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Return to the Current Issue Index
Gavin Smith - Exploring Relations between Watchers and Watched in Control(led) Systems: Strategies and Tactics
Using ethnographic observation within a number of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) control rooms as evidence, this paper documents the apparently trivial but subjectively meaningful types of technologically mediated interaction taking place between CCTV operators and those watched. It examines the operators’ interpretations of the various incidents, individuals and social realities observed. In so doing, the author suggests a number of interesting social-phenomenological processes are occurring. These include: the formation and existence of disembodied relationships between watchers and watched across distanciated CCTV surveillance networks; an operator gaze incorporating care, control and creativity; the existence of hermeneutical narrative constructions among the operators. The latter practice can be empirically demonstrated through the operators’ creation of ‘celebrity characters’, their attribution of pseudo-identities for cameo ‘guest stars’ and their playful characterisation of the framed action taking place in the spaces under observation. It is argued that such informal tactics, employed to both entertain and relieve pressure, are the unintended outcome of systemic strategies of control designed to induce conformity. They allow the operators to make sense of, bring meaning to and cope with relentless, often disjointed, imagery and with the emotional strain of the CCTV workplace culture. The paper also suggests that tactics are not limited to the watchers. The watched or Stars of CCTV appear to employ methods in a similar bid to manoeuvre themselves around the cameras. By considering the practices of watchers and watched, it is argued more generally that CCTV technology is a social medium, the people, places and objects watched functioning not simply as passive ‘objects of information’, but also as active ‘subjects of communication’.
Recent years have witnessed an increase in new ‘technologies of control’ that decrease reliance upon labour intensive forms of policing. The electronic monitoring of offenders represents just one section of the expanding industry in ‘techno-corrections’ that incorporates elements of the private security, military and telecommunications industries. The surveillance capacity generated by these industries has diverted attention away from the role of human agency in the implementation of surveillance services. This paper is concerned with the reliance of ‘technologies of control’ upon ‘street-level surveillance’ which involves a shift in focus away from the capacity of surveillance technologies and towards the actions of agents of control, offenders and the local community, in ensuring the successful operation of electronic monitoring services.
Krista Boa - Privacy Outside the Castle: Surveillance Technologies and Reasonable Expectations of Privacy in Canadian Judicial Reasoning 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.
