For the past several decades, the neoliberal school of economics has dominated public policy, encouraging American politicians to reduce the size of the government. Despite this trend, the power of the state to surveille, criminalize, and detain has become more extensive, even as the state appears to be growing less powerful. By allowing information technology corporations such as Google to collect location data from users with or without their knowledge, the state can tap into a vast surveillance network at any time, retroactively surveilling and criminalizing at its discretion. Furthermore, neoliberal political theory has eroded the classical liberal conception of freedom so that these surveillance tactics to not appear to restrict individuals' freedom or privacy so long as they give their consent to be surveilled by a private corporation. Neoliberalism also encourages the proliferation of information technologies by making individuals responsible for their economic success and wellbeing in an increasingly competitive world, thus pushing more individuals to use information technologies to enter into the gig economy. The individuating logic of neoliberalism, combined with the rapid economic potentialities of information technology, turn individuals into mere sources of human capital. Even though the American state's commitment to neoliberalism precludes it from covertly managing the labor economy, it can still manage a population through criminalization and incarceration. Access to users' data by way of information technology makes the process of criminalization more manageable and allows the state to more easily incarcerate indiscriminately. / Master of Arts

The concept and practice of surveillance has long existed in our society, yet with the development of technology, it has taken on new forms and capabilities. As a result, surveillance technology has become integrated in our society, influencing norms and shaping imaginaries surrounding it. While many existing studies have thoroughly examined people's experiences with surveillance technologies, there has been little attention paid to the efforts of advocacy groups in challenging and reshaping the mainstream imaginaries regarding surveillance technology. Using narrative analysis, this thesis aims to address this gap and explore the sociotechnical imaginaries surrounding facial recognition technology of four advocacy groups: a) Fight for the Future, b) Big Brother Watch, c) Electronic Frontier Foundation, d) Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. This study uncovers that these groups' shared sociotechnical imaginary aligns closely with modern liberal ideals, highlighting the possibility of separating public and private life, the necessity for not only moderate government intervention, but healthy commercial competitions, as well as public education. In other words, I argue that resisting against a particular technology and its associated power dynamics does not always represent a challenge to the fundamental power structure.

Introduction: We analyse the privacy policies of 15 private corporations to understand if the data handling practices – data collection, storage, and sharing –described in the policies are ethical or unethical. The data we leave behind when we use the Internet are crucial for corporations. The data provides valuable insights into our lives, thus helping corporations improve targeted marketing campaigns and increase their revenue. Method: Extensive literature review of peer-reviewed articles, written between1993 and 2021, to examine how theoretical perspectives and empirical findings evolved over time; combined with empirical research to analyse the privacy policies and “dark patterns” of 15 companies. The companies were chosen at random and belong to different sectors to give a broader understanding of the current privacy and data handling practices. Analysis: Discourse analysis of the privacy policies to evaluate the type of language used, if it is clear, easy to understand, and if the policy informs users about how their data are collected, shared, and stored. But also, a visual analysis to understand if the company is implementing “dark patterns”. Results: The results indicate that most privacy policies use misleading terms, are not fully transparent about the company’s data handling practices, and often implement “dark patterns” to try to influence the users’ decisions. Conclusion: Most companies have privacy policies available on their websites due to a clear influence from the GDPR legislation, however, there appears to be a conflicting relationship between wanting to comply with the GDPR and wanting to gather as much information as possible.

The text of the thesis deals with controlling, monitoring, tracking and analyzing an individual's online activities by another person and the influence of this Internet behavior on its reflection in reality. The theoretical part deals with relevant issues from the field of ethics, psychology, theory of computer communication and theory of privacy and technological supervision. The practical part is focused on qualitative analysis of behavior of individuals living in long distance relationships and their strategies for using new media as a means to control the activity of their faraway partner.

Combating crime is a complex task with cultural, political, and legal dimensions. In technologically advanced societies, surveillance technology can be used to aid law enforcement. A few examples of such tools are drones, cameras, and wiretaps to mention a few. As such tools become more commonplace, the need to address associated issues increase which relate to cultural, political, and legal dimensions and different stakeholders. Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to discern the impact of informatics research on surveillance technology and map out similarities and discrepancies between views of social media users, researchers, and professionals within law enforcement. The thesis impose a heuristic perspective and stem from both positivist and interpretivist tradition. The Panopticon metaphor and Panopticism are used as a theoretical lens, mainly to discuss and contextualize the findings. Data was from Twitter and Scopus by using scripts and by conducting an interview with law enforcement staff in Sweden. A total of 88 989 tweets and 4 874 research papers were retrieved. These were analyzed using topic modeling which assigned a dominant topic to each tweet and research paper. The interview was thematized using both the literature review and the topic modeling findings for guiding framework. The findings showed that there were seven topics found within the Scopus dataset and four topics within the Twitter dataset. It was found that privacy was one of the least mentioned aspects in all three datasets and that law enforcement personnel see it as closely related with efficiency. Military applications and usage were found in both research papers and tweets and law enforcement staff use a variety of ICT in their daily work. Based on the findings, it seems as though surveillance technology today can suitably be characterized as being bi-directional, both in the form of sousveillance and surveillance which relates to the Deleuzian perspectives on Panopticon. It was concluded that concrete implementations of surveillance technology attracted the most attention compared to more abstract themes such as ethics and privacy. But in all both datasets, specific ICT was addressed from a critical perspective. Similarly, law enforcement personnel viewed privacy and integrity from the organization’s perspective and highlighted rules and regulation. For future work, sentiment analysis is suggested to supplement topic modeling as well as imposing a longitudinal approach or adding additional social media sources.