Beyond the consent. The limits of the Individual Control Model and prospects for a collectivist approach to contemporary surveillance

Abstract

Contemporary surveillance has not only brought benefits to post-modern societies. Dataveillance, data mining and profiling pose a real danger in most of today’s human communities. This risk affects not only individuals, who are daily victims of discriminations or distorted views of reality, but also the democratic community in which they live, exposed to the progressive erosion of its fundamental principles and the dialogical practices on which it is nourished. The traditional approach to privacy and its protection (the so-called Individual Control Model) attempts, as demonstrated above all by the logic of consent insufflated by the European legislator in the GDPR regulation, to react to this situation of alarm by placing all its hopes in the empowerment of the individual and his rights. However, daily practices and scientific studies have demonstrated the ineffectiveness of this orientation, which, on its own, risks worsening an already emergency situation. What is needed, therefore, is a paradigm shift, i.e., the development of an overall system that, by complementing the existing one, is able to guarantee effective protection of individuals and their privacy. In fact, since the dangers generated by dataveillance concern not only the individual but also the entire community, it is necessary to start thinking of responses to contemporary surveillance that make use, also and above all, of the collective strength of the demos (so-called Societal Structure Model).