THE NEW SPECTACLE 
Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism 

VPRO Documentary 
Dec 20, 2019
vpro documentary

VIDEOS AT THE END OF EACH INTRODUCTION

Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff wrote a monumental book about the new economic order that is alarming. "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism," reveals how the biggest tech companies deal with our data. How do we regain control of our data? What is surveillance capitalism? In this documentary, Zuboff takes the lid off Google and Facebook and reveals a merciless form of capitalism in which no natural resources, but the citizen itself, serves as a raw material. How can citizens regain control of their data? It is 2000, and the dot.com crisis has caused deep wounds. How will startup Google survive the bursting of the internet bubble? Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin don't know anymore how to turn the tide. By chance, Google discovers that the "residual data" that people leave behind in their searches on the internet is very precious and tradable. This residual data can be used to predict the behavior of the internet user. Internet advertisements can, therefore, be used in a very targeted and effective way. A completely new business model is born: "surveillance capitalism." 

On VPRO broadcast you will find nonfiction videos with English subtitles, French subtitles and Spanish subtitles, such as documentaries, short interviews and documentary series. This channel offers some of the best travel series from the Dutch broadcaster VPRO. Our series explore cultures from all over the world. VPRO storytellers have lived abroad for years with an open mind and endless curiosity, allowing them to become one with their new country. Thanks to these qualities, they are the perfect guides to let you experience a place and culture through the eyes of a local. Uncovering the soul of a country, through an intrinsic and honest connection, is what VPRO and its presenters do best.

Original title: De grote dataroof Director: Roland Duong

 Research: Tom Reijner, Halil Ibrahim Özpamuk Camera: Adri Schrover Sound: Jochem Salemink 

Editing: Roland Duong, Paul Delput, Rinze Schuurman Production: Marie Schutgens 

Production assistant: Britt Bennink

 Image Editing: Rob Dorrestijn, Paula Witkamp

 Online Coordinator: Arja van den Bergh Commissioning Editors: Bregtje van der Haak, Doke Romeijn 

Shoshana Zuboff: Surveillance capitalism and democracy

•Premiered Nov 11, 2019

Alexander von Humboldt Institut for internet and society

The collection and analysis of data is changing the way economies operate. Are these changes so fundamental that they can be said to have led to the emergence of a new form of capitalism – surveillance capitalism? If people’s behaviour is made increasingly transparent, do we become a society in which trust is no longer necessary? Are individuals a mere appendage to the digital machine, objects of new mechanisms which reward and punish according to the determinations of private capital? How is social cohesion affected when people become dispensable as a labour force, while their data continues to provide function as a source of value in lucrative new markets that trade in predictions of human behaviour? How should we understand the new quality of power that arises from these unprecedented conditions? What kind of society does it aim to create? And what ramifications will these developments have for the principles of liberal democracy? Will privacy law and anti-trust law be enough? How can we tame what we do not yet understand? Shoshana Zuboff is a social scientist and author of three books, each of which has been recognised as the definitive signal of a new epoch in technological society. Her latest book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism reveals a world in which technology users are no longer customers but the raw material for an entirely new economic system. Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School and was a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School from 2014 until 2016. Making Sense of the Digital Society
The current rapid pace of technological change creates enormous uncertainties – and thus the need for explanations that help us better understand our situation and shape the future. The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) are therefore continuing the Lecture Series Making Sense of the Digital Society that was launched in 2017. The aim of the format is to develop a European perspective on the current processes of transformation and its societal impact. The first speaker of this year’s series was sociologist Eva Illouz, followed by Dirk Baecker, José van Dijck and Louise Amoore. The event with Shoshana Zuboff on 6 November is part of the Berlin Science Week 2019 and the keynote of the DigiKomm conference 2019. More information about the event and the lecture series: https://www.hiig.de/en/events/shoshan... Photo credit: Falling Walls Foundation #digitalsociety #ShoshanaZuboff #ZuboffBerlin

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - Shoshana Zuboff, Carole Cadwalladr, Paul Hilder & Shahmir Sanni

•Sep 30, 2019

UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

Shoshana Zuboff's book, 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism', reveals a world in which the sovereign forces in today’s economy are advertisers, manipulators, shadowy assemblages of state and private actors whose goal is to predict our behaviour, and change it. Their tools are surveillance, provocation and addiction. IIPP presents this special public lecture featuring Shoshana Zuboff; and a panel discussion with Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr, Paul Hilder from openDemocracy and whistleblower Shahmir Sanni. Sign up to our newsletter to hear about our upcoming events: http://bit.ly/iippnews UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment Website: https://ucl.ac.uk/iipp Twitter: https://twitter.com/iipp_ucl ----------------------------------------------- The Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) and the British Library presents a public lecture series titled Innovation and the Welfare State. The dynamic lecture series brings together world-leading thinkers to debate how the 21st century welfare state requires rethinking healthcare, green growth, public access to knowledge and new forms of data ownership. Join us in this powerful discussion on delivering public value through innovation.

The Rise of Surveillance Capitalism

Streamed live on Mar 1, 2019

The Intercept

Join The Intercept’s senior correspondent Naomi Klein and Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power,” for an engaging discussion about the unprecedented form of power called “surveillance capitalism” and the quest by corporations to predict and control our behavior. #SurveillanceCapitalism

Big Tech Stole Our Data While Democracy Slept: Shoshana Zuboff on the Age of Surveillance Capitalism
•Mar 1, 2019
https://democracynow.org - Corporations have created a new kind of marketplace out of our private human experiences. That is the conclusion of an explosive new book that argues big tech platforms like Facebook and Google are elephant poachers, and our personal data is ivory tusks. We continue our interview with Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.

Glenn Greenwald on US protests: Trump's push to deploy the military is 'threat' to democracy
•Jun 3, 2020

FRANCE 24 English

In an interview with FRANCE 24, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald reacted to the protests that are spreading in the US and beyond after the death of unarmed black man George Floyd while in police custody. Greenwald said that although US President Donald Trump was hoping to play the law and order card to win re-election in November, he believed this could backfire. He also called Trump's push to send in the military to quell the protests a "grave threat" to democratic values, adding that it could "give a signal to other leaders around the world", such as Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro.

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Opinion: Systemic racism is the real 'American carnage'

A majority of white Americans still cannot come to terms with what black people have known forever: Racism is systemic, systematic, and nowhere near gone. White America must step up not just for peace, but for justice.


The images of burning police cars, clouds of tear gas, looted stores, law enforcement officers pushing civilians to the ground and protesters marching undeterred are startling and shocking for us Americans, but they are not surprising.

The video of an African American man dying on camera under the weight of a white police officer's knee on his neck is gruesome and shocking. It, too, is not surprising — we have seen videos like these before.

Echoes of the 2015 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, come to mind; for older generations, it is deja vu to the Rodney King riots of 1992 and lynchings during the civil rights movement.

But today's mass protests are gripping the nation at a time when a pandemic has claimed more than 100,000 lives, with more than 30 million unemployed, sky-high wage and income inequality and political polarization that is tearing the country apart.

It now feels like the US is reaching a breaking point. The future of the country seems bleak and uncertain. What we are seeing is "American carnage" — but not of the sort Donald Trump likely imagined when he strangely invoked that term at his presidential inauguration.

Racism doesn't take a break

While America went on lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, much of what characterizes normal life stopped. But the country's more fundamental and structural problems continued. Systemic racism is one of them, with numerous examples evident even as normal life came to a halt in recent months.

In February, video showed Ahmaud Arbery, a black man, being shot by two white vigilantes while out for a jog in Georgia.

In another video, a woman in New York's Central Park is seen calling the police on a black man who asked her to follow park rules and leash her dog, immediately telling them that "an African American man" was there and falsely claiming he was "threatening" her and the dog.

As the pandemic unfolded, people of color have suffered disproportionately high death rates from the coronavirus — also an indirect result of systemic inequality and racism. Yet armed white demonstrators occupied various state capitols to protest lockdown rules and shouted, intimidated and even spit at police officers, who handled them with the utmost care, in a glaring reminder that whites are treated differently by police.

Polarization blocks progress

Like nearly every topic in the US right now, the role of police and the criminal justice system are seen along political and racial lines. The 2015 Ferguson protests led to the creation of Black Lives Matter, a movement dedicated to increasing awareness of systemic racism and fighting the individual and collective biases that perpetuate it.

In response, countermovements popped up with the slogans "All Lives Matter," affirming the belief that Americans live in a colorblind society, and "Blue Lives Matter," promoting the view that police are heroes and have allegedly been framed for race-related violence.

DW reporter Jenipher Camino Gonzalez

It is no surprise that these movements have largely been supported by conservative-leaning whites. Polls have consistently shown that public trust for the police is higher among Republican voters, white and older people, while only a minority of Hispanics, African Americans, young people and Democrats share that trust.

In 2020, these opposing demographic, racial, and political lines are at their most antagonistic, fueling the country's ongoing fragmentation and tribalism.

These groups are actively kept apart by opportunistic political leaders like Trump, who actively stokes discord and whose place in the White House is a direct result of this high polarization and its resulting culture wars.

In such a deadlock, progress is blocked, and US streets will remain susceptible to bouts of violence.

White complacency must end

Statistics show it, studies expand on it and videos like those of George Floyd's killing crystallize it: African Americans are disproportionately targeted by police. Still, many white Americans cannot admit that the country's criminal justice system and police culture protect and benefit them.

Many white Americans cannot admit that racism remains an inherent societal problem and state structures are in dire need of reform to achieve equal treatment for the citizens they purport to serve. This inability of so much of white America to come to terms with its own privilege and empathize with minorities' experiences is the single largest roadblock to progress and reconciliation.

Those who are part of the problem must be part of the solution. People of color cannot single-handedly change a system that is inherently skewed against them; nor should they be forced to try. Throughout history, black mobilization has required a critical mass of white people joining the fight to tip the balance toward progress — during the abolitionist movement, the black suffrage movement, the civil rights movement.

The same is true today — but at a time when political tribalism reigns, can this happen once again? The challenge has never been so great and the stakes so high. If there is to be progress toward eliminating prejudice and racial violence, white Americans must stop being complacent about systemic racism.



IN PICTURES: US PROTESTS OVER GEORGE FLOYD, POLICE KILLINGS RAGE IN DOZENS OF CITIES
Media in the crosshairs
Many journalists covering the protests have found themselves targeted by law enforcement. On Friday, CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez and his crew were arrested while covering the story in Minneapolis, and several reporters have been hit with projectiles or detained while on air. DW's Stefan Simons was fired at by police twice as he reported on the unrest over the weekend. 1234567891011

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AUDIOS AND VIDEOS ON THE TOPIC

From Ferguson, Missouri to Minneapolis, Minnesota

Date 31.05.2020
Author Jenipher Camino Gonzalez
Related Subjects The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Human Rights, Discrimination
Keywords Black Lives Matter, racism, George Floyd, police violence, USA, human rights, discrimination, minority rights

Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3d4rE

George Floyd: What has Trump done for black jobs, poverty and crime?

By Jake Horton BBC Reality Check
4 June 2020

GETTY IMAGES

President Trump is looking to pick up black votes in the 2020 election

As protests continue across the US over the death of an African-American man, George Floyd, President Donald Trump has said he's done "more for the black community than any president since Abraham Lincoln".

He tweeted that he had delivered the lowest African-American unemployment, poverty and crime rates in US history.

So how has he done?
1. Is African-American unemployment the lowest in history?

The African-American unemployment rate reached 16.7% in April this year - the highest since March 2010.

It's spiked sharply because of the huge impact of the coronavirus crisis on the US economy. And this has disproportionately affected African-Americans - their unemployment rate is two percentage points higher than the overall figure.

But it's worth saying it went as low as 5.5% in September last year - the lowest figure recorded since the US Department of Labor started collecting these statistics in the 1970s.

Image copyrightBBC NEWS

Prior to the coronavirus crisis, there had been a consistent downward trend in African-American unemployment under President Trump.

But it's a trend which began under President Barack Obama, who saw the rate decline from 12.6% to 7.5% during his two terms in office from 2009 until 2017.

However, there remains a disparity in wages between different groups in the US.

The average income of African-American households is almost 60% less than white households, with growth stalling under President Trump, according to the latest statistics.
2. Is the African-American poverty rate at a record low?

In 2018, the latest data available, the African-American poverty rate was 20.8% - which is the lowest on record, beating the previous year, since the official count began in the 1960s.

That represents 8.9 million African-Americans in poverty, according to the US Census Bureau.

African-American poverty has been falling since 2010

Source: US Census Bureau

The US Census Bureau calculates poverty by judging that if a family's total income is less than the family's needs, then every person in that family is considered to be in poverty.

Black poverty also came down under President Obama, and was 21.8% in 2016 - his last full year in office.
3. Is crime committed by African-Americans lower than ever?

This is hard to answer with any certainty.

There are crime statistics gathered by the FBI, but there isn't comprehensive data categorised by race.

Violent crime overall has fallen under President Trump, continuing a trend which started after a peak in 1991.

African-American arrests have been dropping in recent years

Source: FBI

When you look at the number of African-Americans arrested - which can give some indication - you can see arrests have come down over recent years.

They've remained relatively steady for the last four years.

The latest available data is from 2018 and shows that 2,115,381 African-Americans were arrested, according to FBI statistics.

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