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The following works presented will explore the theme of data and surveillance all around us. We will look into how surveillance shapes our lifestyles, how we shape it and how data colonisation is affecting our privacy immensely.

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The video shows us the presence of surveillance in London, specifically areas such as Earls Court and Blackfriars. Surveillance includes police and most importantly CCTV cameras. This is to ensure people’s safety and prevent any danger from occurring. CCTV can be found almost everywhere in public areas. Footage can be recorded for evidence if a crime has occurred nearby the area or any suspicious activities are being carried out. It can be said that CCTV cameras are recording our daily lives. The footage kept with the police can be considered data colonialism as the general public is unable to access it. If historical colonialism focused more on taking over land and resources, data colonialism can be considered a modern type where it extracts layers of human life itself (Nick and A. Mejias. 2019).

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On the other hand, when looking at the artefact on counter-surveillance we can see the exploitation of the surveillance method, CCTV. The examples within it represent counter surveillance as they redesign the intended purpose, tailoring it to their needs. This clearly displays the idea Mirzeoff describes in Tactics of Appearance for Abolition Democracy #BlackLivesMatter piece (para.27, n/a), “like any other device, the machines can be manipulated”. In this regard we can refer to the artefact to see how the CCTV’s purpose has been manipulated by the individual, as it has gone from being installed for security reasons and crime prevention but instead, used for art or media. This showcases how in some occasions the individuals can shape their experiences of surveillance rather than it shaping them.

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In the sound recording, you can hear us scrolling through TikTok, which made us wonder how TikTok surveys its users. The data, supposedly, will not be used against the interest of the individuals, however, it is stored and is therefore vulnerable to cyberattacks and issues that could threaten our privacy. In June 2020, hacktivist group Anonymous released shocking police data from the U.S, in what is referred to as BlueLeaks (Greenberg, 2020). TikTok was shown to be quite useful to law enforcement as they were tracking both BLM protesters and other users who posted content related to unrest and violence (Hvistendahl, 2020). We live in a time where social media and the mediascape affects us tremendously, as we are constantly under surveillance as users of the internet.

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The next artefact demonstrates how our working space is curated by technology and therefore manipulated by surveillance. Technology reshapes territories (Casetti, 2018), immersing the user in a separate “bubble”, where constant surveillance through data collection can manipulate the mediascape, taking away the user’s right to privacy in cyberspace and the tangible world. Cookies are the internet’s CCTV; our online actions are constantly being surveyed. This data collection manipulates our cyberspace curating what we are shown and what is hidden, ‘rendering the everyday subject ‘surveyed’ (Ball, K. Di Domenico, M. Nunan, D. 2016).

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In the works we have showcased, we examined how we are constantly being watched in public areas and on social media apps such as TikTok, how data such as CCTV footage and data on TikTok is being taken from people, how in some cases individuals are actually able to manipulate said constant surveillance technologies, and the way in which majority of the time data-surveillance manipulates our mediascapes. Overall it is evident that digital technology is further enabling surveillance to shape our day to day lives, questioning our right to privacy; however the use of counter-surveillance can contradict this to a certain extent.

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Ball, K., Di Domenico, M., & Nunan, D. (2016). Big Data Surveillance and the Body-subject. Body & Society, 22(2), 58–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034x15624973

Casetti, Francesco. “Mediascapes: A Decalogue.” Edited by Sahayari de Silva, Dante Furioso, and Seokhoon Choi. Perspecta51 (October 2018): 21–43.

Creators. (2013). CCTV Footage As Art | Meet William Betts [YouTube Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFfHfxrugeU

Couldry, & Mejias, U. A. (2019). The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism. Stanford University Press.

Greenberg, A. (2020). Anonymous Stole and Leaked a Megatrove of Police Documents. [online] Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/blueleaks-anonymous-law-enforcement-hack/ [Accessed 14 Nov. 2021]. https://www.wired.com/story/blueleaks-anonymous-law-enforcement-hack/

Hvistendahl, M. (2020). Leaked Documents Reveal What TikTok Shares with Authorities — in the U.S. [online] The Intercept. Available at: https://theintercept.com/2020/08/10/blueleaks-tiktok-law-enforcement-privacy/ [Accessed 14 Nov. 2021]. https://theintercept.com/2020/08/10/blueleaks-tiktok-law-enforcement-privacy/

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. “Tactics of Appearance for Abolition Democracy #BlackLivesMatter.” Critical Inquiry: In the Moment(blog), n. d. https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/tactics_of_appearance/.