The Crisis of Self Sovereignty in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The Crisis of Self Sovereignty
- With A Brief Overview of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”
Jonathan Kim
(deframing@icloud.com)
2019.4.25

It’s Time to Panic about Privacy

What is Privacy?
Privacy is a fundamental right,
essential to autonomy and
the protection of human dignity,
serving as the foundation upon which
many other human rights are built.
<Source:https://privacyinternational.org/explainer/56/what-privacy>

Debates on Privacy
ü Companies and governments are
gaining newpowers to followpeople
across the internet and around the
world, and even to peer into their
genomes.
ü The benefitsofsuch advances have
been apparent for years; the costs
are nowbecoming clearer.
ü The boundariesof privacy are in
dispute, and its future isin doubt.
Citizens, politicians and business
leaders are asking if societies are
making the wisest tradeoffs.
<Source:https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/opinion/internet-privacy-project.html>

Privacy is Too Big to Understand
<Source:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/opinion/privacy-technology.html>
§“Privacy” is an impoverished word — far too small a word to describe what we talk
about when we talk about the mining, transmission, storing, buying,selling, use and
misuse ofour personal information.
§You are losing controlover your life.When technologygovernsso many aspects of our
lives — and when that technologyis powered by the exploitation of ourdata —
privacy isn’t just about knowing your secrets, it’s about autonomy.
§Privacy is really about being able to define for ourselveswho we are forthe world and
on our own terms.
§“Maintaining privacy will be integral to the internet’sfuture, if only because consumers
need to feelsafe enoughto participate.”

How Capitalism Betrayed Privacy
<Source:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/sunday/privacy-capitalism.html>
§The forcesof wealth creation no longer favor the expansion of privacy but work to
undermine it. - Therise of “attention merchants” and “surveillancecapitalism”;
thecommodificationofourpersonal data by techgiants likeFacebook,Googleand theirimitators.
§We face a future in which active surveillance is such a routine part of business that for
most people it is nearly inescapable. We are on the road back to serfdom.
§Many employers also nowconstantly watch their employees. There is good reason to
believe that, if nothing is done,gratuitous surveillance will be built into nearly every
business and business model.
§Those who want privacy should support and reward the companies who respect it.
The economicsof privacy would change if enough consumers bought fromcompanies
that don’t spy on us and whose products actually help people avoid an unwanted gaze.

Facebook Under Fire
<Source:https://variety.com/2018/digital/features/facebook-privacy-crisis-big-data-mark-zuckerberg-1202741394>
§Cambridge Analytica illicitly procured the
data of50 million Facebook users —
without their knowledge or consent —
and then enlisted that to informvoter-
targeting strategies forDonald Trump’s
presidential campaign.
§Both Facebook and CAclaim they were
duped by the researcher who originally
harvested the data, who used an
innocuous-seemingpersonality quiz in
2013 to access infoon friends of people
who used the app. à Facebook is
expecting to pay as much as $5bn to the
US Federal Trade Commission.(2019.4.25)

Facebook is "Surveillance Machine"
<Source:https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product>
You don't use Facebook. Facebook uses you.
“Facebook is in the surveillance business.
Facebook, in fact, is the biggest surveillance-based enterprise in the history of mankind.
It knows far, far more about youthan the most intrusive government has ever known
about its citizens.”
“Note that the company’s knowledge about its users isn’t used merely to target ads
but to shape the flowof news to them.”
When the service is free, you're not the customer.You're the product.

The ‘Data Labor Union’
<Source:https://thedataunion.eu>
Facebook usersunite!
'Data Labour Union'launches in Netherlands §The Data Union is going to demand the
transparency and readability of
algorithms used corporationsand
governments.
§The Data Union is going to help members
demand their data rights from
corporations and governments.
§The Data Union will focus attention on
the need for the Data Union.
§The Data Union will inform its members
about the newest tools to protect your
data and develop these ourselves,to end
our dependency.

Facebook’s Privacy Policies
<Source:https://web.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-focused-vision-for-social-networking/10156700570096634/?_rdc=1&_rdr>
ü Facebook founderMark
Zuckerberg told that if
he were to create
Facebook again today,
user information would
by default be public,
not private as it was for
years until the company
changed dramatically in
December.
(2010. 1. 9)
ü Facebook’s mission is to
make the world more
open and connected.
ü The main way we do
this is by giving people
the tools to map out
their relationships with
the people and things
they care about. We
call this map the graph.
(2013. 1. 15)
The digital equivalent of
a town square à
The digital equivalent of
the living room
- Private interactions
- Encryption
- ReducingPermanence
- Safety
- Interoperability
- Securedata storage
(2019. 3.7)
“The Age of Privacyis Over” “GraphAPI/Graph Search” “A Privacy-FocusedVision”

Four Essential Privacy Principles(by Tim Cook)
Ø Companies should challenge themselves to de-identify customer data or not collect
that data in the first place.
Ø Users should always knowwhat data is being collected from them and what it’s being
collected for.This is the only way to empower users to decide what collection is
legitimate and what isn’t.
Ø Companies should recognizethat data belongs to users and we should make it easy for
people to get acopy of their personal data, as well as correct and delete it.
Ø Everyonehas a right to the security of their data. Security is at the heart ofall data
privacy and privacy rights.
<Source:https://twitter.com/tim_cook>

“The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”

The Foundations of Surveillance Capitalism

Sur-veil-lance Cap-i-tal-ism, n.
1. Anew economicorder that claims human experienceas free raw material for hidden
commercial practices ofextraction, prediction, and sales;
2. Aparasitic economiclogic in which the productionof goods and services is
subordinated to a newglobal architecture ofbehavioral modification;
3. Arogue mutation of capitalism marked by concentrations of wealth, knowledge, and
power unprecedented in human history;
4. The foundationalframework ofa surveillance economy;
5. The origin ofa new instrumentarian power that asserts dominance over society and
presents startling challenges to market democracy;
6. Amovement that aims to impose a new collective order based on total certainty;
7. An expropriation of critical human rights that is best understoodas a coup from above:
an overthrowofthe people’s sovereignty.
<Source:ShoshanaSuboff,<TheAgeofSurveillance Capitalism> PublicAffairs,2019>

Behavioral Surplus
Behavioral
Data
Human
Experience
appliedto product or service
improvement
a proprietary
behavioralsurplus
Although some ofbehavioral data are applied to product or service improvement,
the rest are fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as“machine intelligence,”
and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do.

Data Extraction and Analysis
Data
The raw material necessary for surveillance capitalism’s novel
manufacturing processes
Extraction
The social relations and material infrastructure with which the firm
asserts authority over those raw materials to achieve economiesof
scale in its raw-material supply operations
Analysis
The complex ofhighly specialized computational systems that is
generally referred to as “machine intelligence”

Behavioral Value Reinvestment Cycle
ü Users provides the raw material in the
form ofbehavioral data, and those data
are harvested to improve speed, accuracy,
and relevance and to help build ancillary
productssuch as translation.
ü In the Behavioral Value Reinvestment
Cycle, all the behavioral data are
reinvested in the improvement ofthe
product or service.

Discovery of Behavior Surplus
ü Surveillance Capitalism begins with the
discovery of behavioral surplus. More
behavioral data are rendered than
required for service improvement.
ü This surplus feeds machine intelligence
that fabricates predictions ofuser
behavior.These Productsare sold to
business customersin newbehavioral
futures markets.
ü The Behavioral Value Reinvestment Cycle
is subordinated to this new logic.

The Logic and Operation of Surveillance Capitalism
Logic
The Means
of Production
The
Products
The
Marketplace
The translation of
behavioral surplus
from outside to inside
the market finally
enabled Google to
convert investment
into revenue.
Google’s machine
intelligence
capabilities feed on
behavioral surplus,
and the more surplus
they consume,
the more accurate the
prediction products
that result.
Machine intelligence
processesbehavioral
surplus into prediction
products designed to
forecast what we will
feel, think, and do.
Prediction products
are sold into a new
kind ofmarket that
trades exclusively in
future behavior.
Surveillance
capitalism’s profits
derive from behavioral
futuresmarkets.

The Dynamic of Behavioral Surplus Accumulation
ü Surveillance Capitalism master motionis
the accumulation of newsources of
behavioral surplus with more predictive
power.
ü The goalis predictionscomparable to
guaranteed outcomes in real-life behavior.
ü Extraction begins online,but the
prediction imperative increases the
momentum,driving extraction toward
new sourcesin the real world.

Accumulation by Dispossession
Accumulationby dispossession is a conceptpresented by the Marxist geographer
David Harvey, which defines the neoliberal capitalist policies in many western
nations as resulting in a centralization ofwealth and power in the hands of a fewby
dispossessing the public and private entitiesof their wealth or land.
Human experience could be extracted at no extra cost online and at very low cost
out in the real world. Once extracted, it is rendered as behavioral data, producing a
surplus that forms the basis ofa wholly newclass ofmarket exchange.
Surveillance capitalism originatesin this act of digital dispossession, brought to life by
the impatience of over-accumulated investment.This isthe lever that moved
Google’s world and shifted it toward profit.

The Dispossession Cycle
Incursion Habituation Adaptation Redirection
The incursion is when
dispossession
operations rely ontheir
virtual capabilities to
kidnap behavioral
surplus from the
nonmarket spaces of
everyday life where it
lives.
The incursion itself,
once unthinkable,
slowly worms its way
into the ordinary.
Worse still, it gradually
comes to seem
inevitable. New
dependencies develop.
when Google is forced
to alter its practices, its
engineers produce
superficial but
tactically effective
adaptations that satisfy
the immediate
demands of
government authorities
and public opinion.
In afinal stage the
corporation regroups to
cultivate new rhetoric,
methods, and design
elements that redirect
contested supply
operations just enough
so that they appear to
be compliant with
social/legal demands.

Scrapes Your Site Activity
<Source:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/09/creepy-startup-will-help-landlords-employers>
“People will give up their privacy
to get something they want.”
(Steve Thornhill)

Who Knows? Who Decides? Who Decides Who Decides?
Who
Knows?
Who
Decides?
Who Decides
Who Decides?
• ‘This is aquestion about the distribution of knowledge and whether
one is included or excluded from the opportunityto learn.
• This is a question about power. What is the sourceof power that
undergirds the authority to share or withhold knowledge?
• This is a question about authority : which people, institutions, or
processesdetermine who is included in learning, what they are able
to learn, and how they are able to act ontheir knowledge.

Merely Human Natural Resources
In this future we are exiles from ourown behavior, denied access to
or controlover knowledge derived from our experience.
Knowledge, authority, and power rest with surveillance capital,
for which we are merely “human natural resources.”
The commodificationof behavior under the conditionsof
Surveillance capitalism pivotsustoward a societal future in which
an exclusive division oflearning is protected by secrecy,indecipherability, and expertise.

A Fight over Surveillance Capitalism
ü Let it be an insistence that raw surveillance capitalism is as much a threat to society as
it is to capitalism itself.
ü This is not a technical undertaking, not a program for advanced encryption,improved
data anonymity,or data ownership.
ü Such strategies only acknowledge the inevitability ofcommercial surveillance.
ü Surveillance capitalism dependson the social, and it is only in and through collective
social action that the larger promise of an information capitalism aligned with a
flourishing third modernitycan be reclaimed.
‘If there is to be a fight, let it be a fight over capitalism.

The Advances of Surveillance Capitalism

Economic Imperative
Extraction
Imperative
Prediction
Imperative
l The first wave of prediction productsenabled targeted online
advertising. These productsdepended upon surplus derived at scale
from the internet.
l I have summarized the competitive forcesthat drive the need for
surplus at scale as the “extraction imperative.”
l The next threshold was definedby the quality of prediction products.
l In the race for higher degrees of certainty, it became clear that the
best predictionswould have to approximate observation.
l The prediction imperative is the expression ofthese competitive forces.
what forms of surplus enable the fabrication of predictionproducts that
most reliably foretell the future?

Prediction Imperative
Economiesof
Scale
Economiesof
Scope
Economiesof
Action
• Extension ofExtraction
• Depth

Rendition : From Experience to Data
why is our experience rendered as behavioraldata in the first place?
Rendition: the specific operations that target the gap between
experience and data on a mission to transform the one into the other
Rendition describes the concrete operationalpractices through which
dispossession is accomplished, as human experienceis claimed as raw material
for datafication and all that follows, from manufacturing to sales.

Big Data and Big Profits
<Source:https://www.livemint.com/Technology/Bnj3jc8hTDgONgBtTsENvN/The-movement-to-make-your-data-earn-money.html>
§It is the data—which we give away for
free—that is the coreof the vast profits
of the world’smost valuable companies.
- Facebook, pays only 1% ofits value to
its workers(programmers), because the
rest of its work it getsfree from us
- Walmart pays 40% of its value in wages.
§Afewvisionaries have been trying to
introduce a radical new concept.
—“Data as Labor(DaL)”— that will make
for a far more economically fair society
in the digital age.

Data as Labor
<Source:http://radicalmarkets.com>
ü Imagine a world in which your personal data, currently
hooveredup by tech companiesand repurposed for their
profit, were honoredas your dignified work and compensated
as such.
ü Data as Labor(DaL) : Because data suppliers are not properly
rewarded for their digital contributions,they lack the
incentive or freedomto contributethe high-quality data that
would most empower technologyor develop their personal
capacities to maximize their earnings and contributions to the
digital economy.

Economies of Action
“The new power is action.”
The prediction imperative phase represents the completion of the newmeans of
behavior modification, a decisive and necessary evolution
of the surveillance capitalist “means ofproduction”
toward a more complex,iterative, and muscular operational system.
Under surveillance capitalism the objectives and operations of
automated behavioral modification are designed and controlled
by companies to meet their own revenueand growth objectives.

Three Key Approaches to Economies of Action
Tuning Herding Conditioning
Nudge
any aspect of
a choice architecture
that alters people’sbehavior
in a predictable way
Orchestration of
the human situation
foreclosingaction alternatives
and thus movingbehavioralong
a path of heightenedprobability
Reinforcement
“Behaviormodification” or
“behavioral engineering,”
in whichbehavioris continuously
shaped to amplify some actions
at the expense of others

Behavioral Economics for Surveillance Capitalism
Extrinsic Motivation Intrinsic Motivation
《ChoiceArchitect》based on ‘LibertarianPaternalism’
Libertarianpaternalismis the idea that
it is both possible and legitimate for private and public institutions to affect behavior
while also respecting freedom ofchoice, as well as the implementation of that idea.
<Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_paternalism>

Behavioral Modification
Behavioral modification relies upon a variety of machine processes, techniques, and tactics
(tuning, herding,conditioning) to shape individual, group, and population behavior
in ways that continuouslyimprove their approximation to guaranteed outcomes.
Surveillance capitalists’ interests have shifted
from using automated machine processes to know about your behavior
to using machine processes to shape yourbehavior according to their interests.
This decade-and-a-half trajectory has taken us
from automating information flows about youto automating you.

Instrumentarianismas a New Species of Power
What is
Instrumentarianism?
The instrumentation and instrumentalization of behavior for the
purposes of modification, prediction,monetization, and control
ü Totalitarianism was apolitical projectthat converged with economics to overwhelm society.
ü Instrumentarianism is amarket project that convergeswith the digital to achieve its own
unique brand ofsocial domination.
ü Thanks to Big Other’s capabilities, instrumentarian power aims for a conditionof certainty
without terror in the form of“guaranteed outcomes.”
*Big Other:It is thesensate, computational,connectedpuppetthatrenders,monitors,
computes, and modifies human behavior.

Two Species of Power : Totalitarianism vs. Instrumentarianism

A Market Project of Total Certainty
ü Totalitarianism was atransformation of the state into a project oftotal possession.
ü Instrumentarianism and Big Other signal the transformation ofthe market into a project
of total certainty, an undertaking that isunimaginable outside the digital milieu, but
also unimaginable outside the logic of accumulation that is surveillance capitalism.
ü This new power is the spawn of an unprecedentedconvergence:the surveillance and
actuation capabilities of Big Other in combination with the discovery and monetization
of behavioral surplus.
ü we can imagine economicprinciples that instrumentalize and controlhuman experience
to systematically and predictably shape behavior toward others’ profitable ends.
First, machinesare not individuals, andwe should be more like machines.

What is Self-Sovereignty?
<Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty>
Sovereigntyis the full right and power of a governingbody over itself,
without any interference fromoutside sources or bodies.
sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme authority over some polity.
ü Self(orindividual)-Sovereigntyis the concept of propertyin one's own person,
expressed as the natural right of aperson to have bodily integrity and
be the exclusive controller ofone's own bodyand life.
ü Self-Sovereigntyis a central idea in several political philosophies that emphasize
individualism, such as liberalism and anarchism.

What is Self-Determination?
<Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination>
ü The right of a people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern
international law.
ü It states that people, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality
of opportunity,have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international
political status with no interference.
ü By extension, the term self-determination has come to mean the freechoice of one's
own acts without external compulsion.

The End of Self-Determination
surveillance capitalists declare their right to modify others’behavior
for profit according to methodsthat bypass human awareness,
individual decision rights, and the entire complex of self-regulatory processes
(autonomy and self-determination).
§Human consciousness itself is a threat to surveillance revenues,as awareness endangers
the larger project ofbehavior modification.
§Philosophers recognize“self-regulation,” “self-determination,” and “autonomy” as
“freedom of will.”
§The competitive necessity of economiesof action means that surveillance capitalists
must use all means available to supplant autonomousaction with heteronomousaction.

Solutions to the Problem of Self-Sovereignty

The Right to Sanctuary
§ A sanctuary is a sacred place. By extension the term has come to be used forany place
of safety. This secondary use can be categorizedinto human sanctuary, a safe place for
humans, such as a political sanctuary.
§ The sanctuary privilege has stood as an antidote to power since the beginning of the
human story.There was an exit fromtotalizing power, and that exit was the entrance to
a sanctuary in the formof a city, a community,or a temple.
ü Big Other outruns society and law in a self-authorizeddestruction of the right to
sanctuary as it overwhelms considerations of justice with its tactical mastery of shock.
ü “No exit” is the necessary conditionfor Big Other to flourish.
-That is the tides ofbehavioralsurplus and their transformation into revenue,
the certainty that willmeet everymarket player withguaranteed outcomes,
the actuation and modificationthat quietlydrains the willto will.

Obfuscation : as a Strategy for Privacy Protection
Obfuscation is
the deliberateaddition of ambiguous,confusing, or misleadinginformation
to interfere with surveillanceand data collection.
<Source:Finn Brunton, Helen Nissenbaum, <Obfuscation:AUser'sGuideforPrivacy andProtest> TheMITPress,2015>
Operation
Vula
Uploads
to leak sites
TrackMeNot
Chaf
Identical
confederates
and objects
False
tells
Excessive
documentation
Group
identity
Shuffling
SIM cards
Tor
relays
Babble
tapes
CacheCloak

Privacy Itself is a Solution to Societal Challenges
<Source:Finn Brunton, Helen Nissenbaum, <Obfuscation:AUser'sGuideforPrivacy andProtest> TheMITPress,2015>
Privacy does not mean stopping the flow of data;
It meanschannelingit wisely andjustly
to serve societal ends andvalues and the individualswho are its subjects,
particularlythe vulnerable andthe disadvantaged.

Privacy Technologies for our Struggle for Self-Sorvereignty
Decentralized
Identifier
Zero Knowledge
Proof
MimbleWimble
Secure
MPC
Self-Sovereigntyis a Guide to Privacy
…
It’s time for “Privacy Revolution” with the Blockchain Technology!

“What is at stake here is the human expectation of sovereignty
over one’s own life and authorship of one’s own experience.”
- Shoshana Zuboff,<TheAge of SurveillanceCapitalism>

The Crisis of Self Sovereignty in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

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