Everyday surveillance

Everyday Surveillance: Personal data and social classifica5ons

by David Lyon

Yavuz Paksoy

Introduc5on

By myriad forms of agencies, commercial and government organiza9ons, people’s everyday life is being checked, watched, recorded and analyzed, so much so that we o?en take for granted the fact that we leave trails and traces wherever we are and whatever we do. Surveillance contributes increasingly to the reproduc9on and reinforcing of social divisions.

Introduc5on

Surveillance does also raise ques9ons about power, ci9zenship and technological development, and about informa9on policy, regula9on and resistance. It is seen here as a response to the ‘disappearing body’ from integra9ve social rela9onships, enabled by modern means of communica9on and informa9on-‐handling. The rise of invisible informa9on infrastructures that facilitate the classifica9on and processing of personal data and the increasing porousness of their storage containers generate dis9nc9ve ques9ons about everyday surveillance.

Surveillance Became So Central

For most of human history, most social interac9on has been face-‐to-‐face. Today, communica9on that do not involve co-‐presence and that are stretched over space. It is a key feature of modernity that using new media of communica9on people can interact and even remain in rela9onships that are integrated with others despite being divided by distance.


It is striking, for example, that neither the telephone nor the Internet were conceived as means of helping ordinary people to chat with each other but that is just how they have come to be used. Author suggests that as new technologies enabled more and more to be done at a distance, some compensa9ons are sought for the fading face, the disappearing body. In earlier 9mes, suitable compensa9ons included a signature or a seal on a leLer to authen9cate its personal origin. But in the increasingly complex social seMngs of modernity, other tokens of trust were sought.


Documentary evidence were required for administra9ve and commercial purposes:

iden9fica9on at school, the workplace or to police for admission to certain sites to obtain cash from a bank or to pay for purchases tokens of trust, worthiness and authen9ca9on

Today our wallets and purses are stuffed with credit cards, membership numbers, phone cards, social insurance cards, driver’s licences, library cards, health cards and loyalty club cards that can either be used when no other body is present for the transac9on The body has disappeared from these rela9ons but communica9on con9nues

The view of the other way

Personal data may be released – wiMngly or unwiMngly – by those to whom they refer and communicated to others (the bank, the airline) who have some interest in them. What happens to those data as they are processed is largely unknown by data subjects, although some of it may be guessed when the road-‐toll invoice, personalized adver9sing or spam (electronic junk mail) appears in the mailbox or on the screen.

Paradox

Privacy produces surveillance that, it is said, threatens privacy. As the more anonymous arrangements of the modern ‘society of strangers’ emerged, and privacy was more valued, so the reciprocal need for tokens of trust grew as a means of maintaining the integrity of rela9ons between those strangers. As the locally-‐known, embodied person slid from view in the web of social rela9ons, so the importance of creden9als, iden9fica9on and other documentary evidence was amplified.


But not only privacy. As surveillance became a central, cons9tu9ve component of modernity, so it became increasingly a social ordering device on a greater scale. Surveillance depends on informa9on infrastructures, invisible frameworks that order the data according to certain criteria, purposes and interests. The kinds of interests behind social classifica9ons expanded to include not only government departments and policing or security services, but also a mul9tude of commercial organiza9ons as well To take just one example, there is plenty of evidence that insurance companies contribute strongly to police work in Canada.


Informa9on infrastructures allow for plug-‐ins from other sorts of technological devices

video and closed circuit television (CCTV) biometrics and gene9c surveillance

Without the assistance of complex and sophis9cated data processing power, these new technologies would remain rela9vely weak as means of surveillance. unques9oning acceptance of informa9on and communica9on technologies is far higher than that of ethical and poli9cal cri9que and assessment


Given the immense value placed on personal data, both for commercial exploita9on and for risk management, huge pressure is placed on these containers to yield their secrets in shareable ways. Government departments seek ways of assis9ng each other in obtaining compliance, but commercial organiza9ons also exchange and trade categorized personal data in an effort to market their wares more effec9vely. But personal data on airline passengers may also be exchanged for security purposes, par9cularly a?er the terrorist aLacks of 11 September 2001


In 2000 a defunct company called ToySmart.com tried to sell its personal data they were challenged, and obliged to sell only the en9re website, and only to a related company.

Surveillance Society

Dominant groups determine how and in what interests the material infrastructure operates ‘CCTV has been implemented not as one pervasive system but as a series of discrete, localized systems run by a myriad of different organiza9ons rather than a single state monolith’ “It is augmented not only within hierarchical organiza9ons of the sort that depict Big Brother overseeing all from the apex or the panop9con inspector gazing out from the tower, but also, more frequently, within networks that spread horizontally, reaching out here, contrac9ng there, but always finding more ways of seeking and processing personal data with a view to management and influence”


Only personal fears about privacy distracts us from the public issues surrounding surveillance Through social conven9on and custom people accept their place within the hierarchy or learn to see themselves in rela9on to the status of others.


Only personal fears about privacy distracts us from the public issues surrounding surveillance Through social conven9on and custom people accept their place within the hierarchy or learn to see themselves in rela9on to the status of others.


The author is not sugges9ng that classifica9on and surveillance are socially nega9ve processes. They are necessary aspects of all social situa9ons and serve social purposes, from the vital to the vicious. The point is that as powerful means of governance, of social ordering, they are also increasingly invisible and easily taken-‐for granted. Ethical inspec9on is required. Internet users claim to care about online privacy, it turns out, paradoxically, that the very same persons key-‐in PINs and credit card numbers online!

Mobilizing Responses

ALempts to create an electronic ‘Australia Card’ for all ci9zens in the mid-‐1980s spawned a social movement that successfully turned down the proposal, as did similar, later aLempts in South Korea. The use of the Internet to mobilize resistance is an important part of the process. Physical barriers and constraint within places maLer less today Genuine benefits gleaned from having surveillance systems in place tend to deflect aLen9on away from the inequi9es associated with many discriminatory dimensions of surveillance

Mobilizing Responses

The law, at best, can only help to create a culture of carefulness about the processing of personal data, it cannot possibly speak to all issues, let alone keep up with each development in data mining, pro. ling, database targe9ng and marke9ng, loca9onal tracking of vehicles or cellphones, and so on. Focused ethical aLen9on, along with serious proposals for democra9c accountability, and educa9onal and awareness-‐raising ini9a9ves, are needed if everyday surveillance is properly to be understood, and when necessary, confronted and challenged.

Discussion Points

1.  How could it be possible for people both making use of surveillance systems and protect their privacy? Is it possible?

2.  How should mobilizing responses be formed against surveillance power of (especially commercial) organiza9ons?

Education

Everyday surveillance