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The Internet's True Surveillance Potential

posted by Dopefish on Saturday February 15 2014, @08:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-nsa-is-watching-you dept.

sgleysti writes: "In an article titled, "Is the Internet good or bad? Yes.", Zeynep Tufekci explores the true powers of internet surveillance for corporations and governments, using the Gezi Park protests in Turkey as a foil. He explains how the well-known scenarios of 1984 and the Panopticon fail to imagine a powerful and salient use of Big Data in modern democratic societies: the ability to persuade individuals through personally-tailored messages that no-one else hears. He considers how this is far more subtle and compelling than traditional mass media and explores the irony that the internet which has enabled grass-roots protests worldwide also grants powerful entities a new means of influencing large segments of the population."

 
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  • (Score: 1) by dmc on Monday February 17 2014, @08:04AM

    by dmc (188) on Monday February 17 2014, @08:04AM (#493)

    "He explains how the well-known scenarios of 1984 and the Panopticon fail to imagine a powerful and salient use of Big Data in modern democratic societies: the ability to persuade individuals through personally-tailored messages that no-one else hears."

    The darkest side of 'targeted advertising' is 'targeted harassment'. I'm convinced the practice is already widespread, and if the NSA aren't the primary ones responsible, they are the primary ones who know about it and allow it to happen and are therefore guilty as accessories-after-the-fact. I hear so much bullshit about how the privacy leaking aspects of e.g. amazon advertising tied into ubuntu, and google advertising tied into firefox are 'no big deal, you are just paranoid'. I'm fracking sick of it. The obvious way to limit your exposure to targeted harassment is to get targeted advertising out of your daily internet experience. Unfortunately there is some serious money that wants to make god damned sure that never happens for the masses. ( my cathartic self-published outlet is called 'Surveillance Spiral', available for free pdf download from lulu.com/cx1 or cloudsession.com/dawg )