Unpacking Property: Media, Ownership, and Power in Transformation| The Internet of Things Presents: A Case Study on Ensuring Legitimacy for Building Data Supply Routes in Surveillance Capitalism
Abstract
Surveillance capitalists dispossess data on a massive scale to extract surplus value. While pioneers such as Google entered uncharted territory when they established their data supply routes, latecomers to surveillance capitalism, among them many born-analog firms, face the challenge of building such routes in an environment that is far more hostile to maneuvers of data dispossession. This article presents a case study of how the born-analog firm Bosch attempts to build data supply routes and transform itself into a surveillance capitalist. It contributes to existing research on how surveillance capitalists ensure legitimacy for their large-scale data dispossession. It investigates a case with less-considered characteristics—a born-analog (not born-digital) firm from Germany (not the United States) targeting consumers (not policy makers or journalists)—and, thus, adds heterogeneity to the studied cases. This study finds that Bosch employs strategies of seductive surveillance and privacy washing that aim to make the processes of data dispossession invisible.