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Return to the Current Issue Index
Torin Monahan and Tyler Wall - Somatic Surveillance: Corporeal Control through Information Networks
Somatic surveillance is the increasingly invasive technological monitoring of and intervention into body functions. Within this type of surveillance regime, bodies are recast as nodes on vast information networks, enabling corporeal control through remote network commands, automated responses, or self-management practices. In this paper, we investigate three developments in somatic surveillance: nanotechnology systems for soldiers on the battlefield, commercial body-monitoring systems for health purposes, and radio-frequency identification (RFID) implants for identification of hospital patients. The argument is that in present and projected forms, somatic surveillance systems abstract bodies and physiological systems from social contexts, facilitating hyper-individualized control and the commodification of life functions.
Anthony Minnaar - The implementation and impact of crime prevention / crime control open street Closed-Circuit Television surveillance in South African Central Business Districts The use and implementation of public open street Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) surveillance systems in Central Business Districts (CBDs) in South Africa solely for the purpose of crime control (reducing street crime) or crime prevention (deterrence) has in South Africa been a relatively new intervention within the broader context of crime prevention programmes. One of the drawbacks to its implementation for this purpose has been its costs and the inability of the South African Police Service to fund such implementation in the light of other more pressing priorities and demands on its finances and resources. However, the initiative to start implementing and linking CCTV surveillance systems in CBDs in the major metropolitan cities of South Africa to local police services was taken in the mid-1990s by Business Against Crime of South Africa (BACSA). This article, using case study overviews from four South African CBD areas (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria (Tshwane) and Durban), traces CCTV use as crime control or prevention surveillance, how they were implemented, the rationale behind their implementation and the operationalising of them in terms of preventing street crime and its uses in other surveillance. In addition it also looks at this initiative from the perspective of the growth and commercialisation of the management of these services, and the co-operation and co-ordination structures in partnership with the South African Police Service (SAPS). Furthermore, it reviews the purported impact on the reduction of crime of these systems in CBDs and finally the application of public crime surveillance by the CCTV control room operators (private security) in co-operation with the police (response team) and the role it plays in the observation, recording, arrest and conviction of suspects.
William Bloss - Escalating U.S. Police Surveillance after 9/11: an Examination of Causes and Effects In recent years U.S. police have been given greater surveillance powers in response to perceived threats from crime, drugs, and terrorism. Several legal and criminal events have facilitated a reevaluation of the balance between police surveillance authority and civil privacy protection. In the post-9/11 era, changes in federal law, court interpretation of privacy safeguards, and technological advances have expanded the circumstances and methods by which the police may engage in surveillance of civil activities. This paper examines the factors contributing to the escalation in police surveillance and its effects on privacy rights and civil life. The analysis suggests that increasing police surveillance has diminished individual privacy protections and impacted aspects of civil life.
This paper examines the processes that bring about the creation of new public-space CCTV schemes. Through an appraisal of the grounded activities of the practitioners who make decisions over CCTV, the role of agency is identified as a particularly strong, yet relatively neglected, influence on its implementation. Moreover, beyond dichotomised notions of central structures and local agency, an understanding is developed of the complex interaction between the individual actors involved in CCTV dissemination and the political context in which they operate. In doing so, public policy is identified as the vehicle through which camera surveillance systems become installed and disseminated throughout public space. Moreover, these various forces of structure and agency become filtered through identifiable networks of policy-makers, comprising ‘responsibilised’ actors who oversee the deployment of CCTV. This analysis is used to revisit a range of administrative and theoretical understandings of surveillance, including: citations of CCTV as an evaluated response to crime; the attribution of power- and interest-based agendas to its implementation; and accounts which locate CCTV expansion within various evolving societal processes. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork data gathered during doctoral research, the paper considers the activities of practitioners at a local level and identifies crucial contexts, drivers and negotiations on which expanding surveillance is contingent. Ultimately, it is argued that the process of CCTV installation – from conception to material implementation – is disrupted and mediated by a range of micro-level operations, obligations, processes, managerial concerns (particularly conflict resolution and resource issues), structures and agency, and the indirect influence of central government. These not only arbitrate over whether the CCTV becomes installed, but also generate a range of additional uses for the cameras, many of which are performed before they are even switched on. This emphasises the need to consider the processes that enable and constrain the actions of those making decisions over CCTV and demonstrates how no single interest becomes solely participant in the deployment of surveillance. Finally, because of the centrality and contingency of both human agency and the structural contexts in which it operates in determining the installation of CCTV, questions arise concerning the importance of integrative sociological theories in understanding the deployment of surveillance.
Amber Marks - Drug Detection Dogs and the Growth of Olfactory Surveillance: Beyond the Rule of Law?
Since the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998 in the United Kingdom, a significant expansion in the use of drug detection dogs, the most common tool of olfactory surveillance, has taken place with relatively little debate, without specific legislative authority and in the absence of a code of practice. In contrast, the use of the dogs in New South Wales, Australia and in the United States has been the subject of Supreme Court decisions, and in New South Wales, of parliamentary legislation and an independent review by the New South Wales Ombudsman. This paper will argue that the difficult legal issues raised by olfactory surveillance are similar to those raised by other forms of ‘new surveillance’ in the criminal justice system and that the failure of the legal system to deal with these issues in the case of olfactory surveillance could amount to a dangerous precedent for the regulation of other surveillance technologies.
