Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
power derives from the management, support, and ownership of those very distributed
networks). If considered in narrowly exclusive terms, each narrative risks a certain
blindness: either an overinvestment in the valorization of the agency of the user who
hacks the system or an overinvestment in the articulation of the protocols of a given
system as inescapably binding, such that it would require naively idealistic faith if not
false consciousness to believe in the efficacy and value of resistant and participatory
practices. But it remains the case that constellations of control are imbricated with
constellations of expressive resistance, whether in the form of tactical intervention,
asymmetric infowar, or civic engagement. For every system of disciplinary power, as
Anthony Giddens puts it, there is a “countervailing” response from those in precarious,
subordinate, or marginal positions, which is to say that dataveillance and countervailance
must be seen as inextricably connected.
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The practices that might be situated under
the rubric of countervailance do not endeavor to realize an abstracted philosophy of
resistance and human rights. They are often cognizant of such rights, particularly when
a governmental program like Poindexter's TIA is articulated within the field of tactical
activity as a critical object. But their actions are more often about action itself in rela-
tion to a regime that would limit us to efforts to stay on the right side of the data that
defines us. Moreover, the expressive aspects of countervailance as I will outline them
here serve as an important counter to the technocratic consumer rights initiatives that
frame the debate in terms of property—those “MyData” initiatives that seek only to
transfer ownership of data to the individual and to develop personal data banks for
everyday functionality and monetization.
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There are a number of practices that have the potential for disruptive innovation
vis-à-vis the new regime of dataveillance. For example, Gary Marx outlines a range of
behavioral techniques and legal, economic, and technological exploits ranging from
refusal to masking that work toward “neutralizing and resisting the new surveillance”
system; neutralization, as he puts it, is a “dynamic adversarial social dance involving
strategic moves and counter-moves and should be studied as a conflict interaction
process. ”
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With respect to consumer (re)targeting and behavioral profiling, a common
counter-move is the design and programming of anonymizers, encrypters, distributed
networks, and ad and cookie blockers. Though many such enterprising programmers
may work for large IT corporations, their software can usually be tagged as independent,
alternative, open, and almost always free. Just as Internet data mining is dependent on
software design, then, so, too, is the blocking or thwarting of that mining. So, to block
beacons and zombie cookies and maintain the smallest measure of privacy while reading
