Journal article

Indiscriminate mass surveillance and the public sphere

Published in Ethics and Information Technology

Abstract

Recent disclosures suggest that many governments apply indiscriminate mass surveillance technologies that allow them to capture and store a massive amount of communications data belonging to citizens and non-citizens alike. This article argues that traditional liberal critiques of government surveillance that center on an individual right to privacy cannot completely capture the harm that is caused by such surveillance because they ignore its distinctive political dimension. As a complement to standard liberal approaches to privacy, the article develops a critique of surveillance that focuses on the question of political power in the public sphere.

Publication details

Date of publication
16 Mar 2016
Publication link
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Volume
18
Issue
1
Pages
33-39

Bibliometrics

OpenAlex

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Citation count
79
Collected 2026-08-22
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
17.08
Collected 2026-08-22
Citation percentile
98.7%
Percentile among comparable publications of the same age and field.

About FWCI: Field-Weighted Citation Impact compares citations received with the number expected for a work of the same type, year, and subfield. A value of 1.0 represents the world average.

Google Scholar

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Citation count
102
Collected 2026-08-16