Theorizing surveillance in crime control (original) (raw)
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Cut off the Head of the King: Contemporary Surveillance Analysis and the Society of Control
The panoptic architecture described by Michel Foucault in, Discipline and Punish (1976), has been a dominant paradigm in surveillance studies since its inception as an organized field of inquiry in the 1970s. However, over the last decade this paradigm has come under increasing criticism. As Kevin Haggerty (2006) states: “Foucault continues to reign supreme in surveillance studies and it is perhaps time to cut off the head of the king.” An increasing number of commentators argue that the model of the panopticon fails to account for the programmed character of smart surveillance technology. They argue that these technologies do not seek to discipline behaviors as much as they aim to route bodies through different surveillance environments by events of in and exclusion on the basis of massive searches of databases. Seeking a paradigm better able to account for the relationship between software algorithms with big data, some commentators have turned to Deleuze and his 1992 critique of Foucault in the, “Postscript on Societies of Control”. They frequently adopt Deleuze’s notion of the rhizomatically structured, surveillant assemblage, as a model better adapted than the panopticon to account for the capabilities of today’s digital networks. In this paper I argue that Deleuze’s notion of the surveillant assemblage may in fact be better adapted to account for the networked character of electronic surveillance than Foucault’s panopticon. However, I argue that Foucault himself was very aware of the limits of panopticism and that his contribution to surveillance studies must not be limited to that model alone. During his 1978 lectures, Sécurité Territoire Population, Foucault introduced a new paradigm – les dispositifs de sécurité. This paradigm exceeds the panoptic paradigm and overlaps with Deleuze’s model in four important ways: 1) security mechanisms operate at the level of populations (both human and non-human) and do not depend on closed spaces like the prison, classroom and barracks in order to function. 2) Security mechanisms function in tandem with disciplinary regimes. This allows Foucault to account for the fact that the disruptive effects of electronic surveillance networks do not replace disciplinary spaces. In fact they capture disciplined bodies in the process of virtualizing them. 3) The security mechanism is a non-hierarchical form of governance. Those engaged in the activity of electronic surveillance are as much subject to surveillance as those whom they observe. 4) For Foucault and Deleuze, the ‘meaning’ of the security mechanism is a function of both the intended and the unintended effects of the system. This gives the paradigm the flexibility to explain the significance of both false positives and false negatives in the routine functioning of surveillance networks.
This article conducts a comparative critical study of the development in the use of surveillance technologies for the prevention and investigation of serious crime within three selected national jurisdictions -France, Italy and the United Kingdom. It tests the existence of a perilous double shift: (a) surveillance technologies introduced in relation to serious crime are increasingly used for the purpose of preventing and investigating 'minor' offences; at the same time, surveillance technologies originally used for public order purposes in relation to minor offences are now increasingly affected to the prevention and investigation of serious crime; (b) means at the disposal of each actor (intelligence and law enforcement agencies) for the prevention and investigation of serious crime are evolving so that the share of tasks and competences has become blurred. Two surveillance technologies are selected as case studies: the interception of telecommunications and video-surveillance. The human rights dimension -most importantly, the right to privacy and the principle of proportionality, which are at stake in this context -constitutes the normative background of the present work.
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.
2010
The century that has begun denotes the birth of a new world regime at the same time. That „novus ordo seclorum“ or „novus ordo mundi“ is characterized with the amazing step forward in technological and information sense, having serious consequences on all spheres of human actions. Insofar the modern criminal law, gradually but constantly, experiences transformation from the classic repressive instrument of discipline towards the new (preventive) concept of unobtrusive but omnipresent global surveillance resulting in gradual replacement of classic state power with global corporative power in the future. In other words, discipline ends to be the matter of criminal law (exclusively), just as the punishment will loose the status of the main criminal sanction one day. Such transformation will promote different and new policy of repression of criminal acts, which will be based on the surveillance and information as its supstrates, with certain risks for the protection of afirmated fundame...
If surveillance has in fact become “the dominant organizing practice of late modernity” (Lyon, Haggerty, and Ball, 2012), then precisely what surveillance organizes must be understood: it organizes information. As a practice, surveillance is manifold but can be thought most elementarily as “a family of behaviors all dealing in some way with information about the individual (whether uniquely identified or not) or about groups” (Marx, 2012). The objective is the accumulation of information about a person or people – that is, the transformation of humans into the objects of knowledge.
Security, Surveillance, and Sociological Analysis
Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie, 2012
Sécurité et surveillance sont aujourd'hui une partie de l'expérience quotidienne banale d'une manière qu'ils n'ont pasété jusqu'à la fin du XXe siècle.À juste titre, ils sont devenus plus importants sujets dans la sociologie, même si chacune aégalement suscité un intérêt multidisciplinaire depuis les années 1990, parfois sans référenceà l'autre. Le contexte de ces initiatives et de leurséléments qui se chevauchent et interagissent sont esquissées et tracées, préparant le terrain pour les articles sélectionnés pour ce numéro spécial. Il ya un besoin urgent de travaux théoriques et empiriques adéquate dans ces domaines en croissance, notamment parce que les questions abordées dans ces articles sont de plus qu'un intérêt académique. Security and surveillance are today part of commonplace, everyday experience in ways that they were not until the end of the twentieth century. Appropriately, they have become increasing important topics within sociology, even though each has also generated multidisciplinary interest since the 1990s, sometimes without reference to the other. The background to these initiatives and their overlapping and interacting elements are sketched and traced, setting the stage for the articles selected for the special issue. There is an urgent need for adequate theoretical and empirical work in these growing fields, not least because the issues covered in these articles are of more than academic interest.
Surveillance, fighting crime and violence - IRISS Deliverable D1.1 (December 2012)
2015
A report addressing and analysing the factors underpinning the development and use of surveillance systems and technologies by both public authorities and private actors, and their implications in fighting crime and terrorism, social and economic costs, protection or infringement of civil liberties, fundamental rights and ethical aspects Coordinator Trilateral Research and Consulting LLP Dissemination level: PU Deliverable type: Report Version:
One Step Further in the 'Surveillance Society': The Case of Predictive Policing
Tech and Law Center, 2016
This paper is concerned with the study of predictive policing as a tool for surveillance. With regard to the European legal framework, this research studies the influence of the predictive policing model primarily on the principle of presumption of innocence (Article 6.2 ECHR) and on reasonable suspicion. The goal is to identify if predictive policing might be used ‘preventively’ against potential perpetrators of a criminal offense, or more precisely, whether it represents an allowed policing practice given the presumption of innocence as enshrined in Article 6.2 ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights).