This post was written by Dr. Alberto Lusoli, Deputy Director and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Digital Democracies Institute.
On March 29, 2023, Dr. Chris Gilliard shared his latest research at the Digital Democracies Institute Speaker Series. Dr. Gilliard is a member of the inaugural cohort of SSRC’s Just Tech Fellowship and a former Visiting Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center for two years. During his presentation, Dr. Gilliard emphasized the importance of considering class in discussions about surveillance.
What do Apple and Chanel have in common with an ominous Louisiana-based company developing surveillance technologies for the “corrections industry”? According to digital privacy and surveillance scholar Dr. Gilliard, more than we think. From Apple iWatch to the ShadoWatch—a modern take on the ankle monitor for probation and parole monitoring—smart devices constantly measure, quantify, and track every aspect of our daily lives.
Tech companies market tracking as a key feature of smart devices, promising to improve our life quality by optimizing every tiny aspect: from the glucose level in our bloodstream to hours spent in deep sleep at night. Dr. Gilliard conceives tracking devices, such as wearables, as instantiations of luxury surveillance. This form of surveillance promises the always-optimizing individual the dream of achieving and expressing their maximum potential. Whether it’s sports performance or productivity at work, luxury surveillance leverages the classic neoliberal aspiration of upward class mobility to justify its ever-increasing presence. The proliferation of tracking devices gives rise to what media scholars, among others, have called the quantified self movement (on this issue, see the work of Hepp (2020); Neff & Nafus (2016)). Consumers of luxury surveillance opt in to data extraction mechanisms by voluntarily purchasing devices such as the iWatch or the Fitbit (whose precursor, the Pebble Watch, was invented by two Vancouver-born entrepreneurs) to wear as status symbols and class identifiers.
At the other end of the spectrum, we find imposed surveillance. This is a form of surveillance that can be found, for example, in tracking devices for monitoring people on probation or parole. Or, again, in AI-powered driver surveillance cameras installed on Amazon vans. Imposed surveillance does not take no for an answer. Its users do not op-into but are rather forced to wear tracking devices in exchange for some form of monitored liberty. From old-fashioned and bulky ankle monitors to the ShadoWatch, a “reliable and secure way to monitor enrollees in the corrections industry” (ShadowTrack – Products, n.d., para. 1), these devices are designed to stand out rather than to blend in as in the case of sleek luxury wearables. Using James Kilgore’s words (2022), Dr. Gilliard describes imposed surveillance devices as technologies of e-carceration.
Whether it is luxury or imposition, the goal of tracking devices is the same: to signal class belonging. In the case of luxury surveillance, the devices suggest the upper-class status—real or imagined—of their user; for imposed surveillance, the devices stigmatize the people wearing them to signal their reduced rights and liberties.
What we are witnessing in the world of smart devices, Dr. Gilliard continued, is a convergence of luxury and imposed surveillance. The centripetal forces of capitalism are, on the one hand, pushing imposed surveillance closer to luxury wearables. The line of products developed by the Louisiana-based ShadowTrack is a quintessential example of this trend. Their ShadoWatch at first looks like a regular smartwatch. However, its list of features, which includes a “Tamper-Proof Wristband” and a “Body temperature sensor,” reminds us of the imposed nature of this kind of surveillance. The same concurrent process is taking place in luxury surveillance. The connection between luxury and imposed surveillance can be appreciated in the bold aesthetic of the new iWatch Ultra, with its thick and cumbersome case meant to stick out rather than blend in.
The convergence of luxury toward imposed surveillance can be seen also in projects like Chanel’s mini bag for ankle monitors, released in 2011 allegedly after Lindsay Lohan, back then confined to house arrest following a jewelry theft conviction, expressly requested one from the French fashion maison.
The fetishization of carceral devices, the normalization of tracking for recreational uses, and the polishing and sleeking of imposed surveillance systems have pushed us toward an unhappy middle. Here, dreams of optimization justify the adoption of luxury surveillance, which in turn normalizes the imposition of surveillance upon those who have no choice other than accepting it.