The Consequences of Watching: Controlling the Watched

The Consequences of Watching: Controlling the Watched

Copyright: © 2022 |Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-3847-0.ch007
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Abstract

The outcome of surveillance is the ability to use the narratives to understand how an entity behaves. This information offers the opportunity to predict. With the ability to predict comes the opportunity to anticipate the future. Surveillance allows for controlling some aspects of the future. This applies to all the contexts of surveillance discussed.
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Introduction

As suggested as the primary theme of the book, the product of surveillance is numerous different forms of data collected often over a length of time. Independent of the motivation of the collection of information, the data become available for analysis. As suggested in Chapter 2, this information makes up Big Data which creates the narrative profile. This profile is the foundation for most of the consequences of surveillance. It is not the case that the data remains in disparate pieces, but there are specific mechanisms of Big Data analysis that can be used to construct a multi-faceted profile of the person. In this chapter I explore one of the key consequences of the availability of profiles – the ability to control the entity which has been watched and profiled. I begin with a brief overview of the way control has been manifest in our lives with the emergence of systems that can create a “control society.” I then offer the connection between control and prediction, suggesting that once there is a sense of control, it is also possible to predict the events that might happen, knowing how well behavior and attitudes can be controlled by manipulation based on the knowledge of the narratives. I then elaborate on the ways in which control and prediction works within the four contexts of surveillance.

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