Watching the Watchers: Surveillance in the United States

This dissertation represents a comprehensive study of modern surveillance practices in the US. Using large open sources of digital data and quantitative methodologies, I examine contemporary surveillance practices at three distinct levels: 1) structural: the nature and structure of the broader US surveillance network, 2) interactive: the positionality and connectivity between surveillance actors, and 3) physical/material: physical arrangement and material realities of digital infrastructures and surveillance actors. Such analyses are informed by a critical methodological lens of what I term digital sousveillance, which represents the co-optation of digital data and the use of computational methods and techniques to resituate technologies of control and surveillance of individuals to instead observe the observer. This methodological approach lends itself to an extensive range of methodological and theoretical tools, enabling critical examination of surveillance practices that are often hidden and, consequently, difficult to study. In evaluating and demonstrating the utility of such an approach, this dissertation explores the evolving structure of the network of public-private surveillance partnerships, examines the nature of the relationship between network embeddedness and economic capital in the context of surveillance organizations, and investigates the materiality of modern surveillance and its theoretical implications. In doing so, this research contributes to theoretical and empirical understandings of modern surveillance practices in the US, as well as a novel methodological approach to understanding them