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 / Since the era of President Reagan, the American economic and political tradition has been committed to opening trade, limiting government regulation, and reducing public benefits in the interest of expending freedom from the government. Despite this commitment to shrinking the size of the government, the government still considers it responsible for public security, including both national security and criminalization. At the same time as this wave of deregulation, information technology companies such as Google have expanded their ability to collect and store data of individual users—data which the government has access to when it deems such access necessary. The deregulation of private markets has ushered in an era of extreme labor competition, which pushes many people to use information technology such as computers and cell phones, to market their labor and make extra money. However, whenever a person is connected to GPS, Wi-Fi, or uses data on their phone, their location information is being stored and the government has access to this information. Neoliberalism therefore encourages people to use technology that allows them to be watched by the government. Location information is one of the main factors of criminalization; historically, a persons’ location informs the police’s decision to arrest them or not. Enforcing laws against vagrancy, homelessness, prostitution, etc. require law enforcement agencies to know where someone is, which becomes much easier when everyone is connected to their location data by their cell phone. This gives the state a huge amount of power to find and criminalize whoever it wants.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/78250 |
| Date | 23 June 2017 |
| Creators | Hurley, Emily Elizabeth |
| Contributors | Political Science, Plotica, Luke Philip, Pitt, Joseph C., Luke, Timothy W. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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