Abstract
This entry summarizes anthropological perspectives on digital privacy and digital surveillance. It begins with a brief history of digital privacy, from electronic eavesdropping in the late 1800s, to wiretapping in the 1900s, to internet hacking in the present era. It then considers how the loss of digital privacy often occurs when users either willingly or unwittingly provide information to tech firms that profit from its commercialization. The entry concludes with a discussion of possible futures, including organized efforts to protect data privacy by fighting against digital surveillance.
References and Further Reading
- Angwin, Julia. 2015. Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance. New York: St. Martin's Griffin.
- Catherine Besteman, and Hugh Gusterson, eds. 2019. Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses Are Remaking Our World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
10.7208/chicago/9780226627731.001.0001 Google Scholar
- Brooker, Charlie, and Annabel Jones, with Jason Arnopp. 2018. Inside Black Mirror. New York: Crown Archetype.
- Brunton, Finn, and Helen Nissenbaum. 2016. Obfuscation: A User's Guide for Privacy and Protest. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Byler, Darren. 2022. Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
- Chin, Josh, and Lisa Lin. 2022. Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control. New York: St. Martin's Press.
- Churchill, Ward, and Jim Vander Wall. 2001. The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars against Dissent in the United States. Boston, MA: South End Press.
- Coleman, Gabriella. 2015. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous. New York: Verso Books.
- Delfanti, Alessadro. 2021. The Warehouse: Workers and Robots at Amazon. London: Pluto Press.
10.2307/j.ctv2114fnm Google Scholar
- Dourish, Paul, and Genevieve Bell. 2011. Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
10.7551/mitpress/9780262015554.001.0001 Google Scholar
- Ebeling, Mary F. E. 2022. Afterlives of Data: Life and Debt under Capitalist Surveillance. Oakland: University of California Press.
- Eggers, Dave. 2013. The Circle. New York: Knopf.
- Gellman, Barton. 2021. Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State. New York: Penguin.
- González, Roberto J. 2022. War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future. Oakland: University of California Press.
- Hafner, Katie, and Matthew Lyon. 1998. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster.
- Harding, Luke. 2014. The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man. New York: Vintage.
- Hochman, Brian. 2022. The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Heather A. Horst, and Daniel Miller, eds. 2012. Digital Anthropology. Oxford: Berg.
- Huxley, Aldous. 1932. Brave New World. New York: Harper & Row.
- Johnson, Bobbie. 2010. “ Privacy No Longer a Social Norm, Says Facebook Founder.” The Guardian, January 10. Accessed October 12, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-privacy.
- Keats Citron, Danielle. 2022. The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age. New York: W. W. Norton.
- Levy, Karen. 2023. Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Lewis, Randolph. 2017. Under Surveillance: Being Watched in Modern America. Austin: University of Texas Press.
- Lipton, Jacqueline D. 2022. Our Data, Ourselves: A Personal Guide to Digital Privacy. Oakland: University of California Press.
- Lyon, David. 1994. The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Lyon, David. 2003. Surveillance after September 11. Cambridge: Polity.
- Lyon, David. 2018. The Culture of Surveillance: Watching as a Way of Life. Cambridge: Polity.
- Lyon, David. 2022. Pandemic Surveillance. Cambridge: Polity.
- Masco, Joseph. 2014. The Theater of Operations: National Security Affect from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
10.1215/9780822375999 Google Scholar
- Miller, Daniel, and Don Slater. 2000. The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. New York: Routledge.
- Nader, Laura. 1997. “Controlling Processes: Tracing the Dynamic Components of Power.” Current Anthropology 38 (5): 711–23.
- Nesbit, Jeff. 2017. “Google's True Origin Partly Lies in CIA and NSA Research Grants for Mass Surveillance.” Quartz, December 8. Accessed October 12, 2023, https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance.
- Orwell, George. 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
- Park, Yong Jin. 2021. The Future of Digital Surveillance: Why Digital Monitoring Will Never Lose Its Appeal in a World of Algorithm-Driven AI. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
10.3998/mpub.10211441 Google Scholar
- Postman, Neil. 1985. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking Penguin.
- Price, David H. 2022. The American Surveillance State: How the US Spies on Dissent. London: Pluto Press.
10.2307/j.ctv3142thj Google Scholar
- Richard, Laurent, and Sandrine Rigaud. 2023. Pegasus: The Story of the World's Most Dangerous Spyware. New York: Henry Holt.
- Richards, Neil. 2021. Why Privacy Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Sadowski, Jathan. 2020. Too Smart: How Digital Capitalism Is Extracting Data, Controlling Our Lives, and Taking over the World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
10.7551/mitpress/12240.001.0001 Google Scholar
- Schull, Natasha D. 2014. Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Seymour, Richard. 2019. “The Machine Always Wins: What Drives Our Addiction to Social Media.” The Guardian, August 23. Accessed October 12, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/23/social-media-addiction-gambling.
- Sprenger, Polly. 1999. “Sun on Privacy: ‘Get Over It.’” Wired, January 26. Accessed October 12, 2023, https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it.
- Strittmatter, Kai. 2020. We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State. New York: Custom House.
- van der Geest, Sjaak. 2018. “ Privacy from an Anthropological Perspective.” In The Handbook of Privacy Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction, edited by Bart Sloot and Aviva Groot, 413–44. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
10.1017/9789048540136.022 Google Scholar
- Wylie, Christopher. 2019. Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America. New York: Random House.
- Zuboff, Shoshana. 2018. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Public Affairs.