Further Reading: Chapter 33 — Art and Activism Against Surveillance

1. Paglen, Trevor. Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World. New York: Dutton, 2009.

Paglen's investigative book on classified military and intelligence geography — the secret sites, black sites, and classified facilities that occupy real physical space while being absent from official maps and public knowledge. This book provides the methodology and political argument behind his photographic practice: what is the relationship between geographic knowledge, democratic accountability, and national security secrecy? Highly readable, combining investigative journalism, political analysis, and geographic scholarship.

2. Steyerl, Hito. The Wretched of the Screen. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012.

A collection of Steyerl's essays on images, technology, and power, including "In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective" (on the aerial/surveillance view) and "In Defense of the Poor Image" (on resolution, value, and power in visual culture). Steyerl is one of the most important theorists of contemporary visual culture, and this collection provides the theoretical context for her video practice. Dense but rewarding; best read alongside viewing her video works, which are available through museum archives and streaming platforms.

3. Harvey, Adam. "CV Dazzle: Camouflage from Face Detection." ahprojects.com/cvdazzle (2010, ongoing).

Harvey's documentation of the CV Dazzle project, including the design research, algorithm testing, and conceptual framework. Available on Harvey's website with images and explanations. His more recent work — including projects on the invisible infrastructure of surveillance data, published through the Exposing.ai and MegaPixels projects — documents how images of people are scraped from the internet and used without consent to train facial recognition algorithms. Harvey's work bridges art, research, and advocacy in ways that make his projects useful across multiple registers.

4. Nissenbaum, Helen. "A Contextual Approach to Privacy Online." Daedalus 140, no. 4 (2011): 32–48.

Nissenbaum's contextual integrity framework argues that privacy is not about secrecy but about appropriate information flow — information flows appropriately when they match the norms of the context in which they originate. A medical record shared with your doctor is appropriate; the same information shared with your employer is not. This framework is essential for understanding what makes surveillance harmful: it violates contextual norms, not merely formal consent rules. Also see Nissenbaum's full treatment in Privacy in Context (Stanford University Press, 2010).

5. Brayne, Sarah. Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

An empirical sociological study of predictive policing in Los Angeles — based on three years of ethnographic research inside the LAPD — that documents how police officers actually use (and resist) predictive policing tools, how the tools shape police discretion, and how they affect the communities targeted. Brayne's research is essential background for the Stop LAPD Spying case study and for understanding the gap between how predictive policing is theorized and how it is practiced. Her findings on feedback loops and the expansion of surveillance into communities through predictive systems are particularly relevant.

6. Mann, Steve, Jason Nolan, and Barry Wellman. "Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments." Surveillance & Society 1, no. 3 (2003): 331–355.

The foundational paper on sousveillance — Mann's concept of counter-surveillance through wearing cameras and recording those who survey us. Mann's practice (wearing cameras in stores, airports, and other surveilled spaces and recording interactions with security personnel) is both artistic practice and political argument. The paper situates sousveillance within a broader critique of one-directional surveillance and argues for the democratizing potential of widespread counter-observation. Read alongside the "Nothing to Hide" art project as a contrast in approaches to sousveillance.

7. Eubanks, Virginia. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2018.

Eubanks's examination of algorithmic decision-making systems in welfare, child protective services, and criminal justice — with particular attention to how these systems affect poor communities. Her concept of the "digital poorhouse" — the use of data and algorithms to maintain and police poverty — connects directly to the Stop LAPD Spying case study's analysis of how surveillance amplifies existing inequalities. Essential reading for understanding surveillance as a class and racial justice issue, not merely a privacy issue.

8. Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Who Has Your Back?" Annual report. eff.org/who-has-your-back (published annually).

The EFF's annual evaluation of technology companies' policies for protecting user data from government access. The report grades companies on: requiring warrants for content, requiring warrants for metadata, notifying users of government data requests, publishing transparency reports, publishing law enforcement guidelines, fighting for users' privacy rights in courts. Reading multiple years of the report reveals how company policies have evolved — and provides an actionable tool for making decisions about which services to use.

9. Privacy International. "The Global Surveillance Industry." privacyinternational.org (report series, ongoing).

Privacy International's research on the commercial surveillance industry — the companies that develop and sell surveillance technology to governments worldwide, including authoritarian governments. The reports document specific companies, their products, their customers, and the human rights consequences of surveillance technology exports. These reports connect the technical capabilities examined in this textbook to the geopolitical conditions in which they are deployed, and provide essential context for understanding why surveillance technology activism must engage with export controls, corporate accountability, and international human rights frameworks.

10. Kelley, Robin D.G. "Black Study, Black Struggle." Boston Review, March 2016.

While not specifically about surveillance, Kelley's essay on the relationship between intellectual analysis (the study of oppression) and political struggle is essential background for understanding the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition's approach and the broader question this chapter raises: what is the relationship between knowing surveillance and resisting it? Kelley argues that the study of oppression must be in service of liberation, not substitute for it — a question that haunts surveillance studies as an academic field. The essay is also a provocation for Jordan's arc: at what point does studying surveillance require acting against it?

For direct engagement with activist organizations: eff.org, aclu.org, stoplapdspying.org, accessnow.org, citizenlab.ca, privacyinternational.org. For legal observer training: National Lawyers Guild (nlg.org) provides mass defense trainings. Know-your-rights resources are available from local ACLU affiliates.