The temporalities of privacy activists versus the timelessness of surveillance

The temporalities of privacy activists versus the timelessness of surveillance, intervention de Vita Peacock, (King’s College London), dans le cadre du Colloque "Human Agency, Digital Society and Data-Intensive Surveillance", coorganisé par Anders Albrechtslund, professeur en sciences de l'information à l’Université d’Aarhus et directeur du Center for Surveillance Studies, résident-chercheur 2022-2023 à l’IEA de Paris, Rosamunde Van Brakel (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), ainsi que par Olivier Aïm (Sorbonne Université).

Présentation

This lecture draws on ongoing research with privacy activists in Germany to explore conceptions of non-monitoring as allowing for growth and change, in contrast to the temporal immobilities that can accompany surveillance infrastructures. The lecture places these sensibilities in relation to memories of authoritarian surveillance, that provide collective knowledge of the possibility of function creep, and thus a persistent impetus for self-definition with regard to acts of monitoring.