In the developed and in parts of the developing world, surveillance societies have started to emerge. Surveillance societies are societies which function, in part, because of the extensive collection, recording, storage, analysis and application of information on individuals and groups in those societies as they go about their lives. Retail loyalty programmes, website cookies, national identity schemes, routine health screening and no-fly lists all qualify as surveillance. Each features, in different measure, the routine collection of data about individuals with the specific purpose of governing, regulating, managing or influencing what they do in the future. This is our understanding of surveillance.
Thinking about society using surveillance as a concept enables us to mount an ethical, social and spatial critique of the information processing practices which are part of the way society is formed, governed and managed. It enables us to question and evidence its impact on the social fabric: on discrimination, trust, accountability, transparency, access to services, mobility, freedoms, community and social justice. Moreover it enables us to engage in debates with regulators, businesses and journalists about the consequences of their surveillance-based activities. This is what SSN is about.
So, instead of thinking about surveillance as a single all-knowing oppressive force – as George Orwell depicts in the novel Nineteen Eighty Four – we prefer to think of it as something which is woven into everyday life and that is more complex and multi-layered. The covert hi-tech world of the spy or the all-seeing evil despot are but tiny aspects of the surveillance society. Begin, for example, by thinking about the many different activities in which we engage during the course of a single day. At different times we interact with surveillance as part of these activities. As workers, performance information is collected by the organizations for which we work. Managers use that information to let us know how we are performing in our jobs and how we can improve in future.
As consumers our transactions are monitored by financial institutions to detect fraud and our preferences are monitored by loyalty programmes to enable future marketing campaigns to target us. As mobile(cell) phone users our movements and communications can be tracked for use by the emergency services: some people use location based services, such as GPS, to find their way around new places. Surveillance is something which can confer access, entitlement and benefit as well as something which is dangerous, oppressive and discriminatory. Individuals now actively manage their own data profiles knowing they will be able to customize and improve their services as they do so.
In the developed and in parts of the developing world, surveillance societies have started to emerge. Surveillance societies are societies which function, in part, because of the extensive collection, recording, storage, analysis and application of information on individuals and groups in those societies as they go about their lives. Retail loyalty programmes, website cookies, national identity schemes, routine health screening and no-fly lists all qualify as surveillance. Each features, in different measure, the routine collection of data about individuals with the specific purpose of governing, regulating, managing or influencing what they do in the future. This is our understanding of surveillance.
Thinking about society using surveillance as a concept enables us to mount an ethical, social and spatial critique of the information processing practices which are part of the way society is formed, governed and managed. It enables us to question and evidence its impact on the social fabric: on discrimination, trust, accountability, transparency, access to services, mobility, freedoms, community and social justice. Moreover it enables us to engage in debates with regulators, businesses and journalists about the consequences of their surveillance-based activities. This is what SSN is about.
So, instead of thinking about surveillance as a single all-knowing oppressive force – as George Orwell depicts in the novel Nineteen Eighty Four – we prefer to think of it as something which is woven into everyday life and that is more complex and multi-layered. The covert hi-tech world of the spy or the all-seeing evil despot are but tiny aspects of the surveillance society. Begin, for example, by thinking about the many different activities in which we engage during the course of a single day. At different times we interact with surveillance as part of these activities. As workers, performance information is collected by the organizations for which we work. Managers use that information to let us know how we are performing in our jobs and how we can improve in future.
As consumers our transactions are monitored by financial institutions to detect fraud and our preferences are monitored by loyalty programmes to enable future marketing campaigns to target us. As mobile(cell) phone users our movements and communications can be tracked for use by the emergency services: some people use location based services, such as GPS, to find their way around new places. Surveillance is something which can confer access, entitlement and benefit as well as something which is dangerous, oppressive and discriminatory. Individuals now actively manage their own data profiles knowing they will be able to customize and improve their services as they do so.
The Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) is a registered charitable company dedicated to the study of surveillance in all its forms, and the free distribution of scholarly information.