Professor David Lyon – Professor of Surveillance
Studies, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario,
Canada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hX1r2Tbv5g
In 2021, are we actively complicit in the erosion of our
private lives?
Does our every action/transaction/reaction online
become data capital for others – individuals,
corporations, government agencies?
How much of our private lives reside online?
How permanent is our digital footprint?
And should we care?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7pYHN9iC9I
Surveillance and the Gaze:
Why is watching others and being watched by others
so culturally, politically and economically significant
in the 21st Century?
What examples can you think of?
Close observation of a person or group, especially one
of interest or under suspicion
The act of observing or the condition of being
observed
‘9/11 brought to the surface and accelerated a number
of surveillance trends that had been developing
quietly and largely unnoticed for previous decades’
(Lyon, D, (2003) Surveillance after9/11)
(Jan Provost, Sacred Allegory, c1510-
1520)
Growth in surveillance coincided with the
development of capitalism, urbanisation and
industrialisation in the 17th and 18th centuries
Large populations could be controlled through
knowledge rather than force, surveillance through
agencies such as the police, schools, the workplace.
Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish, 1977)
examined how societies self regulate, self discipline by
internalizing the disciplinary regimes of various
institutions in modern society (eg. prison, factory,
school or university)
Foucault argues that the structure of surveillance,
whether active or not, produces conforming behaviour
‘Elaborating on this model of organising the spatial
arrangements of prisons, schools and factories to
enable maximum visibility, Foucault argues that a new
form of internalised disciplinary practice occurs: one is
forced to act as if one is being surveyed even when one
is not’
(Sara Mills, 2003, Michel Foucault)
Photographs were deployed as a means of
categorization in order to distinguish, for instance,
the normal and the abnormal according to the
discourses of a particular time’
(Sturken and Cartwright, Practices of Looking: An
Introduction to Visual Culture)
Viewpoint: ‘We’re living in an age of surveillance
capitalism’ | BBC Ideas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oOCLIrB-0c
Labhaoise Ni Fhaolain, consultant at law firm DAC
Beachcroft in Dublin says:
“Short of ‘airgapping’ (disconnecting from the
internet) your entire life, it is impossible to be
completely insulated from the possibility of being
surveilled.” (2019)
The 2009 Criminal Justice (Surveillance) Act, covers
tracking devices, however………..
She asks – “When does the act of surveillance occur –
once the data has been collected or only after it has
been processed and analysed?”
Work environments (anticipatory/conformity)
Consumerism (surveillance provides a means to
channel consumer behaviour in certain directions)
‘Data about transactions is used both to target persons for further
advertising and to dismiss consumers who are of little value to
companies’ (Lyons, D., Surveillance as Social Sorting, 2003)
State surveillance of populations
‘We live in a climate of increasing ‘database anxiety’
aware of the fact that we are lodged in countless
databases, and that the data we surrender can be put
to all kinds of future uses. At the level of social
control, databases provide governments with raw
materials for social control’ (Bell, David; An
Introduction To Cybercultures’; Routledge; 2001)
It has been argued increasing levels of surveillance in
work places results in:
decline in levels of trust between employer and
employee
increased requirement to conform to organisational
culture and practices; Internalisation of disciplinary
regimes
homogenization of work environments
intrusion into private domain of individual
Increasing levels of surveillance in public spaces
results in:
gradual habituation to loss of privacy
all places becoming the scene of potential crime and
every person a virtual victim or delinquent
our world becomes transformed into a threatening
environment
anonymity seen as potential threat to public security
categorization and stereotyping of social groups
This might appear the safest arena for privacy, but
this is weakening
All manner of data access points entering the home
The emergence of the ‘smart home’ sees virtual
assistants; energy companies monitoring your energy
usage; interactive and smart televisions and security
cameras in the house
Technology frequently inspires ambivalence: we know
that Facebook and Google know too much about us,
yet we continue to use their services because they’re
so convenient
Voice or virtual assistants, however, seem unusually
polarising
People who consider them sinister and invasive
regard enthusiasts as complacent…..
while those who find them useful and benign see the
sceptics as paranoid technophobes
There is one question freighted with bigger issues
about our relationship with the tech industry: should
you let Alexa into your home?
Alexa has grown up in an era of increasing scepticism
about the power and morality of the “big five” tech
companies
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google/Alphabet
and Microsoft.
Events such as the Edward Snowden leaks and the
Cambridge Analytica scandal have tarnished Silicon
Valley’s utopian promises.
Tech journalists are more likely to be critics than
cheerleaders.
In January 2019, Amazon’s senior vice-president of
devices, David Limp, revealed that the company had
sold more than 100m Alexa-enabled devices in U.S.
It is therefore best-placed to become what Shoshana
Zuboff, in her bestseller, The Age of Surveillance
Capitalism, calls the “One Voice”: the dominant
ecosystem that would give its operator “the ability to
anticipate and monetise all the moments of all the
people during all the days”
Zuboff calls the birth of Alexa “a threshold event”.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism; Zuboff, S; Profile
Books
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyQyZgqiokE
Increased surveillance of consumption practices:
social sorting of consumers into differentiated
categories
more sophisticated marketing techniques
encouraging the act of conspicuous consumption
increased all over control of consumer environments.
What reasons can we find to explain the proliferation
of surveillant texts, technologies and practices within
popular culture?
(Reality TV Shows; surveillant cinema; Facebook,
Twitter, home web-cams, mobile phone cameras,
dash cams, Google street view )
In examining possible explanations or speculations
what hypotheses might we draw about the nature of
contemporary culture, identity, pleasures?
https://www.google.com/maps/@53.3289882,-6.30026
93,15.25z
Can we argue that these are significant shifts and in
what ways might these shifts or changes be
understood? Liberatory? Exploitative? Complex
combinations?
Discuss!!!
One argument is that current forms of popular
culture are designed to progressively normalize
surveillance, instil an intuitive acceptance of all other
forms of surveillance : state, corporate, organisational.
It has been suggested that what is needed now is a
new ‘digital social contract’ between citizens,
businesses and government
Individuals need to take more control by making
GDPR data access requests to find out where their
data ‘sits’
Irish Council for Civil Liberties as well as Digital
Rights Ireland have called for a ‘super surveillance
watchdog’ to oversee all state surveillance activities
Former Chief Justice, John Murray reviewed gaps in
the law, focusing on the retention of and access to
communications data held by service providers
His 190 page report (2017) found that current data-
retention legislation amounts to “mass surveillance”
of the entire population and in breach of European
law
The Commission on Law Reform has stated it will
“give priority to examining how technology in the
digital era has affected traditional views of privacy”.
Critics argue that privacy doesn’t matter to children
who were raised in a wired celebrity culture that
promises a niche audience for everyone.
Why hide when you can perform??
