The Resolution
Surveillance---Preventive Intent---Interpretation
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- “Surveillance” must be connected to a specific purpose
- “Surveillance” is observation for the purposes of transforming behavior
- “Surveillance” must be intentional observation
- Observation without intentional purpose is not “surveillance”
Surveillance---Preventive Intent---Interpretation“Surveillance” requires an intentional purpose to shape future action---“monitoring” without objective isn’t TSantaella 10 – Lucia Santaella, Full Professor at São Paulo Catholic University, Director of the Center of Research in Digital Media, One of the Honorary Presidents of the Latin-American Federation of Semiotics, and Member of the Argentinian Academy of Arts, ICTs for Mobile and Ubiquitous Urban Infrastructures: Surveillance, Locative Media and Global Networks, Ed. Firmino, p. 297 THREE REGIMES OF SURVEILLANCE: PANOPTIC, SCOPIC AND TRACKING The word surveillance and its concept are widely used. Even one seems to intuitively know what surveillance means. In a research context, however, we must follow an ethics of terminology, by defining our sources and the meaning implied in the terms being used. A simple definition is given by Bennet & Regan (2004: 452): "surveillance is a way of determining who is where and what s/he is doing in the physical or virtual world, on a given moment in time." Bruno (2008b) mentions a functional definition of surveillance given by Wood et al. (2006:9): "Wherever we may find purposeful, routine oriented, systematic and focused attention given to personal details, with the objective of control, authorization, management, influence or protection, we are facing surveillance." For Lyon (2004: 129). serious and systemic attention to personal details for purposes of influence, administration and control is defined as surveillance. More recently Lyon (2010:6) added to the definition that "in part due to its reliance on electronic technologies, surveillance is generalized across populations, for numerous, overlapping purposes and in virtual and fluid spaces." Lemos (2010:8) cites Gow (2005a), according to whom surveillance "implies something very specific such as the observation of someone's actions or the gathering of personal information in order to monitor actions taken in the past or in the future." Lemos questions this definition by pointing out that "not every form of control and or monitoring might be called surveillance", since surveillance requires the presence of two elements: "intentionality, aimed at avoiding or causing something, and a nominal identification of individuals and groups". Lemos finds anonymous surveillance a difficult concept to grasp without preventive intention, which aims to avoid something, and the identification of the one being surveilled. “Surveillance” must be connected to a specific purposeLyon 7 – David Lyon, Director of the Surveillance Studies Centre, Queen's Research Chair in Surveillance Studies, Professor of Sociology, and Professor of Law at Queen’s University, Canada, Surveillance Studies: An Overview, p. 13-16 Defining surveillance Before going any further, I should make clear what is meant by surveillance. Although the word 'surveillance' often has connotations of surreptitious cloak-and-dagger or undercover investigations into individual activities, it also has some fairly straightforward meanings that refer to routine and everyday activity. Rooted in the French verb sur-veiller, literally to 'watch over', surveillance refers to processes in which special note is taken of certain human behaviours that go well beyond idle curiosity. You can 'watch over' (or, more clumsily, 'sur-veill') others because you are concerned for their safety; lifeguards at the edge of the swimming pool might be an example. Or you can watch over those whose activities are in some way dubious or suspect; police officers watching someone loitering in a parking lot would be an example of this kind of surveillance. Surveillance always has some ambiguity, and that is one of the things that make it both intriguing and highly sensitive. For example, parental concern and care for children may lead to the adoption of some surveillance technologies in order to express this. But at what point does this become an unacceptable form of control? Does the answer depend on whether or not the offspring in question are aware that they are being tracked, or is the practice itself unethical by some standards? At the same time, putting the question this way assumes that people in general are wary, if not positively spooked, when they learn that others may be noting their movements, listening to their conversations or profiling their purchase patterns. But this assumption is not always sound. Many seem content to be surveilled, for example by street cameras, and some appear so to relish being watched that they will put on a display for the overhead lenses, or disclose the most intimate details about themselves in blogs or on webcams. So what is surveillance? For the sake of argument, we may start by saying that it is the focused, systematic and routine attention to personal details for purposes of influence, management, protection or direction. Surveillance directs its attention in the end to individuals (even though aggregate data, such as those available in the public domain, may be used to build up a background picture). It is focused. By systematic, I mean that this attention to personal details is not random, occasional or spontaneous; it is deliberate and depends on certain protocols and techniques. Beyond this, surveillance is routine; it occurs as a 'normal' part of everyday life in all societies that depend on bureaucratic administration and some kinds of information technology. Everyday surveillance is endemic to modern societies. It is one of those major social processes that actually constitute modernity as such (Giddens 1985). Having said that, there are exceptions. Anyone who tries to present an 'overview' has to admit that particular circumstances make a difference. The big picture may seem over-simplified but, equally, the tiny details can easily lose a sense of significance. For example, not all surveillance is necessarily focused. Some police surveillance, for instance, may be quite general - a 'dragnet' - in an attempt somehow to narrow down a search for some likely suspects. And by the same token, such surveillance may be fairly random. Again, surveillance may occur in relation to non-human phenomena that have only a secondary relevance to 'personal details'. Satellite images may be used to seek signs of mass graves where genocide is suspected or birds may be tagged to discover how avian flu is spread. Such exceptions are important, and add nuance to our understanding of the big picture. By looking at various sites of surveillance, and exploring surveillance in both 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' ways, I hope to illustrate how such variations make a difference to how surveillance is understood in different contexts. The above definition makes reference to 'information technology', but digital devices only increase the capacities of surveillance or, sometimes, help to foster particular kinds of surveillance or help to alter its character. Surveillance also occurs in down-to-earth, face-to-face ways. Such human surveillance draws on time-honoured practices of direct supervision, or of looking out for unusual people or behaviours, which might be seen in the factory overseer or in neighbourhood watch schemes. Indeed, to accompany the most high-tech systems invented, the US Department of Homeland Security still conscripts ordinary people to be the 'eyes and ears' of government, and some non-professional citizen-observers in Durban, South Africa have been described by a security manager (without irony) as 'living cameras' (Hentschel 2006). But to return to the definition: it is crucial to remember that surveillance is always hinged to some specific purposes. The marketer wishes to influence the consumer, the high school seeks efficient ways of managing diverse students and the security company wishes to insert certain control mechanisms - such as PIN (personal identification number) entry into buildings or sectors. So each will garner and manipulate data for those purposes. At the same time, it should not be imagined that the influence, management or control is necessarily malign or unsocial, despite the frequently negative connotations of the word 'surveillance'. It may involve incentives or reminders about legal requirements; the management may exist to ensure that certain entitlements - to benefits or services - are correctly honoured and the control may limit harmful occurrences. On the one hand, then, surveillance is a set of practices, while, on the other, it connects with purposes. It usually involves relations of power in which watchers are privileged. But surveillance often involves participation in which the watched play a role. It is about vision, but not one-sidedly so; surveillance is also about visibility. Contexts and cultures are important, too. For instance, infra-red technologies that reveal what is otherwise shrouded in darkness help to alter power relations. But the willing self-exposure of blog-writers also helps to change the contours of visibility. To use infra-red devices to see into blog-writers' rooms at night would infringe personal rights and invade private spaces. But for blog-writers to describe their nocturnal activities online may be seen as an unexceptional right to free expression. “Surveillance” is observation for the purposes of transforming behaviorAndrzejewski 8 – Anna Vemer Andrzejewski, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Building Power: Architecture and Surveillance in Victorian America, p. 3-4 Given the loaded nature of terms such as surveillance, modernity, and even architecture in contemporary scholarly discourse, it is important to define them as used in this book. A good place to begin is to consider what I mean by surveillance, especially since a major goal of this study is to reconsider it in a more comprehensive manner than previous accounts, scholarly and otherwise. According to contemporary popular associations, surveillance refers to a fixed, purposeful, and typically visual act, often offered in stealth, which has a correctional or punitive intent. In our twenty-first century culture, replete with closed-circuit television (CCTV) in stores, schools, casinos, airports, urban streets, and the workplace, wiretaps, high-definition satellite images, and Internet spy software, all of which arc prominently promoted through print media, network television, and Hollywood films, it is hardly surprising that many tend to view surveillance as a covert operation of bureaucratic forces.'1 Previous scholarly studies centered on surveillance, including those by Foucault and by the urban historian Mike Davis, also define it along these lines. Although 1'oucault insists that surveillance is not solely negative, in that it produces knowledge for those who exercise it, surveillance in these terms remains inherently disciplinary in the sense that it ultimately functions as a means or obtaining power by delimiting movement of bodies in space and thus serves principally as a means of control. These forms of surveillance presume and prescribe a set of rules for its subjects under the gaze. Through its exercise, surveillance of this sort aims to recognize transgressions and use this knowledge in order to correct (repression) or to gain information about the subject (production of knowledge). Such a definition implies a voyeuristic, somewhat sexualized, notion of surveillance, since these kinds of gazes arc largely hidden and dependent on this concealment as a means of obtaining knowledge and pleasure. This book treats surveillance in a much more expansive sense and seeks to transcend definitions that equate it with a watchdog form of spying. By surveillance I refer to acts of sustained, close observation of others that have transformation of behavior as their intent. Like sociologist David Lyon, who has examined contemporary modes of data collection outside of a policing context, I consider surveillance beyond its associations with inherently sinister and surreptitious means by which those in power attempt to affirm and enforce their dominance.'1 An act of surveillance refers to any purposeful act in which information about others is collected for all kinds of transformative purposes, of which punishment is but one. This more flexible definition allows for attentive and purposeful gazes that examine subjects closely but not necessarily with the goal of detecting wrongdoing or condemning behavior relative to a particular expectation or standard. Although surveillance certainly has operated in this way in many institutional settings, it is not limited in aim or practice to this disciplinary purpose. At late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century camp meetings discussed in the fourth chapter, for example, surveillance worked in a more affirmative context. Camp-meeting goers gazed on other campers as much to find a model Christian whose behavior they wished to emulate as they did to find a sinner to rebuke, the expansive definition of surveillance offered here also allows for purposeful gazes known, and sometimes welcomed, by those under watch. In workplaces discussed in chapter 2, for example, surveillance was highly visible, and thus known, to workers. What constitutes an act ofl surveillance in this study revolves around the intentional focus of the gaze, rather than whether it is conducted anonymously, in stealth, or with a disciplinary intent. “Surveillance” must be intentional observationGow 5 – Gordon A. Gow, Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, “PRIVACY AND UBIQUITOUS NETWORK SOCIETIES”, March, 2.1.2 A point of clarification of terms A number of terms are used when discussing privacy and privacy-related concerns and ubiquitous networks. Among these are five common concepts, each with slightly different connotations: • Privacy • Anonymity • Surveillance • Security • Trust
‘Privacy’ and ‘anonymity’ are related concepts, but with some important differences. With respect to communications, privacy implies the possession of personal information and the subsequent terms and conditions by which it is used, retained, and disclosed to others. Anonymity, however, implies an absence of information about a person and relates to the terms and conditions by which such information might be collected in the first instance. Both concepts highlight the importance of empowering people to control information about themselves. ‘Surveillance’ is also related to privacy, but implies something quite specific as the intentional observation of someone’s actions or the intentional gathering of personal information in order to observe actions taken in the past or future. Unwanted surveillance is usually taken to be an invasion of privacy. This concept highlights the importance of privacy as a utility that protects people against unwanted intrusions and the right to be left alone. ‘Security’ is a term often used in software development to describe the capability of a technical system to protect and maintain the integrity of personal data circulating within that system. Privacy violations can occur when a system is not secure and it leaks personal data to unauthorized parties. This concept highlights the importance of providing regulating mechanisms to balance and check powers of those that provide and those that collect data. Finally, the term ‘trust’ suggests the quality of a reciprocal relationship between two or more parties with respect to the use and disclosure of personal information and the respect of privacy rights. This concept highlights the importance of dignity and mutual obligations between human beings (often interacting through corporate or other bureaucratic systems.
The field of Surveillance Studies is fortunate to have had many dedicated scholars produce a number of excellent books geared towards the accomplished reader of surveillance literature. While quality texts exist that overview the field (see e.g., Surveillance Studies: An Overview by David Lyon, or the Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies edited by Kirstie Ball, Kevin Haggerty and David Lyon), an entry level introductory text to orient the inexperienced student or surveillance enthusiast to a variety of conceptual footholds has been sorely lacking. John Gilliom and Torin Monahan help address this gap in SuperVision: An Introduction to the Surveillance Society. In their concise crash course, Gilliom and Monahan engage the reader in an accessible and witty dialogue. The authors encourage the reader to not only recognize the ubiquitous nature of surveillance in everyday life by providing a variety of practical and highly relatable examples, but also prompt the reader to consider how omnipresent surveillance shapes their social reality. In no way forceful, Gilliom and Monahan maintain their focus of initiating a dialogue, not having the final word. Eager to avoid the hindrance of conceptual baggage, the authors note that they define surveillance broadly as “monitoring people in order to regulate or govern their behaviour” (2). With this definition Gilliom and Monahan impress upon the reader that surveillance is not voyeurism—surveillance never simply involves the act of looking. The authors maintain that surveillance is, in fact, an act of power: it invokes purposeful watching with the intention of gaining information and/or controlling behaviour. Through this orientation, Gilliom and Monahan prime the reader to begin questioning their basic assumptions about surveillance. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 0.49 Mb. Share with your friends:
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