McSurveillance

Dear Citizens,

This one hits close to home.

For years, Heidi Beirich has been a colleague, partner and friend to The Citizens. We’ve proudly worked with Heidi to share her research exposing the links between online platforms, organized extremism and political violence, including bringing her together with other members of our community to talk about what’s social media extremism really does to democracies.

Now the US government is prosecuting her.

Author and advocate Eric K. Ward, who has worked alongside Heidi for more than two decades, has written an important piece about the case and why everyone in civil society should be paying attention. An indictment is an allegation, not a verdict. But Eric argues that what’s happening to Heidi also needs to be understood in the context of escalating government pressure on journalists, universities, lawyers, civil society organizations and others who challenge powerful interests. Read here.

Here’s what else to read, watch and do this week.

🍔 ONE READ: A Food-Led Afternoon Snack 🍔

Would you like fries with your surveillance capitalism? WIRED journalist Matt Burgess wondered exactly how much McDonald’s knew about him after years of using its app. So he exercised his California privacy rights and asked; McDonald’s sent him 515 pages. What Matt found is shocking, though perhaps not surprising:

Beyond the numbers, McDonald’s also tracked a large Diet Coke as my favorite item to repeatedly purchase. It labeled my core purchasing habits as getting a “Food-Led Afternoon Snack” or an “On the Go Lunch in a Rush.” (Jokes about grabbing a “food-led” snack have now become a meme in my household.) Notably, the report also listed my “attrition” score as zero, which could mean that Ronald McDonald sees me as a lifelong customer who’s never going to stop grabbing french fries and a soda on the walk home.

According to McDonald’s data, Burgess was likely to visit 2.16 times in the following six weeks and spend an average of $13.49 when he did.

👉 Read the whole piece here.

📚 Bonus read: Still clinging to the last gasps of summer and need a good book? Tressie McMillan Cottom has put together an essential reading list for the New York Times on AI, data, politics and power. Sunscreen. Cold drink. Existential dread about surveillance capitalism. See you by the pool!

🐑 ONE WATCH: The Flock Thickens 🐑

Last week we told you about Flock, the company behind an enormous network of automated license-plate readers. This video feature goes deeper, inside a packed city council meeting in Fridley, Minnesota where residents are saying no, and asking what kind of communities we’re creating when watching everyone starts to substitute for trusting one another. Watch here.

🔓 ONE ACTION: Privacy Please 🔓

With all this talk about surveillance, what can you do about it? Here are some good actions to take wherever you call home this week:

🌎 Anywhere in the world: Amnesty International is campaigning against the business model at the heart of surveillance capitalism, calling for governments to ban surveillance advertising and put people back in control of their data. Support the campaign.

🇪🇺 In Europe: European Digital Rights is fighting on several fronts at once: against government spyware, against attempts to weaken encryption and against proposals that would normalize scanning people’s private communications. Plug into EDRi’s campaigns here.

🇬🇧 In the UK: Our friends at Open Rights Group are fighting everything from predictive policing to data discrimination. Their “Reset the ICO” campaign calls for a genuinely independent watchdog that puts the public first, investigates abuses and stops the revolving door between regulators and Big Tech. Reset the ICO here.

And in the 🇺🇸? Back to Flock, here’s a digital toolkit and campaign site to demand an end to secret cameras.

Our modest demand: Could everyone please stop spying on us?

That’s all for this week!
Team Citizens

*PS - Join our Signal Chat if you haven’t already! 400+ people share practical advice on protecting your data, organising against Big Tech and staying ahead of what you need to know.