Abstract

Knowledge society implies many contradictions, and surveillance is one of these. Thanks to communication devices, we always have ubiquitous availability of personal data, but this generates some problems: not only privacy risks for individuals, but also a collective privacy danger for our society. Thanks to the anonymous analysis of big data streams, it is possible to influence collective behaviours without violating people's privacy. At the same time, we can notice that some cooperative flows emerge from this processes, reaching far beyond the surveillance practices, which open new ways to consider surveillance itself. To exemplify how these processes work, two brief examples regarding the health field are provided.