Corporatism

The line between the government and corporations is vanishing – Numerous

surveillance policies create further ties between corporations and the government
through surveillance independently cause a chilling effect on political participation
and dissent. Our primary political task is to open up the doors by which citizen
political participation outside of corporate controlled frame is even possible. The
status quo guarantees oligarchical policymaking resulting in tyranny, racial violence
and makes solving all other problems impossible because corporations influence the
flow of data and policymaking.
Lehn ‘15 [Nick Lehn is currently finishing his Masters in Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology from the
University of Oxford. His favorite topics include anything pertaining to science and society, global
politics, social justice, globalization and technology. “Responding to oligarchic corporatism and
government surveillance in the 21st Century” http://americablog.com/ AMERICAblog was created by
John Aravosis, a former writer for the Economist with a joint law degree (JD) and masters in foreign
service. A readership of over 1.5 million. 4/6/15 Acc: 9/23/15, Evidence gender-modified*] JTC

There are numerous threats that face us in our current day and age. One could spin the “Wheel of Fate”
to select which threat has the greatest potential to kill us today. Putin and an increasingly imperialist
Russia, or perhaps a jihad-driven and nuclear armed Iran. There’s always the 21st century boogeyman
Terrorism™, featuring the Islamic State and guest starring Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Boko Haram. We
can’t forget about the institutionalized racism and violence at the hands of the police; or global
climate change and the steadily increasing economic inequality (both in the US and around the world).
While all of the above pervasive threats — along with numerous others — could each deservedly win
the “Ms. Biggest Threat To The World” Pageant, the [crown*]tiara should rightfully go to the threat
the encompasses them all: the confluence of wealth, power and information between corporate and
government interests. Our private and public sectors have aligned to undermine the free exchange of
people, goods and ideas; and now, they’re trying to control the Internet. Like all technological
innovations, the Internet can be used to enrich the public or to concentrate wealth and power for the
few; it can be used for the betterment of society or, more frequently, to oppress the masses. It is this
concentration of power, information, and wealth in the hands of the privileged few — politicians,
government agencies and corporations — that I believe is the greatest danger facing us today. More
immediate than global warming, more prevalent than terrorism and more likely than a nuclear
holocaust, this threat is real, and its consequences are happening all around us right now. Since 9/11
and the passage of the Patriot Act, global citizens —American and otherwise — have seen more and
more of our civil liberties being taken from us at an alarmingly rapid rate. Immediately following 9/11,
the Bush administration used the emotionally charged political environment to drag us into wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan and to push the PATRIOT Act through Congress, granting the US government
near unilateral surveillance and wiretapping abilities, while suspending numerous civil liberties. In so
doing, Bush set the stage for increased government and corporate cooperation and information
sharing. Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s PRISM program were perhaps the most
shocking evidence of cooperation between the government and corporations. Internet and
telecommunications companies “voluntarily” handover all emails, messages, and video and voice calls of
both Americans and non-Americans to the NSA. Not only is this in direct violation of the Fourth
Amendment, but it is done for everyone, regardless of any alleged “terrorist” ties. And thanks to the
PATRIOT Act, it does not require a warrant. The 2010 Citizens United ruling and the 2014 Hobby Lobby
ruling further increased the power and influence of corporations by granting them privileges and
protections typically reserved for individual citizens. These two rulings combine to turn corporations
into “super-people”, with Constitutional Rights and the ability to spend billions of dollars to influence
the outcome of elections. Not only does this make the choice of who to vote for about the same as
choosing between Coke or Pepsi, but it ensures that before long, as Bernie Sanders has warned,
“Congress will become the paid employees of the billionaire class.” Not even Hilary Clinton is a safe bet
to vote for to disentangle corporations and the government. According to Julian Asange, Clinton has
strong and problematic ties to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. While there are other search engines out there
besides Google, Google’s global —and perhaps also geopolitical — dominance cannot be ignored. With
a few lines of code, Google can instantly change who has access to what information. One study even
showed that, if it so desired, Google could influence the outcome of elections by tweaking its search
engine algorithm. Despite its Orwellian mantra of “Don’t be evil,” Google’s business practices should
give pause to netizens across the globe. To be sure, it isn’t all bad. Congress’s failure to pass SOPA (the
Stop Online Piracy Act), which would have granted corporations and the US government the ability to
censor entire websites and cut-off sites from their revenue streams, and the recent FCC rules for Net
Neutrality, classifying the internet as a public utility. This, for the time being, means that the Internet
is still egalitarian in principle, and able to be equally accessed by anyone with an internet connection.
But that isn’t for lack of trying on the part of our government. Earlier this month, the US Senate
Intelligence Committee passed CISA in a 14-1 vote, which is being dubbed “Patriot Act 2.0.” Under the
guise of a “cyber security measure” to protect companies from recent hacks, CISA would allow the
government to use information on consumers collected by corporations in criminal proceedings. This
means that corporations who collect information on consumers (name, credit/debit card information,
etc.) can be made to “voluntarily” give that information to the government at any time for any reason
and, again, without warrant. This bill also makes it much harder for future leakers and whistleblowers
to act in what is already a harsh legal environment, and makes the punishment much worse for them
if they do come forward. Thankfully this hasn’t (yet) passed in either full house of Congress, but the
committee results make it seem like only a matter of time. And it isn’t limited to your information;
now, a host of benign online choices can be used against you if the government doesn’t like them. Just
last week, and more or less under the radar, President Obama signed an executive order declaring a
national emergency to deal with (in the most vaguely worded language possible) “the increasing
prevalence and severity of malicious cyber-enabled activities originating from, or directed by persons
located, in whole or in substantial part, outside the United States”. This executive order makes donating
funds, goods, or services to any person(s) suspected of engaging in malicious cyber-enabled activities
outside of the US illegal. I find section 7 of particular interest (emphasis added): Sec. 7. For those
persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a
constitutional presence in the United States, I find that because of the ability to transfer funds or other
assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order
would render those measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective
in addressing the national emergency declared in this order, there need be no prior notice of a listing or
determination made pursuant to section 1 of this order. This means that if you have “a constitutional
presence in the US” and are caught donating funds, goods, or services digitally to someone suspected
of engaging in malicious cyber-enabled activities, you can be arrested and have your property seized
by the US government without any prior notice (or, importantly, due process). So donating to, say,
Edward Snowden or Julian Assange is now not only illegal, but also punishable without due process.
This should raise massive red flags for all of us. And if you do not already feel like your privacy is being
invaded yet, how about the FBI knowing where your whereabouts are at all times via a secret device
called a “Stingray,” which tricks your cell phone into revealing its location. In response to being
threatened by a judge’s court order into disclosing information about “Stingray”, the FBI ordered the
police to drop all criminal charges that relied on information garnered from the program. Some may be
fine with increased surveillance in the name of security, or say that they have nothing to hide, but what
happens when the government can brand anyone a “terrorist” simply for having views that run
counter to their interests, or the interests of their corporate benefactors? Going beyond that, there is a
stark difference between CCTV cameras monitoring activity and our identity and private
communications being stolen from us by those who potentially wish us harm. Given the choice between
living in a police state with the illusion of freedom and security, and living freely with an increased risk
of attack, I’d much rather be free! Or at least put it to a vote, and let me have a say before having my
freedoms taken away from me by the government-corporate police state. Instead, there is an
increasing level of cooperation between public and large, private interests on which the public has no
recourse, turning the United States into a corporatocratic oligarchical police state. It’s a classic game of
“heads I win, tails you lose.” Corporations fund both candidates — donating based on incumbency first
and ideology second — so that they have influence no matter who wins. Politicians then give the
corporations what they want, like the 29 members of the House who penned the “Internet Freedom
Act” in response to the FCC ruling, and are all backed by major telecommunications companies. It is
increasingly looking like Orwell, Huxley and Friedrich Nietzsche were all right: Big Brother is watching us,
and technology is being used to control society. What’s more, most Americans see this happening and
shrug: “‘We have invented happiness’, say the last men, and they blink.” It’s already been established
that We the People are becoming increasingly powerless against corporate influence, government
intrusion or even the local police — who have now been given military grade weaponry.

Surveillance is a key nodal point of corporate and state ties – historical development
of the relationships and technologies prove that modern state surveillance is not even
possible without the aid of corporate presence and unjustifiable without corporate
agenda. This specific tie fuels billions into the military-industrial complex,
guaranteeing warfare no matter how unreliable the threat.
Ball and Snider 13-*Professor of Organization @ the Open University Business School, director of the Surveillance Studies Network
**Professor Sociology @ Queens University [Kirstie, Laureen, The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: A political economy of surveillance,
“Introduction: The surveillance-industrial complex: towards a political economy of surveillance?” 2013, pg. 1-5, DKP]

The origins of the surveillance- industrial complex Today’s ‘surveillance society’ (Lyon 2001) emerged from a complex of
military and corporate priorities, intimately linked with developments in the natural sciences, that were nourished through the
active and ‘cold’ wars that marked the twentieth century. Two massive configurations of power – state and corporate
– have become the dominant players. Their evolution and growth was dialectical rather than linear;
each conglomeration of networks and actors was and is mutually constituted from, by and through the
other. This synergy was made possible by the ‘complementarities’ of government and corporate ‘needs’,
and their mutual and complementary dependence on – and faith in – the limitless capabilities of ‘science’ – which in
turn depended on state and corporate funding. There is nothing conspiratorial about this process: today’s surveillance- industrial
complex emerged in unpredictable, uncontrollable, non- linear ways – as Haggerty and Ericson (2006) remind us, there were a multiplicity of

‘causes’ and of ‘effects’. But it is not at all accidental that the vast majority of the technologies that
shape our lives today, the ‘winners’ of thousands of internecine battles for supremacy, are those that
extend the social control of dominant institutions over designated ‘others’, making the other ‘visible’ in
ever more novel ways (Mosco 1996, 2004; Williams 1961, 1980). Military involvement in surveillance technologies dates back to warfare in the
nineteenth and early twentieth century. At the beginning of World War I, the British Navy appointed physicist and engineer Alfred Ewing to decipher Morse code
intercepts picked up from the Germans at listening stations belonging to the Navy, Post Office, and the Marconi company (Jones 1989: 175). By World War II a
formal cryptography division was established at Bletchley Park. This assemblage of scientists and engineers was charged with (and eventually credited for) breaking
the codes used in the ‘Enigma’ machine, the main German encoding and decoding system. Alan Turing, described as a brilliant mathematician, and his colleagues at
Bletchley Park were instrumental in establishing the theoretical underpinnings of machine intelligence and the ‘thinking machine’ which eventually became the
computer (Jones 1978: 63). The logistics of warfare – the need to supply and control large numbers of people in widely dispersed armies – also spurred the
development of the computer. These wartime connections – the interpersonal, cultural, political and corporate networks created through this quest –
laid the groundwork for cold war developments and post- war industrial applications. Controlling
external enemies, however, was not the only priority of the state and its elite supporters. From communists to terrorists,
from ‘agitators’ and union members to demonstrators and ‘yobs’, documenting, predicting and altering the behaviour of
internal groups deemed problematic has been equally important to nation- states. With the loss of the colonies,
sending troublemakers to far- flung lands became difficult. And the visible, dramatic use of force historically associated with sovereign power

became increasingly counterproductive – eighteenth- and nineteenth- century ‘rabble’ (as designated by bourgeois elites), rather than being
awed and frightened by the public torture and dismemberment of lawbreakers, was equally likely to riot on behalf of the victim (Foucault 1977; Thompson 1975).
New ways to keep the lower orders in line were therefore urgently required. By instilling the bourgeois conscience in the offender,
he (or she – lower- class women and girls, particularly their sexuality, were primary targets of the new discipline) would learn new ways of
behaving and punish themselves for transgressions, thereby lessening the need for legitimacy threatening displays of coercion by the
state. Institutions and regimes to discipline and train lawbreakers, the young and the mentally disordered became popular. As Coleman and McCahill (2010: 228)
have argued, surveillance does not merely react to ‘crime’, it creates ‘truth regimes and constructs target
populations’. To do this, many traditional working- class pursuits, both leisure activities such as gambling and cock- fighting and
subsistence behaviours such as gleaning (taking the crops left on landowners’ fields after harvest) were criminalised. A number of traditional,

formerly accepted forms of ‘getting by’ such as poaching became capital offences (the Black Acts, see
Thompson 1975; Hay et al. 1976). Medical and legal authorities constructed elaborate ‘scientific’
theories to explain the promiscuous behaviour, low intelligence or violent tendencies of ‘criminals’,
prostitutes (and other categories of ‘the weaker sex’) and the mentally ill (Hooton 1939; Pollak 1950;
Snider 2003). New discursive categories singled out a weak and morally deficient ‘criminal class’.
Surveillance through the discipline of statistics as well as hands- on (often literally) techniques practiced
by the newly established authorities, in institutions and on the streets, made certain populations more
visible, distinguished them from ‘law- abiding’ or ‘respectable’ working- class folk, and singled them out
for particular moral and legal sanctions. Beliefs in the imminent breakdown of elite control grew out of
the increased mobility and urbanization created by industrial capitalism. People rooted for generations
in village and parish, bound by traditional, religious, patriarchal and agrarian controls, were persuaded
or forced – by destitution, famine, or expulsion from their traditional lands – to move into burgeoning
factory towns and cities. As large populations of poor, often desperate men and women gathered in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century English
cities, the religious, political and propertied elites who dominated, enforced and benefited from the dominant social order grew fearful. As these cities became
havens for theft, prostitution, gambling and drunkenness, pastors and first- wave feminists worried about children running wild, about the morality and sexuality of
women and girls. Then (and also now), as Hardt and Negri argue, ‘the concept of property and the defence of property remain[ed] the foundation of every modern
political constitution’ (2009: 15). Surveillance,
therefore, is the sociotechnical means through which the logic of
juridical concepts articulate with social relations of commodity production, finding its expression in
systems of public and private law. In a myriad of ways, what Hardt and Negri term ‘the republic of property’ (2009:
4–21) is facilitated through the institutional goals and biopolitical dimensions of modernity involving
surveillance mechanisms. In addition to state–military roots, the surveillance- industrial complex has
also been shaped by commerce, the life- blood of the free enterprise capitalist state. Business elites
were key architects and cheerleaders in the state–military–industrial networks that funded, designed, legitimized and built the
machineries of surveillance from the earliest days on. Corporations such as Marconi, General Electric, General Dynamics and their nineteenth- century

predecessors were the go- to players in the military machine, states depended on them to manufacture weapons and manage the
logistics of advanced warfare. This did not change when the locus of state power shifted west after World War II and the American empire replaced the British. The
cold war and Russia’s successful launch of Sputnik in 1957 injected billions into the coffers of corporate conglomerates such as IBM, GE, Sperry Rand, and Raytheon,
most of it channelled through the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (Kline et
al. 2003: 85).2 Lucrative military contracts enticed scientists and engineering laboratories at Harvard, Stanford, UCLA and MIT to investigate the potential of artificial
intelligence and to develop faster, smaller computers separate from a mainframe (Kline et al. 2003). But business was also keen to develop
technologies to control its own designated ‘other’, its labour force. From nineteenth- century Taylorist time- motion studies to
the computer- monitored electronic workplace of today (Ball and Wilson 2000), private enterprise has been a prime architect of surveillance. Today it is

possible for corporations to ‘see’ (and therefore monitor and control) virtually every act of low- level employees in
digitised factories, warehouses and call centres (Snider 2002). Call centre, warehouse and assembly line workers are monitored to the
last keystroke and bathroom break (Ehrenreich 1998); bank and financial sector workers are ‘made knowable and to some

extent controllable’ by ‘disciplinary matrices woven into [the] discourse’ of computer- based
performance monitoring (Ball and Wilson 2000: 17). The burgeoning domain of cyberspace, created through ‘the
mutual constitution of digitisation and commodification’ (Mosco 2004: 156), has also been developed to
maximise its potential as a marketing opportunity. As written records that once languished in separate corporate and state
bureaucracies were digitised, they became mobile, transferable across and between private and public institutions, giving business the ability to know the customer
as thoroughly as the employee. Customers, citizens, employees and ‘criminals’ could all be reconstructed through
the aggregation of data collected in bits of information from a myriad of sources. This information could then be
disassembled and reassembled to suit the priorities and interests of the institution involved. The ‘computerized dataveillance’ made

possible through this integration of surveillance capabilities (Haggerty and Ericson 2006: 4) has become a key
component of governance and of commerce. Indeed, dataveillance on the Web allows the entire communication process to be turned into
a commodity, packaged and sold. Every thought, gene, scientific advance and emotion, the desire for entertainment, education, or solace, can be packaged and sold
to increasingly fragmented audiences. Cyberspace and its many spin- offs, like the technological developments that preceded it, has been touted as beneficial,
progressive, inevitable and finally inescapable (Mosco 2004: 150–1).Today’s
state-subsidised surveillance- industrial complex,
then, was designed to facilitate conquest and control over those categorised as ‘the other’, groups seen
as problematic by the elites developing and sponsoring technological growth. And as Mosco (2004) points out,
although ‘we’, the employee, consumer and citizen, can use these technologies in a number of ways, for a variety of purposes,
the basic ‘choices about deployment and anticipated use’ have already been built into the design of
hardware and software (Feenberg 1999). The institutional goals of the scientists at Bletchley, and at similar research clusters in the United States and Germany,
were to win the war. These scientists were not funded to develop technologies to maximise creativity, facilitate cooperative decision- making or fulfil human needs
for shelter and sustenance. Thus it is hardly surprising that the
resulting scientific and technological advances focused on
developing new and better methods of controlling and punishing the designated ‘other’. And this is a
quest they were willing to fund. Guided by focused questions from their funders, money given ‘with . . . expectations of a [specific] return’ (Smart
1992: 44), highly trained scientists, interacting in networks of complex, multifaceted organisations,

produced the surveillance-industrial complex we see today.

Surveillance ensures a culture of compliance to law and norms. Basic psychology

proves that the feeling of being watched influences social and political behavior—the
aff is critical for any possible resistance to the dominant order to happen.
Zuboff ‘15 [Shoshana Zuboff Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard
Business School PhD in social psychology from Harvard “Big other: surveillance capitalism and the
prospects of an information civilization” http://www.palgrave-
journals.com/jit/journal/v30/n1/full/jit20155a.html]
In contrast to Arendt, Varian’s
vision of a computer-mediated world strikes me as an arid wasteland – not a
community of equals bound through laws in the inevitable and ultimately fruitful human struggle with
uncertainty. In this futurescape, the human community has already failed. It is a place adapted to the
normalization of chaos and terror where the last vestiges of trust have long since withered and died.
Human replenishment from the failures and triumphs of asserting predictability and exercising over will in the face of natural
uncertainty gives way to the blankness of perpetual compliance. Rather than enabling new contractual forms, these
arrangements describe the rise of a new universal architecture existing somewhere between nature and God that I christen Big
Other. It is a ubiquitous networked institutional regime that records, modifies, and commodifies
everyday experience from toasters to bodies, communication to thought, all with a view to establishing new
pathways to monetization and profit. Big Other is the sovereign power of a near future that annihilates
the freedom achieved by the rule of law. It is a new regime of independent and independently controlled facts that supplants
the need for contracts, governance, and the dynamism of a market democracy. Big Other is the 21st-century incarnation of the electronic text
that aspires to encompass and reveal the comprehensive immanent facts of market, social, physical, and biological behaviors. The institutional
processes that constitute the architecture of Big Other can be imagined as the material instantiation of Hayek’s ‘extended order’ come to life in
the explicated transparency of computer-mediation. These processes reconfigure the structure of power, conformity, and resistance inherited
from mass society and symbolized for over half a century as Big Brother. Power can no longer be summarized by that
totalitarian symbol of centralized command and control. Even the panopticon of Bentham’s design, which I used
as a central metaphor in my earlier work (Zuboff, 1988, Ch. 9,10), is prosaic compared to this new architecture. The
panopticon was a physical design that privileged a single point of observation. The anticipatory conformity it induced required the
cunning production of specific behaviors while one was inside the panopticon, but that behavior could
be set aside once one exited that physical place. In the 1980s it was an apt metaphor for the hierarchical spaces of the
workplace. In the world implied by Varian’s assumptions, habitats inside and outside the human body are
saturated with data and produce radically distributed opportunities for observation, interpretation,
communication, influence, prediction, and ultimately modification of the totality of action. Unlike the
centralized power of mass society, there is no escape from Big Other. There is no place to be where the Other is
not. In this world of no escape, the chilling effects of anticipatory conformity9 give way as the mental agency and
self-possession of anticipation is gradually submerged into a new kind of automaticity. Anticipatory
conformity assumes a point of origin in consciousness from which a choice is made to conform for the
purposes of evasion of sanctions and social camouflage. It also implies a difference, or at least the possibility of a
difference, between the behavior one would have performed and the behavior one chooses to perform as an instrumental solution to invasive
power. In a world of Big Other, without avenues of escape, the agency implied in the work of anticipation is gradually submerged into a new
kind of automaticity – a lived experience of pure stimulus-response. Conformity is no longer a 20th century-style act of submission to the mass
or group, no loss of self to the collective produced by fear or compulsion, no psychological craving for acceptance and belonging. Conformity
now disappears into the mechanical order of things and bodies, not as action but as result, not cause but effect. Each
one of us may
follow a distinct path, but that path is already shaped by the financial and, or, ideological interests that
imbue Big Other and invade every aspect of ‘one’s own’ life. False consciousness is no longer produced by the hidden
facts of class and their relation to production, but rather by the hidden facts of commoditized behavior modification. If power was once
identified with the ownership of the means of production, it is now identified with ownership of the means of behavioral modification. Indeed,
there is little difference between the ineffable ‘extended order’ of the neoliberal ideal and the ‘vortex of stimuli’ responsible for all action in the
vision of the classical theorists of behavioral psychology. In both worldviews, human autonomy is irrelevant and the lived experience of
psychological self-determination is a cruel illusion. Varian adds a new dimension to both hegemonic ideals in that now this ‘God view’ can be
fully explicated, specified, and known, eliminating all uncertainty. The
result is that human persons are reduced to a mere
animal condition, bent to serve the new laws of capital imposed on all behavior through an implacable
feed of ubiquitous fact-based real-time records of all things and creatures. Hannah Arendt treated these themes
decades ago with remarkable insight as she lamented the devolution of our conception of ‘thought’ to something that is accomplished by a
‘brain’ and is therefore transferable to ‘electronic instruments’: The last stage of the laboring society, the society of jobholders, demands of its
members a sheer automatic functioning, as though individual life had actually been submerged in the over-all life process of the species and the
only active decision still required of the individual were to let go, so to speak, to abandon his individuality, the still individually sensed pain and
trouble of living, and acquiesce in a dazed, ‘tranquilized,’ functional type of behavior. The trouble with modern theories of behaviorism is not
that they are wrong but that they could become true, that they actually are the best possible conceptualization of certain obvious trends in
modern society. It
is quite conceivable that the modern age – which began with such an unprecedented and
promising outburst of human activity – may end in the deadliest, most sterile passivity history has ever
known. (Arendt, 1998: 322) Surveillance capitalism establishes a new form of power in which contract and the
rule of law are supplanted by the rewards and punishments of a new kind of invisible hand. A more complete
theorization of this new power, while a central concern of my new work, exceeds the scope of this article. I do want to highlight, however, a
few key themes that can help us appreciate the unique character of surveillance capitalism.

Err aff– the threat is treated as “small” by those in power. Ensures the political trajectory of corporatism
is intensified.
Haggerty, 2015
Kevin D. Professor of Criminology and Sociology at the University of Alberta, “What’s Wrong with Privacy
Protections?” in A World Without Privacy: What Law Can and Should Do? Edited by Austin Sarat p. 230

emphasis on the threat of authoritarian forms of rule inherent in populations

Still others will say I am being alarmist. My
open to detailed institutional scrutiny will be portrayed as overblown and over dramatic, suggesting I veer towards the
lunatic fringe of unhinged conspiracy theorists.66 But one does not have to believe secret forces are operating behind
the scenes to recognize that our declining private realm presents alarming dangers. Someone as conservative and
deeply embedded in the security establishment as William Binney – a former NSA senior executive – says the security
surveillance infrastructure he helped build now puts us on the verge of “turnkey totalitarianism.”67 The
contemporary expansion of surveillance, where monitoring becomes an ever-more routine part of our lives, represents a
tremendous shift in the balance of power between citizens and organizations. Perhaps the greatest danger
of this situation is how our existing surveillance practices can be turned to oppressive uses. From this point forward our
expanding surveillance infrastructure stands as a resource to be inherited by future generations of
politicians, corporate actors, or even messianic leaders. Given sufficient political will this surveillance infrastructure
can be re-purposed to monitor – in unparalleled detail – people who some might see as undesirable due to their
political opinions, religion, skin color, gender, birthplace, physical abilities, medical history, or any
number of an almost limitless list of factors used to pit people against one another. The twentieth century
provides notorious examples of such repressive uses of surveillance. Crucially, those tyrannical states
exercised fine-grained political control by relying on surveillance infrastructures that today seem laughably
rudimentary, comprised as they were of paper files, index cards, and elementary telephone tapping.68 It is no more alarmist to
acknowledge such risks are germane to our own societies than it is to recognize the future will see wars,
terrorist attacks, or environmental disasters – events that could themselves prompt surveillance structures to be
re-calibrated towards more coercive ends. Those who think this massive surveillance infrastructure will
not, in the fullness of time, be turned to repressive purposes are either innocent as to the realities of power, or whistling
past a graveyard. But one does not have to dwell on the most extreme possibilities to be unnerved by how enhanced surveillance
capabilities invest tremendous powers in organizations. Surveillance capacity gives organizations unprecedented
abilities to manipulate human behaviors, desires, and subjectivities towards organizational ends – ends
that are too often focused on profit, personal aggrandizement, and institutional self-interest rather than human
betterment.
 Solvency
As part of an agenda against corporatism Russell and I think that it’s important that

The United States Federal Government substantially curtail its domestic surveillance
by revising the terms of the 3rd Party Doctrine, including a warrant requirement.
Supreme Court has consistently held the third party doctrine to defend surveillance
proven by various examples over time
Brown 14, Kimberly N. Brown, University of Baltimore - School of Law, “Anonymity, Faceprints, and
the Constitution,” University of Baltimore School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2014-14,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2394838

Relatedly, theSupreme Court “has held repeatedly that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the
obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities.”272
There is no Fourth Amendment ban on the use of information obtained through government informants, for
example,273 even though they “frustrat[e] actual expectations of privacy.”274 The Court has also upheld the warrantless
installation of pen registers to record numbers dialed from a subject’s home on the theory that
“telephone subscribers [do not] harbor any general expectation that the numbers they dial will remain
secret.”275 It has condoned government scrutiny of documents provided to accountants,276 banks, 277
and physicians,278 because such documents “contain only information voluntarily conveyed” and the
individual “takes the risk . . . that the information will be conveyed by that person to the
Government.”279 With the advent of the Internet, lower courts have applied the third-party doctrine to justify
government subpoenas of shared computer files, information sent or received through the Internet and
stored on a third-party server,280 and individual subscriber information obtained from Internet service
providers without a warrant.281 By treating public exposure and third-party access to personal
information as waivers of Fourth Amendment protections, modern doctrine offers a difficult path to
erecting protections against government surveillance conducted by piecing together various public and private sector data
with images posted online or captured in plain sight.

Changing the 3PD is key to prevent total corporate surveillance and spur public
opinion against corporate-government ties writ large.
Sylvain 14, Olivier Sylvain, Fordham University School of Law, “Failing Expectations: Fourth Amendment Doctrine in the Era of Total
Surveillance”, 49 Wake Forest Law Review 48, Fordham Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2473101 , July 28, 2014,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2473101

Total surveillance in liberal democracies substantially transforms the relationship between individuals
and their government.51 The “panoptic gaze” of constant government surveillance is arguably the most dangerous threat to personhood and
citizenship. Total government surveillance in particular has significant implications for the rights to speech, association, and “intellectual privacy.” 52 Since the late
1960s, the courts
have assessed the constitutionality of government searches by asking whether the
defendant “exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy” at the time of the search, and whether that
“expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’” 53 Specifically, courts ask the two
questions posed by Justice John Marshall Harlan in Katz v. United States: first, whether the defendant
had a subjective expectation of privacy at the time of the search and, second, whether society generally
shares that expectation.54 In Katz, the Court reviewed the constitutionality of a warrantless police
wiretap of a public telephone in an enclosed glass booth.55 The majority determined that the police
violated the Fourth Amendment injunction against unreasonable searches and seizures.56 In an opinion by Justice
Potter Stewart, the Court resolved that the Fourth Amendment is addressed to “people, not places.” 57 When the defendant closed the door

of the booth to make his call, the Court reasoned, he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the
call.58 This was particularly true in the context of the telephone, a communications technology that had
come to occupy a “vital role” in society.59 Justice Harlan departed from the majority opinion to make
plain that the property-based approach was inadequate to address nontrespassory government
surveillance.60 In an earlier line of cases, the Court had allowed government wiretaps of telephone
conversations because the interception occurred outside of the defendant’s private property.61 The Fourth
Amendment, however, was not solely addressed when addressing physical intrusions by a tangible object, Justice Harlan explained.62 Such an approach “in the
present day,” he continued, is “bad physics as well as bad law” since “reasonable expectations of privacy may be defeated by electronic as well as physical invasion.”
63In the end, the majority opinion and Justice Harlan’s important elaboration caused “a profound shift in
Fourth Amendment analysis.” 64 Courts have since relied on Harlan’s concurrence in particular to review
a wide range of cases involving government surveillance and a wide range of technologies, including
overhead flights, thermal imaging devices, drug-sniffing dogs, and GPS tracking.65

Our advocacy is neither a stale roleplaying exercise nor an abstract idealist pipe-
dream but a “concrete utopian” demand. The gap pried open by ending corporate
surveillance – the material steps against structural violence – enables and is
surrounded by a larger yearning for freedom. This demand is both a goal and a bridge;
we keep one foot in the possible and one reaching far beyond.
Weeks 2011 [Kathi, prof in women studies at Duke, The Problem with Work, pp. 218-224]
The utopian demand could be grasped initially as an offshoot or even subset of the manifesto, one that takes as its focus the manifesto's
"practice of enumerating demands" (Lyon i99th, 102).38 The discussion that follows will note the demand's resemblances to the species of
utopianism that we have already considered, while also trying to underscore the form's specificity. As we move from the traditional utopia to
the critical utopia, and then from the manifesto to the utopian demand, the emphasis shifts from estrangement to provocation, and the focus
moves from the detailed vision ofother worlds to increasingly fragmentary possibilities. One
could conclude that the relative
incompleteness of the demand as a form is accompanied by a weakening of its utopian effectivity.
Certainly the traditional and critical utopias are better equipped than the utopian demand to produce a strong estrangement effect and, in so
doing, to generate a rich critical perspective on the present. The constricted range of the utopian demand renders it less able to mount a
systematic critique. However, as I argued in the discussions of the other forms each ofwhich has its own tendencies to at once release but also
to constrain and domesticate the utopian impulseless can sometimes be more. It
is precisely the demand's limited scope
relative to the other forms that, I want to claim, is the source ofsome ofits advantages. Situating the utopian
demand in relation to other utopian forms reveals continuities that may not otherwise be readily apparent. As an act rather than a text this
models' relationship to the more familiar literary genre may be hard to discern; but as we have seen, utopian forms have long been deployed to
generate a practical effect, to spur political critique and inspire collective action. The gap between act and text that the manifesto seeks to
reduce even further is still more thoroughly breached by the utopian demand. Just as the manifesto "calls for a more complex understanding of
the text as an event and ofthe textuality ofthe event" (Somigli 2003, 27), the
demand should be conceived as both act and
text, both an analytic perspective and a political provocation. As we move from the manifesto to the demand, we
move from a form of writing intended to inspire a mobilization of political practice to a mode of political engagement in relation to which
textual analyses are also generated. The
demand, like the manifesto, "cannot be cut off from the public discourse that
arises around and as a result of its issuing" (26). There is, however, a fundamental tension between the terms
"utopia" and "demand" that calls for attention. The former points toward the broader social horizon of a
future that is always beyond our grasp; the latter directs our attention to the present, to the specific desires
that can be named and the definite interests that can be advanced. In this way the paradoxical relationship between tendency
and rupture, identification and otherness, and affirming and overcoming that is produced by the utopian form's efforts to negotiate the
relationship between present and future also haunts the utopian demand. With the demand, the dynamic is manifest in the conflict between
the speculative ideals of utopias and the pragmatism of demands. It is important to acknowledge the ways in which this fusing of utopianism
and demanding could have a dampening effect on each ofthe practices. Harnessing the speculative imagination to a particular and limited
political project risks both stifling the utopian impulse and undermining the assertion of practical political claims making. While recognizing the
potential limitations of the utopian demand as a form, I want to consider the ways in which each
of the practices might also serve to
animate and enhance the other. To function optimally, a utopian demand must negotiate the relationship
between the terms in a way that preserves as much as possible the integrity of each of these impulses,
while holding them together in a constructive tension. At its best, a utopian demand is not just a hobbling
together of tendency and rupture in the form of a perfectly transparent and legible demand and an
expression of pure utopian otherness. Instead, the terms can be altered by their relationship. To function
adequately as a specifically utopian form such a demand should point toward the possibility of a break,
however partial, with the present. It must be capable of cognitively reorienting us far enough out of the
present organization of social relations that some kind of critical distance is achieved and the political
imagination of a different future is called to work. This brings us to the heart of the differences between
utopian and non-utopian demands. While remaining grounded in concrete possibilities, the demand
has to be enough of a game changer to be able to provide an expansive perspective. Whereas the
demand's propensity to raise eyebrows the incredulity with which it is sometimes received might be a
liability from the standpoint of a more traditional political calculus, it is fundamental to the utopian
form's capacity to animate the possibility of living differently. Here it is important to note that the demands that
merit the label "utopian" are necessarily larger in scope than their formulation as policy proposals
would initially indicate. None of its supporters presumed that wages for housework would signal the
end of either capitalism or patriarchy. But they did hope the reform would bring about a gendered system
characterized by a substantially different division of labor and economy of power, one that might give
women further resources for their struggles, make possible a different range of choices, and provide
discursive tools for new ways of thinking and imagining. Indeed, its proponents saw a society that paid wages for
housework as one in which women would have the power to refuse the waged housework that they had fought to win. Similarly, a society in
which everyone is granted a basic income would not bring about the end ofthe capitalist wage relation, but it would entail a significant shift in
the experience of work and its place in the lives of individuals. This
is a demand that as in Ben Trott's description of a "directional
demand"- instead of being fully recuperated within the economy of the same, "looks for a way out?' As
demands rather than comprehensive visions, they suggest a direction rather than name a destination
(Trott 2007, 15). In this case, by challenging productivist values, by contesting the notion that waged work is the proper source of and title to
the means of consumption, the
demand for basic income points in the direction of the possibility of a life no longer
subordinate to work, thus opening new theoretical vistas and terrains of struggle. The point is that these
utopian demands can serve to generate political effects that exceed the specific reform. So to function
effectively as a utopia, the demand must constitute a radical and potentially far-reaching change, generate critical distance, and stimulate the
political imagination. To function optimally as a demand, a utopian demand should be recognizable as a
possibility grounded in actually existing tendencies. This is not to say that it should be "realistic"at least in
the sense that the term is deployed in the typical anti-utopian lament about such demands. Rather, the point is that it should be
concrete rather than abstract. As a demand, the utopian vision to which it is linked should be recognizable
as a credible politics grounded in a plausible analysis of current trends, as opposed to a rant, an
exercise in political escapism, or an expression of merely wishful thinking. A utopian demand should be
capable of producing an estrangement effect and substantial change, while also registering as a credible
call with immediate appeal; it must be both strange and familiar, grounded in the present and gesturing
toward the future, evoking simultaneously that "nowness and newness" that has been ascribed to the manifesto
(Caws 2001). Perhaps the relationship between utopia and demand is at its most paradoxical when approached not in terms ofthe relation
between tendency and ruptureor, in Bloch's version, between the "Real-Possible" and the novumbut in relation to the Nietzschean relation
between affirming and overcoming. In some sense, the temporality ofthe various forms narrows as we move from the traditional utopia to the
manifesto and then to the demand. Despite the generative potential of the traditional utopia's more detailed vision ofa revolutionary
alternative, as the map ofa distant future, it can also, to borrow Baudrillard's observation, have "the effect ofstifling
the current situation, of exorcizing immediate subversion, of diluting (in the technical sense of the term) explosive
reactions in a long term solution" (1975, 162). Ifthe time ofthe manifesto is always "now" (Lyon 1991a, 206), the time ofthe
demand is "right now?' With utopian demands, the immediate goal is not deferred as it is in the more
comprehensive utopias. To make a demand is to affirm the present desires ofexisting subjects: this is
what we want now. At the same time, the utopian demand also points in the direction ofa different
future and the possibility of desires and subjects yet to come. The paradox of the utopian demand is that it is at
once a goal and a bridge; it seeks an end that is open-ended, one that could have a transformative effect
greater than a minor policy reform. Thus, the small measures of freedom from work that the demands for
basic income and shorter hours might enable could also make possible the material and imaginative resources to
live differently. As we move from the manifesto to the demand, we also continue in the direction ofmore fragmentary forms, both in
terms ofthe vision offered and the agents it seeks to provoke. Like the critical utopia, the demand aims to open us cognitively and affectively to
the future rather than to attach us to a ready-made vision. But whereas the manifesto remains "a document of an ideology" (Caws 2001, xix),
the demand's commitments are far less extensive and systematic. The demands for basic income and shorter hours offer neither full-blown
critiques ofthe work society or maps ofa postwork alternative; they prescribe neither a vision of a revolutionary alternative nor a call for
revolution, serving rather to enlist participants in the practice of inventing broader visions and methods ofchange. Like the manifesto, the
focus of the demand is less on the work of building a preconceived alternative than on provoking the
agents who might make a different future. Indeed, the demand takes the manifesto's concentration on activating agentsrather
than on providing what Marx and Engels criticized as "fantastic pictures of future society" (1992, 36)even further. The utopian demand
does not so much express the interests or desires of an already existing subject as it serves as one of the
many mechanisms of its formation. It is less the argument or rhetoric of the demand than the act of
demanding that constitutes a political subject. The potential effects of the collective practice ofdemanding were something
that the proponents ofwages for housework understood well. A demand emerges from that tradition as simultaneously expressive and
performative. Selma James's mode of presentation of the demand for wages for housework is suggestive in this respect. As she explains it, the
benefits ofthe movement for wages depends on the practices oforganiz ing, demanding, and winning, each ofwhich is measured by degrees: it
is not when, but only "to the degree that" women organize a struggle for wages, "to the degree that" they demand a wage, "to the degree that"
they win a wage, that various benefits will accrue (1976, 27-28). What is important
in these formulas is less the goal that
one maywin or lose than the process of demanding, organizing, winning; what is crucial here is the
degree to which the subjects themselves are transformed.39 In this way, the utopian demand can be seen as
something more than a demand for a specific goal or set of goals, Rather, according to this account, it is
a process of constituting a new subject with the desires for and the power to make further demands.
Perhaps this is what James meant when she referred to the demand for wages for housework as "the perspective of winning" (27): to struggle
for wagesor, to expand the insight, for basic income or shorter hoursto want them and to assert that they are one's due, is to participate in the
practice ofcollective hope and engage thereby in a constituting act. If the legacy of revolutionary vanguardism does indeed haunt the manifesto
in its tendency to name the "we:' as in Marx and Engels's proletariat or the housewives ofthe wages for housework movement, the
demand is not something that can presume to evoke a revolutionary subject or name it in advance of its
formation. Just as Marx and Engels once insisted, contra the utopian socialists, that communism was not
something to prescribe but something to invent, something that would emerge in the process of
political struggle, the demand could be said to allow its advocates to emerge in the collective practice of
demanding. If prescriptions of alternatives close down possibilities, so too does the naming of agents. The demand is neither the
"document ofan ideology" nor the platform ofa party; it is difficult to predict who might coalesce around
the demand, what kind of political subject might emerge in relation to its advocacy Who might be called to the
project remains an open question. Just as demands are more directional to recall Trott's term than prefigurative of a postwork society, the
antiwork political subject that might coalesce around the demand or set of demands is less likely to be a
vanguard than a coalition. In this sense, these demands might best be characterized not only as directional,
but also as "articulatable" that is, capable of being linked together. Although utopian demands do not
present a systematic program or vision they are not a means to some preconfigured end broader
political visions can be enabled as different constituencies find points of common interest. As demands
manage to intersect and groups link together, broader social visions can emerge, not as a prerequisite of
these articulations but as their product. To draw on Ernesto Laclau's description, demands might be "put together
to create some kind of more feasible social imaginary:' not a perfect state of emancipation and ultimate
fulfillment, but more-global visions constructed around particularized items (Zournazi 2003, 123-24). Demands are
more dispersed than ideologies or platforms, a partiality that does not lend itselfto the traditional model of a vanguard or even a party. So the
political result is not imagined as a series of local Bellamy Clubs, dedicated as they were to disseminating that author's broader vision, but
as an assemblage of political desires and imaginaries out of which alternatives might be constructed.

Prioritize structural violence above one-shot extinction scenarios, corporate ruling-

class protected media minimizes the violence which outweighs all warfare.
Abu-Jamal, 98 ( Mumia is an American activist and journalist, 9-19-1998, "Writings by Mumia Abu-
Jamal," No Publication, http://www.angelfire.com/az/catch)

It has often been observed that America is a truly violent nation, as shown by the thousands of cases of
social and communal violence that occurs daily in the nation. Every year, some 20,000 people are killed by others, and
additional 20,000 folks kill themselves. Add to this the nonlethal violence that Americans daily inflict on each
other, and we begin to see the tracings of a nation immersed in a fever of violence. But, as remarkable, and
harrowing as this level and degree of violence is, it is, by far, not the most violent features of living in the midst of the American empire. We
live, equally immersed, and to a deeper degree, in a nation that condones and ignores wide-ranging
"structural' violence, of a kind that destroys human life with a breathtaking ruthlessness. Former
Massachusetts prison official and writer, Dr. James Gilligan observes; By "structural violence" I mean the increased rates of
death and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted by those
who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of the
class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society's collective human choices, concerning
how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting "structural"
with "behavioral violence" by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of
individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. --
(Gilligan, J., MD, Violence: Reflections On a National Epidemic (New York: Vintage, 1996), 192.) This
form of violence, not covered
by any of the majoritarian, corporate, ruling-class protected media, is invisible to us and because of its
invisibility, all the more insidious. How dangerous is it--really? Gilligan notes: [E]very fifteen years, on the
average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused
232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty
throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in
effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide on
the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world.

Our impacts outweigh on probability and magnitude – risk assessment is

epistemologically biased towards white male elites who discount the severity of
everyday localized violence in destroying marginalized populations.
Verchick 96 [Robert, Assistant Professor, University of Missouri -- Kansas City School of Law. J.D.,
Harvard Law School, 1989, “IN A GREENER VOICE: FEMINIST THEORY AND
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE” 19 Harv. Women's L.J. 23]
Because risk assessment is based on statistical measures of risk, policymakers view it as an accurate and
objective tool in establishing environmental standards. n275 The scientific process used to assess risk purports to focus single-
mindedly on only one feature of a potential injury: the objective probability of its occurrence. n276 Risk assessors, who consider most value judgments
irrelevant in determining statistical risk, seek to banish them at every stage. n277 As a result, the language of risk assessment -- and of
related environmental safety standards -- often carry an air of irrebuttable precision and certainty. The EPA, for example, defines the standard
acceptable level of risk under Superfund as "10<-6>" -- that is, the probability that one person in a million would develop cancer due to exposure to
site contamination. n278 [*76] Feminism challenges this model of scientific risk assessment on at least three levels. First, feminism questions the
assumption that scientific inquiry is value-neutral, that is, free of societal bias or prejudice. n279 Indeed, as many have pointed out, one's perspective
unavoidably influences the practice of science. n280 Western science may be infused with its own ideology, perpetuating, in the view of the
ecofeminists, cycles of discrimination, domination, and exploitation. n281 Second, even if scientific inquiry by itself were value-neutral, environmental
regulation based on such inquiry would still contain subjective elements. Environmental regulation, like any other product of democracy, inevitably
serves only to "mask, not
reflects elements of subjectivity, compromise, and self-interest. The technocratic language of regulation
eliminate, political and social considerations." n282 We have already seen how the subjective decision to prefer
white men as subjects for epidemiological study can skew risk assessments against the interests of
women and people of color. The focus of many assessments on the risk of cancer deaths, but not, say, the risks of
birth defects or miscarriages, is yet another example of how a policymaker's subjective decision of what to
look for can influence what is ultimately seen. n283 Once risk data are collected and placed in a statistical form, the ultimate
translation of that information into rules and standards of conduct once again reflects value judgments. A safety threshold of one in a million or a
preference for "best conventional technology" does not spring from the periodic table, but rather evolves from the application [*77] of human
experience and judgment to scientific information. Whose experience? Whose judgment? Which information? These are the
questions that feminism prompts, and they will be discussed shortly. Finally, feminists would argue that questions involving the risk of
death and disease should not even aspire to value neutrality. Such decisions -- which affect not only
today's generations, but those of the future -- should be made with all related political and moral
considerations plainly on the table. n284 In addition, policymakers should look to all perspectives, especially
those of society's most vulnerable members, to develop as complete a picture of the moral issues as
possible. Debates about scientific risk assessment and public values often appear as a tug of war between the "technicians," who would apply only
value-neutral criteria to set regulatory standards, and the "public," who demand that psychological perceptions and contextual factors also be
considered. n285 Environmental justice advocates, strongly concerned with the practical experiences of threatened communities, argue convincingly
for the latter position. n286 A feminist critique of the issue, however, suggests that the debate is much richer and more complicated than a bipolar
view allows. For feminists, the notion of value neutrality simply does not exist. The debate between technicians and the public, according to feminists,
is not merely a contest between science and feelings, but a broader discussion about the sets of methods, values, and attitudes to which each group
subscribes. Furthermore, feminists might argue, the parties to this discussion divide into more than two categories. Because one's world view is
premised on many things, including personal experience, one might expect that subgroups within either category might differ in significant ways from
other subgroups. Therefore, feminists would anticipate a broad spectrum of views concerning scientific risk assessment and public values. Intuitively,
this makes sense. Certainly scientists disagree among themselves about the hazards of nuclear waste, ozone depletion, and global warming. n287 Many
critics have argued that scientists, despite their allegiance [*78] to rational method, are nonetheless influenced by personal and political views. n288
Similarly, members of the public are a widely divergent group. One would not be surprised to see politicians, land developers, and blue-collar workers
disagreeing about environmental standards for essentially non-scientific reasons. Politicians and bureaucrats are two sets of the non-scientific
adherence to vocal, though not always broadly representative,
community that affect environmental standards in fundamental ways. Their
constituencies may lead them to disfavor less advantaged socioeconomic groups when addressing
environmental concerns. n289 In order to understand a diversity of risk perception and to see how attitudes and social status affect the risk
assessment process, we must return to the feminist inquiry that explores the relationship between attitudes and identity. 1. The Diversity of Risk
Perception A recent national survey, conducted by James Flynn, Paul Slovic, and C.K. Mertz, measured the risk perceptions
of a group of 1512 people that included numbers of men, women, whites, and non-whites proportional to their ratios in society. n290
Respondents answered questions about the health risks of twenty-five environmental, technological, and "life-style" hazards,
including such hazards as ozone depletion, chemical waste, and cigarette smoking. n291 The researchers asked them to rate each hazard as posing
"almost no health risk," a "slight health risk," a "moderate health risk," or a "high health risk." The researchers then analyzed [*79] the responses to
determine whether the randomly selected groups of white men, white women, non-white men, and non-white women differed in any way. The
researchers found that perceptions of risk generally differed on the lines of gender and race. Women, for instance,
perceived greater risk from most hazards than did men. n292 Furthermore, non-whites as a group perceived greater risk from most hazards than did
whites. n293 Yet the most
striking results appeared when the researchers considered differences in gender
and race together. They found that "white males tended to differ from everyone else in their attitudes and perceptions -- on average,
they perceived risks as much smaller and much more acceptable than did other people." n294 Indeed, without
exception, the pool of white men perceived each of the twenty-five hazards as less risky than did non-white men, white women, or non-white
women. n295 Wary that other factors associated with gender or race could be influencing their findings, the researchers later conducted
several multiple regression analyses to correct for differences in income, education, political orientation, the presence of
children in the home, and age, among others. Yet even after all corrections, "gender, race, and 'white male' [status]
remained highly significant predictors" of perceptions of risk. n296 2. Explaining the Diversity From a feminist perspective,
these findings are important because they suggest that risk assessors, politicians, and bureaucrats -- the large majority of
whom are white men n297 -- may be acting on attitudes about security and risk that women and people of
color do not widely share. If this is so, white men, as the "measurers of all things," have crafted a system of
environmental protection that is biased toward their subjective understandings of the world. n298 [*80]
Flynn, Slovic, and Mertz speculate that white men's perceptions of risk may differ from those of others because in many ways women and
people of color are "more vulnerable, because they benefit less from many of [society's] technologies and institutions, and because
they have less power and control." n299 Although Flynn, Slovic, and Mertz are careful to acknowledge that they have not yet tested this
hypothesis empirically, their explanation appears consistent with the life experiences of less empowered groups and comports with previous
understandings about the roles of control and risk perception. n300 Women and people of color, for instance, are more vulnerable to environmental
threat in several ways. Such groups are sometimes more biologically vulnerable than are white men. n301 People of color are more likely to live near
hazardous waste sites, to breathe dirty air in urban communities, and to be otherwise exposed to environmental harm. n302 Women, because of their
traditional role as primary caretakers, are more likely to be aware of the vulnerabilities of their children. n303 It makes sense that such vulnerabilities
would give rise to increased fear about risk. It is also very likely that women and people of color believe they benefit less from the technical institutions
that create toxic byproducts. n304 Further, people may be more likely to discount risk if they feel somehow compensated for the activity. n305 For this
reason, Americans worry relatively little about driving automobiles, an activity with enormous advantages in our large country but one that claims tens
of thousands of lives per year. The researchers' final hypothesis -- that differences in perception can be explained by the lack of "power and control"
exercised by women and people of color -- suggests the importance that such factors as voluntariness and control over risk play in shaping
perceptions. [*81] Risk perception research frequently emphasizes the significance of voluntariness in evaluating risk. Thus, a person may view water-
skiing as less risky than breathing polluted air because the former is accepted voluntarily. n306 Voluntary risks are viewed as more acceptable in part
because they are products of autonomous choice. n307 A risk accepted voluntarily is also one from which a person is more likely to derive an
individual benefit and one over which a person is more likely to retain some kind of control. n308 Some studies have found that people prefer
voluntary risks to involuntary risks by a factor of 1000 to 1. n309 Although environmental risks are generally viewed as involuntary risks to a certain
degree, choice plays a role in assuming risks. White men are still more likely to exercise some degree of choice in assuming environmental risks than
other groups. Communities of color face greater difficulty in avoiding the placement of hazardous facilities in their neighborhoods and are more likely
to live in areas with polluted air and lead contamination. n310 Families of color wishing to buy their way out of such polluted neighborhoods often
find their mobility limited by housing discrimination, redlining by banks, and residential segregation. n311 The workplace similarly presents workers
exposed to toxic hazards (a disproportionate number of whom are minorities) n312 with impossible choices between health and work, or between
sterilization and demotion. n313 Just as marginalized groups have less choice in determining the degree of risk they will assume, they may feel less
control over the risks they face. "Whether or not the risk is assumed voluntarily, people have greater [*82] fear of activities with risks that appear to be
outside their individual control." n314 For this reason, people often fear flying in an airplane more than driving a car, even though flying is statistically
safer. n315 If
white men are more complacent about public risks, it is perhaps because they are more likely
to have their hands on the steering wheel when such risks are imposed. White men still control the major political
and business institutions in this country. n316 They also dominate the sciences n317 and make up the vast majority of
management staff at environmental agencies. n318 Women and people of color see this disparity and often lament their back-seat role in shaping
environmental policy. n319 Thus, many people of color in the environmental justice movement believe that environmental laws work to their
disadvantage by design. n320 [*83] The toxic rivers of Mississippi's "Cancer Alley," n321 the extensive poisoning of rural Indian land, n322 and the
mismanaged cleanup of the weapons manufacturing site in Hanford, Washington n323 only promote the feeling that environmental policy in the
United States sacrifices the weak for the benefit of the strong. In addition, the catastrophic potential that groups other than white men associate with a
risk may explain the perception gap between those groups and white males. Studies of risk perception show that, in general, individuals
harbor
particularly great fears of catastrophe. n324 For this reason, earthquakes, terrorist bombings, and other
disasters in which high concentrations of people are killed or injured prove particularly disturbing to the lay
public. Local environmental threats involving toxic dumps, aging smelters, or poisoned wells also produce high concentrations of
localized harm that can appear catastrophic to those involved. n325 Some commentators contend that the
catastrophic potential of a risk should influence risk assessment in only minimal ways. n326 Considering
public fear of catastrophes, they argue, will irrationally lead policymakers to battle more dramatic but
statistically less threatening hazards, while accepting more harmful but more mundane hazards. n327 [*84]
At least two reasons explain why the catastrophic potential of environmental hazards must be given
weight in risk assessment. First, concentrated and localized environmental hazards do not simply harm
individuals, they erode family ties and community relationships. An onslaught of miscarriages or birth
defects in a neighborhood, for instance, will create community-wide stress that will debilitate the
neighborhood in emotional, sociological, and economic ways. n328 To ignore this communal harm is to
underestimate severely the true risk involved. n329 Second, because concentrated and localized
environmental hazards tend to be unevenly distributed on the basis of race and income level, any
resulting mass injury to a threatened population takes on profound moral character. For this reason, Native
Americans often characterize the military's poisoning of Indian land as genocide. n330 [*85] 3. Understanding Through Diversity Flynn, Slovic,
and Mertz challenge the traditional, static view of statistical risk with a richer, more vibrant image
involving relationships of power, status, and trust. n331 "In short, 'riskiness' means more to people than
'expected number of fatalities.'" n332 These findings affirm the feminist claim that public policy must consider both logic
and local experience in addressing a problem. n333 Current attempts to "re-educate" fearful communities with only risk
assessments and scientific seminars are, therefore, destined to fail. n334 By the same token, even dual approaches that combine
science and experience will fall short if the appeal to experience does not track local priorities and
values. Cynthia Hamilton illustrates these points in her inspiring account of how a South Central Los Angeles community group, consisting mainly
of working-class women, battled a proposed solid waste incinerator. n335 At one point, the state sent out consultants and environmental experts to
put the community's fears into perspective. The consultants first appealed to the community's practical, experience-based side, by explaining how the
new incinerator would bring needed employment to the area and by offering $ 2 million in community development. n336 But the community group
found the promise of "real development" unrealistic and the cash gift insulting. n337 When experts then turned to quantifying the risks "scientifically"
their attempts backfired again. Hamilton reports that "expert assurance that health risks associated with dioxin exposure were less than those
associated with 'eating peanut butter' unleashed a flurry of dissent. All of the women, young and old, working-class and professional, had made peanut
butter sandwiches for years." n338 The sandwich analogy, even assuming its statistical validity, could not convince the women because it did not
consider other valid risk factors (voluntariness, dread, and so on) and because it did not appear plausible in the group members' experience. In the end,
Hamilton explains that the superficial explanations and sarcastic responses of the male "experts" left the women even more united and convinced that
"working-class women's [*86] concerns cannot be dismissed." n339 Thus even the
"science" of risk assessment, if it is to serve
effectively, must include the voices of those typically excluded from its practice.