Penetrating Privacy: Confessional Poetry and the Surveillance Society

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-114
Author(s):  
Deborah Nelson
2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Mubi Brighenti

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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Clarke

The digitisation of data about the world relevant to business has given rise to a new phase of digitalisation of business itself. The digitisation of data about people has linked with the notions of information society, surveillance society, surveillance state and surveillance capitalism, and given rise to what is referred to in this article as the digital surveillance economy. At the heart of this is a new form of business model that is predicated on the acquisition and consolidation of very large volumes of personal data, and its exploitation to target advertisements, manipulate consumer behaviour, and price goods and services at the highest level that each individual is willing to bear. In the words of the model’s architects, users are ‘bribed’ and ‘induced’ to make their data available at minimal cost to marketers. The digital surveillance economy harbours serious threats to the interests of individuals, societies and polities. That in turn creates risks for corporations. The new economic wave may prove to be a tsunami that swamps the social dimension and washes away the last five centuries’ individualism and humanism. Alternatively, institutional adaptation might occur, overcoming the worst of the negative impacts; or a breaking-point could be reached and consumers might rebel against corporate domination. A research agenda is proposed, to provide a framework within which alternative scenarios can be investigated.


2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 64-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanur Cavlin Bozbeyoglu

Turkey’s mandatory ID card system, in place since the foundation of the Republic, is an integral part of everyday day life for Turkish citizens. The country is currently experiencing a shift from from paper-based national ID cards to electronic ID cards. The electronic ID card project commenced in 2007 and a pilot implementation was launched in the province of Bolu in 2008 by the Ministry of Interior, in collaboration with The National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology (UEKAE) and the Social Security Institution. The electronic card incorporates a chip that carries identifying information including identity number, photograph and PIN, and also includes two fingerprints and two finger vein patterns as biometric indicators. The pilot implementation in Bolu has been integrated with social and health security systems in this province and aims to cover every resident of by November 2010. The ultimate goal of the system is to eventually provide coverage for all citizens and all governmental spheres in the country. The basic justifications for the centralisation and digitisation of the identity system are to increase efficiency in government administration and to maintain security in the era of e-government projects and European Union participation process. Right of citizenship is proven by means of the identification system and the ID card; therefore, to be out of the identification system means to be out of all administrative, political and commercial spheres of society. This study examines the necessity for and the promises of the electronic ID card and discusses the potential risks of the new system for citizens in terms of privacy, accessibility and other implications. Discussion of the meaning of government identification in the context of Turkey and developments in the identification system serve as a background for the study.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Mitchener-Nissen

When assessing any security technology which impacts upon privacy, whether this constitutes a new technology or the novel application of existing technologies, we should do so by examining the combined effect of all security interventions currently employed within a society. This contrasts with the prevailing system whereby the impact of a new security technology is predominantly assessed on an individual basis by a subjective balancing of the security benefits of that technology against any reductions in concomitant rights, such as privacy and liberty. I contend that by continuing to focus on the individual effect, as opposed to the combined effects, of security technologies within a society the likelihood of sleep-walking into (or indeed waking-up in) an absolute surveillance society moves from a possible future to the logically inevitable future. This conclusion is based on two underlying assertions. Firstly that assessing a technology often entails a judgement of whether any loss in privacy is legitimised by a justifiable increase in security; however one fundamental difference between these two rights is that privacy is a finite resource with identifiable end-states (i.e. absolute privacy through to the absolute absence of privacy) whereas security does not have two finite end-states (while there exists the absolute absence of security, absolute security is an unobtainable yet desired goal). The second assertion, which relies upon the validity of the first, holds that one consequence of absolute security being unobtainable yet desirable is that new security interventions will continuously be developed, each potentially trading a small measure of privacy for a small rise in security. Examined individually each intervention may constitute a justifiable trade-off. However this approach of combining interventions in the search for ever greater security will ultimately reduce privacy to zero.


2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (2/3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pete Fussey

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.


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