bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Authoritarianism and privacy: The moderating role of terrorism
Authors: Norris Gareth
Published: July 2018

The resurgence in interest in authoritarianism has been linked to a rise in the acceptance of right-wing ideology and also restrictions on civil liberties, particularly in relation to surveillance and the right to privacy. Whilst we can observe simple correlations between these variables, the dynamics of threat are more complex to understand. The analysis reported here demonstrates how the relationship between authoritarianism and the curtailment of civil liberties is moderated by the threat of terrorism. Using 2005 British Social Attitudes survey data, collected either side of the 7/7 bombings, comparisons between the pre-post samples indicate that the threat of terrorism activates authoritarian tendencies and reduces the protection of rights to privacy from government. Interestingly and importantly, reactions to terrorism in the form of a change in opinion regarding civil liberties for those scoring higher in authoritarianism remained almost constant between the two periods. The results provide support for understanding how minority opinions (removal of rights to privacy) can become majority views during times of threat.
Mexico: Internal security, surveillance, and authoritarianism
Authors: Arteaga Nelson
Published: July 2018

The recent violence linked to drug trafficking in Mexico has been dealt with by the federal government by increasing police presence on the streets and involving the army in public safety activities. This has not decreased violence but has increased cases of human rights violation, and the capabilities of non-regulated surveillance and monitoring of the population. Thus, the new internal security law suggests that the police and the army will be able to “develop intelligence activities” by “any information gathering method.” They will also be able to require information from other authorities that they consider necessary to ensure “constitutional order,” as well as the “continuity” and “survival” of State institutions. The law has generated a wide public debate that contrasts two competing discourses.
Leaking Boats and Borders: The virtu of surveilling Australia’s refugee population
Authors: Heemsbergen Luke , Daly Angela
Published: July 2018

When refugees displaced to Australia’s offshore detention do speak, it is through surveillance upended through publicity and violations of privacy. Weak legal rights to privacy in Australia juxtapose the increasing secrecy under which the Australian state operates its own offshore detention centres (Manus Island and Nauru) while increasing the mandate of data retention at home. Australia’s institutional context offers visibility to these concerns of surveillance whereby we find an acceleration of prohibitive privacy for government and prohibitive transparency for individuals. Our analysis of this country synthesises media-law in practice with theories of mediated visibility (Flyverbom 2016, 2017; Brighenti 2010), to understand Australian privacy, media and immigration law in the context of pervasive surveillance and the radical management of visibility. Our contribution speaks to applicable privacy concerns for states grappling with invasive data collection and its relation to the (prohibiting of the private) voice of the surveilled, which we see as doubly acute for those left vulnerable in Australia’s borderzones.
How to silence the lambs? Constructing authoritarian governance in post-transitional Hungary
Authors: Nagy Veronika
Published: July 2018

This paper examines a range of arguments put forward to explain how financial surveillance of non-governmental organisations empowers authoritarianism in the post-transitional Hungarian context. In doing so, it attempts to shed light on the limitations of existing surveillance theories regarding the historical component of surveillance tolerance and the different modes of governance in post-communist European countries. It argues that post-transitional disappointment in democratic governance is causing Hungarians to become resigned to political decisions and to support new forms of authoritarian rules. Such a stoic attitude and the historically embedded surveillance culture facilitate the use of monitoring mechanisms that not only target terrorists as an external security threat, but also target NGOs defined as ‘the enemies of national values’. Hungarian authoritarian policies are not facilitated by extended surveillance practices, as Anglo-Saxon theories have regularly argued, but by the way they are used as an instrument of a political deterrence strategy against political opponents.
The Global Turn to Authoritarianism and After
Authors: Murakami Wood David
Published: July 2018

This editorial introduces the special responsive issue on the global turn to authoritarianism. It points out the lack of any systematic political theory of the way in which authority and surveillance relate within Surveillance Studies and sketches some possible outlines for such a theory, that involves relationships between surveillance, democracy, authoritarianism, colonialism and capitalism. It argues that the contemporary turn to authoritarianism is predominantly a Global North phenomenon, that adds to an already common situation in the post-colonial Global South, and that the fears that drive the turn to authoritarianism in the North are rooted in fears of the breakdown of a post-colonial global order that was so favourable to the Global North. Finally, it proposes three possible trajectories: multiplying and deepening authoritarianism; the return of neoliberalism on a planetary scale; and new forms of platform authoritarianism that emerging from surveillance capitalism. However, it rejects all of these in favour of the rediscovery of collective desires.
Personal Data Spaces: An Intervention in Surveillance Capitalism?
Authors: Lehtiniemi Tuukka
Published: July 2018

Personal data spaces, or PDSs, are emerging intermediary services that allow users control over the sharing and use of their data. In this article, the surveillance capitalism model, which describes how businesses employ datafication to create value in the digital economy, is used to contextualize PDSs. Focusing on three PDS services, I analyze the social imaginaries they represent, paying attention to the increased agency over data they offer users. This proposed agency reflects the efforts of PDSs to intervene in, but not counter, surveillance capitalism. While their goal is to intensify datafication by increasing the quality and specificity of data that businesses can employ, their interventions also change the structure of data flows, allowing users to more directly benefit from datafication. PDSs envision their users as data-supplying and benefit-demanding market participants, active subjects in value creation instead of passive objects of data extraction. PDSs view themselves as platform providers that facilitate data exchanges and rely on market mechanisms to ensure beneficial services are developed for users to choose from.
Surveillance, Panopticism, and Self-Discipline in the Digital Age
Authors: Manokha Ivan
Published: July 2018

The objective of this paper is to revisit the metaphor of the Panopticon, borrowed by Michel Foucault from Jeremy Bentham to describe the development of disciplinary institutions in Western societies from the early nineteenth century, and to examine its relevance for the analysis of modern electronic means of surveillance. Widely used in the early stages of the study of new surveillance technologies, the metaphor of the Panopticon, particularly in the field of ‘surveillance studies,’ is growingly seen as inadequate to understand the impact of the latest surveillance tools and practices. This paper seeks to show that dominant interpretations of Foucault’s use of Panopticon as referring to techniques of domination or to ‘power over,’ while legitimate as regards some of his earlier writings, overlook Foucault’s later works on technologies of the self. That is, in Panoptic dispositifs in particular, as well as in settings involving power/knowledge configurations defining ‘normality’ more generally, individuals may end up exercising power over themselves without any coercion. It is argued here that the development of modern information and communication technologies may be said to produce a setting, the description of which as ‘panoptic’ is even more pertinent than was the case with respect to Western societies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Building upon recent empirical works on the ‘chilling effect,’ particularly in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013, the article discusses modern technologies of the self—self-restraint and self-censorship—that new technologies, enabling different forms of surveillance, produce in Western societies. It also outlines the areas in which the notion of the Panopticon may be useful in terms of guiding research into self-discipline and self-restraint in the context of the proliferation of modern techniques of surveillance.
State Surveillance and the Right to Privacy.
Authors: Taylor Nick
Published: July 2018

The influence of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights on domestic law has ensured that the state’s use of technical covert surveillance equipment has become legally regulated over the past twenty years, albeit in a somewhat piecemeal fashion. The passage of the Human Rights Act 1998 will see the development of the "right to respect for private life"; in UK law. This paper seeks to reflect upon the impact that the European Convention has had on the regulation of covert surveillance, and whether there is a theoretical justification for developing the "right to respect for private life"; beyond traditional private spheres and into the public arena. It is argued that overt surveillance in the form of closed circuit television cameras (CCTV) should thus be legally regulated according to the principles established by the European Convention, and that such an extension of the "right to respect for private life"; need not be detrimental to the common good.
Privacy is not the Antidote to Surveillance.
Authors: Stalder Felix
Published: July 2018

The standard reaction to the problem of surveillance is to demand the protection of privacy. This article, however, argues that the conventional notion of privacy, based, as it is, on the separation of the individual from their environment, is no longer useful in the context of ubiquitous electronic communication. Rather than defending ever shrinking areas of privacy, we should refocus our efforts and demand accountability from those design and employ the new communication systems.
Fantasy Island: a Labour Process critique of the ‘age of surveillance’
Authors: Thompson Paul
Published: July 2018

While surveillance has long been recognised as part of the armoury of managerial practices in the workplace, there has been increasing claims that electronic or panoptic surveillance is a new and successful model of control. This paper explores and challenges these claims by examining in detail ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ versions of the story through the work of Sewell and Zuboff respectively, before looking briefly at recent debates on call centres. It concludes by arguing that through there has been some shift towards surveillance practices, there is insufficient evidence that a combination of electronic panopticon and peer pressure is effective and distinctive enough to constitute a credible new model of control of the labour process. In addition, social scientists must be careful not to assume that developments in workplace surveillance are transferable to the broader social terrain, or vice versa.
Information Technology, Privacy, and Power within Organizations: a view from Boundary Theory and Social Exchange perspectives
Authors: Stanton Jeffrey M. , Stam Kathryn R.
Published: July 2018

Over recent years, information technology has played an increasingly important role in the monitoring and surveillance of worker behavior in organizations. In this article, we take the position that managers, workers, and information technology professionals alike see worker-related information as a valuable organizational resource and that processes of social exchange influence how this information resource is controlled. These suppositions are woven together by joining two theories, information boundary theory, a motivational framework for examining privacy at work, and social exchange theory, which provides a perspective on social networks and social power. After discussing these two frameworks and how they might be interlaced, we analyze a corpus of semi-structured interviews with 119 managers, employees, and IT professionals that explored questions of privacy, motivation, and power in six not-for-profit organizations that were undergoing technology-driven change with potential for increased monitoring and surveillance.
Public Area Surveillance and Police Work: the impact of CCTV on police behaviour and autonomy
Authors: Goold Benjamin J.
Published: July 2018

Drawing on a recent study of the impact of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras on policing practices in a large English police force, this paper considers whether the presence of surveillance cameras affects the working attitudes and behaviour of individual police officers. In particular, this paper asks whether CCTV makes the police more accountable or more cautious in the exercise of their discretion in public spaces. Although noting that in certain circumstances CCTV may inadvertently help to reduce incidences of police misconduct, this paper concludes by arguing that more needs to be done to prevent the police from interfering with the operation of CCTV and gaining unauthorised access to potentially incriminating video evidence.
Privacy, Personal Information and Employment
Authors: Charlesworth Andrew J.
Published: July 2018

It is a widely accepted proposition, reflected in privacy-enhancing legislation and regulations, that individuals will have less privacy in their workplace activities than in their private lives. However, modern technologies and business practices have blurred the boundary between private life and workplace, and a re-evaluation of the traditional legislative and regulatory protections for privacy in employment is required.
Plague, Panopticon, Police
Authors: Elden Stuart
Published: July 2018

This article resituates the Panopticon in Foucault’s work, showing how it emerged from research on social medicine in the early to mid 1970s, and relating it to discussions of the plague and the police. The key sources are lectures and seminars from this period, only partly translated in English. What is of interest here is how Foucault’s concerns with surveillance interrelate with concerns about society as a whole – not in the total institution of the prison, but in the realm of public health. This is pursued through detailed readings of Foucault’s analyses of urban medicine and the hospital. The article closes by making some general remarks about situating Foucault’s books in the context of his lecture courses, and about how the analysis of medicine may be a more profitable model for surveillance than the Panopticon.
Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments.
Authors: Mann Steve , Nolan Jason , Wellman Barry
Published: July 2018

This paper describes using wearable computing devices to perform "sousveillance" (inverse surveillance) as a counter to organizational surveillance. A variety of wearable computing devices generated different kinds of responses, and allowed for the collection of data in different situations. Visible sousveillance often evoked counter-performances by front-line surveillance workers. The juxtaposition of sousveillance with surveillance generates new kinds of information in a social surveillance situation.
Social Control After Foucault / Le Contrôle Social après Foucault.
Authors: Lianos Michalis
Published: July 2018

English

After the Foucauldian model, often misunderstood and projected without nuance onto the present, the study of social control has not progressed much. Meanwhile, changes on the ground call for the construction of a new theoretical paradigm which should take account of three contemporary tendencies: a) the embedding of control in the widespread and often consensual interaction between the user and the outlets and systems of institutional action; b) the emergence of an ‘unintended control’, that is not oriented towards values; and, c) the inherent contribution of sociotechnical systems, which at once regularise social behaviour and project onto their users a consciousness formed around invisible, yet ubiquitous, threats. The paper proposes to understand these tendencies as part of the contemporary transition towards institutional normativity and institutional sociality, two concepts that the author has developed in other works.

Français

Après le modèle foucaldien, souvent mal compris et projeté sans nuance sur le présent, le débat sur le contrôle social n'est pas en forte progression. Cependant, les évolutions sur le terrain appellent à la structuration d'un nouveau cadre théorique qui tient compte de trois tendances contemporaines : a) l'enchâssement du contrôle dans l'interaction large, et souvent agréable, de l'usager avec les institutions et les organisations, b) l'émergence d'un "contrôle involontaire", dépourvu de l’intention d’appliquer des valeurs c) l'apport inhérent de systèmes sociotechniques qui à la fois, régularisent les comportements sociaux et projettent sur leurs usagers un consentement formé autour de menaces invisibles mais ubiquistes. Il est proposé de comprendre ces tendances comme partie de la transition contemporaine vers une « socialité institutionnelle », analysée par l’auteur dans d’autres travaux.
Surveillance and Mobilities.
Authors: Bennett Colin J. , Regan Priscilla M.
Published: July 2018

The editorial introduces the pieces in this special issue on surveillance and mobilities. It draws out the key themes of the issue, asking: what is meant by 'mobility' and why it deserves such a focus; what are the goals and purposes of the surveillance of mobilities; and finally, what are the consequences. It proposes a simple typology of mobilities: 'what moves' (body, transactions, and artefacts); and 'movement itself'.
New Labour and New Surveillance: Theoretical and Political Ramifications of CCTV Implementation in the UK
Authors: Fussey Pete
Published: July 2018

This paper examines the implications of New Labour's approaches to crime and disorder on CCTV implementation. It concentrates on the usage of CCTV as one of the government's many initiatives, which are intended to address crime and disorder, including the fear of crime. In particular, the impact of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act (CDA) - the cornerstone of this government's approach to crime reduction - on the generation of such strategies is examined. The paper revisits neo-Marxist and Foucauldian analyses of the so-called surveillance society through an appraisal of the complex relationship between structure and agency in the formulation and implementation of anti-crime and disorder strategies. Drawing on fieldwork data the paper considers the activities of practitioners at a local level by focusing on the influence of central government, local communities and 'common sense' thinking based on certain criminological theories. It is argued that a myriad of micro-level operations, obligations, processes, managerial concerns (particularly conflict resolution and resource issues), structures and agency - as well as the indirect influence of central government - shape CCTV policy. Ultimately, the creation of new local policy contexts under the CDA emphasise the need to consider incremental and malleable processes concerning the formulation of CCTV policy. In turn, this allows a re-examination of theoretical accounts of surveillance, and their attendant assumptions of sovereign or disciplinary power.
Reclaiming the Streets: Closed Circuit Television, Neoliberalism and the Mystification of Social Divisions in Liverpool, UK
Authors: Coleman Roy
Published: July 2018

The normalisation of camera surveillance on the streets of the UK raises profound questions about the strategies of contemporary urban political rule and the material and ideological re-mapping of urban space. Firstly, this paper will argue that an understanding of street camera surveillance requires a consideration of the operation of neoliberalism at the local level [in this case Liverpool on the north west coast of England] through a myriad of 'partnership' arrangements that have shifted the terrain of local democracy and the meanings of both the public interest and social justice. Secondly, in using case material from a paradigmatic neoliberalising city, the paper argues that surveillance cameras are part of a social control strategy that seeks to hide the consequences of neoliberalisation in creating a particular ambience and exclusivity regarding 'public' spaces. Thirdly, the paper critically considers whether we can understand visual surveillance as a technique for the 'exclusion of difference' in urban space or as a tool that suppresses the reality of social divisions.
Reactive Attention: Video Surveillance in Berlin Shopping Malls
Authors: Helten Frank , Fischer Bernd
Published: July 2018

The paper examines the practice of use of video-surveillance in Berlin Shopping Malls. The video systems observed here do not seem to be an efficient instrument of social control and exclusion. They are used more on demand for various purposes such as the monitoring of daily tasks and the co-ordination of persons working inside the mall. The objectives publicly claimed by management – crime prevention and the like – could not be achieved because the everyday practice presents other tasks to the operators. The workplace, the personnel, their multiple tasks, their qualifications support more a reactive use of video surveillance than a proactive targeted observation of individuals, even if the equipment would allow for that. It may turn out that the CCTV infrastructure of Berlin shopping malls can be characterised best as test-beds – open for various applications. There are, however, obstacles to this in the form of data protection concerns and the lack of political and economic support to go further (tied of course to financial constraints). Finally, as shown in our study, the social practice in everyday life continues to resist one-dimensional expectations of the technological possibilities of CCTV.
The Apple of the Eye: Parents' Use of Webcams in a Danish Day Nursery
Authors: Jorgensen Vibeke
Published: July 2018

Via webcams parents can now, from their place of work, see what happens in the day nursery of their child. The focus of this paper is why Danish parents of children, aged 0- 6, use webcams, what they use them for and why some parents refuse using the webcams. The conclusions rest on a qualitative analysis of 3 of 11 interviewed parents. It is concluded that control is an important, but surely not the only motive behind parents' use of this sort of CCTV. It's also concluded that a substantial number of needs are connected to the use. Most prevailing are security needs, needs of social contact and of knowledge. The use of webcams has a clear relation to the parent's handling of his parenting, his relationship to the day-care institution and his situation at work, his attitude towards the use of webcams and technical and practical matters. It is connected with tendencies of the radicalized modernity of today and with parents' different ways and possibilities of handling these tendencies.
The Public Surveillance Functions of Private Security
Authors: Wakefield Alison
Published: July 2018

This paper is concerned with arguably the most pervasive body of watchers in society, private security personnel. Set in the context of the rapid post-war expansion of both mass private property and private security, the contention of the paper is that the inter-dependency between these two industries is key to understanding the significance of surveillance as a form of governance in privatised urban spaces. Drawing on an empirical study of private security in three settings: a cultural centre, a shopping centre and a retail and leisure complex, it is argued that surveillance practices represented much more than an approach to policing and crime prevention in these venues, and were central to broader management strategies for the three centres. These surveillance practices also became the basis for collaborative working with the police. In the conclusion, a number of concerns are raised with respect to the policing aspects of surveillance, in relation to both commercial and public policing objectives and the human rights and civil liberties being eroded along the way.
An Exploration of the External Validity of Self-Report amongst Arrestees
Authors: Patton David
Published: July 2018

Self-report validation surveys in the USA focussing on arrestees' self-reports unequivocally demonstrate that they do not validly report their recent drug consumption despite being a highly drug involved group. Like their American counterparts, English arrestees display very high levels of drug consumption. Data used from the NEW-ADAM programme (1998) is used to explore the external validity of arrestees' self-reports to drug consumption in the 3 days prior to interview. Drug consumption in the UK has become a normalized activity among adolescents, young adults and 'clubbers'. Arrestees and young offenders have recently been added to this list. Therefore the normalization of drug use provides an interesting context through which to view the present findings amongst arrestees.
Securing the Elderly Body: Dementia, Surveillance, and the Politics of "Aging in Place"
Authors: Kenner Alison Marie
Published: July 2018

Aging in place, the option to grow old in one's home instead of institutional healthcare facilities, is predicated on the development of technologies and resources that network patients, caregivers, medical personnel, and third party interlocutors. Monitoring systems and other information technologies are broadly considered to be the most promising means to establish these connections, and home care technologies for elderly people with dementia comprise one of the fastest growing areas of commercial development. Grounded in the political economy of aging and understood as surveillance, monitoring technologies for the elderly highlight sociopolitical responses to aging and dementia and raise critical questions about caregiving, quality of life, and the way technological design engages with everyday rights. This paper will analyze surveillance technologies for the elderly with attention to issues of power and inequality, and how these dynamics may or may not be considered in technological design for the oldest populations
CCTV Policy in the UK: Reconsidering the Evidence Base
Authors: Webster C. William W.
Published: July 2018

This article attempts to address such concerns by revisiting the rationale behind the policy and provision of CCTV surveillance cameras, and by reconsidering the evidence base and the logic behind the cameras.  In doing so, it suggests that the focus on crime statistics is in many ways a ‘red herring’ that does not fully explain the impetus behind the revolution or the true beneficiaries of CCTV.  As costs become a more important issue with the age of systems, the reassessment of the evidence base is as much about a redistribution of the costs of delivering CCTV as about its effectiveness.  This in turn raises further questions about the evidence base on which CCTV policy and practice is founded.
Waking Up to the Surveillance Society
Authors: Hayles N. Katherine
Published: July 2018

In February 2009 the House of Lords Constitutional Committee in the United Kingdom published the report Surveillance: Citizens and the State. Some have hailed this as a landmark document. The following is one of four commentaries that the editors of Surveillance & Society solicited in response to the report.
Discrimination by Design: predictive data mining as security practice in the United States’ ‘war on terrorism’
Authors: Guzik Keith
Published: July 2018

The tactics and strategies employed by the United States in its ‘War on Terrorism' have generally been condemned as departures from the norms of how a democratic government conducts itself. Reforms are thus thought needed to place the ‘War on Terror' under the rule of law and protect civil liberties. This article attempts to counter that view. Using predictive data mining-a technology at the heart of the US National Security Agency's (NSA) surveillance scandal-as an example, it argues that rather than a break with the past, the tactics that the Bush Administration adopted to fight terrorism represent an extension of a particular type of future-oriented power which Foucault (2008) referred to as "security" or "government." And while individual civil liberties are no doubt at stake, they are not at stake equally for everyone. Predictive data mining discriminates by design, designating certain groups as threats relative to others. Thus, persons with Middle Eastern and North African backgrounds will disproportionately bear the burden of this surveillance technique and the innumerable mistakes it produces. Finally, the rule of law would seem to offer little to remedy the situation. The War on Drugs, the policing of immigration, and past international disputes with ‘terrorist regimes' have provided a "crime jurisprudence" (Simon 2007) that legitimizes such discrimination. Paradoxically and pessimistically then, the real hope for change lies in the crisis of legitimacy that one could expect to result from the wider application of such discriminatory technologies or the benevolent reign of an executive branch that has been imbued with an authority beyond its traditional limits.
Carceral Ambivalence: Japanese Canadian ‘Internment’ and the Sugar Beet Programme during World War II
Authors: Ikebuchi Ketchell Shelly
Published: July 2018

Liberty is a fundamental marker of citizenship. During World War II, for Japanese Canadians in prisoner-of-war camps the stripping of their liberty was a sure sign of their loss of citizenship. However, for others the distinction between liberty and incarceration was not as clear.  Despite the fact that many Japanese Canadians enjoyed the appearance of relative freedom during World War II, for many citizenship was uncertain and liberty was tenuous at best. Ambivalence infused discussions surrounding the relocation of Japanese Canadians to Alberta and Manitoba. This paper highlights the multiple and diverse processes of incarceration that took place amidst this ambivalence.  I begin with Foucault’s (1995) definition of the ‘carceral’ as an incorporation of “institutions of supervision or constraint, of discreet surveillance and insistent coercion” (299).  Using newspaper articles from a one year period, I apply this definition to Japanese Canadian ‘relocation’ to Alberta and Manitoba as part of the government sponsored Sugar Beet Programme. This program offers a unique perspective, as it was framed as a ‘self-support’ program, thus implying a greater range of freedoms. However, despite illusions of freedom, I argue that what made these sites carceral was a combination of state and civic mediations.
Conspiracy Theorizing Surveillance: considering modalities of paranoia and conspiracy in surveillance studies
Authors: Holm Nicholas
Published: July 2018

In this paper I argue that the notion of paranoia can inform a post-panoptic theory of surveillance, without simply functioning as a pre-emptive dismissal of a critical engagement with technologies and regimes of surveillance as just paranoid. Rather, I seek to address how paranoia can be rearticulated to serve a productive, non-pathological function in an analysis of logics of surveillance. To this end, I consider the manner in which paranoia is characterised in popular cultural narratives and how the advent of cultural paranoia can be understood in the context of the expansion of state and corporate surveillance, especially in the UK and post-9/11 North America. Drawing on this notion of cultural paranoia, I then argue for three modalities of paranoia-as-surveillance theory. The first modality, the paranoia of the subject of surveillance, addresses the divergent panoptic subject who rejects the disciplinary logic of the panopticon; the second modality considers how the paranoid as the suspicious subject could be used to characterise the expansion of surveillance regimes through an ever-present need to observe; and the third modality of conspiracy theory proposes that a paranoid logic, akin to that of the conspiracy theory, sutures over epistemic gaps in the interpretation of information in instances of analytic deficit.
Public Health STI/HIV Surveillance: Exploring the Society of Control
Authors: O’Byrne Patrick , Holmes Dave
Published: July 2018

While Michel Foucault asserted that the sovereign style of rule had disappeared, instead replaced by a disciplinary society (wherein individuals were trained/domesticated in a variety of social institutions), years later, Gilles Deleuze recounted how this social structure had again changed. Within this new system, which Deleuze labelled the society of control, social networks have become so densely intertwined that it no longer matters whether or not someone is disciplined in accordance with social rules because now they are entrapped within a web that would more often than not ensure that socially appropriate trajectories are maintained. Using Deleuze's framework about the society of control, in this paper, we explore the current public health STI/HIV surveillance system. The outcome of this exploration is the suggestion that the system is, in fact, an example of a densely intertwined (rhizomatic) control society, and that it is maintained through the desires of the people.
From Closed-Circuit Television to the Open Network of Live Cinema
Authors: Barreto Leblanc Paola
Published: July 2018

This paper accompanies four films which use CCTV to create Live Cinema performances which challenge both the narrative conventions of cinema and the expectations that we have of CCTV images. The paper details the ways in which this occurs and concludes with some lessons for future CCTV film-making and performance.

The films can be viewed at: http://paoleb-ccvv.blogspot.com/
Artveillance: At the Crossroads of Art and Surveillance
Authors: Brighenti Andrea Mubi
Published: July 2018

In this article I review a series of artworks, artistic performances and installations that deal with the topic of surveillance. My aim is twofold. On the one hand, I want to look comparatively at how different artists interrogate, question, quote, or critise surveillance society. On the other hand, I take these artistic actions as themselves symptomatic of the ways in which surveillance interrogates contemporary society. In other words, my claim is that surveillance does not simply produce substantive social control and social triage, it also contributes to the formation of an ideoscape and a collective imagery about what security, insecurity, and control are ultimately about, as well as the landscape of moods a surveillance society like ours expresses.
Surveillance and Child Protection: De-mystifying the Trojan Horse
Authors: Wrennall Lynne
Published: July 2018

This paper belongs to an embryonic body of scholarship that documents the camouflaging of political, economic and social agendas under the rhetoric of Child Protection. The Trojan Horse theory of Child Protection, as this scholarship may broadly be termed, alleges the misuse of Child Protection powers for ulterior motives. Years of struggle against the Law and Order, Psychiatric and other discourses have won a raft of Civil and Human Rights protections. Bypassing these protections, Child Protection provides a rhetoric that disguises surveillance and disarms opposition, because a justifiable and apparently benign pretext has been found in the ostensible and entirely laudable, aim of protecting children. The paper collates widespread evidence of how the pretext of Child Protection has been used to extend surveillance and disarm populations.Through the discourse of Child Protection, children are propelled through various constructions from ‘child in need’, to ‘child at risk’, to ‘potentially delinquent’, to ‘delinquent’, but in each case, transgressions of ever more restrictive and constantly morphing laws, regulations and expectations are used to infiltrate techniques of information gathering deeper into more intimate parts of the social body. Child Protection is now used to penetrate where orthodox policing can no longer go. Wherever they are placed in the process of criminalisation, as victim or transgressor, children are constructed as a pretext for expanding power and increasing profit. Transgression by, or against, children, is used to further the economic, political and commercial interests in surveillance. To fully understand the relationship between surveillance and Child Protection, it is necessary to interrogate the information-sharing model that is built into the major Child Protection frameworks. The paper explores the manner in which Child Protection has been structured by the information- sharing model, to benefit the sectional interests in surveillance and the detrimental consequences that this has for children and young people.
Video Activism and the ambiguities of counter-surveillance
Authors: Wilson Dean Jonathon , Serisier Tanya
Published: July 2018

This paper examines the use of visual technologies by political activists in protest situations to monitor police conduct. Using interview data with Australian video activists this paper seeks to understand the motivations, techniques and outcomes of video activism, and its relationship to counter-surveillance and police accountability. Our data also indicated that there have been significant transformations in the organization and deployment of counter-surveillance methods since 2000, when there were large-scale protests against the World Economic Forum meeting in Melbourne accompanied by a coordinated campaign that sought to document police misconduct. The paper identifies and examines two inter-related aspects of this; the act of filming and the process of dissemination of this footage. It is noted that technological changes in the last decade have led to a proliferation of visual recording technologies, particularly mobile phone cameras, which have stimulated a corresponding proliferation of images. Analogous innovations in internet communications have stimulated a coterminous proliferation of potential outlets for images.. Video footage provides activists with valuable tools for safety and publicity. Nevertheless, we argue, video activism can have unintended consequences, including exposure to legal risks and the amplification of official surveillance. Activists are also often unable to control the political effects of their footage or the purposes to which it is used. We conclude by assessing the impact that transformations in both protest organization and media technologies might have for counter-surveillance techniques based on visual surveillance.
Web 2.0, Prosumption, and Surveillance
Authors: Fuchs Christian
Published: July 2018

“Web 2.0” platforms such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter that focus on data sharing, communication, community, and co-production have become very popular. It is therefore important to understand the economic organization of these platforms. The discussion of surveillance in web 2.0 is important because such platforms collect huge amounts of personal data in order to work. In this paper, first the example of Google Buzz is discussed. Then, a model that conceptualizes the cycle of capital accumulation and distinguishes between production and circulation of capital is introduced. The role of surveillance in web 2.0 is outlined based on the cycle of capital accumulation. The notions of the Internet prosumer commodity and web 2.0 surveillance are introduced in order to characterize the relationship of production, consumption, and surveillance on web 2.0.
Profiling Phorm: an autopoietic approach to the audience-as-commodity
Authors: McStay Andrew
Published: July 2018

As online advertising moves to the centre-stage of advertisers’ media spend, now surpassing television and press in the UK, it is argued here that critique of advertising practice should pay more careful attention to systems of feedback-oriented production and data-based audience management and creation. This paper thus progresses and updates Dallas Smythe’s (1977) audience-as-commodity argument by examining developments in online behavioural advertising, particularly in regards to the potential for advertising facilitated by deep-packet inspection (DPI) that has caused consternation to technologically savvy consumers, privacy activists and the European Commission. Utilising the case study of Phorm that received national media attention in the UK and policy-maker attention in Europe, this paper highlights key features of DPI-based advertising, non-personally identifiable profiling and their implications for contemporary commercial autopoietic feedback relationships.
A Conceptual Legal Framework for privacy, accountability and transparency in visual surveillance systems.
Authors: Taylor Nick
Published: July 2018

The United Kingdom uses visual surveillnace techniques on a huge scale, but its rewgulation of those techniques has been sadly lacking. This paper seeks to consider the extent to which the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) provides an overarching framework for the regulation of visual surveillance practices, both overt and covert, thereby bringing about the conditions for accountability and transparency, and to critically analyse the extent to which UK law operates within that framework so far as it applies to video surveillance.
In Defense of Privacy: The Concept and the Regime
Authors: Bennett Colin J
Published: July 2018

It has recently become fashionable within the surveillance studies community to subject the concept and regime of “privacy protection” to some very rigorous criticism.   “Privacy” and all that it entails is argued to be too narrow, too based on liberal assumptions of subjectivity, too implicated in rights-based theory and discourse, insufficiently sensitive to the social sorting and discriminatory aspects of surveillance, and overly embroiled in spatial metaphors about “invasion” and “intrusion.”  As a concept, and as a way to frame the various social and political challenges encountered within “surveillance societies,” it is inadequate.   These critiques are important, and to some extent, have set scholarly inquiry on a new, exciting and broader, trajectory than that offered by privacy scholars. On closer examination, however, these critiques are often based on some faulty assumptions about the contemporary framing of the privacy issue, and about the governance of the issue.  Privacy, as a concept, regime, a set of policy instruments, and as a way to frame civil society activism, shows an extraordinary resilience. Surveillance scholars must learn to live with it.
Mutual Transparency or Mundane Transgressions? Institutional Creeping on Facebook
Authors: Trottier Daniel
Published: July 2018

This article explores the post–secondary sector’s adoption of social media. Social media plays an increasing role in the visibility of personal information. The term refers to a set of web–based services that facilitate the authorship and distribution of media between users. The most popular social media site is Facebook with over 750 million users worldwide. Facebook was originally launched as a service for university students to author and distribute information about their personal identity, interpersonal connections, and social activities. While Facebook has since expanded its scope beyond universities, student life remains a heavily ‘Facebooked’ phenomenon. University administrators are keenly aware of their students’ presence on this site, and are adopting new practices to harness Facebook as an extension of their professional duties. This paper draws upon findings from a series of fourteen semi–structured face–to–face interviews with various administrators and employees at a medium–sized university in Eastern Ontario. As Facebook first emerged in an academic context, these findings provide a rich example of how institutions can scrutinize populations using social media. These findings suggest that institutional surveillance on Facebook stems from ground–up practices prior to implementing top–down mandates, suggesting that these practices have developed from institutional users’ personal experiences with the site. As well, the visibility of the university and its reputation is offered by respondents as motive for scrutiny, suggesting a discourse of mutual transparency of both the university as an institution as well as its student population.
Urban Surveillance and the Struggle between Safe and Exciting Nightlife Districts
Authors: Van Liempt Ilse , Van Aalst Irina
Published: July 2018

Cities attract vast numbers of people at night (Roberts and Eldridge 2009). In recent decades the evening economy has started to play a significant role in city centre regeneration, with alcohol related establishments as the driving force (Hollands and Chatterton 2003). Concerns about personal safety and fear of crime have become central in determining the success of these leisure-based inner-city areas (Judd 2003, Bannister et al. 2006). This attitude is also reflected in academic work, where most studies explore the late night economy in terms of alcohol consumption, disorder and anti-social behaviour (Hobbs et al. 2003, Hadfield 2006, Monaghan 2002, Plant and Plant 2006, Winlow and Hall 2006). Nightlife districts are, however, favoured by visitors for their adventure and excitement (Hubbard 2005). The question raised in this paper is how surveillance measures in different nightlife districts are legitimized, taking into account the fact that these districts need not only to be safe but also stimulating. Based on an analysis of policy documents, nighttime observations and expert interviews with stakeholders in the Safe Nightlife Programmes of Rotterdam and Utrecht, different local safety measures, their legitimizations and their outcomes in different local urban settings will be analysed.
Review of Basaran’s Security, Law and Borders
Authors: Jeandesboz Julien
Published: July 2018

Basaran, Tugba. 2010. Security, Law and Borders: At the Limits of Liberties. London: Routledge. 160pp. Hardback, £75 (UK). ISBN: 978-0-415-57025-1.
The Public Domain: Surveillance in Everyday Life
Authors: Marwick Alice
Published: July 2018

People create profiles on social network sites and Twitter accounts against the background of an audience. This paper argues that closely examining content created by others and looking at one’s own content through other people’s eyes, a common part of social media use, should be framed as social surveillance. While social surveillance is distinguished from traditional surveillance along three axes (power, hierarchy, and reciprocity), its effects and behavior modification is common to traditional surveillance. Drawing on ethnographic studies of United States populations, I look at social surveillance, how it is practiced, and its impact on people who engage in it. I use Foucault’s concept of capillaries of power to demonstrate that social surveillance assumes the power differentials evident in everyday interactions rather than the hierarchical power relationships assumed in much of the surveillance literature. Social media involves a collapse of social contexts and social roles, complicating boundary work but facilitating social surveillance. Individuals strategically reveal, disclose and conceal personal information to create connections with others and tend social boundaries. These processes are normal parts of day-to-day life in communities that are highly connected through social media.