Surveillance Essay

In this essay there will be a focus on how digitalisation leads to routine surveillance, including a for and against argument for this. This includes points into how surveillance can have its up sides and down sides, and how it also effects our country and everyday lives.

Surveillance is the ongoing systematic collection, collation, and analysis of data and the timely distribution of information to those who need to know so that action can be taken. (Oxford University Press, 2017). Whilst there are many different ways of observing data, they all fall into to two categories; hard and soft surveillance. Soft surveillance seeks to invoke self-conscious efforts of public or private institutions to steer peoples’ choices in directions that will improve their own welfare. (Barrigar, 2006, p.2). This means that a company will try to sell you more things by giving your data to third parties. An example of this is when you search for a certain product/service on Google (or any over search engines), this then leads to advertisements popping up on third party websites such as Facebook or YouTube. Whereas hard surveillance is the way for traditional mechanisms where to access data, there is possibly two factor authentication, such as a pin number as a minimum. (Burling, 2007). This maybe using a pin and password to access your online banking account, the use of fingerprints to gain access to buildings or even scanning a card to show your attendance in university lectures and seminars.

One way that surveillance has progressed over the past couple of decades is through these surveillance methods going through digitalisation. Digitalisation is the integration of digital technologies into everyday life by the digitisation of everything that can be digitised. (IGI Global, n.d.) This might mean that the technologies that are used to check on citizens will have changed and been improved. One major example of digitalisation is smart phones; as most people now have phones, the theory of pocket-based surveillance is a new way that not only companies, but the State can use to form a collection of data of its civilians. Pocket-based surveillance is when your smart phone usage is being checked and tracked, which can also be applied to both hard and soft surveillance. (couldn’t find a reference for this) Pocket-based surveillance can also apply to the theory of quantified self, Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly invented the theory in 2007 and it can be defined as ‘quantified self movement, where people track and analyse aspects of their lives such as steps, travels, productivity, location, glucose, heart rate, coffee intake, sleep and more to understand and improve themselves’ (Rettberg, 2014, p.61). This concerns the technologies like smart watches, including Fitbits, Garmin and Apple Health, to name a few. There are thousands, if yet millions, of apps on smart phones in which involve self tracking, that make sure your daily moves are tracked. This could be pedometer apps, sleep tracking applications and even the Apple Health app which counts your steps and what amount of distance you have travelled, without you even noticing (which is also a type of soft and hard surveillance). There is lots of critique about quantified self as it is meaningless, useless data that could have some inaccuracies. Van Dijck (2014) stated that ‘the ideology of dataism shows characteristics of a widespread belief in the objective quantification and potential tracking of all kinds of human behaviour and sociality through online media technologies’. These (self) tracking apps conform to macro (large scale) and micro (small scale) dataveillance and also conforms to Taylorism, where these applications threatens to dehumanise the workplace, (The Economist, 2015) meaning that digitisation has led to jobs in this sector to be under threat. Again, digitalisation has led to surveillance to be heightened and always keeping track what you are doing on your smart phone, without users even knowing.

The use of soft and hard surveillance allows different companies in power to build a database of your likes and dislikes. This information may even be passed onto to other companies and the possibility to be accessed by the government. Since September 11, 2001 (the Twin Towers terrorist attack) more people than ever have become at least vaguely aware of the surveillance capacities of their governments and law enforcement agencies. The heightened and multiplied surveillance was to make the citizens and the State determined to prevent future attacks by upgrading security and surveillance systems. The Department of Homeland Security was established in the USA as a first response, setting off a ripple effect around the world, one result of which is that ‘security industries’ are now seen as an economic sector in their own right. (Lyon, 2007, p.12). In the UK, the Home Secretary is a senior official in government, who focuses on security and terrorism, legislative programme and expenditure issues. They are also the body concerned with protecting the country and the safety of the citizens. (GOV.UK) The current Home Secretary in the UK is Sajid Javid and the US Home Secretary is Kirstjen Nielsen.

Whilst some parts of hard and soft surveillance seem very scary, it is not always bad and sometimes it can be an enabling thing. Such as, healthcare, when you enrol to be a patient of the NHS or any other private medical company (e.g. private dentist), they will create an account for you which will include all your personal information and will create a database of your medical records and history. This database of information is really beneficial as when doctors and nurses might need to help you with your medical issues, they have all your information which is easily accessible. There are also many other good uses for organised and routine surveillance such as online banking, security at airports and when phone companies will bill you for each call you make in the past month. However, as the government have organised and routine surveillance, it means that some citizens of the country become paranoid and are now more aware than ever about what they Google or even what they do in public. Not only is the government surveilling what is happening online, but they are also focused on the day-to-day events that happen in the busy streets in town and city centres. According to Reolink (2018), there has been research that has found that a Londoner is likely to be caught on security camera over 300 times a day. If you don’t live in London it is found that many of these citizens are caught on camera about 70 times a day and that happens mostly in workplaces, shops or other public places with surveillance cameras installed. Whilst these numbers are big, the number is likely to increase because more and more residents are installing home security cameras outdoors to prevent and catch burglars. (Reolink, 2018) There are many benefits to having lots of CCTV cameras and the main advantage is to help the government and companies to prevent and solve issues of crime. In a recent occurrence, CCTV footage helped West Midlands Police see a horrific gun violence attack happen in Birmingham. Anib Khan was caught on CCTV firing a shotgun into a car where two victims unfortunately died. (BBC, 2018) However, there are many times in which this type of routine surveillance doesn’t work to the states advantage. This comes after a community support worker was stabbed in a Scottish hospital, it was found that the 24-hour CCTV cameras had not been working for several years. (BBC, 2018). It is clear that the government and state are very focused on organised and routine surveillance to protect the safety of citizens. Statistics to show this dedication is that it was found that £515 million was spent on CCTV security cameras in the past few years. (Reolink, 2018)

A recent article that was published by the Times (Gibb, 2018) showed that even though the UK Government is very dedicated to making sure that their routine and organised surveillance is working to the best that it can be there can be also many dark sides and disadvantages. The governments mass interception programmes which allows untargeted surveillance of people’s emails and internet use actually breaches individuals’ rights to privacy. The mass spying programme included Tempora, a bulk data store of all internet traffic and it is a catalogue including “a web browsing profile for every visible user on the internet”. It also included Black Hole, a repository of more than one trillion events including internet histories, email and instant message records, search engine queries and social media activity. Jim Killock added to the article that “in light of the judgement, it is even clearer that these powers to not meet the criteria for proportionate surveillance and that the UK government is continuing to breach our right to privacy”. Antonia Byatt, director of English PEN also added to the article stating “this judgment confirms that the government’s surveillance practices have violated not only our right to privacy but our right to freedom of expression too. Excessive surveillance discourages whistleblowing and discourages investigative journalism. The government must now take action to guarantee our freedom to write and to read freely online.” Digitalisation has allowed the government to these resources that access this type of information and it has massively backfired on them. As the government has been caught out, it now leads citizens of the country to question whether they have any privacy at all.

As well as hard and soft surveillance, one of the biggest ways to keep checks on citizens and users of the internet is through the use of dataveillance; a form of continuous surveillance through the use of (meta)data (Raley, 2013, pg.121-146). Dataveillance, a concept originally forged by Roger Clarke (1988), refers to the systematic monitoring of people or groups, by means of personal data systems, in order to regulate or govern their behaviour. (Esposti, 2014, p. 210). Although this concept was formed before the internet was invented, in the current climate dataveillance can mean that your internet search histories are all collected and then turned into algorithms on certain websites, e.g. your watch history on Netflix. However, Ashworth (et al: 2006) stated that “dataveillance assumes our online data is a true reflection of ourselves” which sometimes can be misleading. For example, if I watch one film or TV episode and Netflix that is based on murder, the algorithm that is created from your watch history might make you out to be a serial killer or interested in death. With its emphasis on data accumulation and analysis through recorded observation and analytical intervention, dataveillance is actively contributing to the demand for the automation of standardized tasks. Automation brings advantages to both consumers (Nawrocki 2013) and organizations (Hale 2012). This can be applied to Netflix and other sites such as online shopping pages; Amazon and eBay. In some instances, dataveillance is good for users as it provides automated advertisements and recommendations, just for you and your interests but it also makes you aware of what you are searching for and watching.

Overall, there are many advantages and disadvantages of surveillance, whether that be hard and soft surveillance, or even dataveillance. Digitalisation has helped the surveillance progress and grow and has helped the State to prevent major attacks and to help solve acts of crime.

Bibliography

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