Problem
As we have seen in this course, virtually every generation has felt that the existing threat to its privacy was unprecedented in nature. That said, the sheer capacity to collect metadata which exists today is without comparison. Ericson and Haggerty refer to it as a 'surveillant assemblage.' According to the authors: "This assemblage operates by abstracting human bodies from their territorial settings and separating them into a series of discrete flows. These flows are then reassembled into distinct 'data doubles' which can be scrutinized and targeted for intervention. In the process, we are witnessing a rhizomatic leveling of the hierarchy of surveillance, such that groups which were previously exempt from routine surveillance are now increasingly being monitored."
Explain what the authors mean by a 'surveillant assemblage' and which articulates your position on the issue. To accomplish this, you are to select at least one example (the use of facial recognition), to support your argument.
Overall, your paper should capture the core idea behind the surveillant assemblage, and also whether the risks we face to our privacy are truly unprecedented in nature.
• A brief literature of three additional academic scholarly sources pertaining to the topic of surveillant assemblage and how facial recognition technology poses unprecedented threats to our personal privacy (i.e., provide the complete citation, summarize the source, and provide a rationale-i.e., why are you using the source and how does it support your argument).