Corporate surveillance
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Corporate surveillance is the monitoring of a person or group's behavior by a
corporation A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and ...
. The data collected is most often used for
marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
purposes or sold to other corporations, but is also regularly shared with
government agencies A government or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, such as an administratio ...
. It can be used as a form of
business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical p ...
, which enables the corporation to better tailor their products and/or services to be desirable by their customers. Although there is a common belief that monitoring can increase
productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...
, it can also create consequences such as increasing chances of deviant behavior and creating punishments that are not equitable to their actions. The monitoring of customers or workers can cause resistance and a backlash because it insinuates a suspicion.


Sale of customer data

If it is
business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical p ...
, data collected on individuals and groups can be sold to other corporations, so that they can use it for the aforementioned purpose. It can be used for
direct marketing Direct marketing is a form of communicating an offer, where organizations communicate directly to a pre-selected customer and supply a method for a direct response. Among practitioners, it is also known as ''direct response marketing''. By ...
purposes, such as targeted advertisements on Google and Yahoo. These ads are tailored to the individual user of the search engine by analyzing their search history and emails (if they use free webmail services). For example, the world's most popular
web search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
stores identifying information for each web search.
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
stores an
IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...
and the search phrase used in a database for up to 2 years. Google also scans the content of emails of users of its Gmail webmail service, in order to create targeted advertising based on what people are talking about in their personal email correspondences. Google is, by far, the largest web
advertising agency An advertising agency, often referred to as a creative agency or an ad agency, is a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes other forms of promotion and marketing for its clients. An ad agency is generally ...
. Their
revenue model A revenue model is a framework for generating financial income. It identifies which revenue source to pursue, what value to offer, how to price the value, and who pays for the value.Afuah, A. 2004. ''Business Models: A Strategic Management Approach ...
is based on receiving payments from advertisers for each page-visit resulting from a visitor clicking on a Google
AdWords Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the result ...
ad, hosted either on a Google service or a third-party website. Millions of sites place Google's advertising banners and links on their websites, in order to share this profit from visitors who click on the ads. Each page containing Google advertisements adds, reads, and modifies
cookies A cookie is a baked or cooked snack or dessert that is typically small, flat and sweet. It usually contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of oil, fat, or butter. It may include other ingredients such as raisins, oats, chocolate chi ...
on each visitor's computer. These cookies track the user across all of these sites, and gather information about their web surfing habits, keeping track of which sites they visit, and what they do when they are on these sites. This information, along with the information from their email accounts, and search engine histories, is stored by Google to use for building a profile of the user to deliver better-targeted advertising.


Surveillance of workers

In 1993, David Steingard and Dale Fitzgibbons argued that modern management, far from empowering workers, had features of neo-
Taylorism Scientific management is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineeri ...
, where
teamwork Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way. This concept is seen within the greater framework of a team, which is a group of interdependent individua ...
perpetuated surveillance and
control Control may refer to: Basic meanings Economics and business * Control (management), an element of management * Control, an element of management accounting * Comptroller (or controller), a senior financial officer in an organization * Controllin ...
. They argued that employees had become their own "thought police" and the team gaze was the equivalent of Bentham's panopticon guard tower. A critical evaluation of the Hawthorne Plant experiments has in turn given rise to the notion of a
Hawthorne effect The Hawthorne effect is a type of reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed. The effect was discovered in the context of research conducted at the Hawthorne Western Electric ...
, where workers increase their
productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...
in response to their awareness of being observed or because they are gratified for being chosen to participate in a project. According to the
American Management Association The American Management Association (AMA) is an American non-profit educational membership organization for the promotion of management, based in New York City. Besides its headquarters there, it has local head offices throughout the world. It ...
and the ePolicy Institute, who undertook a quantitative survey in 2007 about electronic monitoring and surveillance with approximately 300 US companies, "more than one fourth of employers have fired workers for misusing
email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...
and nearly one third have fired employees for misusing the Internet." Furthermore, about 30 percent of the companies had also fired employees for usage of "inappropriate or offensive language" and "viewing, downloading, or uploading inappropriate/offensive content."American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute (2008)
Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance 2007 Survey
.
More than 40 percent of the companies monitor email traffic of their workers, and 66 percent of corporations monitor Internet connections. In addition, most companies use software to block websites such as sites with games, social networking, entertainment, shopping, and sports. The
American Management Association The American Management Association (AMA) is an American non-profit educational membership organization for the promotion of management, based in New York City. Besides its headquarters there, it has local head offices throughout the world. It ...
and the ePolicy Institute also stress that companies track content that is being written about them, for example by monitoring
blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...
s and
social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
, and scanning all files that are stored in a
filesystem In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is Computer data storage, stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage me ...
.


Government use of corporate surveillance data

The
United States government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...
often gains access to corporate
database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...
s, either by producing a warrant for it, or by asking. The
Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terr ...
has openly stated that it uses data collected from consumer credit and direct marketing agencies—such as Google—for augmenting the profiles of individuals whom it is monitoring. The US government has gathered information from
grocery store A grocery store ( AE), grocery shop ( BE) or simply grocery is a store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, a ...
discount card A discount card is a card or document, often a plastic credit card or paper card, that entitles the holder to discounts on the prices of some products or services. Cards may be issued as part of a loyalty program, offering discounts to existing cus ...
programs, which track customers' shopping patterns and store them in databases, in order to look for
terrorist Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
s by analyzing shoppers' buying patterns.


Corporate surveillance of citizens

According to Dennis Broeders, "Big Brother is joined by big business". He argues that corporations are in any event interested in data on their potential customers and that placing some forms of surveillance in the hands of companies, results in companies owning
video surveillance Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly tr ...
data for stores and public places. The commercial availability of surveillance systems has led to their rapid spread. Therefore it is almost impossible for citizens to maintain their anonymity.


See also

* Big data *
Computer surveillance in the workplace Computer surveillance in the workplace is the use of computers to monitor activity in a workplace. Computer monitoring is a method of collecting performance data which employers obtain through digitalised employee monitoring. Computer surveillance ...
*
Loyalty program A loyalty program is a marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of a business associated with the program. Today, such programs cover most types of commerce, each having varying features and ...
*
Shopping cart software Shopping cart software is a piece of e-commerce software on a web server that allows visitors to have an Internet site to select items for eventual purchase.Farris, Paul W.; Neil T. Bendle; Phillip E. Pfeifer; David J. Reibstein (2010). ''Marke ...
*
Surveillance capitalism Surveillance capitalism is a concept in political economics which denotes the widespread collection and commodification of personal data by corporations. This phenomenon is distinct from government surveillance, though the two can reinforce each o ...


References

{{Data warehouse * Financial data analysis Data management