidding (RTB)
An automated advertising auction system in which ad impressions are sold and purchased in milliseconds as a user loads a webpage, with bids informed by detailed data profiles of the user. Real-time bidding involves the simultaneous transmission of personal data to hundreds or thousands of advertisin → Glossary of Key Terms
The reproduction of discriminatory exclusion patterns (like historical housing redlining) through algorithmic advertising targeting that encodes or reproduces race-correlated behavioral patterns. → Chapter 14: Behavioral Targeting and Real-Time Bidding
Reducing data exhaust:
Use a privacy-focused browser (Firefox with uBlock Origin, Brave, or DuckDuckGo) for web browsing. - Use a search engine that does not build user profiles (DuckDuckGo, Startpage). - For sensitive searches (medical, legal, financial), consider using a browser in private/incognito mode or on a separat → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
Rendition cycle
Shoshana Zuboff's term for the process by which surveillance capitalism converts human experience into behavioral data, translating the texture of lived life into quantifiable signals for predictive modeling. The rendition cycle describes how the digital representation of experience feeds back into → Glossary of Key Terms
Report the workplace safety conditions
Jordan can independently file an OSHA complaint about the safety conditions that contributed to Diego's injury. This report is protected activity: Jordan cannot be legally retaliated against for filing an OSHA safety complaint. > > 3. **Contact the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division** — if → Chapter 30: Whistleblowing, Dissent, and Organizational Surveillance
A neoliberal governance strategy that shifts responsibility for managing social risks from institutions to individuals, often facilitated by surveillance technologies that monitor and evaluate individual compliance. Wellness programs that monitor employee health metrics, insurance pricing based on d → Glossary of Key Terms
You can request a copy of all personal data held about you - **Right to rectification** — You can correct inaccurate data - **Right to erasure** (right to be forgotten) — You can request deletion under certain circumstances - **Right to restriction** — You can limit processing in certain circumstanc → Chapter 31: Privacy as a Right: Legal Frameworks and Constitutional Protections
The use of satellite-mounted cameras and sensors to observe the earth's surface at various resolutions, used for military intelligence, environmental monitoring, urban planning, and commercial applications. The democratization of high-resolution satellite imagery (through commercial providers like P → Glossary of Key Terms
**Installed fonts:** Which fonts are present on the system - **Plugin list:** Which browser plugins are installed - **Time zone and language settings** - **Canvas fingerprint:** How the browser renders a specific test drawing (varies subtly by graphics hardware, driver, and OS) - **WebGL fingerprint → Chapter 12: Browser Cookies, Tracking Pixels, and the Third-Party Data Ecosystem
Secrecy as a structural norm
the classification system that removed large domains of government activity from democratic accountability. 3. **Legal exceptionalism** — the development of courts, procedures, and doctrines that applied different rules to security matters than to ordinary law enforcement. 4. **Threat elasticity** — → Chapter 6: The National Security State — From COINTELPRO to PRISM
Surveillance or security measures that are visible and reassuring but that provide little actual security benefit. The term, coined by Bruce Schneier, describes TSA security screening, decorative CCTV cameras, and other measures whose primary function is to perform security rather than achieve it. * → Glossary of Key Terms
One group argues FOR the claim (or the strongest version of it). - One group argues AGAINST the claim. - A third group serves as judges. → Chapter 18 Exercises
Shadow profile
A profile constructed and maintained by a platform about an individual who has not registered for or consented to that platform, typically built from contact lists uploaded by the individual's connections, tracking pixels, and data broker information. Facebook's shadow profiles were documented in le → Glossary of Key Terms
Sherron Watkins (Enron, 2001)
Internal corporate whistleblower; the legal response was SOX 2. **Edward Snowden (NSA, 2013)** — National security whistleblower; disclosed to journalists; fled abroad 3. **Frances Haugen (Facebook, 2021)** — Corporate whistleblower; disclosed to Congress and media; remained in U.S. → Chapter 30 Exercises: Whistleblowing, Dissent, and Organizational Surveillance
Shoshana Zuboff
*The Age of Surveillance Capitalism* (2019); theorized behavioral data as raw material in a new economic logic - **Herbert Simon** — Identified the "poverty of attention" in information-rich environments (1971), foundational to attention economy theory - **Charles Duhigg** — Documented the Target pr → Key Takeaways: Chapter 11 — The Data Economy
SIGINT (Signals Intelligence)
Intelligence gathered by intercepting electronic signals, including communications (COMINT) and non-communications signals. SIGINT agencies — including the NSA in the United States and GCHQ in the United Kingdom — conduct bulk collection of communications data under authorities that have generated s → Glossary of Key Terms
Slower than regular browsing
routing through three relays adds latency - **Some sites block Tor exit nodes** - **Not immune to all attacks** — correlation attacks (if an adversary controls both the entry and exit nodes) can deanonymize users; this is mainly a risk from nation-state adversaries - **Not protection against applica → Chapter 32: Counter-Surveillance: Encryption, Anonymization, and Obfuscation
Smart city
An urban environment in which networked sensors, data analytics, and automated systems are used to manage infrastructure, services, and governance. Smart city infrastructure generates pervasive ambient surveillance data; critics argue that smart city projects are often surveillance infrastructure pr → Glossary of Key Terms
social credit logic
comprehensive behavioral scoring for access determination — is already present in Western commercial societies: FICO scores, insurance behavioral rating, algorithmic hiring, content moderation reputation systems - The relevant distinction is governance and accountability, not the presence or absence → Key Takeaways — Chapter 38: The Future of Surveillance
Social credit system
China's government-operated system of behavioral scoring and sanction that aggregates data from financial, legal, social, and behavioral records to generate scores that affect individuals' access to services, travel, employment, and social standing. The social credit system is the most comprehensive → Glossary of Key Terms
Social graph
The map of relationships between individuals on a social platform or in a social network, representing who knows whom and how. Social graph data is highly revealing even without communication content; analysis of social graphs enables inference about political beliefs, sexual orientation, health con → Glossary of Key Terms
David Lyon's concept of surveillance as a mechanism for sorting populations into categories that receive different treatments, opportunities, or restrictions. Social sorting transforms surveillance data into differential outcomes; it is the mechanism by which surveillance perpetuates and intensifies → Glossary of Key Terms
Some evidence of modest effectiveness
personality-matched messaging does slightly outperform non-matched messaging in laboratory conditions - **Significant skepticism about the scale of claimed effects** — real-world political outcomes involve many factors; attributing specific vote margins to psychographic targeting is methodologically → Case Study 34-1: Cambridge Analytica and the Behavioral Futures Market in Politics
Soundscape ecology
pioneered by Bernie Krause and elaborated by researchers including Almo Farina and Bryan Pijanowski — treats the acoustic environment of a habitat as a holistic indicator of ecological condition. Rather than monitoring individual species, soundscape ecologists analyze the total acoustic output of a → Chapter 22: Birdsong Monitoring and Environmental Surveillance
Sources to consult:
Your state legislature's website (search for electronic monitoring + employees) - The National Conference of State Legislatures (ncsl.org) database on employee monitoring laws - The Electronic Privacy Information Center (epic.org) workplace privacy resources - State attorney general or labor departm → Chapter 27 Exercises: Remote Work Surveillance
Sousveillance
Steve Mann's term for surveillance directed upward — recording those in positions of power by those subject to their authority. Citizen filming of police violence is a form of sousveillance; the Rodney King video was a landmark sousveillance moment. Sousveillance is one tool of accountability in asy → Glossary of Key Terms
Stalkerware
Software secretly installed on a device, typically by a domestic partner or abuser, to covertly monitor the device user's communications, location, and activities. Stalkerware is a domestic violence technology and represents the darkest application of consumer-grade surveillance tools. *(Chapter 19) → Glossary of Key Terms
Step 1 — Browser audit:
What browser do you currently use? - Open your browser's extension list. Which extensions are installed? Do any collect data you're unaware of? - Open your browser settings and locate cookie and tracking settings. What is currently enabled? - Go to a website that tracks you (try coveryourtracks.eff. → Chapter 32 Exercises: Counter-Surveillance
Step 2 — App permission audit:
On your smartphone, go to Settings > Privacy and review which apps have access to: location, microphone, camera, contacts, photos - Identify three apps with permissions they don't functionally need - Revoke those permissions and note whether the apps still function normally → Chapter 32 Exercises: Counter-Surveillance
Step 3 — Account security audit:
List your five most important accounts (email, banking, social media, etc.) - For each: (a) Is your password unique? (b) Is two-factor authentication enabled? - If you don't use a password manager, estimate how many passwords you reuse → Chapter 32 Exercises: Counter-Surveillance
Surveillance that operates not through conscious intent to watch but through the design of environments, architectures, and systems that make certain populations perpetually legible to power. Structural surveillance includes the racial geography of CCTV deployment, the surveillance embedded in welfa → Glossary of Key Terms
Shoshana Zuboff's framework describing an economic logic in which human behavioral data — extracted without meaningful consent — is the primary raw material for generating predictions about human behavior, which are sold in behavioral futures markets. Surveillance capitalism names a specific mutatio → Glossary of Key Terms
An interdisciplinary academic field examining the social, political, ethical, and technical dimensions of monitoring practices, with roots in sociology, political science, geography, law, computer science, and philosophy. Surveillance studies emerged as a distinct field in the 1990s through the work → Glossary of Key Terms
synoptic map
a map showing weather conditions simultaneously across a large area — became possible only with the telegraph. "Synoptic" means "seeing together," which is precisely the surveillance aspiration: to see what no single observer could see, assembled from the reports of many. → Chapter 23: Weather Surveillance and Climate Monitoring
Synopticism
Thomas Mathiesen's concept, proposed as a complement to panopticism, describing the condition in which the many watch the few — as in mass media, celebrity culture, and reality television. Synopticism captures surveillance dynamics not addressed by Foucault's primarily vertical, hierarchical model. → Glossary of Key Terms
synopticon
Mathiesen's concept of the many watching the few — as a complement to Bentham's panopticon (the few watching the many). Social media is, in one dimension, synoptic: many users watch and scrutinize a small number of celebrities and public figures. But simultaneously, the platform watches all users fr → Chapter 13: Social Media as Observation Tower
T
targeted surveillance
focused monitoring of specific individuals or communications based on individualized suspicion — and **mass surveillance** — collection of communications across a population without individualized suspicion — is both constitutional and ethical. → Chapter 9: Intelligence Agencies and Mass Interception
Targeting
In surveillance contexts, the selection of specific individuals or communications for intensive collection and analysis. Targeted surveillance is distinguished from bulk collection; civil libertarians argue that surveillance programs should be limited to targeted collection predicated on individuali → Glossary of Key Terms
Team A preparation notes:
Employers have legitimate interests in employee health (productivity, insurance costs) - Financial incentives are used throughout the economy to align individual and collective interests - Participation in wellness programs has been associated with positive health outcomes in some studies - Employee → Chapter 20 Exercises
Team B preparation notes:
The "voluntary" character of programs with significant financial incentives is questionable, especially for lower-wage workers - Health data is highly sensitive; its transfer to employers (even in aggregate) creates risks - The individual responsibility frame of wellness programs ignores structural → Chapter 20 Exercises
also known as "usage-based insurance" or "pay-as-you-drive" insurance — uses driving behavior data to price insurance individually rather than through demographic and actuarial group classifications. → Chapter 15: Smart Devices and the Internet of Things
Law enforcement: need "exceptional access" to preserve lawful surveillance capacity - Cryptographers: encryption with backdoor is not secure encryption; key escrow creates exploitable vulnerabilities - Status: backdoor legislation not enacted in U.S. as of 2025 → Chapter 9 Key Takeaways: Intelligence Agencies and Mass Interception
The company's concerns:
Ensuring that employees are working during stated hours - Maintaining productivity on projects with deadlines - Managing employees fairly without access to direct observation → Chapter 4 Exercises: The Industrial Eye
The critique:
Haystack problem: more irrelevant data (hay) doesn't make finding the needle easier; may make it harder - Cognitive science: analysts make worse decisions with more irrelevant data - Operational evidence: bulk metadata collection was triggering factor in ~1.8% of terrorism cases (New America Foundat → Chapter 9 Key Takeaways: Intelligence Agencies and Mass Interception
tracking across sites - **Browser fingerprinting** — identifying your device through its unique configuration - **Tracking pixels** — tiny images embedded in web pages and emails that report when they're loaded - **Supercookies/evercookies** — persistent tracking mechanisms that survive clearing nor → Chapter 32: Counter-Surveillance: Encryption, Anonymization, and Obfuscation
Third-party doctrine
A US legal doctrine, derived from Smith v. Maryland (1979), holding that information voluntarily shared with third parties (banks, telephone companies, service providers) loses Fourth Amendment protection. The third-party doctrine has been applied to dramatically limit privacy protections for digita → Glossary of Key Terms
Three key scripts
the specific words a student should say in three situations: - When asking an administrator what data the university holds about them - When reporting a concern about privacy practices to the campus privacy office - When a professor requires use of proctoring software that the student believes is in → Chapter 33 Exercises: Art and Activism Against Surveillance
Tracking pixel
An invisible one-pixel image embedded in emails or webpages that, when loaded, sends information about the user's IP address, device, email client, and behavior back to the tracking entity. Tracking pixels are widely used in email marketing and web analytics; they can detect when emails are opened, → Glossary of Key Terms
In data governance, the principle that individuals should be able to know what information is collected about them, how it is processed, by whom, and for what purposes. Transparency is a necessary but insufficient condition for meaningful privacy protection; disclosing surveillance practices in opaq → Glossary of Key Terms
U
Ubiquitous computing
A paradigm in which computing devices are embedded throughout environments and everyday objects, making computation continuous and ambient rather than confined to discrete devices. Ubiquitous computing enables ubiquitous surveillance; the smart home, smart city, and IoT all instantiate this paradigm → Glossary of Key Terms
Understanding your carrier's practices:
Major carriers sell aggregated location data to third parties and have faced regulatory action for this practice. Review your carrier's opt-out options for data sharing. - Opt out of carrier location data sales where these options are available. → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
Understanding your rights:
In California and states with CCPA-equivalent laws, you have the right to request, delete, and opt out of the sale of your data from apps and data brokers. Exercise these rights annually. - Submit opt-out requests to major location data brokers (SafeGraph, LiveRamp, Acxiom, and others have opt-out p → Chapter 18: Smartphone Surveillance: Location Data and Digital Exhaust
USA PATRIOT Act
A sweeping post-September 11 US federal law (2001) that dramatically expanded government surveillance authorities, lowered standards for FISA warrants, authorized roving wiretaps, enabled access to library and bookstore records, and facilitated information sharing between intelligence and law enforc → Glossary of Key Terms
Usage patterns
when the device is used, what commands are given, which features are activated - **Smart home device data** — if the Echo is connected to other smart home devices (lights, locks, thermostats), Amazon receives data about their states and activations - **Third-party skill data** — when users enable th → Chapter 15: Smart Devices and the Internet of Things
A portmanteau of "surveillance" and "sousveillance" coined by Steve Mann to describe the general field of watching and being watched, inclusive of all directions and modalities. *(Chapter 1)* → Glossary of Key Terms
Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA)
A US federal law enacted in 1988 prohibiting video rental services from disclosing customers' rental records without consent. Passed in response to the disclosure of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental history, the VPPA has been invoked in litigation concerning streaming service data sh → Glossary of Key Terms
Visibility asymmetry
The condition in which surveillance arrangements make some actors highly visible to others while rendering those doing the watching relatively invisible. Visibility asymmetry is a structural feature of hierarchical surveillance and is central to the power effects Foucault analyzes: those watched can → Glossary of Key Terms
Visibility:
What was visible to the Taylor-era foreman that was invisible to workers? - What is visible to the algorithmic manager that is invisible to workers? - What is visible to workers about their management system in each era? → Chapter 28 Exercises: Algorithmic Management — When the Boss Is an AI
VPN (Virtual Private Network)
A technology that encrypts internet traffic and routes it through a server in another location, obscuring the user's IP address and browsing activity from their ISP and local network. VPNs protect against certain forms of surveillance (network monitoring) but do not provide anonymity from the VPN pr → Glossary of Key Terms
A periodic statement by a service provider that it has not received secret government orders compelling data disclosure, which functions by its absence: if the canary disappears, users can infer that a secret order has been received. Warrant canaries are a legal workaround to gag orders accompanying → Glossary of Key Terms
A database of individuals flagged for enhanced scrutiny, restriction, or interdiction, maintained by governments or private entities. Watch lists — including the US Terrorist Screening Database (the "no-fly list") — often lack meaningful appeal processes, and inclusion criteria are frequently opaque → Glossary of Key Terms
Wearable technology
Consumer electronics worn on the body that continuously monitor physiological signals, movement, location, and other personal data, including fitness trackers, smartwatches, and health monitors. Wearable technology blurs the boundary between voluntary self-quantification and involuntary surveillance → Glossary of Key Terms
Information serves power (surveillance makes populations legible to those who govern) - Surveillance always sorts (classifies populations for differential treatment) - Visibility asymmetry is structural (watchers know more than the watched) - Consent is not the organizing principle (surveillance is → Key Takeaways — Chapter 3: Pre-Modern Surveillance
NEXRAD Doppler radar data: 159 stations, continuous, publicly available in real time - GOES satellite imagery: Full resolution data publicly available through NOAA portals - Radiosonde data: 900 global launch sites, data shared internationally under WMO agreements - Hurricane hunter aircraft data: N → Case Study 23-1: Hurricane Florence and the Private Weather Ecosystem — Who Owns the Storm?
What this enables:
Checking plates against hot lists of stolen vehicles, vehicles with outstanding warrants, or vehicles of interest to law enforcement - Building a historical record of where a specific vehicle (and its driver) has been over time - Generating alerts when a specific vehicle enters or exits a defined ar → Chapter 25: Urban Sensors and Smart City Infrastructure
What this includes:
Research into genetic associations with thousands of diseases (heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, depression, schizophrenia) - Research linking genetics to behavioral traits (intelligence, educational attainment, personality) - Research into complex traits including sexual orientation and political → Case Study 24-2: The UK Biobank — Genetic Surveillance, Equity, and the Data Commons Problem
What was difficult:
Amazon's scale of anti-union spending and organization - The mandatory captive audience meetings, which Amazon (legally) used intensively - The monitoring infrastructure's chilling effects on organizing conversations within the facility - The race and class dynamics of Bessemer, Alabama — a majority → Case Study 28-2: The RWDSU and Amazon Bessemer — Organizing Against the Algorithm
What worked:
Generating national attention to the specific conditions of algorithmic management - Building a worker-leader cohort who testified effectively in public forums - Creating NLRB proceedings that documented specific Amazon surveillance and coercion practices - Inspiring subsequent organizing campaigns, → Case Study 28-2: The RWDSU and Amazon Bessemer — Organizing Against the Algorithm
Whistleblowing
The disclosure of information about illegal, dangerous, or unethical practices by an insider to an external authority or the public, often at significant personal risk. Whistleblowers — including Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Frances Haugen — have been among the most important sources of info → Glossary of Key Terms
Write a 300-word reflection:
Does this audit change your view of any of your tracking practices? - Is there anything on the list you would like to stop? What would stopping require? - Is there anything you would like to start tracking? After what you've read in this chapter, what would you consider before starting? → Chapter 20 Exercises
Write a 400-word analysis:
What does the opt-out process (or its absence) reveal about whether these companies treat privacy as a genuine value or a compliance exercise? - Is opt-out as a privacy framework adequate for the location data broker ecosystem? If not, what would an adequate framework look like? → Chapter 18 Exercises
Z
Zero-day vulnerability
A software flaw unknown to the software developer that can be exploited by attackers before a patch is issued. Intelligence agencies have been revealed to stockpile zero-day vulnerabilities for offensive surveillance capabilities; this practice is controversial because stockpiled vulnerabilities als → Glossary of Key Terms
Zero-knowledge proof
A cryptographic method by which one party can prove to another that they know a value without conveying any information about the value itself. Zero-knowledge proofs enable privacy-preserving authentication and verification systems and are increasingly significant in privacy-by-design engineering. * → Glossary of Key Terms