A A TikTok comedian recently launched a fake ICE tip line and received dozens of calls — including one from a teacher who suggested agents pay attention to a kindergartner in her class. Governments and companies are the creators of surveillance culture, but citizens are also becoming eager to play a role in it. And It’s not just our perceived political enemies we want to keep an eye on. These are our friends, neighbors, partners and children.
As corporations and governments move ever further into our digital lives – collecting information about where we shop, who we know and what we believe – we have become more comfortable demanding similar access into our personal lives. While many apps log our location throughout the day, we demand that our friends also share their real-time activities through Apple’s Find My feature. While OpenAI uses our chat logs to train its models, we keep track of our partners’ text messages. And while Palantir analyzes social media data to help ICE identify its targets, we record strangers publicly without their consent.
In fact, aggressive behavior that would have shocked us a decade ago barely registers now. I think about that young man I spoke to Who had a new co-worker request that he share his location indefinitely because the person “just liked knowing where people were”. Or the girl who parked outside her boyfriend’s house hack his text messages Using your car’s Bluetooth.
These excesses may seem like individual failings, but we cannot separate them from their social context. When companies are collecting digital clues about your HIV status sharing them with advertisersIt’s hard to keep track of what’s appropriate. Consumers have become desensitized to large-scale data collection. one in 2023 report According to Pew Research, 73% of American adults said they feel they have no control over what companies do with the data they collect about them. When asked about the government, this number increased to 79%. is it any surprise Are people more tolerant of it in their personal lives too? Let’s call it trickledown surveillance.
Perhaps the clearest example of the erosion of privacy norms comes from romantic partnerships, where tracking and monitoring have become widely accepted substitutes for direct communication. one in 2021 study Published in Children and Youth Services Review, researchers found that nearly 60% of young adults surveyed had experienced “digital surveillance or control” while dating, which was defined in the study as “using social media/technology to monitor, invade privacy, and control a dating partner’s activities.” Scanning a partner’s social media profiles is now normal small signs of infidelityLike an Instagram “like” on another person’s photo or a tagged photo in an unexpected location. Some people go as far as paying amateur online detectives for a full audit of their partner’s digital footprint.
Mutual monitoring has also become a major part of family life. Many youth today will grow from children to teenagers and young adults without the expansion in privacy that typically comes with those changes. Now, parents Track your children’s locations regularlyRead their messages and keep an eye on their social media accounts well into young adulthood. The idea that these habits could violate young people’s self-esteem and autonomy may not occur to parents – especially if they are busy spying on each other digitally.
Step outside the home into neighborhoods and communities and everything is the same. Make a public mistake — or worse, suffer some humiliation or a health crisis — and you could see your name and face in front of millions of viewers on TikTok. Talking to another adult on an airplane while wearing a wedding ring? Dancing at a party like no one is watching? Complaining about a restaurant employee? These are all crimes that could make you known as the internet’s current villain, with viewers rushing to contact your employer and flooding your family with hate messages.
Perhaps all this tracking and recording would have been worthwhile if it had strengthened our relationships, but it doesn’t. Instead of building trust with our friends, partners, and children over time, we are shortening the process and relying on technology to fill in the gaps. At best, our relationships become shallow. At worst, the desire for constant visibility turns into control and abuse. Organizations advocating for victims of domestic violence have repeatedly called on tech companies to reconsider tracking features like Apple’s AirTags, which make it easier for abusers to spy on their victims. Advocates say many cases of sextortion and sharing of intimate photos without consent begin when young people feel pressured to share online logins with controlling partners.
Despite our growing numbness to the culture of surveillance, there are still moments when we crave attention. When Amazon-owned smart doorbell company Ring ran a Super Bowl ad last month, telling viewers it uses AI to scan its front gardens for lost dogs, it public outrage erupted. Soon after, the ring announced It is canceling its partnership with surveillance tech firm Flock Safety to create a system that would link neighborhood cameras and share footage with police.
The ring debacle is an anomaly. Too often, aggressive new technology is met with indifference or resignation. Meta has been revealed in a recently leaked internal document There are plans to add facial recognition For its popular Ray-Ban smart glasses, the company suggested that there is a chaotic political climate in the US can provide a good distractionBecause the critics will be so overwhelmed with other stories that it won’t be possible to push them back.
As Meta hopes, political turmoil may distract attention from privacy concerns, but it may also put them in the spotlight. As government agencies from ICE to the UK’s NHS deepen their relationships with surveillance technology companies, people may see a new appetite for resistance, both publicly and privately.
We didn’t ask for the digital panopticon we live in, but we don’t have to give it our eyes and ears. When we refuse to be monitored and monitored, we reclaim a piece of the sovereignty that tech companies have stolen from us. And with time, we can rediscover that quiet, secret place where love and trust take root.
