Monitored Subjects, Unaccountable Capitalism

On 8 November 2016, millions of US citizens from across the nation went to vote in perhaps the most important election of their lifetimes. Little did they know the country had already been invaded. It was not by bombs or troops. It was not an economically crippling blockade or an apocalyptic chemical attack. Rather it was a new type of weapon, one whose historical roots combined the most insidious aspects of twentieth-century covert operations with the most dangerous viral techniques of the twenty-first-century information age. In the middle of the night and in broad daylight, a secretive force had infiltrated the last remaining global superpower and had turned its citizen's data against them.

The full facts of this attack are only now coming to light. The data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica digitally harvested over 50 million Facebook profiles in order to individually target US voters for political gain. Specifically, the 'CEO' of Donald Trump's campaign used his prominent position at the company to 'wage a culture war on America using military strategies' employing according to a former employee 'the sorts of aggressive messaging tactics usually reserved for geopolitical conflicts to move the US electorate further to the right'. Suddenly, what seemed like harmless clicks indicating what one 'liked' were weaponised and made into a 'lucrative political tool'. Indeed, these 'smart' strategies were especially effective against a formidable political machine like the Clinton and the Democratic establishment. The Trump campaign had bet the house on running a data-led campaign, figuring that was their best chance against the formidable Clinton machine. Cambridge were the data guys brought in to help him do it. Their main job was to build what they called 'universes' of voters, grouping people into categories, like American moms worried about childcare who hadn't voted before.

Of course, the danger of Cambridge Analytica and these types of cyber-invasions goes far beyond one single election. They threaten to undermine the very survival of modern democracy itself. Already, similar methods by the same company have been blamed for swaying the shocking Brexit vote by the UK to leave the EU. 'There are three strands to this story. How the foundations of an authoritarian surveillance state are being laid in the US' quoting one popular UK commentator, 'How British democracy was subverted through a covert, far-reaching plan of coordination enabled by a US billionaire. And how we are in the midst of a massive land grab for power by billionaires via our data. Data which is being silently amassed, harvested and stored. Whoever owns this data owns the future.' This new hi-tech battlefront was populated by nefarious computerised secret agents like former 'Etonian-smoothie' and big time adman Nigel Oakes, who was infamously hailed as Trump's 'weapon of mass persuasion' and the '007 of big data'.

However, digging beneath the hype is an even more worrying truth. These attacks were only the tip of the iceberg as 'this type of campaign could only be successful because established institutions – especially the mainstream media and political-party organizations – had already lost most of their power, both in the United States and around the world'. More than simply a loss of trust, they uncovered a brave new world where big data was 'hacking the citizenry' to shape popular beliefs and concretely reinforce existing inequalities. It represented a growing form of 'evil media' able to digitally mould how people think and act, a social media virus engineered to 'manipulate the things or people with which they come into contact' for purposes of power and greed. Not surprisingly, perhaps, this 'evil' was directly related to the growth of data-based academic research funded by state security agencies and the military. Moreover, the reach of this surveillance was almost unprecedented – with the potential to monitor upwards of two billion people.

This is a modern-day horror story where truth has become stranger and dramatically more troubling than fiction. It is full of scandal, outrage and liberal pieties about the need to protect our individual rights and sacred democratic institutions. And yet amid the noise, anger and inspiring protests, it is easy to miss the deeper reality of what is happening. Before Cambridge Analytica, before Trump and Brexit, big data was viewed as the hero not the villain. Those same voices disdaining these corrupting digital methods were once its greatest champions. As leading critical theorist William Davies recently declared:

There is at least one certainty where Cambridge Analytica is concerned. If forty thousand people scattered across Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had changed their minds about Donald Trump before 8 November 2016, and cast their votes instead for Hillary Clinton, this small London-based political consultancy would not now be the subject of breathless headlines and Downing Street statements. Cambridge Analytica could have harvested, breached, brainwashed and honey-trapped to their evil hearts' content, but if Clinton had won, it wouldn't be a story.

It was the key to creating a sleek, efficient and bright 'smart' future. And it was by no means confined to mere elections or political campaigning. It was and is being used to reconfigure education policy – to data mine our children's personalities and emotions with the desire to predict 'national productivity in a global education race'.

This reveals the ideological beating heart of big data. It is as much a promise, a technological 'myth', as it is a reality. A vision is emerging of a different society where data rules our lives for better and worse. This vision can be found in the creation of 'data frontiers' for industries, portraying big data as a force for exploring and exploiting innovative ways of manufacturing not only goods but, quite literally and figuratively, the world. Such changes are reflected in hopeful investments in smart technology and analytics to radically improve our lives and society. However, this promise is far from ideologically or politically neutral. Contained within its romanticised ideals revolving around speed, efficiency and innovation is an agenda that too often serves the few at the expense of the many.

Nevertheless, there is a perhaps much more profound question that must be asked. What is not monitored and for what reason? It is all too common to lament that big data is just a symptom of a society where everyone is under surveillance all the time, where everything we do and think is being watched by the all-seeing eye of the digital corporate and government Big Brother. What these legitimate fears ignore though is how much of sociality remains hidden from view. From tax evasion to elite back-door deals to destroy our environment, big data has made the public little wiser about...