Digital Sousveillance: A Network Analysis of the US Surveillant Assemblage

Abstract

This paper introduces a new methodological approach to the study of surveillance that I call digital sousveillance— the co-optation of digital data and the use of computational methods and techniques to resituate technologies of control and surveillance of individuals to instead observe the organizational observer. To illustrate the potential of this method, I employ quantitative network analytic methods to trace the changes in and development of the vast network of public and private organizations involved in surveillance operations in the United States—what I term the “US surveillant assemblage”—from the 1970s to the 2000s. The results of the network analyses suggest that the US surveillant assemblage is becoming increasingly privatized and that the line between “public” and “private” is becoming blurred as private organizations are, at an increasing rate, partnering with the US government to engage in mass surveillance.