CENSORSHIP & SURVEILLANCE IN DIGITAL SPACES
The world wide web and other aspects of digital culture have given governments, corporations and citizens rich new tools of communication within and across national borders. These possibilities for open communication, however, pose a threat to those whose power thrives on secrecy and information control. In this context, digital technologies have set off a new information control struggle between and among governments, between and among multinational corporations (including new media corporations), and between citizens, governments and corporations.
Two of the keys ways this struggle has manifested are cyber-censorship (limiting access to digitized information, especially on the web), and cyber-surveillance (that intrudes into the private economic lives and political freedoms of citizens). The sites, articles and books linked or cited below address these complex issues of informational freedom from a variety of angles and with a variety of suggested models for the flow of information through digital media.
There is arguably no greater issue in digital culture today than the authoritarian threat posed by misuse of digital technologies to censor political discussion, and to undermine the vital political and personal right to privacy.
Censorship of Digital Spaces
- Delbert, Ronald, et al.Access Denied:The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008. Important, comprehensive study.
- Knockel, Jeffrey, Lotus Ruan and Masashi Crete-Nishihata. “Keyword Censorship in Chinese Mobile Games.” The Citizen Lab (August 14, 2017). On one of the many ways the Chinese government seeks to censor online content.
- Mitchell, Anna and Larry Diamond. “China’s Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone” The Atlantic (February 2, 2018). On how China's authoritarian use of citizen surveillance may well become a model used in currently democratic societies.
- OpenNet Initiative OpenNet is a major transnational effort to monitor Internet censorship, filtering and surveillance.
- Safi, Michael et al. "The Internet, But Not as We Know: Life Online in China, Cuba, India and Russia." Guardian (11 Jan 2019).
- Shanti, Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas, Open Networks, Closed Regimes Summary of a massive study of the impact of the Internet on "closed regimes" like China and Iran. Challenges the conventional wisdom that the Internet automatically brings freedom with it.
- Soldatov, Andrei and Irina Borogan. The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russian Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries. New York: Public Affairs, 2015. Russia's attempt to catch up to China in digitally repressing dissent.
Surveillance vs. Privacy in Digital Cultures
- Andrews, Lori. I Know Who You Are and I Know What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy. NY: The Free Press, 2012. Groundbreaking book on the threat to privacy with suggested legal safeguards.
- Andrews, Lori. “Internet Privacy Rights Constitution.” (n.d.). Rich set of suggestions for basic privacy rights that should be guaranteed to all users of digital technology.
- Aschwanden, Christie. “This Algorithm Knows You Better than Your Facebook Friends Do.” FiveThirtyEight (January 12, 2015). /li>
- Aurora, Fennel. “All the Ways Facebook Can Track You.” Safe and Savvy (February 28, 2018) Along with the Aschwanden piece above, good details on the amount of invasive information collected on every Facebook user.<
- Boyle, James. "Foucault in Cyberspace: Surveillance, Sovereignty, and Hard-Wired Censors" Early but still relevant article on privacy law in digital culture.
- Barrett, Brian. “How to Stop Your Smart TV from Spying on You.” Wired (2-17-2017). Practical advice about resisting one of the many means of digitized surveillance.
- Dewey, Caitlin. “98 Data Personal Points that Facebook Uses to Target Ads at You,” Washington Post (Aug 19, 2016.
- Fuchs, Christian, et al.., K. Boersma, A. Albrechtslund, and M. Sandoval, eds. Internet and surveillance. New York: Routledge, 2011.
- Gellman, Barton. “NSA Broke Privacy Rules Thousands of Times Per Year, Audit Finds.” Washington Post (August 15, 2013). And things have only gotten worse since 2013.
- Gray, Chris Hables. “Big Data, Actionable Information, Scientific Knowledge and the Goal of Control.” Revista Teknokultura 11.3 (2014): 529-554. Important piece on the abuse of scientific data by governments to control citizens.
- Harding, Luke. The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man. New York, Vintage, 2014. Details the US and UK governments' abuse of privacy law, and the authoritarian threat posed by new technologies.
- Hern, Alex. “Why Have We Given Up Our Privacy to Facebook and Other Sites So Willingly?” Guardian (March 21, 2018). Interesting take on why people have given up their privacy rights so easily in exchange for trivial digital pleasures.
- Hern, Alex and Arwa Mahdawi. “Beware the Smart Toaster: 18 Tips for Surviving the Age of Surveillance.” Guardian (March 28, 2018). Amusing but also frightening list of all the ways "Internet of Things" devices undertake surveillance.
- Ingram, David. “Facebook to Put 1.5 Billion Users Out of Reach of New EU Privacy Regulations.” Reuters (April 18, 2018). On Facebook's attempt to circumvent important basic digital privacy laws enacted by the European Union.
- Lanier, Jaron. Ten Reasons to Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. New York: Henry Holt, 2018. One of Silicon Valley's top engineers on the oppressive impact of social media on privacy and identity.
- Levine, Yasha. Surveillance Valley. London: Icon Books, 2019. Details the military roots of the Internet in the Vietnam era, and the continued complicity between web-based companies like Google and the US military and police departments.
- Lyon, David. "From Big Brother to the Electronic Panopticon" On how extensive digital surveillance can be.
- Madden, Mary, et al. “Teens, Social Media, and Privacy.” Pew Research Center (May 21, 2013). On how easily we give up privacy for fleeting digital pleasures.
- Madden, Mary and Lee Rainie. “American Attitudes Towards Privacy, Security and Surveillance.” Pew Research Center (May 20, 2015). Two Madden pieces on how US citizens express concern about digital privacy but remain largely complacent in seeking remedy.
- "Privacy Project." Clear, useful set of essays on surveillance from the NYTimes. (May require subscription.)
- Reeves, Joshua. Citizen Spies: The Long Rise of America's Surveillance Society. New York: NYU Press, 2018. Places recent surveillance culture into the long history of Americans spying on one another.
- Silver, Curtis. “Patents Reveal How Facebook Wants to Capture Your Emotions, Facial Expressions and Mood.” Forbes (June 8, 2017). Facebook adds facial recognition to its arsenal of privacy invasion tools.
- Solon, Olivia. “How Europe’s ‘Breakthrough’ Privacy Law [GDPR] Takes on Facebook and Google.” Guardian (April 19, 2018).
- Trotter, Daniel. Social Media as Surveillance. London: Routledge, 2012. Social media as the perfect tool for government surveillance and the authoritarian uses to which personal data can be used.
- Vaidhyanathan, Siva. Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. Oxford University Press, 2018.
- ---. The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry). University of California Press, 2011. These two books by Vaidhyanathan are vital for anyone wishing to understand the dark side of digital technologies as threats to personal freedom and democratic choice.
- Zuboff, Shoshona. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. NY: Public Affairs, 2019. One of the most comprehensive studies demonstrating how extreme inequalities of knowledge and power via corporate/state surveillance are erasing human autonomy and political freedom.