I am going to be away this week in San Francisco (it’s a hard job but someone’s gotta do it…) at the American Society for Criminology conference. Anyway, I currently have no working laptop it is unlikely I’ll be posting here until at least next weekend.
One of the characteristics one would expect in a ‘surveillance society’ is that surveillance would become seen as a more ‘normal’ reaction to problems at all levels of society. So we start to see instructive stories about surveillance in all kinds of unexpected places. The ‘Home and Garden’ section of the Seattle Times newspaper carries a very interesting report this week on the use of relatively low-cost surveillance systems (some involving digital movement detection) used by ordinary middle-class homeowners to monitor their property and more specifically to catch their neighbours doing very unneighbourly things, such as tossing dog faeces into their gardens or trying to peek in through their windows.
In most of these cases, it seems the surveillance is primarily about defending property and based around specific observed anti-social behaviours. So, is this just a question of the legitimate defence of property rights and privacy (the legal view) or is this any kind of a social problem? I think it is certainly more complicated than just being a question of individuals empowering themselves with technology to do the right thing.
There is a big unvoiced problem behind all of this which is the decline of civility, neighbourliness and trust. It seems that most of the problems are interpersonal ones and would be ideally best resolved not through the secret gathering of information to inform a police investigation, public prosecution or private legal action, but through communication with the neighbours concerned. Richard Sennett, Jane Jacobs and many others have observed that we live increasingly in a ‘society of strangers’. The turn to surveillance not as a last resort but as a ‘natural’ first option, would seem to me not only a recognition of this, but a contribution to the wider problem. We don’t trust our neighbours so we watch them. But in watching them we diminish any remaining trust we had in them, and certainly they lose any trust they had in us.
This adds up. It is social not just interpersonal. It means people accept the diminution of general rights of privacy in public spaces and justifies the intrusion of all kinds of agencies into the lives of individuals and groups. This is only encouraged by government campaigns to watch out for suspicious activity, corporate pleas to all of us to be permanently on guard against ‘identity thieves’, ‘hackers’ and of course, celebrity magazines and websites that encourage a voyeuristic interest in the intimate lives of others.
I won’t be posting much for the next few days. My wife and I are going into hospital from the later today (16th December) for the birth of our child.
I would say ‘normal service will be resumed shortly’, but everyone tells me that this will be an entirely new normality…
You would think after 4 years of trials at Heathrow, that British airports would now be able to work out whether or not they could and more importantly, should, use the various varieties of body scanners that are now available. However Manchester Airport is holding another trial starting from now at its Terminal 2. At least it will give a chance for the public to say what they think. The scans are remote – i.e.: the officer observing the images is not on the airport floor, which prevents the kind of scenario we mentioned in our Report on the Surveillance Society of lewd remarks directed at passengers. Personally, I am rather less concerned about this rather abstract view of my body being seen briefly as I pass through an airport than I am about my financial details and personal life being traded between private companies, or about being under constant video surveillance in ordinary public space in the city. However, the images, although ghostly, are detailed enough that genitals, deformities, medical implants and so on can be seen, and if this story is to be believed it would seem that there is no provision for women’s images to be seen by a women alone and men’s only by a man. This will make it entirely unacceptable to some people, in particular members of certain religious groups. But the scans are – at least, for now – voluntary, in that passengers can refuse and have a traditional pat-down search instead.
However, this technology won’t be staying in the airports for long. I reported back in July on stories that terahertz wave scanning could soon be made to fit into portable cameras. That raises a whole different set of social, political and ethical questions…
(Thanks to Simon Reilly for sending me the link)
Just when you think that state surveillance in supposedly free countries could not sink any lower, it has been revealed that UK Border Agency is finding a pilot project into using DNA and isotope analysis to determine the origin of asylum-seekers. This is not a joke or a scare-story. It is a real project. Science Insider has the details here. The Agency is refusing to say who is doing this research for them, nor has it provided any references to studies that show that what they are proposing will work. It appears that most scientists working in the area think it is based on entirely faulty premises and there is no reason to believe it will work. That’s only a minor objection compared to the political and ethical ones of course. As the story in Science Insider points out the Border Agency seem to be making a fundamental (and totally racist) error in assuming that ethnicity and nationality are synonymous. And this research would probably not got past any university ethics committee, which makes one wonder what kind of screening or ethical procedures the Border Agency used, and indeed who would carry out such an obviously unsound piece of research. It’s another example of increasingly unaccountable arms-length agencies (which have proliferated in recent years) using the ‘technical’ as an excuse to bypass what should be a matter of high-level policy, and indeed something that so obviously harks back to the bad days of Europe’s racist and genocidal past that it beggars belief that any sane official would have let this get further than a suggestion in a meeting.
(thanks to Andy Gates for pointing me to the story)
I’m in the local paper here in Kingston today because the Canada Research Chairs program released the official news of the new appointments yesterday. They clearly don’t do proof-reading at The Whig-Standard (what a wonderfully historically and politically-redolent name that is!) and the photo makes me look like I am wearing a hair-piece(!), but apart from that… it’s all fine. And both the reporter, Peter Hendra, and the photogrpaher, Michael Lea, were a pleasure to deal with. Thanks, guys.
I’ve just got back from a very productive research trip to Japan and it’s only a couple of days to go until I leave again, this time permanently, which means I should at last say something about my new job. It also means I won’t be posting here much over the next week.
From September 1st, I will be Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) Associate Professor of Surveillance Studies in the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. My new boss will be a longtime colleague and one of the people I admire most in the world of surveillance studies, David Lyon.
It’s a big move and probably, for both personal and professional reasons, the last big move I will make. I have been in various parts of Newcastle University in the UK since my Masters back in 1996-7. I originally moved to the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape (APL) to work with the brilliant Professor Steve Graham who was running the innovative Centre for Urban Technology (CUT). I didn’t realise then that CUT was already on the verge of disappearing and was soon merged into the new, larger Global Urban Research Unit (GURU), and that Steve would leave to take up a Chair in Human Geography at Durham. However, that did mean that, having finished my postdoc, I could take over his teaching, which eventually led to a permanent lectureship. I’d wanted to move to Canada for a while though, and having got married to Kayo (that’s where the ‘Murakami’ comes from…), who also wanted the same things, we started looking and waiting for the right opportunities. It’s a bit odd leaving just after I’ve got the promotion I’d wanted, but you have to take the opportunities when they arise. It’s no judgement on Newcastle as a university or as a city (there isn’t a better one in England), but a life decision. My time at Newcastle has been great and there’s a number of people from the University I would like to thank in person and in public here:
Phillip Lowe from the Centre for Rural Economy, and Neil Ward (now Dean of Social Sciences at UEA) for giving me a break right at the start;
Rachel Woodward, previously of CRE and now in Geography, who was the perfect PhD supervisor;
Ella Ritchie from Politics, who gave me a job when I needed one in what was then the Department of Politics;
Steve Graham for mentoring me through a difficult period;
Geoff Vigar for being a great friend and latterly also, a most supportive Director of GURU;
and all the friends and colleagues in GURU, APL, and beyond, with whom I’ve shared both good times and intellectual stimulation over the years, in particular Alex Aurigi (who’ll soon be the new Head of the School of Architecture and Design at Plymouth), Andrew Ballantyne, Carlos Calderon, Stuart Cameron, Jon Coaffee (just appointed Chair of Spatial Planning at Birmingham!), Nathaniel Coleman, Lorna Dargan (now in the Careers Service), Anne Fry, David Haney, Jean Hillier, Marian Kyte, Rose Gilroy, Sara Gonzalez (now at Leeds Geography), Zan Gunn, Claire Haggett (now at Edinburgh Geography), Patsy Healey, Peter Kellett, Andy Law, Kim McCartney (the best administrator it has ever been my pleasure to work with), Ali Madanipour, Abid Mehmood, Frank Moulaert (now in Leuven), John Pendlebury, Neil Powe, Maggie Roe, Tim Shaw (now retired), Mark Shucksmith (OBE!), both Suzanne and Lucy Speak, Bill Tavernor, Ian Thompson, Graham Tipple, Tim Townshend, Bernadette Williams and Ken Willis. There’s others who I never got to know as well as I would have liked to have got to know better but there just hasn’t been the time – in particular, both Paolas, Martyn, and Armelle and Daniel. And apologies if there’s anyone else I’ve missed.
Finally, and most importantly of all, I’d like to thank our best friends and future godparents to our baby boy who’s due in December: Andrew Donaldson and Jane Midgley. Andrew, in particular, has been the person with whom I have probably shared most since we shared an office during our PhDs, and is in no small part responsible for any intellectual and personal progress I’ve made since that time.
I could probably blog all the time just about border surveillance and security issues… Aaron Martin has pointed out the reported latest new development on the Israel-Palestine border, which is an apparently arbitrarily used stamp which allows visitors to visit only the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and not Israel itself. Gaza remain closed to foreign visitors, and effectively an open-air prison camp.
It seems hard to define this as a ‘policy’ since the Israeli government officially deny that any order was given for the new stamp, despite the fact there is witness and photographic evidence of its use. Its purpose seems to be clearly to define for future reference, ‘enemies of Israel’ and to make it as hard as possible for those interested in the welfare of Palestinians to enter Israel.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a very good little report on locational privacy, “the ability of an individual to move in public space with the expectation that under normal circumstances their location will not be systematically and secretly recorded for later use.”
As usual for EFF, it is written in clear, understandable language and is free-to-access and download.
* I’m going to be away up to the mountains for a couple of days, so there won’t be any more posts here until Sunday at the earliest… next week is a slow one here in Japan as it is O-bon, the Buddhist festival of the dead, and many people go back to their family home and offices are generally closed for some or all of the week. I won’t be doing much in the way of interviewing, but I still have quite a few interviews and visits from the last two weeks to write up.
It’s official, I’ve been promoted to ‘Reader in Surveillance Studies’ (equivalent to Associate Professor) at Newcastle. Unfortunately I’m leaving very soon, but it was nice to get the recognition of the university, even if I can only hold the title for just one month!
I would just like to say a public thank-you to those who both supported and refereed the application – officially, I don’t know who you all are, but I have my suspicions! And also a big thanks to everyone involved with Surveillance & Society and the Surveillance Studies Network because, to be honest, I would be nowhere without all of you.
ubisurv 