They Know You More Than You Know Yourself - Surveillance Capitalism and It's Ethical Impacts

Table of Links

1 Introduction

2 The new Empire of Surveillance Capitalism

3 Target Advertisement

4 Military technology and Politics

5 Focus on Ethical Frameworks

5.1 Utilitarian Framework

5.2 Deontology Framework

5.3 Direct comparison between Utilitarianism and Deontology

6 Conclusions, Acknowledgements, and References

Surveillance capitalism is a concept that describes the practice of collecting and analyzing massive amounts of user data for the purpose of targeted advertising and other forms of monetization. The phenomenon has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, with tech companies like Google and Facebook using users’ personal information to deliver personalized content and advertisements. Another example of surveillance capitalism is the use of military technology to collect and analyze data for national security purposes. In this context, surveillance capitalism involves the use of technologies like facial recognition and social media monitoring to gather information on individuals and groups deemed to be potential threats to national security. This information is then used to inform military operations and decision-making. This paper wants to analyze in a critical way the phenomenon of surveillance capitalism, proposed under two different ethical framework perspectives. Utilitarianism, a consequentialist ethical theory that judges actions based on their ability to bring about the greatest amount of happiness or pleasure for the greatest number of people, and Kantian deontology, a non-consequentialist ethical theory that emphasizes the importance of individual autonomy, freedom, and dignity. On one side, the utilitarian framework enlightens how Information Technology (IT) and the features provided offer, at first sight, all the positive perceptions to the majority of people, happiness, entertainment, and pleasure. On the other side, the Kantian deontology framework mostly focuses on the aspect of freedom and free will of the individual. This topic is particularly related to the concession of permissions to access data in change of services and the degree of influence that manipulation performed by surveillance capitalism can generate.

1 Introduction

To increase consumerism, the business of major companies and the power of countries, social networks and political parties are performing a form of inner and intimate manipulation that is located in the idea of Surveillance Capitalism. In this paper, I will try to show this new phenomenon, which can be realized utilizing targeted advertising and military technology, under two different ethical frameworks, the utilitarianist and the Kantian perspective. The scope is to enlighten justifications and implications according to these different frameworks. In particular, I will start by defining the concept of Surveillance Capitalism and the way it is perceived nowadays. I will analyze in depth some of the most common real-world situations in which this phenomenon can be seen in action, i.e. targeted advertisement and coercive manipulation in both totalitarian regime and democratic countries. I will then analyze these aspects in relation to the ethical frameworks proposed, from one side “the end justifies the means” and from the other the duty framework as the core, introducing other philosophical works as a support of my analysis.

The paper is organized in the following way. Section 2 will describe Surveillance Capitalism, defining its characteristics and important features. Section 3 and 4 will be devoted to the analysis of the realization of Surveillance Capitalism in the form of targeted advertisement and manipulation of people in politics and military fields. In particular, these real scenarios of analysis were chosen because they are very representative of the main needs in the nowadays society. From one side the target advertisement represents an incentive for consumerism and the possibility of easily realizing every desire (e.g. the easy discovery of new places, occasions, and assets). From the other side, the social and national security, which is connected to both politics and military war is a topic to which people are very sensitive nowadays, because of the incredible ease with which some crimes can be performed today. Section 5.1 recalls these phenomena, in particular the one of target advertisement, which is more connected to pleasure and amusement, under a utilitarian perspective, after having described the key points of the framework. Section 5.2 will have the same approach as section 5.1, applied to the duty framework proposed by Kant and focusing more on the phenomena related to the political sphere, as it is more representative of the concepts of responsibility and duty towards people and the country. Section 5.3 will complete the analysis, deepening the study of both phenomena under the two ethical frameworks. It will also enlighten the main difference between the two frameworks and their values, while conclusions are drawn in section 6.

2 The new Empire of Surveillance Capitalism

The wide spread of the Internet brought to the current society in which the major means of generating wealth on the Internet and through proprietary platforms (as apps) is the surveillance of the population. This phenomenon allows to increase exponentially gains from the digitalized companies that have the monopoly of society. Digitalization of surveillance has radically changed the nature of advertising. Now, the implication of the system is the absence of effective privacy. Revelations of Edward Snowden on NSA’s Prism of 2013 are an example of the pattern of a tight interweaving of the military with giant computer-Internet corporations. There are many examples of partly cooperative, partly legally coerced sharing of data that can be found in the case of Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and others. These companies turned over the data from tens of thousands of their accounts on individuals every six months both to the NSA and other intelligence agencies, with a fast rise in the number of accounts turned over to the secret government [1]. In practice, according to revelations, NSA gained access to data from mobile phones emanating from hundreds of millions of Americans as well as populations abroad—operating thorough Boundless Informant, Prism, and other secret projects. The final goal was to capitalize on new military technology and create larger global Internet monopolies while expanding the military-digital interchange system. In the context of capitalization, an example of the trend that well represents the centralized structure of monopoly-finance capital in the age of digital surveillance is given by the practice of “securitization” increasingly standing simultaneously for a world dominated by the elements identified in [1, 3]. In detail:

1. Financial derivatives trading

   
   

2. A network of public and private surveillance

   
   

3. The militarization of security-control systems

   
   

4. The removal of judicial processes from effective civilian control

Surveillance can be simply seen as a collection of techniques that together potentially constitute subjects to regulation (first interpretation), as well as attention purposeful, systematic, and oriented to social control (second interpretation). While totalitarian regimes may embrace the second definition, seeing Surveillance as an instrument to strengthen their control over people, capitalist and democratic systems may value Surveillance more for reasons connected to its rationality, potentialities in terms of welfare, and good sense. On the whole, it must be noticed anyway that Surveillance must be contextualized also in its economic implications and this is more than a way of social control [2]. One of the greatest issues that are connected to Surveillance Capitalism, as also shown in the core phenomenons of the paper, i.e. target advertising and coercive manipulation, is the asymmetry in

the distribution of power that is generated by the retrieval of data of people unaware of this process (known and discussed following some whistle-blowers revelations). The weight of this power is concentrated in the hands of the actors that have access and can manage the information that is retrieved [3].