Zero-Order Privacy Violations and Automated Decision-Making about Individuals

Abstract

In this article, it is presented the notion of zero-order privacy violation as a grounding practice within a new type of human exploitation, namely, data colonialism: massive appropriation of social life through data extraction, acquiring digital “territory” and resources from which economic value can be extracted by capital (Couldry & Mejias, 2019). At first, I claim that privacy violations do not depend on the nature of the agents involved. Robots read your email, and not having humans involved in the process does not make it less of a violation. It is considered that the harvested data stream is better understood as being a commodity when clean, well-formed, meaningful data standards are respected. Then, it is suggested that scenarios like the covid-19 pandemic make a perfect case to expand surveillance via tracking applications. Companies and governments with pre-existing tendencies to secrecy, tech-enabled authoritarianism, and austerity, capitalize on disinformation strategies. Finally, remarks on the value of encryption, and strategic deleting as measures to reinforce privacy are made.