Collaborative Chaos: Symbiotic Physical and Virtual Resistance to Pervasive Surveillance

Abstract

The scale of modern surveillance and the debate surrounding its nature have become expansively complex. Consequently, the field of communication and surveillance studies represent a critical area of scholarship with interwoven academic, policy and social implications. This thesis, a critical ideological study of modern surveillance founded upon an empirical study, draws on participant observation, militant ethnography and semistructured interviews as research methods. From a participant insider perspective, it explores and interprets the experiences, meanings and views of counter-surveillance actors targeted by surveillance based on participant observation and militant ethnography conducted during the 2017 Chaos Communication Congress in Leipzig and the 2019 Chaos Communication Camp in Mildenberg, Germany. Drawing on Jeffrey Juris’ militant ethnography and based on the participants’ own experiences in resisting modern surveillance, I focus on the lessons learned from those belonging to the third-wave of privacy activism. Through their personal experiences, this research reveals control strategies, lessons learned and views of privacy activists, hacktivists and civic-hackers on the state of modern surveillance. This thesis concludes that the current symbiotic nature of the state-corporate surveillance and disinformation nexus means any legislative solution to be unlikely.