Droves of police officers descended on UC Santa Cruz early Friday morning, initiating a standoff with pro-Palestinian supporters, who have blocked off the campus' main entrance since Tuesday.
"The strikers are demanding amnesty for grad students and other academic workers who were arrested or face discipline for their involvement in the protests, which union leaders say were peaceful except when counter-demonstrators and other instigators were allowed to provoke unrest"
The toxic surveillance business model
– and the big tech monopolies that built their empires on top of this model:
The roots of this business model can be traced to the 1990s, as scholar Matthew Crain’s work illuminates.
In a rush of enthusiasm to commercialize networked computation,
the Clinton administration laid down the rules of the road for the profit-driven internet in 1996.
In doing so, they committed two original sins
–sins that we’re still paying for today.
🔸First, even though they were warned by advocates and agencies within their own government about the privacy and civil liberties concerns that rampant data collection across insecure networks would produce,
they put NO restrictions on commercial surveillance.
None.
Private companies were unleashed to collect and create as much intimate information about us and our lives as they wanted
–far more than was permissible for governments.
(Governments, of course, found ways to access this goldmine of corporate surveillance, as the Snowden documents exposed.)
And in the US, we still lack a federal privacy law in 2024.
🔸Second, they explicitly endorsed advertising as the business model of the commercial internet–fulfilling the wishes of advertisers who already dominated print and TV media.
This combination was–and is–poison.
Because, of course, the imperative of advertising is
“know your customer,”
in service of identifying the people most likely to be convinced to buy or do the things you want them to.
And to know your customer you need to collect data on them.
This incentivized mass surveillance, which now feeds governments and private industry well beyond advertising,
with strong encryption serving as one of our few meaningful checks on this dynamic.
On this toxic foundation, over the course of the 2000s, the Big Tech platforms established themselves
through search, social media, marketplaces, ad exchanges, and much more.
They invested in research and development to enable faster and bigger data collection, processing, and to build and maximize computational infrastructures and techniques that could facilitate such collection and ‘use’ of data.
Economies of scale, network effects, and the self-reinforcing dynamics of communications infrastructures enabled the firms early to this toxic model to establish monopoly dominance.
This was aided by the US government’s use of soft power, trade agreements, and imperial dominance to ensure that the EU and other jurisdictions adopted the US paradigm.
This history helps explain why the majority of the world’s big tech corporations are based in the US, with the rest emerging from China.
The US got a head start, via military infrastructure and neoliberal policies and investment,
while China built a self-contained market, capable of supporting its own platforms with its own norms for content that further limited external competition.
These massive surveillance AI companies are moving to become defense contractors,
providing weapons and surveillance infrastructures to militaries and governments they choose to arm and cooperate with.
We are all familiar with being shown ads in our feeds for yoga pants (even though you don’t do yoga)
or a scooter (even if you just bought one),
or whatever else.
We see these because the surveillance company running the ad market or social platform has determined that these are things
“people like us” are assumed to want or be attracted to,
based on a model of behavior built using surveillance data.
Since other people with data patterns that look like yours bought a scooter, the logic goes,
you will likely buy a scooter
(or at least click on an ad for one).
And so you’re shown an ad.
We know how inaccurate and whimsical such targeting is.
And when it’s an ad it’s not a crisis when it’s mistargeted.
But when it’s more serious, it’s a different story.
We can trace this story to the post-9/11 US drone war,
with the concept of the #Signature#Strike.
A signature strike uses the logic of ad targeting,
determining targets for death based not on knowledge of the target
or certainty about their culpability,
but based on data patterns and surveillance of behavior that the US,
in this case, assumes to be associated with terrorist activity.
Signature strikes kill people based on their data profiles.
And AI, and the large scale surveillance platforms that feed AI systems,
are supercharging this capability in incredibly perilous ways.
We know of one shocking example thanks to investigative work from the Israeli publication 972,
which reported that the Israeli Army, following the Oct 7th attacks,
is currently using an AI system named #Lavender in Gaza,
alongside a number of others.
Lavender applies the logic of the pattern recognition-driven signature strikes popularized by the United States,
combined with the mass surveillance infrastructures and techniques of AI targeting.
Instead of serving ads, Lavender automatically puts people on a kill list
based on the likeness of their surveillance data patterns to the data patterns of purported militants
– a process that we know, as experts, is hugely inaccurate.
Here we have the AI-driven logic of ad targeting,
but for killing.
According to 972’s reporting, once a person is on the Lavender kill list,
it’s not just them who’s targeted,
but the building they
(and their family, neighbors, pets, whoever else)
live is subsequently marked for bombing,
generally at night when they (and those who live there)
are sure to be home.
Grad students, postdocs, and academic researchers at #UCLA and #UCDavis are the next to be called out to #strike in #UAW4811's stand up strike starting Tuesday May 28. Some rank and file workers have already been wildcatting and sicking out. See you out on the picket lines
«Earlier this year Oshawa, ON, #DelMonte shuttered the doors to the local factory. Seventy-one workers at the Oshawa Del Monte factory were terminated without notice or severance pay
Prior to the closure, these workers were on the picket line fighting for a livable wage above #poverty line and other basic compensations. Three weeks into the #strike, Del Monte announced the factory was shutting down...»
More than 1,500 graduate students, teaching assistants and researchers are expected to walk off the job at UC Santa Cruz today, launching the first labor strike over the University of California’s response to pro-Palestinian protests in the past month....
Graduate workers in California to strike over treatment of Gaza protesters. Widespread disruption expected after workers vote to hold series of strikes, starting Monday with UC Santa Cruz. California’s huge university system is facing widespread disruption after workers voted to hold a series of strikes in protest of its...
"Workers at the first Apple store in the US to have unionized, in Towson, Maryland, have voted to authorize a strike as progress in bargaining for a first contract has stagnated.
This authorizes the eboard to call a stand up strike similar to UAW's autoworkers strike last year. Our initial demands include amnesty for all students and workers who are facing any disciplinary action for protest, divestment from "weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and companies profiting from Israel's war on Gaza," disclosure of all investments, and the ability for researchers to opt out from funding from sources tied to the military or oppression of Palestinians (including a transitional fund for those people).
This strike is in response to our employer first allowing a vigilante mob to brutalize our students and workers, and then calling the police to further brutalize them the following night. Our union is responding to a pattern of employer violence that's as old as unions themselves, allying with police-aligned vigilantes to chill and crush organizing.
Apple workers are striking at a store in Maryland by Millie Giles 5/13/24
"...In the aftermath of its outrage-inducing object-crushing advert, Apple has been dealt another PR blow, as it faces its first retail employee strike in history.
...While Apple is currently in the firing line for its employee practices, with labor unions like the Communications Workers of America accusing the tech giant of union-busting, collective strike action has been gaining traction across the US more widely..."
If you're a University of California worker who's a member of UAW 4811 (the new union composed of the former 2865, 5810, and SRU), check your email box for a link to a vote on strike authorization due to UC's unfair labor practices.
‘Many’ arrests as police descend on pro-Palestine encampment at UCSC (lookout.co)
Droves of police officers descended on UC Santa Cruz early Friday morning, initiating a standoff with pro-Palestinian supporters, who have blocked off the campus' main entrance since Tuesday.
Why UC grad students are going out on strike (calmatters.org)
More than 1,500 graduate students, teaching assistants and researchers are expected to walk off the job at UC Santa Cruz today, launching the first labor strike over the University of California’s response to pro-Palestinian protests in the past month....
Graduate workers in California to strike over treatment of Gaza protesters (www.theguardian.com)
Graduate workers in California to strike over treatment of Gaza protesters. Widespread disruption expected after workers vote to hold series of strikes, starting Monday with UC Santa Cruz. California’s huge university system is facing widespread disruption after workers voted to hold a series of strikes in protest of its...