On the subject of Brazilian Internet surveillance, I would just like to draw people’s attention to some of the other surveillance studies scholars with whom I will be working with here, starting with Fernanda Bruno. Fernanda is a Professor in the Postgraduate Programme in Communication at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She has a blog on surveillance issues here. I first came across Fernanda when we published a really interesting piece she wrote with Paulo Vaz on self-surveillance back in the ‘Foucault and Panopticism Revisited’ special issue of Surveillance & Society back in 2003.
Author: David
I'm David Murakami Wood. I'm currently Canada Research Chair at the University of Ottawa. I like reading, cycling, running, and I am slowly coming to the realization of the limits of getting older.
Internet Surveillance in Brazil
At the same time as the UK government is pressing ahead with its plans for a massive database of all communications (that even the European Commission doesn’t like), and the US Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review has ruled that warrantless Internet surveillance is constitutional, Brazilian lawmakers are also attempting to restrict Internet liberties in the name of security.
In particular Senator Eduardo Azeredo last year pushed a ‘cybercrime’ bill through the upper house of parliament, that includes measures to create fixed identities for ISPs and IP numbers – see this blog post from my host, Rodrigo Firmino back in October when this first came to light. The struggle over this bill has been going on since 2006 and there are a whole host of other controversial measures particularly around cracking mobile phones which also seem to be not much more than ways of putting more money in the pockets of telecoms companies… there are more details,links to legal analyses, and a translation of the law into English here.
Whatever the justifications or political objections – and there is a widespread campaign now ongoing as the bill still has not cleared the other chamber of parliament here – this would seem to be technically difficult, could effectively destroy the productive and collaborative use of the Internet in Brazil, but would also be very expensive with little actual benefit. I will be trying to arrange an interview with Senator Azeredo while I am here – as well as talking to the objectors.
Surveillance, Security and Social Control in Latin America Symposium
Some people are probably wondering what I am actually doing here. I sometimes feel like am not quite sure myself, but I will write more on my research over the next few days. One thing my hosts and I are doing is organising the first gathering of surveillance studies scholars in Brazil, the symposium on Surveillance, Security and Social Control in Latin America here at the Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, Curitiba. Hopefully this will form the nucleus of the Surveillance Studies Network in Latin America. We’ve selected 46 papers for presentation, although actually we could do with some more Spanish language contributions… we may issue another extended call soon.
European Parliament Agrees to Biometric Passports
The European Union’s plan to introduce biometric passports (with fingerprint images) will go ahead from the end of June after the European Parliament finally agreed to the proposal. This means that all states of the EU will now have to construct new databases of fingerprints for the entire population (including the UK and Ireland who, although outside the Schengen agreement on internal borders, voluntarily follow the same passport standards).
The Parliament did manage to introduce one major ammendment which rejected the European Commission’s plan to have children under 12 years-old fingerprinted as well – although some countries already do this. However, this vote was a rubber-stamping exercise by a ineffectual body.
The unreliability of fingerprint identification, which is mentioned in this report by PC Worldremains a major issue. Having talked to European Commission people at many different events, my general opinion of them is that, whilst well-meaning, they are seriously lacking technological expertise and knowledge of the research in the area, and generally fail to listen to those who know except where they will confirm their existing opinions. Like most governments.
Winnipeg gets CCTV
Well, another city authority is apparently paying no attention to the continuous stream of assessments of CCTV systems in practice. This time, it’s Winnipeg in Canada. The cheif of police is hopeful that the small 10-camera system will work and is already saying he hopes it will be extended… before we know whether it will or won’t work. As usual the story is nothing but boosterism and contains no contrary view at all. I can predict a stream of (police) anecdotes about crimes ‘solved’ by the cameras for a few months and how much safer the town is, and then a couple of years down the line, a report showing that nothing much has changed in reality…
In Brazil
Just a quick post to say that I’ve arrived in Curitiba safely – the Brazilians seem to have the nice kind of border controls that now seem long gone in the UK. It is raining incredibly hard now, and we already had a massive electrical storm that knocked out power in our neighborhood for a couple of hours.
Note: this post was interrupted by another power cut last night!
New Report on CCTV
Another new report shows that CCTV is not quite as effective as its advocates claim. The CITRIS report on the 4-year old, 70-camera, system in San Francisco, written by Jennifer King, Professor Deirdre Mulligan and Professor Steven Raphael shows that although there was a 20% reduction in crime against property crime in the areas covered by the cameras, crime against the person (robbery, mugging, assault, rape etc.) remained unaffected. This just adds the findings of many studies in the United Kingdom that show the same lack of preventative power from video surveillance.
Electronic Tagging for Kids
Another day, another ridiculous device that plays on fear… British company Lok8U (urgh…) has produced a digital watch that can be used to track the wearer through GPS. Now there are plenty of these types of devices about from Bladerunner’s GPS-enabled jackets to services for tracking another person’s mobile phone.
But there is something rather more ominous about this one. It’s not just a friendly tracking device. It is, so the makers’ claim, “the world’s first GPS locator that locates your child… not just the device.” In other words, the watch is designed so that it cannot be removed by the wearer. Never mind prisoners on probation, or offenders on behaviour orders, this is basically DIY electronic tagging for your kids. Of course it won’t stop any actual harm coming to the little darlings (and in any case it will probably be as easily removed as electronic tags are) but it might just make both you and they even more afraid of the world than you are already.
The Everyday Resilience of the City
The new book I’ve written with Jon Coaffee and Peter Rogers, The Everyday Resilience of the City, is available now from Palgrave. It’s based on the ESRC New Securities Challenge project we worked on over the last few years.
Off to Brazil…
Welcome to the new ‘Notes from the Ubiquitous Surveillance Society’, now on WordPress…old posts are still archived at Newcastle University for those who are interested.
I’m just about to leave for Brazil, were I will be a Visiting Scholar in the Postgraduate School of Urban Development at the Pontifical Catholic University of Curitiba, Brazil for three months.
In the meantime, there’s more to sort out than I have time for, but I will certainly get the relaunch of Surveillance & Society done…
ubisurv 