New technologies and the “right to security”: Criminal control, rights security, and the possibility of considering new forms of punishment In surveillance capitalism

Abstract

The article aims to explore issues related to the use of new technologies in criminal law, which receive attention under the justification of being efficient and devoid of the fallibility that human behavior may present, ensuring high effectiveness in criminal prosecution, public order, and defense of public safety. The research aims to question the uncritical use of these new technologies, as they are sometimes employed in ways that violate individual rights and guarantees, providing an overview of the functioning of the criminal justice system, oriented to ensure the "right to public safety" at the expense of considering the security of individual rights, as advocated by Baratta. It also seeks to relate the current socio-economic moment marked by what Shoshana Zuboff terms as surveillance capitalism and the new forms of punishment corresponding to this period of capitalism (based on the studies of Rusche and Kirchheimer). This is because, although they may bring advantages to criminal law, technologies are still mediated by agents within their institutions, notably those with racist tendencies. The need to contextualize the functioning of the criminal justice system in the present day is understood in the first chapter, followed by a chapter dedicated to the debate on new technologies in criminal law, culminating in the third chapter that exposes the discussion about surveillance capitalism. This is an exploratory research through bibliographic review, concluding on the intertwined relationship between new forms of surveillance and punishment facilitated by new technologies and the era of surveillance capitalism.