By nature, the architecture of visual and digital surveillance is a black-box. The inner workings are intentionally masked, cumbersome to comprehend and therefore harder to call into question. When these systems are used to disseminate disinformation and digital deceit, journalism plays a crucial role in shining a light on our entanglement within these systems. As surveillance infrastructure becomes increasingly interwoven in our lives, we need to critically consider power structures created by technology in order to exercise agency over our personal information usage now and in the future. If this architecture is left unexamined, uncriticized, then we are ceding a major part of our digital autonomy to businesses that may not always have our best interests at heart.
This section is a collection of technical exposés that explore the repercussions and potential collateral damage of policies and practices such as data mining, digital profiling, technology access, and surveillance on a systemic level. The works in this section explore and emphasize the tendency of these systems to disproportionately discriminate against marginalized and under-represented groups and create hierarchical power imbalances, favouring those who design them.