Page 518 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Surve llance and Pr vacy |

and so on—in the hopes that these technologies will reduce the threat of crime
and help to keep us safe. We are also coming to accept more comprehensive
forms of commercial monitoring as we surrender detailed information about our
shopping habits and preferences by using loyalty cards, credit cards, or shopping
online. Often, but not always, we are provided with the offer of compensation,
convenience, or customization in return for providing personal information to
marketers.
However, as monitoring practices become more sophisticated, powerful, and
pervasive, critics worry that the potential for abuse increases and that the emerg-
ing surveillance society threatens to erode forms of personal autonomy and pri-
vacy that we have come to associate with democratic freedom. Given the rapid
development and decreasing cost of technologies that gather, store, and sort
personal information, combined with the increasing demand for such informa-
tion, it is likely that concerns over the threat to privacy will only increase in the
foreseeable future. As a society we will be forced to decide what legal limits we
want to impose on the development and deployment of surveillance technolo-
gies, since neither state agencies nor commercial entities seem likely to do so on
their own.

survEiLLanCE
Any discussion of the apparent conflict between surveillance and privacy
should start with the disclaimer that the concept of privacy is a culturally and
historically variable one, and that of surveillance an ambivalent one. Typically
the conflict is framed as one in which surveillance plays the role of villain and
privacy that of victim. But surveillance has numerous beneficial uses in contem-
porary society, and we depend upon forms of state and commercial monitoring
for security as well as efficiency and convenience (Lyon 2001). The government’s
collection of census data, for example, helps shape the allocation of political rep-
resentatives in the United States as well as the distribution of government ben-
efits. The operation of a democratic society is predicated on the ability of elected
representatives to monitor the wants and needs of their constituents, and the
complex financial systems upon which we depend rely on strategies for iden-
tification and verification to prevent fraud and facilitate commerce. Finally, we
depend on government oversight to ensure that both individuals and private
corporations follow the law.

sTaTE survEiLLanCE
Its practical uses notwithstanding, the notion of surveillance tends to retain
sinister overtones, not least because it implies unequal relations of power. En-
gaging in the practice of surveillance means more than just gathering informa-
tion; it means exerting some form of control over those who are subjected to
it. This fact is most obvious in the case of surveillance by the state, which can
bring its policing and military power to bear on those whom it monitors. When
state surveillance power is not held publicly accountable, it can be abused by