Introduction

The word surveillance was first used in 1792, following the French Revolution, in the name for the Comite de Surveillance (Committee of Surveillance), which was tasked with monitoring suspicious people (generally strangers) and recommending arrest (Hanson, 2004). In the three centuries since, the word has retained its original meaning, as it still entails the gathering of information about groups and/or individuals for the purpose of monitoring, usually by the government (Clarke, 1988). Within the context of information technology, Clarke (1988) describes a subset of surveillance known as dataveillance, or ‘the systematic use of personal data systems in the investigation or monitoring of the actions or communications of one or more persons’ (p. 499). Esposti (2014) expands this definition to include regulation of behavior, and both public and private entities engage in dataveillance (Clarke, 1988, 1994; Amoore & De Goede, 2005; Ashworth & Free, 2006; Van Dijck, 2014).

A well-known example of government dataveillance is the case of whistleblower Edward Snowden, who accused the National Security Agency (NSA) of spying on Americans. Snowden revealed Project PRISM, a classified initiative that involved the collecting and intercepting of private data related to phone calls, social media communications and online behavior recorded by companies like Verizon, Facebook and Google (Van Dijck, 2014). Project PRISM permits the NSA to require these companies to turn over data that match approved parameters considered to be ‘criminal’ or ‘dangerous’, as defined by the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Snowden alleged that the NSA violated these protocols by illegally surveilling domestic targets, but then-President Obama and many large tech firms insisted the NSA's practices were an implicit transaction. The public cannot expect that the data they generate online will not be used by other parties, especially when using free services such as Facebook or Google (Van Dijck, 2014). Nonetheless, this sparked intense debate about the extent to which third parties should have access to personal communications.

The concept of dataveillance has predominantly been discussed as we describe here—outside entities monitoring data generated digitally by individuals to understand their movements and communications.