Corporate Infrastructural Expansion as Big Data Surveillance

• In Event: A New/Old Technology for Governance? Questioning Big Data Surveillance - I: Big Data State & Private Enterprise

Abstract

Amazon’s influence on the breadth of consumer data collected and the tactics of data collection continues to grow largely due to its widening market power in both online marketplaces and cloud computing. These market powers provide ample opportunities for data collection on consumer behaviors and thus big data surveillance. While this surveillance usually occurs in house, using Amazon’s own infrastructure or the infrastructure of corporations Amazon has acquired, the Amazon Headquarters bidding process (HQ2) gave Amazon the opportunity to outsource data collection and surveillance to 238 municipal entities. I examine publicly available HQ2 bids as well as the results of Freedom of Information requests for unavailable bids to study the following three intertwined dynamics: corporate municipal partnership, economic incentives, renegotiation of consumer privacy boundaries and consent, in order to provide policy recommendations for the protection of consumer data and data privacy. The major contributions to STS are a deepening of conversations on accountability related to data surveillance, the relationship between surveillance and organizational structure, and economic disincentives for privacy regulation.

Author

• Laura Calloway, Indiana University