Surveillance and Social Control - 2

1
Surveillance and Social Control - 2

• How monitored are we?
• Is Britain a Big Brother society?

2

• 1) The collection of information
  (dataveillance)
• 2) The rise of CCTV
• (closed circuit television)
• The streets of Paris
• The case of Las Vegas
• 3) The politics of surveillance
• - Official story / unofficial stories

3
The Collection of Information

• David Lyon
• The Surveillance Society
• Visual surveillance
• Dataveillance
• Sophisticated electronic data collection systems
• 1) Specific individuals
• 2) Types of individuals / groups
• 3) Whole population

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• Constant data collection
• More data collated every day
• Databases contain e.g.
• Financial situation
• Health situation
• Use of state benefits
• Consumer preferences
• Education record
• Criminal record

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The Collection of Information

• Government
• Criminal data
• Life data
• - Voting data
• - Social welfare data

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• The paradoxes of democracy
• 1) Government knowledge of individual grows
• 2) After September 11th more surveillance to
  protect freedom

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The Collection of Information

• Business corporations
• - Consumer preferences
• - Marketing
• reducing uncertainty
• Selling your data
• - data as commodity

8

• Government data collection systems
• separate from
• Business data collection systems
• Now Blurring of boundaries
• Government use of
• business data
• e.g. mobile phone records
• - Electronic trails

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The Rise of CCTV (Closed Circuit Television)
Britain the most visually monitored society in
Western world 2000 1.3 million
cameras Increasing at 20 per year
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• Average person per day
• 300 cameras
• 30 CCTV networks
• Public systems
• Private systems
• Average driver on motorway
• - image taken every 4 minutes

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CCTV - historical background

• Changes in Paris
• Medieval city
• Visually inaccessible to authorities
• Modern city
• Highly visually accessible to authorities
• - From mid-19th century, total reconstruction of
  streets

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What CCTV can do
1. Capture car number-plates 2. Capture
faces 3. Store and compare 4. Size secrecy
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Las Vegas casinos

• 1) Streets outside - CCTV
• 2) CCTV everywhere inside
• - Zoom mechanisms
• - Infra-red, heat-seeking motion mechanisms
• 3) Electronic communications surveillance

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The Politics of Surveillance

• Official story
• - reduces crime
• - enhances public safety
• - discourages creation of new criminals
• - 75 of public in favour

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• Unofficial story
• Norris and Armstrong
• City of Hull, UK
• 1) 900 targeted surveillances - 12 arrests
• 2) Operators biases youths, black people,
  drunks, beggars
• 3) Shifts crime to other areas

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• Zygmunt Bauman
• Consumers
• failed consumers
• Streets and shopping malls kept pure
• Public spaces controlled by private business
  interests
• c) Consumerism stimulate aspirations of all
• d) Surveillance control aspirations of poor

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• Gated communities
• - Private communities for the rich
• - Fences and electronic surveillance systems
• USA, South Africa, Brazil
• - Great divides between rich and poor
• Rich frightened of theft and violence
• Social fabric torn apart / CCTV as solution
• Crime further concentrated in poor areas
• Coming to Britain soon

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ISSUES TO CONSIDER

• 1) Surveillance necessary and socially
  beneficial?
• OR Surveillance intrusive and a violation of
  human rights?
• BALANCE?
• 2) How much privacy do you really have?
• Has the Big Brother society come to be a
  reality?
• 3) Are the poor more targeted than the rich? Is
  that a problem? Democracy?