Edward Snowden’s disclosures about National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance, together with the ambiguous complicity of internet companies and the international controversies that followed illustrate perfectly the ways that big data has a supportive relationship with surveillance.2 Indeed, as the title of this chapter suggests, ‘big data surveillance’ is now an indispensable concept for considering how surveillance happens today. Moreover, the practices of big data surveillance are inconceivable without the internet and are thus a constitutive aspect of the digital world that we inhabit in the twenty-first century. Surveillance may no longer be considered as a special case or a limited activity

that may not affect everyone. Like it or not, surveillance touches all lives that have any digital connection, even if you do not have a Facebook account or use a smart phone. This in turn means that technologies of observation and detection play a vital role in how governance works today. How do we understand and respond to data-driven surveillance and security practices? This requires careful consideration of the techniques and technologies involved alongside informed and renewed politics and ethics. Words used in the post-Snowden situation such as ‘bulk data’ and ‘dragnet’ and

‘mass surveillance’ show that processes referred to as ‘big data’ are in play, producing expanded and intensified surveillance. The rapid and widespread adoption of big data practices signal profound changes for individuals, for the dynamics of both public and private sector organizations, for the relation of citizen to state and for society at large. However, for a fuller understanding of Snowden’s revelations and big data sur-

veillance several matters have to be unpacked, not least the questions of the sociotechnical character of big data, how several of the Snowden revelations demonstrate

dependence on big data techniques and which have a highly significant impact for understanding the character of surveillance today. Of course, some of what Snowden has shown involves targeting but the main focus here is on big data techniques. Beyond this, it is vital to consider what is meant by the controversial key concepts, ‘big data’ and ‘surveillance.’ Big data, first, may be best thought of as ‘the capacity to search, aggregate and

cross-reference large data sets’.3 There is of course a range of ideas, practices, metaphors, software and techniques bundled together in those two deceptively straightforward-sounding words. For one thing, big data practices occur in a variety of contexts4 and one big mistake is to imagine that similar kinds of ends and possibilities of success are in view whatever the context. Consumer marketing, health care, urban policing and anti-terrorism – to take four popular potential and actual application sites for big data – are not the same and practices that may in some respects be acceptable in one (say, marketing) may erode rights and deny human dignity in another (say, anti-terrorism).5 If there are potential benefits or harms, that is, they are not the same in each area. The second crucial concept is surveillance, that can be understood as any sys-

tematic, routine and focused attention to personal details for a given purpose (such as management, influence or entitlement).6 This too is a broad definition that needs some tightening for the present purpose. Our task here is to examine how far big data intensifies certain surveillance trends associated with information technologies and networks,7 and is thus implicated in emerging configurations of power and influence. Of course, as political-economic and socio-technological circumstances change, so surveillance also undergoes alteration, sometimes transformation. Over the past 20 years, studies of surveillance suggest that a shift in emphasis from discipline to control 8 has been a key trend associated with the increasing use of networked electronic technologies that permit surveillance of mobile populations rather than only those confined to relatively circumscribed spaces. Even this does not get to the heart of the issue, however. Surveillance practices have been moving steadily from targeted scrutiny of populations and individuals to mass monitoring in search of what Oscar Gandy calls ‘actionable intelligence’9 and big data surveillance exemplifies this. Two main questions are addressed here: first, in what ways and to what extent

do the Snowden disclosures indicate that big data practices are becoming increasingly important to surveillance? Queries about big data practices in relation to surveillance and public concern about the activities of the NSA predate Snowden, of course.10 But Snowden’s revelations have brought them into the public eye as never before. Second, if big data is gaining ground in this area, then how far does this indicate changes in the politics and practices of surveillance? Are new trends, or the augmentation of older ones, visible here? We shall explore these questions in respect to the capacities of big data and their social-political consequences before commenting on the kinds of critique that may be appropriate for assessing and responding to these developments.