Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PermutationInstitutions Necessary
Combining legal reform and critical surveillance studies is
necessary to make meaningful political change.
Cohen 15 [Julie, professor at Georgetown University. Studying Law
Studying Surveillance, Surveillance and Society. Vol. 13 Is. 1]
Relative to legal scholarship, work in Surveillance Studies is more likely to
build from a solid foundation in contemporary social theory. Even so, such
work often reflects both an insufficient grasp of the complexity of the legal
system in action and lack of interest in the ways that legal and regulatory
actors understand, conduct, and contest surveillance. By this I dont mean to
suggest that Surveillance Studies scholars need law degrees, but only to
point out what ought to be obvious but often isnt: legal processes are social
processes, too, and in overlooking these processes, Surveillance Studies
scholars also engage in a form of black-boxing that treats law as monolithic
and surveillance and government as interchangeable. Legal actors engage in
a variety of discursive and normative strategies by which institutions and
resources are mobilized around surveillance, and understanding those
strategies is essential to the development of an archaeology of surveillance
practices. Work in Surveillance Studies also favors a type of theoretical jargon
that can seem impenetrable and, more importantly, unrewarding to those in
law and policy communities. As Ive written elsewhere (Cohen 2012a: 29),
[t]oo many such works find power everywhere and hope nowhere, and seem
to offer well-meaning policy makers little more than a prescription for
despair. Returning to the topics already discussed, let us consider some
ways in which Surveillance Studies might benefit from dialogue with law. Let
us return first to the problem of digitally-enhanced surveillance by law
enforcementthe problem of the high-resolution mosaic. As discussed in the
section above, works by Surveillance Studies scholars exploring issues of
mobility and control offer profound insights into the ways in which continual
observation shapes spaces and subjectivitiesthe precise questions about
which, as we have already seen, judges and legal scholars alike are skeptical.
Such works reveal the extent to which pervasive surveillance of public spaces
is emerging as a new and powerful mode of ordering the public and social life
of civil society. They offer rich food for thoughtbut not for action.
Networked surveillance is increasingly a fact of contemporary public life, and
totalizing theories about its power dont take us very far toward gaining
regulatory traction on it. That enterprise is, moreover, essential even if it
entails an inevitable quantum of self-delusion. Acknowledgment of pervasive
social shaping by networked surveillance need not preclude legal protection
for socially-shaped subjects, but that project requires attention to detail. To
put the point a different way, the networked democratic society and the
totalitarian state may be points on a continuum rather than binary opposites,
but the fact that the continuum exists is still worth something. If so, one
needs tools for assessment and differentiation that Surveillance Studies does
PermutationIntersectionality
For counter surveillance to be effective, it must include a
flexible pedagogy that evaluates contextual, relational
and ethical dimensions of power.
Fernandez & Huey 2009 (Luis and Laura, Northern Arizona Univ. &
Univ. of Western Ontario, Is Resistance Futile? Thoughts on Resisting
Surveillance, Surveillance and Society 6:3)
It is also important to understand the different types of actors who may
engage in surveillance, since the social and power location of the actor will
inevitably impact the type of dynamic that unfolds. We know from numerous
studies that surveillance, as defined above, can originate from different
locations. Rather than categorize the different types of surveillance
techniques, then, it is more useful to enumerate the different types of actors
who may engage in surveilling a subject. Surveillance can originate at several
different levels, as has been pointed out before. Some of the possible actors
include the state, employers in various institutions (private and public),
corporations (collecting data on clients), or individual and interpersonal
actors (such as spouses, lovers, neighbours, and so on). Key to this crude
typology is the implicit understanding that power dynamics will likely vary
depending on the location of origination, thus producing different dialectics.
In some instances, we may document conflicts between corporations and
their clients, resulting in a power dynamic different from the surveillance by a
state actor of political protestors. In other words, our analysis of surveillance
should be predicated on the origins and actors involved. If the above logic is
correct, then it follows that studying surveillance (and resistance) is going to
be situational, contextual, and historically specific. Lets now turn to a quick
examination of resistance. As a central theme in the surveillance literature, it
is sticking that resistance, as a concept, remains under theorized. In part, this
may be due to the generalized nature of the concept, which can cover vast
territories of divergent human action. Thus, like surveillance, it is probably
useful to start not with all-encompassing definition, but with an
understanding that resistance too will be contextual, relational, and
dependent on the power dynamics of a given situation. Possible actors
engaged in the resistance of surveillance, then, could include individuals,
groups, institutions, networks, and the state itself (e.g., states versus states).
But the nature of resistance tactics, technologies, and techniques will evolve
in a direct response to a power struggles.
PermutationMiddle Ground
Understanding transparency and secrecy as antipodes is
to reductive, rather we should have a blending of the two.
Birchall 11 [Clare, professor of cultural studies at the University of Kent.
Introduction to Secrecy and Transparency: The Politics of Opacity and
Openness, Theory, Culture & Socieity. Is. 7-8 Vol. 28]
To take this last area, Jacques Derridas work on the secret can help us think
through the problems of a democracy committed to an idea of total
transparency. Transparency cannot easily accommodate those who want to
be exempt from its project, those who want to remain not merely private, but
singular (which Derrida equates with the secret when discussing the limits of
democracy [Derrida with Ferraris, 2001]). Because of this intolerance for
singularity, transparency risks looking less like an agent of democ- racy and
freedom and more like a tool of totalitarianism. Derrida writes: If a right to
the secret is not maintained, we are in a totalitarian space (Derrida with
Ferraris, 2001: 59). From this perspective, secrecy functions as a constitutive
element of transparency, while transparency defines itself as a reaction
against secrecy. A regime that embraces transparency will only ever be able
to go so far before it tips over into totalitarianism because of its parallels with
surveillance, particularly when extended to citizens. Resisting the call to be
transparent to the state is, then, automatically registered as a sign of guilt.
But if the regime doesnt go far enough, if it shrinks back from applying
transparency to its own actions, the regime meets the charge of
totalitarianism coming the other way (for acting covertly, autono- mously and
without an explicit mandate).4 Hence an infinite hesitation, a radical
undecidability, within any democracy that counts transparency among its
operating principles. Hence too the prospect of a debate between
transparency and secrecy that will never be concluded, because far from
being inimical to each other, they are symbiotic.
This is why the stakes of that debate are so routinely misunderstood. Its not
a question of reframing the supposed opposition between transparency and
secrecy in ever wider perspectives, because such reframing assumes that the
terms can be made to yield to interpretive mastery. (This introduction and the
context it provides might not be immune to this charge.) Nor should we give
in to the fantasy that there is a beyond of transparency, a beyond of
secrecy, or a beyond of their mutual dependence. The undecidability might
be unbearable, might tempt us to come down on the side of secrecy or on
the side of transparency, yet the more intelligent response is not to seek to
resolve the tension so much as to inhabit it strategically. Just as Derrida has
analysed the Nietzschean and Freudian Jenseits, and the intractable logic of
the pas au-dela' , so we need to find dif- ferent ways of staying with the
aporia of transparency-as-secrecy.
No Alternative Solvency
Counter Surveillance does not remove individuals from
the gaze of the state and ultimately expands state power.
Monahan 2006 (Torin, Prof. @ UNC Chapel Hill, Counter Surveillance as
Political Intervention? Social Semiotics 16:4)
While each of the four counter-surveillance interventions covered so far seeks
to raise public awareness and to mobilize for social change, none of them are
completely successful at moving their critique from the individual to the
institutional plane. The SCP come closest to doing this, but so far their plays
remain too isolated and discrete to effect long-term change. This deficiency
may be in part because activists construct surveillance problems in
individualized and abstracted terms in order to make them somewhat
tractable and receptive to intervention. The challenge lies in ratcheting-up
the unit of analysis to the institutional level so that lasting change can be
effected. The desired outcomes might take the form of better regulation and
oversight of surveillance and/or meaningful democratic participation in the
process of setting surveillance policies, for instance. In the long run, as the
next section will argue, the oppositional framing of surveillance versus
counter-surveillance may be counter- productive for achieving these goals.
also strategically engage the law, and the surveillance of police has significant evidentiary validation, particularly as it
may be utilized to file complaints against police misconduct. For Dale Mills, founder of Sydney Copwatch, the purpose of
monitoring police at protest actions is: essentially to do the job that the superior officers should be doing, and that is to
make a complaint about police misbehaviour, to highlight the question with police misbehaviour, and to offer the video as
solid evidence. People can easily challenge oral evidence, a bit more difficult to challenge photographic evidence but
moves (Marx 2003) may foreclose the usefulness of footage for official exposure of police misconduct. Complaints to the
New South Wales Ombudsman, for example, have been returned on the basis that without a name or number it is
impossible to ascertain the police involved. As police frequently refuse to give their name on request and just as
frequently fail to wear identifying badges in protest situations they are capable of neutralizing the official visibility of the
video as a foundational motif of video activism, suggesting it was a mistake totake the Rodney King example, of like
this spectacular video equals this social outcome. I think those really spectacular videos are definitely the exception
dynamics. Moreover while witness video may be of interest to mainstream media, particularly where it is seen to coalesce
Lowenthal suggested footage of police violence could accumulate diverse meanings, dependent upon media framing and
audience positions. He noted that obviously some people would be like Oh give that hippie a good whacking, thats what
they need and then other people might be thats beyond the bounds of what police powers should be, and it should be
incident where footage was broadcast of police brutality that far from solidifying the organization of protest, had a chilling
effect leading some within the protest movement to conclude oh my god these people [police] are really, really violent
and Im afraid of them. I dont want to go out and protest, and in some ways thats actually what the police were saying as
1992). Earlier studies of media coverage of protest emphasized ideological framing in which the police are assumed to be
While contemporary
media ecology renders coverage considerably more multifaceted and
conditional (Cottle 2008), our interview participants nevertheless felt
substantial pressure to offer up visual images of violence if they wanted to
access major media outlets. As a videographer involved in an environmental protest action reported they
in the right, capable only of restrained reaction to provocation (Waddington 1992, 178).
[the media] were only really interested in the footage which involved conflicts and specifically conflict with the police
Such
pressure can create internal contradictions for videographers, where they find
themselves concurrently trying to prevent violence through observation while
also aspiring to capture it. As one video activist remarked so youre there as a camera person to try and
prevent biffo but you really want biffo to get it on telly (Davi interview). The hazard of the mainstream
medias preoccupation with violence was clearly articulated: there are two
issues. Theres the issue around which the protest and the activism is
happening and then theres the issue of police accountability and often we
capture stuff which shows police behaving badly and the issue were trying to
get attention for gets ignored for the police stuff (McEwan interview). Protest
movements have on occasion successfully articulated wider political issues
thats all they were asking for. And that wasnt something we really wanted to highlight (McEwan interview).
despite such
optimism about the future of the technology there are clearly drawbacks
involved in the circulation of such a plethora of images. Video activist Louise Morris
everyone with a pair of eyes, everyone with a camera or video (Mills interview). Nevertheless,
revealed her ambivalence to this phenomenon: now all the activists are taking videos everyone now has a camera and
theyre not doing the activismwere so mediated now that we like to film everything its proof we were there, proof we
did it and then everyones got access to the YouTubes of the world and Engage Media and that mob are actually
facilitating anyone with a camera, a computer with an editing software to throw it up there. I think its less specialized
which is greatIts
just also those moments you turn up to actions and you realize
that 50 percent of the people are actually there to film it, and then youve got
this massively reducing pool of people who are actually on the doing side of
things. As Morriss comments make clear, the increasing access to portable video technology such as mobile phones
and digital cameras must be understood in relation to the corresponding increase in internet-related technology. In
particular the rise of YouTube has significantly impacted upon the practice of video activism. Launched in June 2005,
YouTube offered a simple platform for the uploading of video using standard browser software and providing URLs and
For some
activists the proliferation of user generated content has diminished the power
of the image, as one proposed the proliferation of media cheapens it, it
means images are not so powerful or they have to be more full-on to grab
anyone (Davi interview). Such observations indeed recall Baudrillards argument
that the explosion of information in a media-immersed society presaged the
erasure of meaning as he suggested information devours its own
contentsinstead of causing communication, it exhausts itself in the act of
staging communication (1983, 97-98). The availability of open publishing has led some activists to question
HTML code that facilitated the embedding of links into other websites (Burgess and Green 2009).
the ongoing relevance of dedicated alternative media sites. For some the very idea of activist media seemed somewhat
remote and even anachronistic in the new media environment. Cameras are everywhere and everyone can post a video
onlineI dont really see the need like I used to (Davi interview). Also, because of the availability of technology and the
capacity of anyone who has got a home computer (Davi interview) to do editing there is little necessity for the kind of
distinct organization that was present at G20 protests. Others who had been involved in video activism since the 1990s
revealed similar sentiments: I think that technology has changed a bit and I think that back then Indymedia was probably
the only website that would allow for open publishing, so open publishing was quite rare ten years ago, and Indymedia
was actually a pioneer in that. Now with open publishing being everywhere, I dont know that that model really works
anymoreI think it feels a bit more disjointed and maybe theres something about power in numbers. I dont know I feel
the
inclination to generate endless content without context was sharply criticized
by some. For those wishing to move beyond witness video in order to produce
compelling narrative documentaries that contextualize events, the
consequence has been an overwhelming cascade of low quality soundbite
footage that says little about the overall objectives and issues with which
that that video activist movement has waned a little bit (Prickett interview). As in the case of Morris,
exploit at will (Menn, 2013; Riley, 2014; Der Spiegel, 2013). When these
approaches do not suffice, state authorities have designed and constructed
network infrastructure and hardware to allow direct access to the fibre optic
or copper lines themselves (Aron, 2013). Privacy services like TOR have been
penetrated by state security services and their encryption protocols broken
(Goodin, 2013). Distortion and switching as a form of resistance are also
misleading, as they ignore how services like PRISM rely on databases of
previously entered information in addition to real time data collection. Entire
datasets of personal information are already in the possession of
governments and private corporations already (Lyon, 2001). A sudden change
in behaviour or shift in the data collected in real time doesn't change prior
knowledge, and the analytical and comparative potential of these datasets
persists. Data collected and circulated within these databases is notoriously
difficult to remove, and is often outside the awareness and means of
individuals themselves (Lyon, 2002). Finally in many cases those conducting
surveillance have enormous ranges of extra techniques for collecting
personal information. Security organisa- tions in the service of nation states
and private companies have a range of covert and exotic measures for data
collection (Der Spiegel, 2013), and consumer level surveillance is often built
into the many digital infrastructure, networks, and standards that consumers
use (Prid- more, 2012). Companies and authorities have also been
extraordinarily successful in "seducing" users away from resistance to
complicity (Lyon, 2007, p. 102). What this suggests is that for individuals
confrontational measures of resistance are limited, and that any mean- ingful
shift in the material realities of data collection is difficult.
of the fact that the story did finally emerge, the police officers obviously
exercised extreme caution in regulating the places of abuse (i.e. in a police
vehicle and in a police restroom), and one can speculate that this level of
control was a response to their fear of being under surveillance, and thus
held accountable, for their actions.
Hardt and Negri (2004) have suggested that innovative tactics of resistance
spur state agents to implement new modes of control to neutralize
challenges to state power. This is evident in the ironic situation of video
activists, whose efforts to secure safety through imaging renders them
exceptionally visible to police. The monitoring of police in turn kindles
counter-neutralization tactics, in particular strategic incapacitation (Gillham
& Noakes 2007) that aims to neutralize visual monitoring either through
direct physical force or through spatial strategies of containment. Getting
beaten up was one of the foremost hazards of video activism, and those
interviewed reported that individuals armed with video and digital cameras
were commonly targeted by police at protest actions. One activist suggested
police do target people like that at protests, Ive seen it. People with
megaphones, people with cameras they get taken down pretty quickly
(Jacobs interview), while another recollected that quite a few people have
ended up with a black eye and a bruised head (Morris interview). Yes we saw
this during APEC in particular, it wasnt again just not Copwatchers but
members of the commercial media, there was that infamous video Paula
Bronstein for example who was thrown to the ground during APEC, but again
other members of the commercial media who either had police officers block
their filming, or told to turn around and not to film, several of us were
threatened with arrest, there was one undercover police officer who tried to
snatch a camera from my hand, and so it definitely brings attention to
yourself yeah (Mills interview). Spatial strategies of isolation and containment
are an additional counter-neutralization move engaged by police. Fernandez,
drawing upon Foucaults notion of disciplinary diagrams, argues that police
deploy two disciplinary diagrams: the leprosy model and the plague model
(2009, 170). In the plague model, space is divided into a grid and subjected
to surveillance and regular inspection. In the leprosy model, lepers are
expelled from communal space so that sickness is excluded (Elden 2003,
242). Video activists are clearly perceived as lepers, and are subject to
processes of containment and ejection from spaces of protest. Morris
identifies a definite strategy of make sure youve identified who the camera
people in the protest group are, sideline them, dont give them any good
footage and dont give them anything that will turn up in court (Morris
interview). While another video activist suggested some police will act
against you for being the teller of the truth so you can get targeted, camera
can get trashed and your tapes ripped out or personally removed from a
protest because you are documenting it (Jacobs interview).
[her] fat ass off the corner (Jamieson, 2006). This new communications
technology is again used to police bodies deemed out of place, even as
those bodies are held static by income disparities and the difficulty of finding
afford- able housing. As the Faircliff case suggests, more research needs to be
done on how surveillance practices encode and help reproduce existing forms
of structural inequality.