18Automated surveillance
Surveillance no longer refers solely to the work of covert agencies and their spies or police and CCTV networks. In recent decades it has become a central component of the burgeoning online economy, as evidenced by the ready invocation in popular mainstream media of the so-called ‘surveillance economy.’ The Wall Street Journal, for example, ran a series of stories in 2012 about the growing range of digital surveillance technologies, ranging from automated license plate readers to online tracking, that it grouped under the rubric of the ‘surveillance economy’ (WSJ, Sept. 29, 2012). It is becoming increasingly clear that a large segment of the digital media economy is based on comprehensive and extensive ...
