This week I will be mostly preparing for and attending this symposium which we (Rodrigo Firmino, Fernanda Bruno, Nelson Arteaga Botello and myself) have been organising. Today that means looking after our main keynote speaker, David Lyon…
We have a great set of papers and around 100 people coming mainly from Brazil. This does mean that I will not be posting a lot here, although I will try to note any really interesting papers and presentations.
The largest ever British meeting of people against the surveillance society took place in London yesterday. The Convention on Modern Liberty site has (unedited) transcripts of some of the speeches an debates including author, Phillip Pullman’s excellent keynote. The Guardian/Observer website also has a strongly supportive report and there is an editorial in the The Observer, which argues that “whether by complacency, arrogance or cynical design, the government has erected an edifice of legal constraint to liberty that would suit the methods and aims of a despot.”
It was a shame that I couldn’t be there but I like to think I played some small part in the process that has led here, and will hopefully this campaign will continue to go on to forcing a retreat by the state from its illiberal course. This meeting is merely the beginning of the convention…
There will be a very interesting -looking conference in Amsterdam, 11-12 June, called Datawars: Fighting Terrorism through Data. According to the call for papers, the workshop will be held at the University of Amsterdam in June and will explore the ethical and political implications of the new data-led approach to security, risk and fighting terrorism in Europe. Suggested topics include:
It´s part of a project run by a couple of excellent researchers, Louise Amoore and Marieke de Goede, of the Universities of Durham and Amsterdam respectively (who probably don´t remember but I worked in an tiny attic office opposite them in the Politics Dept at Newcastle for a few months just after my PhD!). I might go as I have been doing some work on attempts to create global databases, called ´From Echelon to Server in the Sky´, but the timing might be awkward (unfortunately I can´t reveal why yet…).
If I wasn’t still in Brazil in March, I would be at my friend and colleague, Torin Monahan‘s latest workshop, on Surveillance and Empowerment at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The aim is to reverse the usual way all too many of us think about surveillance as negative to “explore the potential of surveillance for individual autonomy and dignity, fairness and due process, community cooperation and empowerment, and social equality.” It’s a way of thinking that I have been trying to consider for a while, however unpopular it is with some Surveillance Studies scholars and anti-surveillance activists… should be controversial in the most productive way – and Torin’s workshops are always productive.
In February, the Convention on Modern Liberty will be taking place in cities across the UK and online. Unfortunately I will still be in Brazil and there are no listed events in Newcastle, which is a great shame – I would certainly have been organising some. This is an issue that tends to cross party lines and unite people of all political persuasions, so I hope as many people as possible in the UK get involved…
The Guardian newspaper´s Comment is Free site also has a special section set up for the event called Liberty Central. Surveillance Studies Network and Surveillance & Society were supposed to be listed there (they contacted us), but they aren´t yet…
If I’d known about it, I would have been here at Campus Party 2009 this week. Just the biggest computing event in the world, right on my doorstep, and I hadn’t even noticed, and what is more they had a panel on security… oh well, I can’t be everywhere!
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.
ubisurv 