Big Bazaar Is Watching You.

You live in a totalitarian surveillance state: just not a political one. Totalitarian because it seeks power through gathering big data on every aspect of your social and personal existence.

The very same surveillance tools that were used to manipulate and create the division and hate speech underlying the recent riots are now also being used to identify rioters and bring them to justice. 

In the coming days, months and years a reckoning is coming for those who have partaken in the recent racist violence on our streets. However, they are being traced not through the state-owned telescreen and through the thought police of Big Brother but by their shopping data, browsing habits,  and private cameras, and they may even have paid for themselves. The data and tools of surveillance capitalism are 'a scanner lightly'. If you've ticked the terms and conditions, they are unconstrained by warrants; they see you, they know you, and they gossip. 

The U.K., especially in our cities, is one of the most surveilled states in the world. China, to the jealousy of other governments during the pandemic, can take a city's face and immediately track its location to see exactly where it has been in the past week, seamlessly linking one network of central state street, bus, train, and traffic cams. We aren't quite there yet, but we are closer than you think: not only with the state-funded, albeit often privatised, CCTV in our city centre but also with Surveillance capitalism's tools. Anyone present or active at the recent far-right riots should be expecting a knock on the door. With the support of companies, the State knows who they are. 

In 2011, during the last riots, there were around 52,000 government-run CCTV cameras in the U.K., but only under 2 million private ones. A year later, police were still identifying and picking up rioters. 

Since then, the number of cameras has exploded, including dashcams and doorbells. Yet while there are legal restrictions on the State as safeguards against mass surveillance, if you have an online camera doorbell, you have signed up to terms and conditions that remove much of the protections on your data—including who they share it with or sell it to. 

What is Surveillance Capitalism? 

"The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" is a book by Professor Shoshana Zuboff That Explains our modern economic system. Professor Zuboff has a track record of accurately analysing world-shaping events. Her previous book, which came out at the end of the 1980s, accurately predicted the next decade or more of home computing and its global impact. 

Surveillance Capitalism is an economic system centred around the commodification of personal data. Traditional capitalism relies on exchanging goods and services. Still, surveillance capitalism operates by extracting, analysing, and monetising the vast amounts of personal information generated through digital interactions. 

Tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon collect data from users' online activities—ranging from search queries and social media interactions to online purchases and even physical movements tracked via mobile devices—and now movements from CCTV using facial recognition. This data is used to create detailed behavioural profiles, which are sold to advertisers and other third parties, allowing them to predict and influence consumer behaviour.

The process is often hidden; most people are typically unaware of the extent to which their data is being harvested and used. Perhaps the closest overlap with the 'Telescreens' of 'Big Brother' is in systems like Ring doorbells - surveillance systems that you pay for and install yourself. The data they collect, however, is not yours. 

At a behavioural level, they will track how often you leave the house and your patterns. They will track how many deliveries you get. They can use facial recognition to track how frequently you get unrecognised callers. All this is valuable data about your lifestyle - if you get several deliveries a day, then you might have a high propensity to shop online. If you do the school run every morning and have four children, that's a valuable data point for sale to advertisers. Their profit model is not only the sale of the cameras, it is not only any subscription fees, it is the continued stream of valuable data you produce. Some video doorbell companies are often more than happy to share footage when the State requests it, turning every doorway into a state-accessible CCTV without your consent. 

This caused outrage, so Amazon has now said it will require a warrant before sharing the data. Of course, that may add some legal protection, but it is still available. 

Big Hoover Is Watching You 

There is a similar data stream for robot vacuum cleaners. Just as Google streetmaps have commoditised our public spaces to sell maps and photos of places they don't own, some robot vacuum cleaners are mapping our buildings. The plan is that they will then sell internal building plans to systems like Google Maps. Perhaps they will also sell your meter squared of wood, tile, lino, and carpet to flooring companies to target you. 

That's when the data collecting acts as intended. That doesn't include when a picture of you on the toilet taken by your hoover ends up on Facebook. 

Tracking the Rioters 

Here are some ways they are being found using state and capitalist surveillance. 

Your Face is an open book. 

First, the basics—some didn't bother to cover their faces or wear gloves. Thrown projectiles will be fingerprinted to place people at the scene. Faces will be photographed, and interactions will be captured on multiple police bodycams. 

The government can potentially run facial recognition against driving licence and passport data. If they don’t, private companies can run facial recognition against social media. Keir Starmer and the police have both advised this is a critical part of the response and in identifying rioters.

Masks, even balaclavas,  do not fully protect from facial recognition. A.I. software can still use some facial recognition with masks and balaclavas - it doesn't work like looking at a photo; it uses measurements between eyes, ears, length of nose, etc., that can often still be seen under a cloth mask when contrast is enhanced. Facial recognition is not the only analytical tool that can be used - there is also 'gait' recognition. Software can now look at video footage where the face is obscured and identify and track individuals by how they walk which is as distinctive as a face or fingerprint. 

 Of course,it also help when rioters who did think to wear balaclavas or masks didn't cover distinctive tattoos. 

Everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes 

 All the videos shared on social media will be scraped, saved, and analysed. After the 2011 riots, some people were not picked up for over a year. Now, phone cameras have higher definitions, the analysis is faster—driven by AI and facial recognition—and the volume of corroborative material is higher, with many key incidents recorded from many angles.  

Mobile Phone Forensics 

The people filming the videos are placed at the scene. Those filming had their phones on them. With the cooperation of phone companies, the State can geographically ring-fence an area, even retrospectively, and get every mobile phone number that pinged on a tower; anyone who claims they weren't there will have to explain why their phone was in the vicinity. 

There are some questions about how accurate this data is - but it is an additional layer of corroboration. Photos and videos also often have metadata by default that may embed the exact GPS location of the photograph, along with the phone or device that took it. 

The state can easily and automatically examine mobile phone tower data and query "all phones at two or more riot locations who are not normally local to that area" as a source of leads for further investigation. 

End to end Encrypted Apps

"Gentlemen do not read each others mail." 

US Secretary of State Henry Stimson,

Henry Stimson famously closed the USA's cryptanalysis and signals intelligence office after WWI. However, surveillance capitalists and states are engaged in an ongoing battle over access to end-to-end encrypted messaging apps. States, including the U.K., demand tech giants add 'back doors' to encryption. 

Companies rightly point out that this completely undermines not only personal privacy but online banking and payments, and legislation needs to be drafted with more understanding of the technology and implications.

So, theoretically, the apps being used to organise terrorism are secure—except they are not because of the human element. Any group chat is only as secure as its members, even those that have not been infiltrated—the first group chat member whose phone is opened or cracked by the State has given a wealth of intelligence. 

Social Media Network Analysis 

This isn't just about who has been posting, liking or sharing hate - Once one rioter has been identified, their network is traceable - who they are following, who they are calling, and who they are messaging. What other phone numbers are often connected to the same cell tower as them? All this data is readily available from the private companies that collect it; the collection is not paid for by the state but by the people who have signed up for the services! 

Shopping Data 

Shops have also happily shared their data  - including CCTV - not just of riots but cross-referenced against records of who was buying balaclavas in the vicinity before the riots!  We have people who bought a balaclava on their way to a riot, paid by tapping their phone, and then put the balaclava on without changing their clothes. 

Vehicle Data 

Private Vehicles 

“We use ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) technology to help detect, deter and disrupt criminal activity at a local, force, regional and national level. This includes travelling criminals (those using the road network to avoid being caught), organised crime groups and terrorists. ANPR provides lines of enquiry and evidence in the investigation of crime and is used by forces throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.”

police.co.uk

ANPR: Automatic Number Plate Recognition allows the State to identify cars and track them from camera to camera. Again, this can be an additional level of corroboration. A pattern can be seen if the same number is identified at several trouble spots. 

However Cars and Vans increasingly have dashcams and location trackers, and should self-driving cars increase, then vehicles will become 360° surveillance points - with the data owned by companies generally quite happy to sell or give the information to the State. 

Public Transport 

Private Trains, buses, and stations are providing the State with not only CCTV on their vehicles but also records of online and machine ticket purchases. This is being used with forward-looking pattern recognition—if the State is expecting trouble in an area, they can tap into the company systems and see, for example, spikes in ticket purchases, which they can use to distribute resources and track those involved. 

Political interference 

The tools of surveillance capitalism are for sale to the highest bidder, whether that's commercial companies looking to sell you shoes or political parties and state actors looking to manipulate you. 

Perhaps the golden age of this political interference was 2015 - 2016, or at least since then, when the social media giants have tried to make it less obvious. 

Key points were the 2015 U.K. election, the 2016 Brexit vote, and the 2016 U.S. election for Donald Trump. 

Votes For Sale  - Facebook's Political Manipulation Service 

Facebook has a long track record of performing experiments on its users, including openly attempting to influence how they vote. Facebook's "Global government and politics team division" boasted that it could deliver results. In a now-deleted release, Facebook took credit for delivering an SNP landslide in the 2015 General Election in Scotland. 

One other way of influencing votes they trialled in the US from 2010  was the "I've Voted"  profile button.  Facebook users were able to add a badge to their profile saying that they had voted. This mirrors such badges offline and is designed to use peer pressure, remind people to vote, and drive up turnout.

 However - unbeknownst to users, Facebook controlled who their badge was shown to.  This had a measurable effect on votes. Facebook can accurately predict how people are likely to vote. They have the data. What Facebook essentially did in its manipulation trials was pick a party in an area and give an extra reminder to vote to the people who were more likely to vote for that party. 

Cambridge Analytica 

Following this electoral manipulation was the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Cambridge Analytica was a private company funded by Russian dark money that claimed to have up to 9,000 data points on hundreds of millions of voters in the U.S., U.K., and the West. The firm utilised this data harvested from millions of Facebook users without their consent to build psychographic profiles of voters. 

This allowed them to create highly targeted and personalised political advertisements to influence voter behaviour and perceptions.

The Leave. E.U. campaign used these to sway undecided voters by focusing on emotional and misleading messages about immigration and sovereignty. In the U.S., the Trump campaign employed Cambridge Analytica's data-driven approach to micro-target potential supporters in crucial swing states, tailoring messages that resonated with their fears, hopes, and grievances. The firm's activities have since sparked widespread concern about the ethical implications of data privacy and the manipulation of democratic processes, leading to investigations and calls for stricter regulations on digital campaigning.

There is a sad irony that the tools of surveillance capitalism were used to foment the division and hate that have fanned the flames of the recent domestic Islamophobic terrorism - and will now be used to round up the rioters. At the same time, the instigators might get off scot-free. 

What happens now? 

As to what happens next, the last time there were riots near this scale was 2011. The sentences were harsh, and the head of the Crown Prosecution Services was… Keir Starmer. We've just seen peaceful climate protestors sentenced to 5 years. It will be an acid test to see what these rioters get in comparison. Labout will have a vested interest in making an example of these rioters. 

However, Civil liberties are hard to reclaim once they are gone. While it will be interesting to analyse them as they are found, what can be used against one group can be used against any.

 Even if you trust the State, this level of surveillance is in the control of private companies who have literally designed the system to exploit for profit. What can be used by a benign government against those who would harm you can be misused by a state against those who would protect you, such as climate change activists or peaceful protestors, and can be used to influence how you think, feel, vote and buy.