The counter-control revolution: "silent control" of individuals through dataveillance systems

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the social impacts of “silent control” of individuals by means of the architecture of dataveillance systems. It addresses the question whether individuals, in reality, can actually determine autonomously the kinds of information that they can acquire and convey in today's dataveillance environments. The paper argues that there is a risk of a “counter‐control revolution” that may threaten to reverse the “control revolution” described by Shapiro.Design/methodology/approach – Using relevant business cases, this paper describes the nature of dataveillance systems, then it examines situations in which the intellectual freedom of individuals is silently constrained by the architecture of such systems. This analysis leads to the conclusion that individuals in today's information society face the risk of a “counter‐control revolution” that can threaten their intellectual freedom. Given this troubling conclusion, the present paper addresses the challenges of establ...

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