ABSTRACT
In the twenty-first century surveillance is hard-wired—sometimes literally—into our everyday environment. It's not just that a surveillance device is encountered every few minutes during the day, but that the word surveillance describes the way that organizations now work. Our cell phone use is logged, our Internet surfing is tracked, our images are caught on closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, and we need a PIN to get money from an ATM and a barcode ID to get into a fitness center. All of this happens, but it is the reasons behind it that are more striking. The decisive transformation is that surveillance, understood as the purposive processing of personal data, is now the dominant organizational mode of the modern age.
