Consumer behavior is a means of identifying problematic social types. Most of the surveillance technologies of agencies like the NSA or the dismantled Total Information Awareness program attempt to piggyback off of existing demographic research accumulated by the private sector through commercial monitoring. In the same way that Bertillon collected anthropometric data in order to identify criminal types in the nineteenth century, the US surveillance apparatus today collects market research and consumer demographics. Buying the wrong kinds of books or airline tickets, living in the wrong kind of housing, and attending the wrong kind of events in the wrong combination is liable to mark one as potentially dangerous. These new surveillance programs translate stereotypes into algorithms that can calculate the sum total of one’s market behavior and determine the appropriate degree of suspicion.
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