Social Control in the Digital Capitalism Era: private and public surveillance, and its environmental costs

Private and public surveillance, and its environmental costs

Abstract

Digital surveillance is increasingly influential in social control and crime fighting, ranging from the use of facial recognition technologies in security cameras to mass online data mining. This surveillance requires huge data centers, located far from the public. This article explores the architectural and ideological framework that sustains and legitimizes this surveillance and sets out to answer what is the environmental impact of these used for social control? In addition, it addresses the social control exercised by the State through digital technologies and the use of private data for targeted marketing. Finally, the global data storage superstructure that supports state and private surveillance and its environmental impacts are exposed, hidden under the myth of the dematerialization of digital technologies and the deliberate concealment of these structures from the public. To this end, a hermeneutic-phenomenological methodology was employed.