Surveillance and its discontents (original) (raw)

Surveillance, Power and Everyday Life

Surveillance has become a crucial component of all environments informed or enabled by ICTs. Equally, almost all surveillance practices in technologically 'advanced' societies are enhanced and amplified by ICTs. Surveillance is understood as any focused attention to personal details for the purposes of influence, management, or control. Thus in addition to those who may be 'suspects' (because of alleged offences), ordinary persons in everyday lifeworkers, consumers, citizens, travellers --find that their personal data are of interest to others. Agencies process personal data in order to calculate risks or to predict opportunities, classifying and profiling their records routinely. While everyday life may thus seem less 'private', and ordinary people may feel that they are more vulnerable to intrusion, the use of searchable databases for categorizing and profiling means that deeper questions of power are involved. Life chances and choices are affected -sometimes negatively -by the judgments made on the basis of concatenated data, which means that such surveillance is implicated in basic questions of social justice, to do with access, risk distribution and freedom. There is increased need for ethics and politics of information in an era of intensifying surveillance.

Bigbrother.Gov.UK: State Surveillance in the Age of Information and Rights

SSRN Electronic Journal

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 signals both the importance of forms of surveillance as techniques of policing and also the human rights apprehensions which those strategies engender. The Act is explained and analysed according to rights-based standards as well as its fit with the development of an "information society".

Introduction: Surveillance, Privacy and Security

In modern societies, surveillance is progressively emerging as a key governing tech- nique of state authorities, corporations and individuals:‘the focused, systematic and routine attention to personal details for purposes of influence, management, protection or direction’ (Lyon, 2007, p. 14). The ‘Snowden revelations’ of mass-surveillance programmes brought into the light of day the ever-increasing and far-reaching capabilities of digital surveillance technologies (Greenwald, 2014). The lack of serious reactions to these activities shows that the political will to implement digital surveillance technologies appears to be an unbroken trend. This drive towards a security governance based on digital mass-surveillance raises, however, several issues: Are the resulting infringements of privacy and other human rights compatible with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union or the EU data protection framework and the values of demo- cratic societies? Does security necessarily depend upon mass-surveillance? Are there alternative ways to frame security? Do surveillance technologies address the most pressing security needs, and if so, are they the most efficient means to do so? In other words, the promotion and adoption by state authorities of mass-surveil- lance technologies invites us to ask again if the argument of increasing security at the cost of civil liberties is acceptable, and thus to call into question the very idea that this would be necessary to preserve democratic societies. Focusing on the citizens’ perspective on surveillance, privacy and security, this volume contributes new insights from empirical research and theoretical analysis to a debate, characterized by evident tendencies to provide simplified answers to apparently multidimensional and correspondingly complex societal issues like security. This book tries to further nurture a debate that challenges the assumption that more security requires less privacy, and that more surveillance necessarily implies more security (Bigo et al., 2008). A key motivation is the wish to incorporate into new analyses the perspectives, attitudes and preferences of citizens, understood as being the main beneficiaries of security measures, while at the same time potential and actual targets of mass-surveillance programmes conducted in the name of responding to imminent security threats.

ETHICAL SOCIETY And SURVEILLANCE

Though unknown to the societies of our past, surveillance is something common in contemporary society. Many people may talk of its need and its benefits. This paper, however, will rather explain how advanced surveillance techniques introduce limitations in public life and show the scenarios in which privacy and personal data are being abused. It will also state reasons to why supervision is leading to a sense of insecurity in modern society.

Beyond Common Sense: Surveillance Societies

Criminal Justice and Security in Central and Eastern Europe (eds. Mesko Gorazd, Branko Lobnikar, Kaja Prislan, Rok Hacin) University of Maribor Press : Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security (2018) , pp 30-41, 978-961-286-176-6 , 2018

This paper highlights some questions that stand at the heart of current police policy, eg. the consequences of the transformation thesis, the militarization of police, as well as the 'pluralisation of policing'. The relentless emphasis on security, the media focus on violence, the need to find returning investment forms after the collapse of the bipolar world order, and the political necessity of making people feel safe — creates policing practice similar to the military experience. The concept of police as 'servants of the state' lacks the notion of the relative autonomy of the state and the relative autonomy of the police. There is a general disagreement on what the police are guarding, and whether the work of privately employed guards might also be considered as policing. An emerging surveillance state raises the question of whether the private security organs can be judged as a kind of refeudalization, a privilege that violates the right to equality.

Surveillance, Privacy and Security

Surveillance, Privacy and Security, 2017

This volume examines the relationship between privacy, surveillance and security, and the alleged privacy-security trade-off, focusing on the citizen's perspective. Recent revelations of mass surveillance programmes clearly demonstrate the everincreasing capabilities of surveillance technologies. The lack of serious reactions to these activities shows that the political will to implement them appears to be an unbroken trend. The resulting move into a surveillance society is, however, contested for many reasons. Are the resulting infringements of privacy and other human rights compatible with democratic societies? Is security necessarily depending on surveillance? Are there alternative ways to frame security? Is it possible to gain in security by giving up civil liberties, or is it even necessary to do so, and do citizens adopt this trade-off? This volume contributes to a better and deeper understanding of the relation between privacy, surveillance and security, comprising in-depth investigations and studies of the common narrative that more security can only come at the expense of sacrifice of privacy. The book combines theoretical research with a wide range of empirical studies focusing on the citizen's perspective. It presents empirical research exploring factors and criteria relevant for the assessment of surveillance technologies. The book also deals with the governance of surveillance technologies. New approaches and instruments for the regulation of security technologies and measures are presented, and recommendations for security policies in line with ethics and fundamental rights are discussed. This book will be of much interest to students of surveillance studies, critical security studies, intelligence studies, EU politics and IR in general.

What’s new about the “new surveillance”?: Classifying for change and continuity

Knowledge, Technology & Policy, 2004

A critique of the dictionary definition of surveillance as "close observation, especially of a suspected person" is offered. Much surveillance is applied categorically and beyond persons to places, spaces, networks and categories of person and the distinction between self and other surveillance can be blurred. Drawing from characteristics of the technology, the data collection process and the nature of the data, this article identifies 28 dimensions that are useful in characterizing means of surveillance. These dimensions highlight the differences between the new and traditional surveillance and offer a way to capture major sources of variation relevant to contemporary social, ethical and policy considerations. There can be little doubt that major changes have occurred. However the normative implications of this are mixed and dependent on the technology in question and evaluative framework. The concept of surveillance slack is introduced. This involves the extent to which a technology is applied, rather than the absolute amount of surveillance. A historical review of the jagged development of telecommunications for Western democratic conceptions of individualism is offered. This suggests the difficulty of reaching simple conclusions about whether the protection of personal information is decreasing or increasing.

Just Surveillance? Towards a Normative Theory of Surveillance

Surveillance and Society

Despite recent growth in surveillance capabilities there has been little discussion regarding the ethics of surveillance. Much of the research that has been carried out has tended to lack a coherent structure or fails to address key concerns. I argue that the just war tradition should be used as an ethical framework which is applicable to surveillance, providing the questions which should be asked of any surveillance operation. In this manner, when considering whether to employ surveillance, one should take into account the reason for the surveillance, the authority of the surveillant, whether or not there has been a declaration of intent, whether surveillance is an act of last resort, what is the likelihood of success of the operation and whether surveillance is a proportionate response. Once underway, the methods of surveillance should be proportionate to the occasion and seek to target appropriate people while limiting surveillance of those deemed inappropriate. By drawing on the just war tradition, ethical questions regarding surveillance can draw on a long and considered discourse while gaining a framework which, I argue, raises all the key concerns and misses none.

SuperVision: An introduction to the surveillance society

Human Affairs, 2013

Surveillance studies is a continuously growing discipline within the social sciences and it has been gaining prominence due to recent developments and scandals concerning surveillance. SuperVision is a book which introduces the various surveillance mechanisms applied in the world we live in and also attempts to reflect on theoretical debates within surveillance studies. However, as the authors claim, it is primarily "a crash course in the current practices of surveillance and a set of core questions that can guide a journey" (p. vii). Both authors are established surveillance studies scholars, who have published extensively on topics ranging from surveillance, security and power to surveillance in schools. SuperVision is an academic book, but it was written primarily for people outside surveillance studies. The main body is an overview of surveillance possibilities, and practices relating to the various technologies we use (such as the internet, mobile phones) and the institutions we spend our lives in (workplaces, schools). It gives the reader an overall idea of what it means to live in the surveillance society. It produces a large number of real life examples of how the information collected through these various channels can be used or misused. The book serves as a good introduction to surveillance studies, especially from the practical point of view. As the subtitle of the book suggests, we live in the surveillance society, characterized as a society in which "virtually all significant social, institutional, or business activities … involve the systematic monitoring, gathering and analysis of information in order to make decisions, minimize risk, sort populations, and exercise power" (p. 2). In the course of the book, the authors attempt to provide us with answers to questions such as why we should care about the fact we live in a surveillance society, how we should understand surveillance and whether surveillance really makes our lives easier and safer and what effect it has on our lives. In this review, I shall not provide all of the details and examples of various surveillance mechanisms and their practice, but I will focus on demonstrating how these questions were answered.