An unlikely dialogue between Ernesto Araújo and Shoshana Zuboff
In honour of Ernesto Araújo’s departure from the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brazil.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, Ernesto Araújo, during the ministerial conference named “Bridging the Digital Divide: the Digital Response to Covid-19” held on July 1, 2020, states that the freedom of the Internet, in the context of the global pandemic of COVID-19, would be a matter of great relevance, considering the “power of information to create wealth”, which “could only be conquered through the free Internet”. In his speech, the minister also addresses the role of the Internet as a tool for promoting democracy but warning that “digital technologies can be the main instrument of freedom, on the one hand, but also the main instrument of totalitarian social control, on the other. He also makes a call to combat totalitarianism, saying that it would be possible to emerge from the pandemic “not only better, stronger and more equal, (…) but also freer.
However, the global pandemic of COVID-19 seems to accelerate the domination process of Surveillance Capitalism described by Shoshana Zuboff in her book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”, which makes Ernesto Araújo’s speech an interesting starting point. Surveillance Capitalism is defined by Zuboff as “a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sale” (ZUBOFF, 2019, p. 8). This new economic order is intrinsically connected to the most important non-state actors in the pandemic theatre.
Associating the speech of Brazil’s Foreign Minister with Shoshana Zuboff’s work, a first point worth highlighting would be in Araújo’s assertion that information has the power to create wealth. The data, the information, is placed by Zuboff as being the food for the machine of Surveillance Capitalism, obtained by obscure and not necessarily legal means. The information itself, of unitary character, does not explain how it is possible to take advantage of the subjectivity of the users for the generation of profit and capital, however, following the generalist discourse of Araújo, it is not about information, a singular unit of data, but what he names “Internet”.
In an in-depth manner, the great flow of data, which spans from the innumerable generating sources to the most diverse destinations, is what generates the capacity for the creation of information wealth. Google, cited by Zuboff as one of the founders of Surveillance Capitalism, controls through its Android operating system more than 74% of the smartphone market, besides being the main force concerning search engines and Internet browsers. The raw material that can be exploited is practically infinite since it is reproduced with every click, access or search performed in any of the services controlled by the company. Zuboff states in the article “A capitalism of surveillance” in the newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique
We are the objects whose matter is extracted, expropriated and then injected into Google’s artificial intelligence plants, which manufacture the predictive products that are sold to real customers — the companies that pay to play in the new behavioural markets (ZUBOFF, 2019)
While some see the possibility of profit from data as a positive thing, it should be noted that the predatory forces of Surveillance Capitalism and the neoliberalism that accompanies and precedes it cross any ethical or legal barriers, as they act intending to make sure that their actions are not brought into the public consciousness. The exploitation that takes place over the subjectivity of the individual, so that the subject’s behaviour can be analyzed and subsequently shaped, influenced, must occur in an omnipresent but unconscious manner.
There is, therefore, a first inconsistency in the minister’s speech: the creation of wealth through information is already a reality, precisely sponsoring the implementation and expansion of Surveillance Capitalism, however, this does not mean the existence of a “free” Internet. Facts that corroborate the tendency to deny the existence of all this freedom are the various state and non-state spying scandals that use the technology in an unregulated way, such as those triggered by Edward Snowden and Christopher Wylie. In both cases, users are observed or influenced by an invisible external agent, of which they are unaware.
Other examples of Internet control continue to occur during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Among them is the monitoring of the social network Twitter by the technology company Dataminr during the Black Lives Matter protests, helping US police to track user posts that took place during the demonstrations. The report by Sam Biddle in The Intercept on the subject highlights the impossibility of separating the joint action between Dataminr and the American state and the practice of surveillance, considering that in this case there is a synthesis between the concept of consumer surveillance and state surveillance.
Returning to Zuboff’s ideas about Surveillance Capitalism, it is unlikely that laws related to data protection are a final solution to the practices of exploitation and behaviour manipulation, because these occur without the endorsement or consent of users. On the other hand, initiatives such as the General Law on Data Protection (LGPD), expected to come into force in Brazil in 2021, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) developed by the European Union, are of paramount importance to prevent the strengthening of what Araújo calls “an instrument of totalitarian social control.
Danilo Doneda, lawyer and professor PhD in Civil Law, writing an opinion article for the digital newspaper JOTA, states that the pandemic context should not be used as a justification for abuses in the use of personal data, placing the aforementioned regulatory frameworks as important, as they can be used as a basis for the development of good practices. Data, in general, can be useful in combating the proliferation of the virus, but the treatment they will receive during the pandemic period will leave an important legacy: it will be determinant in generating debates about the issue of personal data and its legal provisions, engaging those who are most directly affected by the subject, the population.
Following Doneda’s line of reasoning, Zuboff states in an interview for the Slate portal that, unlike the initial years of the implementation of Surveillance Capitalism, there is a paradigm shift, in the sense that the pioneering companies of this new order cannot act so freely. The author places the users as the new political force of the 21st century, just as the workers and consumers were in the 20th century (ZUBOFF, 2020) so that they receive the responsibility and the opportunity to reassess their vulnerabilities, precisely because they are considered the means and the ends in the fight against the virus. Thus, Araújo’s idealistic speech, that there would be the possibility of a transition to a state of greater freedom after the pandemic, acquires some meaning and support.
The emergence of a totalitarian social control through the use of technologies, it seems, would occur silently, hence the need for a society aware of the monitoring and manipulation processes in place. The state of São Paulo, for example, implemented the Intelligent Monitoring System (SIMI-SP), to “monitor key indicators for pandemic management”, “support research groups in the development of analysis on the pandemic”, and “ensure transparency to the population”, as stated on the project’s website. Decree №64,963 of May 5, 2020, of the Legislative Assembly of the state of São Paulo, which establishes SIMI-SP, guarantees in the first article that the platform “will not contain personal data, thus considered those related to a natural person, identified or identifiable, being limited to anonymized data.”
Bruno Bioni’s article entitled “Checkmate: the tripod of personal data protection in the chess game of legislative initiatives in Brazil” seeks to elucidate the effects of anonymization of personal data, eliminating the myth of irreversibility of this process. Ultimately, Bioni demonstrates that anonymization practices are not infallible, having their efficiency and effectiveness restricted by the objective delimited at the beginning of the process.
Finally, going back to Ernesto Araújo’s idealistic speech during the ministerial conference, greater freedom is possible. Shoshana Zuboff, as said before, believes in a change of paradigms and awareness about the expansion of Surveillance Capitalism, making it more difficult for technology conglomerates to seize power, which facilitates the creation of an escape route from this new economic and social order. Bioni and Doneda share hopes for the Brazilian scenario, as they consider the development of regulation for personal data to be a positive thing.
While there are no guarantees of success in the fight against Surveillance Capitalism, as well as against the global pandemic of COVID-19, individuals are left with a self-assessment. The foundations for the post-pandemic society begin to form now, so society must be fully aware of the principles it wishes to carry forward, as these will be put to the test. Zuboff closes his book by saying:
The Berlin Wall fell for many reasons, but most of all because the people of East Berlin said, ‘No more!’ We too can author many ‘beautiful new’ facts that claim the digital future as the home of humanity. No more! Let that be our declaration (ZUBOFF, 2019)
Being so, one will find a reality in which individuals are “not only better, stronger and more equal, (…), but also freer” from the continuous struggle for rights within the digital universe, seeking to restore the inviolability of human subjectivity and to reverse, as far as possible, the damage brought by Surveillance Capitalism and the global pandemic of COVID-19.
(This piece was originally written in Portuguese. This version was translated using Deepl.com translator)
Bibliographic References
ZUBOFF, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. 1. ed. New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2019. 717 p. ISBN 9781610395700.
ZUBOFF, Shoshana. Um capitalismo de vigilância. Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil, [S. l.], n. 138, p. 1–28, 3 jan. 2019. Disponível em: https://diplomatique.org.br/um-capitalismo-devigilancia/. Acesso em: 17 jul. 2020.
ASSEMBLEIA LEGISLATIVA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO. Ficha informativa. DECRETO Nº 64.963, DE 05 DE MAIO DE 2020, [S. l.], 17 jul. 2020. Disponível em: https://www.saopaulo.sp.gov.br/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Decreto-64963-de-05-de-maiode-2020-SIMI.pdf. Acesso em: 17 jul. 2020.
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