This is an interesting one and although not specifically for surveillance capitalism (more like pure surveillance). A couple of us are gathering this Saturday or the next to gather some facts on this (might be in Portuguese, though) - Perceber o contexto das CCTVs em Portugal (Sessão de trabalho) - #2 by Sean
I remember talking off-the-record with some people from an unnamed cybersecurity organization within the Portuguese state and they implied that if I wanted to explore any privacy violation by the state, the NIF would be the best place to start.
It could be an interesting investigation, I just fear that if you focus on the surveillance capitalism approach you’ll miss half the picture or end up doing a dissertation about speculation of how the PT Gov’t might sell people’s data, which may not be very scientific. I think the capitalist dynamics may not be so much at play, but rather dynamics of diplomacy and govt cooperation on the exchange of data of their citizens for “tax/police enforcement” as we have seen with the 5-eyes.
With that said, given the options here listed so far, I’d say the health data might be the most outrageous (given it’s health data) from the surveillance capitalism point of view. And if you choose to focus on this topic, you’ll probably find that they sell “anonymised data” - which doesn’t really anonymize anything.
And so if your thesis argument goes like:
- They collect data on patients (find out what)
- They sell “anonymised” data to datamining companies (and find out which)
- Anonymised data doesn’t technically work (we can get into that discussion later).
- Therefore, they are literally selling people’s health information
- Therefore surveillance capitalism at play