Pegasus Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

The ongoing revelation that several governments around the world have spied on opposition politicians, activists and journalists, using the Pegasus spyware developed by the Israeli company NSO, has created outrage and criticism of what is rightly perceived as a massive and unjustified overreach of government powers and interference into citizens’ lives. Using a tool that was ostensibly marketed as a cyber defence against terrorism and other forms of crime, countries like India, Mexico and Hungary appear to have been intercepting the communications and metadata of those who criticised the regime in power, thereby using surveillance and digital technology to erode democratic norms - a leak that Edward Snowden, who had exposed similar snooping by the U.S. National Security Agency in 2013, described in a tweet as “the story of the year.”

Stop what you're doing and read this. This leak is going to be the story of the year: (LINK: https://t.co/zhC0LN4TlC) pic.twitter.com/doo4HDDzxt

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 18, 2021

Though the abuse of Pegasus technology is extremely dangerous for democracy and dissent in the countries affected, it is at present relatively limited, and the use of such spyware does not directly impact the digital freedom and privacy of the vast majority of Internet users. The use of such spyware can, of course, be scaled up, as Snowden pointed out to the Guardian, so that over time “it’s not just going to be 50,000 targets. It’s going to be 50 million targets, and it’s going to happen much more quickly than any of us expect.”

The growth of communications technology and the rise of the digital age have been the two key factors that contribute to the erosion of privacy in modern times, as new technologies have made it possible to widen the scope of surveillance from a few specific persons, to an entire population, generating a corpus of behavioural or communications data quickly and cheaply. 

The philosopher Michel Foucault argued that this would become a form of social control, preventing crime or disruptive behaviour that altered the sociopolitical status quo, as people would come to believe that they were always being watched, and be compelled to police their behaviour accordingly. Surveillance would, indeed, be a cheaper and less obtrusive alternative to more expensive or controversial measures like policing or an active crackdown of civil liberties.

Foucault’s model of surveillance, as epitomised in the Pegasus spyware, assumes that the ultimate destination of data collected through surveillance is with a governmental or administrative body. While the use of Pegasus is certainly detrimental for worldwide digital freedom and dissent against authoritarian tendencies of governments, this threat is not as immediate and widespread for the general population as one that we face today as a result of the proliferation of digital services and social media platforms - surveillance capitalism.

Surveillance capitalism is a term coined by the author Shoshana Zuboff, who defined it in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, as the practice by large tech companies, such as Google or Facebook, of harvesting demographic and behavioural data of users who come to their platforms. This data is then used by the company or by advertisers to whom it is sold, in order to show targeted content or ads to these users. 

This data, which Zuboff calls behavioural surplus, is the companies’ main source of profit, analogous to Karl Marx’s concept of surplus value. It is stored and fed into the algorithm running these platforms, creating a profile for each user with their demographic preferences, likes and dislikes, and enabling the companies to influence and direct their choices on the web. Given that this would lead to a higher frequency of clicks and purchases, it generates enough revenue for the company and its associates that they can afford to offer their basic digital services for free - gratis, not libre, as while it has no monetary cost to the consumer, it comes at the cost of their behavioural data.

This has many implications. First, surveillance capitalism often underpins the user experience offered by many digital platforms - it is through harvesting our behavioural, geographic and demographic data, and creating a profile for us based on it, that Instagram is able to show us an ‘Explore’ page with content that we are likely to engage with, and that a Google search helps us find information that is instantly relevant to us. Without this, the functioning of such platforms would inevitably be impacted. 

Second, it has implications when it comes to individual choices about items bought and content consumed. We can never be sure if we are actively choosing to consume some particular content, or whether it has been chosen for us by the algorithm. Often, especially when it comes to our political views, the algorithm creates for us an echo chamber in which we are most often exposed to those views that match our own, thus exacerbating inherent confirmation biases, and eroding our capacity to listen to and respect dissenting views. This has an obvious impact on political polarisation in the real world.

Third, the existing situation allows customers to use the services for free, and it does not seem likely that they would be willing to pay for their privacy, or even make trade offs in terms of user experience, according to various studies.

For example, a January 2019 survey by a think-tank, the Centre for Data Innovation, showed that while 67.8% of respondents responded ‘Strongly Agree’ when asked if they wanted companies like Google and Facebook to use less of their data, only 34.8% responded the same way when it came to giving up existing features, and only 18% said ‘Strongly Agree’ to the idea of paying a subscription fee for these services. This has, however, not prevented companies such as Apple from launching such schemes; the company now offers, as part of its paid cloud subscription, a form of ‘Private Relay’ browsing that prevents advertisers from tracking users.

This, however, raises important questions about the nature of privacy. Is digital privacy a necessary right for all users of the Internet, or should it be restricted based on users’ ability to pay, or based on whether they live in countries that have enacted laws to prevent the sharing of their data to third parties? Moreover, existing laws surrounding privacy, both in the physical and the digital world, rely on the Aristotelian distinction between the oikos, or the private, domestic sphere, and the polis, the public sphere; it is largely considered unethical for the oikos to be breached without warrant or permission. However, given that the digital world, with all of its threats to privacy, is still very much a part of each individual’s oikos, should we just accept that our privacy has been breached, or is there a possibility of a system of informed, specific and fair consent when it comes to the use of our data and sharing it with third parties?

The Pegasus leak is important when it comes to understanding surveillance and its impact on individual privacy, freedom and how we exist on the Internet, in more than one way. It reveals to us the fragility of our notions of privacy on the Internet, and may well show that governments and other regulatory bodies cannot be relied upon to protect this privacy, as infringing it serves their own ends too. 

However, it is merely the tip of the iceberg, as the targets of surveillance are not just those who challenge the people in power; all of us are, in some way or another, subject to digital surveillance. Although the digital world provides much more scope for data harvesting and surveillance, regulating and restricting digital surveillance must work, as Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, wrote, “to ensure that going forward what is unlawful in the analogue world is also unlawful online.” 

Image credit: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.