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How is it not? Cambridge dictionary: the careful watching of a person or place, especially by the police or army, because of a crime that has happened or is exp

How is it not? Cambridge dictionary: the careful watching of a person or place, especially by the police or army, because of a crime that has happened or is expected.

pixl97 3y ago
Because this is the description of the act "the careful watching of a person or place" This is a non-inclusive list of reasons why and whom may perform the act "especially by the police or army", "for the purposes of catching criminals" There are many acts that are defined by 'who' does it. The act of surveillance is not one of them. For example a private investigator can surveil you. A business can do the same by intentional action (for example selling hidden tracking devices to ensure they can find you if you are kidnapped) or unexpected action (your cell phone reports back to a server every 30 seconds of an exact GPS location of where you are).
- olalonde 3y ago
  Historically, surveillance has always been used in the context of detective work, police, spying, security, crime prevention, supervision, etc. No one thought of data collection for the purpose of improving services and serving ads as "surveillance" until a few years ago when critics of Google started abusing that term.
rpdillon 3y ago
The same dictionary has a great entry for "surveillance capitalism" as well: > an economic system in which the product for sale is personal data collected on the internet, especially from search engines (= programs used to find information on the internet) and social media platforms (= websites and programs that allow people to communicate and share information on the internet) I think this is the context folks are reaching for: it's not just a data-driven business model, it's driven by people's personal data in particular. As far as sharing willingly, it's _incredibly_ hard to buy a smartphone and prevent it from collecting your personal information (like location, movement patterns, app usage) without removing much of the functionality that makes it useful. And once that data is collected, it's open season. I just ran across this piece from today where the government literally goes directly to private data brokers because the NSA takes too long: https://www.404media.co/us-counterintel-buys-netflow-data-team-cymru-track-vpns/ https://www.404media.co/us-counterintel-buys-netflow-data-te... That particular case is about tracking VPNs (so not directly related to Google's data collection), but is a good example of how we can limit government's reach, but as long as they can buy data from private firms, there's a loophole in the 4th amendment, likely rooted in the third-party doctrine.

How is it not? Cambridge dictionary: the careful watching of a person or place, especially by the police or army, because of a crime that has happened or is expected.

pixl97 3y ago

Because this is the description of the act "the careful watching of a person or place" This is a non-inclusive list of reasons why and whom may perform the act "especially by the police or army", "for the purposes of catching criminals" There are many acts that are defined by 'who' does it. The act of surveillance is not one of them. For example a private investigator can surveil you. A business can do the same by intentional action (for example selling hidden tracking devices to ensure they can find you if you are kidnapped) or unexpected action (your cell phone reports back to a server every 30 seconds of an exact GPS location of where you are).

olalonde 3y ago
Historically, surveillance has always been used in the context of detective work, police, spying, security, crime prevention, supervision, etc. No one thought of data collection for the purpose of improving services and serving ads as "surveillance" until a few years ago when critics of Google started abusing that term.

rpdillon 3y ago

The same dictionary has a great entry for "surveillance capitalism" as well: > an economic system in which the product for sale is personal data collected on the internet, especially from search engines (= programs used to find information on the internet) and social media platforms (= websites and programs that allow people to communicate and share information on the internet) I think this is the context folks are reaching for: it's not just a data-driven business model, it's driven by people's personal data in particular. As far as sharing willingly, it's _incredibly_ hard to buy a smartphone and prevent it from collecting your personal information (like location, movement patterns, app usage) without removing much of the functionality that makes it useful. And once that data is collected, it's open season. I just ran across this piece from today where the government literally goes directly to private data brokers because the NSA takes too long: https://www.404media.co/us-counterintel-buys-netflow-data-team-cymru-track-vpns/ https://www.404media.co/us-counterintel-buys-netflow-data-te... That particular case is about tracking VPNs (so not directly related to Google's data collection), but is a good example of how we can limit government's reach, but as long as they can buy data from private firms, there's a loophole in the 4th amendment, likely rooted in the third-party doctrine.