surveillance

As the Supreme Court of India determines the contours of the right to privacy and who in Indian territory has it, Mythri Prasad-Aleyamma critiques many of the assumptions around the opposition to Aadhar. This critique is grounded in the differences of how surveillance and privacy are known and experienced by those who are vulnerable for varied reasons, but especially those who are migrants or…

Surveillance powers of the state and corporations are escalating and are hugely assisted by information technology. Under regimes of colonialism and patriarchy, women, minorities and all other subjects have experienced being surveilled, enumerated and categorised. There is a need to now relook at how gender is implicated in surveillance practices in the contemporary. In this resource, Internet…

If an object has a chip, it becomes smart, and by extension our houses become smarter - and so do our cities, hospitals, toys, phones. But what about the inventors, the creators, the owners, the users of all these smart and tiny things - are we becoming smarter? Reflecting on sessions in Rights Con 2017 in Brussels, Vale examines the ways in which the internet of things can lead to invasive…

We can no longer ignore the pervasive datafication of our lives - the ways in which our habits, illness, abilities, relations are abstracted, and our bodies made into data by an intersecting range of institutions and processes. In this article, the gendered, sexualised and racialised nature of surveillance is unpacked, so we maintain a focus on the power relations involved. Surveillance…

Surveillance has historically functioned as an oppressive tool to control women’s bodies and is closely related to colonial modes of managing populations. Big data, metadata and the technologies used to collect, store and analyse them are by no means neutral, but come with their own exclusions and biases. This paper highlights the gendered and racialised effects of data practices; outlines the…

Global data volume has grown exponentially in recent years and experts expect this trend to continue. The wider trend towards the pervasive datafication of our lives is not one we can just sit out. Big data and the algorithmic decisions it feeds permeate citizenship, healthcare, welfare states, education, finance, law enforcement as well as the ways in which we shop, travel, and live our social…

Facebook's arbitrary policy on women's nipples has angered many, who find their content removed or accounts suspended or banned. Japleen Pasricha writes about being repeatedly 'punished' by Facebook for posting content on the social media platform that is feminist and bold, about young women growing up and even images of protest by women in Manipur against the oppression of the Indian army and…

Contemporary surveillance practices are to a large extent big data driven, underpinned by a collect-it-all logic, and ever expanding due to fear-mongering, yet pervasive national security discourse. Surveillance technologies and practices have not only multiplied in scale and quantity. Too often, feminist issues on the one hand, and discussions around privacy and surveillance on the other still…

We conducted a small survey of LGBTQIA users of Facebook and asked them what do THEY think of the real-name policy. Does this policy ensure their safety which is what Facebook claims, or does it expose them online and leave them vulnerable to harassment.

There are myriad mobile phone apps meant to be deployed for personal safety, but technical wizardry perhaps makes it easy to lose sight of the fact that technology is not a saviour but a tool or an enabler. Technology alone cannot be the panacea of a problem that is deeply complex and, in reality, rooted in society and governance.