In the 1980s a Canadian researcher said “Today credit cards constitute one of the most serious threats to fundamental rights and liberties. Insofar as they enable service companies to gather, process and disseminate increasing amounts of information on people, their behaviours, their tastes, etc… the posses highly sophisticated means for increasing control over private individuals thereby augmenting their market share. This logic, which makes obtaining information on individuals a prerequisite for economic growth, has taken hold without has taken hold… where there are no laws protecting personal information inn the private sector. This means that little by little the conditions for a generalized behavioural control, a custom made totalitarianism, are being introduced. Commissions [in charge of protecting liberties] should be aware of the importance of the stakes if they do not wish to see their efficacy if not their existence, called into question…” [j.p.lemasson 1989]

This is one of the fundamental origins of the surveillance strategies of the internet. Where credit card data is analyzed to produce marketing profiles, so now its direct descendent the personal data of internet users is producing marketing profiles and more specific and targeted understandings. Beyond this the strategies have infected our social imaginaries (collective values that provide for unitary meaning but which are logically unprovable…) which is to say that surveillance not only watches us but infects us and encourages our destructive consumptiveness…