Resolution resolved: The United States federal government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance. Violations

SURVEILLANCE

NO AGREEMENT ON MEANING

There is no agreement on what surveillance means

The past few years have witnessed incredible growth in the field of surveillance studies. Remarkably, despite this growth, there is no consensus on what forms of human activity are encompassed in the term "surveillance." Derived from the French for watching over, surveillance encompasses the basic activity of watching others. Brian Martin (1993, 115) uses surveillance in this sense when he describes it as "keeping a close watch on others." However this basic definition has been variously expanded upon and/or challenged. Gary Marx (1998), among others, suggests that there has been a notable shift in what consititutes surveillance. Marx distinguished between what he terms traditional surveillance, involving close observation of a targeted individual (e.g. the police officer who trails a suspect), and the new surveillance: technologies designed to systematically extract and collect personal data (e.g., the database that collects, sorts, and creates data profiles of targeted individuals and groups). Whereas traditional surveillance is an exceptional activity, proliferating technologies have made the new surveillance a routine, everyday activity that is largely invisible to those people whom it targets. What these two forms of surveillance share, however, is that each seeks to "eliminate privacy in order to determine normative compliance or to influence the individual." (Marx 2003, 370)

There is no agreement on meaning of surveillance

Neyland 6 Daniel Neyland, Senior Research Fellow, Said Business School, University of Oxford, UK 2006

Privacy, Surveillance and Public Trust pp 6-7

The term surveillance is used in relation to a variety of contexts, by a range of social science research and is oriented towards diverse claims regarding the actions of particular technologies, places and people. While privacy can act as a useful organizing principle in analyzing claims regarding who should have what (in terms of rights, protections and remedies) and how these claims might be decided, surveillance can act as a useful organizing principle for analyzing claims about who does what (in terms of day to day activities inside and outside technologies involved in collection, storage and categorisation of information on the population).

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It is not the case however, that there is agreement on which activities should form the focus for analysing surveillance. Rule (1973) considers surveillance as an embedded aspect of relations between the state and the population. 'Surveillance entails a means of knowing when rules are being obeyed, when they are broken, and most importantly, who is responsible for which' (1973:22). While Rule focuses on social order and possible punishment, McCahill (2002) focuses on the ambivalence of surveillance technologies. He argues that 'The introduction of new surveillance technologies always has a social impact, and this impact can be both positive and negative' (2002: xi). However Lyon (2001) shifts debate towards the practices of information collection and analysis involved in surveillance, suggesting a definition of surveillance as: 'any collection and processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for the purposes of influencing or managing those whose data have been garnered' (2001: 2). This view is contrasted by Bennett (2005) who suggests that Lyon draws his definitions too broadly and that greater attention needs to be paid to the details of exactly who has their personal data scrutinized, and to what effect. For Bennett most data collected is entirely routine and free from further scrutiny, both for the collectors and subjects of collection. Bennett suggests, however, that this is a highly selective, contingent process and forms the point at which questions should be asked of whose information is selected for greater scrutiny, why and for what end. This selectivity involves issues of identity (who someone is) and claims about likely future action (what threats they might pose.

ALL AGREE SURVEILLANCE IS WATCHING TO CONTROL

All agree surveillance is watching over to exert power or control

Huey 9 Laura Huey, prof of sociology, University of Western Ontario, 2009 Surveillance: Power, Problems, and Politics, Sean P. Hier and Josh Greenberg, eds p 221-2

Among the various definitions and understandings of surveillance, there nevertheless remains common terrain. In the simplest sense – the act of watching over – surveillance encompasses activities that may be socially desirable. We might refer to the image of the nurse who keeps close watch over the ailing patient (Martin 1993) or even the police detective who watches the suspect in order to gather evidence or to prevent the commission of a crime (Marx 1988). In its more complex forms, the term carries nasty connotations (Martin 1993) – hence the frequent use of the mataphors of Orwell's Big Brother or Bentham's panopticon. Whether viewed as beneficial to society or detrimental to individual privacy, surveillance is about power and its manifestation in the world. The nurse who systematically collects the patient's vital signs uses this information to make decisions concerning the patient's well-being – a benevolent exercise of power. In contrast, the systematic collection of data on particular ethnic groups to target their members for increased observation by law enforcement can only be understood as power negatively manifested. I want to be explicit on this point: however a person is situated in relation to the exercise of power, understanding surveillance as the expression of power is necessary for understanding the politics of surveillance and, in particular, the beliefs and values of those who oppose its use and spread.

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