Uberveillance

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What Does Uberveillance Mean?

Uberveillance is a term used to describe intensive surveillance processes only developed in the 21st century. At its most basic level, uberveillance refers to the most comprehensive surveillance possible at a given moment in time. This involves the use of cutting-edge surveillance technology.

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Techopedia Explains Uberveillance

The contemporary idea of uberveillance is related to objects that can be placed inside the human body to provide precise information about movements and locations. A class of these types of devices are called technotherapeutics, and they can be used in health care to provide doctors and others with critical information about the human body.

The idea of uberveillance raises a variety of questions about privacy and inherent human rights. Some critics base their analysis of uberveillance on the work of philosophers like Michel Foucault, and apply some of the same complex dialectics between security and liberty. Those looking closely at technotherapeutics and other similar devices might describe uberveillance as surveillance from the inside looking out, where these devices may be described as black box technologies for the human body. The idea is that these devices may effectively force individuals to provide detailed information on their movements to outside observers, regardless of whether these are related to government groups or not, and that emerging uses of such technologies may lead to various instances of abusive or dangerous uberveillance in the future.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.