“You Have Searched Me & Know Me” Surrendering Our Freedom Through Surveillance.

This opinion piece was written by Dr. Andrew Shepherd, an Otago University lecturer in Theology based at Ngatiawa River Monastery. A forum, ‘Students, Citizens & Surveillance: Technology, theology and the future of education and democracy’, will be held at Ramsey House - the event has been postponed, with a new date yet to be announced. Keep an eye on the University of Otago page here.

Psalm 139 (NRSV)

1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down,
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
    O Lord, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is so high that I cannot attain it.
7 Where can I go from your spirit?
    Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning
    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
    and the light around me become night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
    the night is as bright as the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.
13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed.
17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
    I come to the end—I am still with you.
19 O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
    and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
20 those who speak of you maliciously,
    and lift themselves up against you for evil!
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
    And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with perfect hatred;
    I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my thoughts.
24 See if there is any wicked way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.

Every day, as we send emails, utilise google search, update our social media accounts, make online purchases, use apps on our mobile phones, we relinquish information about ourselves to the most wealthy and powerful corporations in human history.  The data generated by our willing participation in the digital world – and through simply carrying around a mobile phone – is captured by Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and others, and fed into incredibly powerful computational software, designed by some of the world’s most intelligent I.T. and behavioural scientists.  The thousands of individual data points created and harvested each day – our physical movements, product preferences, dietary choices, modes of transport, employment status, leisure activities, network of family and friends – all contribute to companies developing an ever clearer picture about each one of us.  

In previous periods of capitalism, businesses’ knowledge of their customers was limited to the general – e.g. I am a 40+ Pakeha male, married, with kids.  In the world of surveillance capitalism, arguably, companies know more about us than we know about ourselves.  Our political persuasions, faith allegiance, sexuality, and our most intimate thoughts and emotions – those things which give rise to irritation, anxiety, anger; our prejudices, predilections and phobias – are all known.  In a dark echo of the Psalmist, in the age of surveillance capitalism, it is to impersonal, behemothic global corporations that we attest: 

2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down,
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
    you know it completely.

(Psalm 139:2-4, NRSV)

Furthermore, unlike previous iterations of capitalism, our personal information is not being gathered for our benefit.  It is not we who are the customer of Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and the increasing number of companies engaged in the emerging field of surveillance capitalism.  Rather, our data is simply the resource which, turned into a commodity – behavioural prediction – is then sold onto others.  These businesses then use this powerful knowledge to send us target advertising.  Their profoundly intimate knowledge about us – including our hidden fears and desires – ensures an almost guaranteed sale.  Put bluntly: we are not using Google and Facebook, they are using us.

For the Psalmist, David, God’s intimate knowledge of his ‘inward parts’ (v13) provides a deep sense of security.  Such relational confidence is understandable.  David is responding to the God referred to elsewhere as El-roi, the one who ‘sees’ the plight of the vulnerable and who, in-turn, is ‘seen’ by them (Genesis 16:13).  It is this God, observing the enslavement and oppression of a people (Exodus 2:25; 3:7-9), who acts definitively to free Israel from their slavery.  It is his experience of a God, whom, while radically Other, is to be trusted, which enables David to make himself further vulnerable – asking that God will ‘search,’ ‘test’ and ‘know’ him, revealing to him his own wickedness and therefore leading him into the way of life (Psalm 139: 23-4).

In contrast to this relational dynamic of trust and vulnerability, our relationships with surveillance capitalist companies are deeply asymmetrical.  We know nothing of the details of the intimate knowledge they have about each one of us, nor with whom this information is being shared.  A number of questions arise: Are surveillance capitalist companies to be trusted and are their intentions to lead us into ways of life?  To what extent does living enmeshed in a system of constant surveillance challenge and undercut human freedom?  What does the new economic logic of surveillance capitalism mean for: our understanding of privacy and human relationality? for democracy and citizenship?  How might the Church play a role in encouraging society to reflect upon these critical questions?  And, how might the Church engage in economic relationships built upon trust, in which others are treated not as commodities, but as fellow companions seeking the way of life?

This opinion piece was written by Dr. Andrew Shepherd, an Otago University lecturer in Theology based at Ngatiawa River Monastery.