Video Surveillance and Social Control in a Comparative Perspective

Video Surveillance and Social Control in a Comparative Perspective PDF

Author: Fredrika Björklund

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 0415628601

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This edited collection reports the results of a comparative study of video surveillance/CCTV in Germany, Poland, and Sweden. It investigates how video surveillance as technologically mediated social control is affected by national characteristics, with a specific concern for recent political history. The book is motivated by asking what makes video surveillance "tick" in three very different cultural settings, two of which (Poland and Sweden) are virtually unexplored in the literature on surveillance. The selection of countries is motivated by an interest in societies with recent experiences of authoritarianism, and how they respond to the global trend towards intensified technical means of control. With thorough empirical studies, the book constitutes an important contribution to security studies, surveillance studies, and post-communist area studies.

Trust and Transparency in an Age of Surveillance

Trust and Transparency in an Age of Surveillance PDF

Author: Lora Anne Viola

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-29

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1000488446

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Investigating the theoretical and empirical relationships between transparency and trust in the context of surveillance, this volume argues that neither transparency nor trust provides a simple and self-evident path for mitigating the negative political and social consequences of state surveillance practices. Dominant in both the scholarly literature and public debate is the conviction that transparency can promote better-informed decisions, provide greater oversight, and restore trust damaged by the secrecy of surveillance. The contributions to this volume challenge this conventional wisdom by considering how relations of trust and policies of transparency are modulated by underlying power asymmetries, sociohistorical legacies, economic structures, and institutional constraints. They study trust and transparency as embedded in specific sociopolitical contexts to show how, under certain conditions, transparency can become a tool of social control that erodes trust, while mistrust—rather than trust—can sometimes offer the most promising approach to safeguarding rights and freedom in an age of surveillance. The first book addressing the interrelationship of trust, transparency, and surveillance practices, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of surveillance studies as well as appeal to an interdisciplinary audience given the contributions from political science, sociology, philosophy, law, and civil society. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Technocrime

Technocrime PDF

Author: Stéphane Leman-Langlois

Publisher: Willan

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1134002033

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This book is concerned with the concept of 'technocrime'. The term encompasses crimes committed on or with computers - the standard definition of cybercrime - but it goes well beyond this to convey the idea that technology enables an entirely new way of committing, combating and thinking about criminality, criminals, police, courts, victims and citizens. Technology offers, for example, not only new ways of combating crime, but also new ways to look for, unveil, and label crimes, and new ways to know, watch, prosecute and punish criminals. Technocrime differs from books concerned more narrowly with cybercrime in taking an approach and understanding of the scope of technology's impact on crime and crime control. It uncovers mechanisms by which behaviours become crimes or cease to be called crimes. It identifies a number of corporate, government and individual actors who are instrumental in this construction. And it looks at the beneficiaries of increased surveillance, control and protection as well as the targets of it. Chapters in the book cover specific technologies (e.g. the use of CCTV in various settings; computers, hackers and security experts; photo radar) but have a wider objective to provide a comparative perspective and some broader theoretical foundations for thinking about crime and technology than have existed hitherto. This is a pioneering book which advances our understanding of the relationship between crime and technology, drawing upon the disciplines of criminology, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, surveillance studies and cultural studies.

Transparency and Surveillance as Sociotechnical Accountability

Transparency and Surveillance as Sociotechnical Accountability PDF

Author: Deborah G. Johnson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-07-11

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1317631862

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Surveillance and transparency are both significant and increasingly pervasive activities in neoliberal societies. Surveillance is taken up as a means to achieving security and efficiency; transparency is seen as a mechanism for ensuring compliance or promoting informed consumerism and informed citizenship. Indeed, transparency is often seen as the antidote to the threats and fears of surveillance. This book adopts a novel approach in examining surveillance practices and transparency practices together as parallel systems of accountability. It presents the house of mirrors as a new framework for understanding surveillance and transparency practices instrumented with information technology. The volume centers around five case studies: Campaign Finance Disclosure, Secure Flight, American Red Cross, Google, and Facebook. A series of themed chapters draw on the material and provide cross-case analysis. The volume ends with a chapter on policy implications.

Actor-Network Theory and Crime Studies

Actor-Network Theory and Crime Studies PDF

Author: Dominique Robert

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-23

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1317185625

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Developed by Bruno Latour and his collaborators, actor-network theory (ANT) offers crimes studies a worthy intellectual challenge. It requires us to take the performativity turn, consider the role of objects in our analysis and conceptualize all actants (human and non-human) as relational beings. Thus power is not the property of one party, but rather it is an effect of the relationships among actants. This innovative collection provides a series of empirical and theoretical contributions that shows: ¢ The importance of conceptualizing and analyzing technologies as crucial actants in crime and crime control. ¢ The many facets of ANT: its various uses, its theoretical blending with other approaches, its methodological implications for the field. ¢ The fruitfulness of ANT for studying technologies and crime studies: its potential and limitations for understanding the world and revamping crime studies research goals. Students, academics and policy-makers will benefit from reading this collection in order to explore criminology-related topics in a different way.

CCTV

CCTV PDF

Author: Inga Kroener

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 1317169085

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Central state and non-covert surveillance began in earnest at the start of the twentieth century. By the start of the twenty-first century, the UK was one of the most surveilled societies on earth. This groundbreaking volume by Inga Kroener analyses the particular combination of factors that have created this surveillance state. Kroener argues against the inevitability of the rise of CCTV that is so often found in this literature, to map out the early history of CCTV, tracing its development from a tool for education, safety and transport during the 1950s, to one of politics in the 1970s and 1980s, to eventually become a tool of surveillance during the 1990s. Within this analysis, the complex role of the public in 'allowing' the widespread and rapid dissemination of CCTV is discussed and the representation of CCTV in the media is also studied. This volume will be of interest to all scholars working in the fields of surveillance studies; science, technology and society departments; and social historians more generally.

Information Communication Technology and Social Transformation

Information Communication Technology and Social Transformation PDF

Author: Hugh F. Cline

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-02-05

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1317703219

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This book argues that information communication technologies are not creating new forms of social structure, but rather altering long-standing institutions and amplifying existing trends of social change that have their origins in ancient times. Using a comparative historical perspective, it analyzes the applications of information communication technologies in relation to changes in norms and values, education institutions, the socialization of children, new forms of deviant and criminal behaviors, enhanced participation in religious activities, patterns of knowledge creation and use, the expansion of consumerism, and changing experiences of distance and time.

Digitizing Identities

Digitizing Identities PDF

Author: Irma van der Ploeg

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-11-19

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1317630068

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This book explores contemporary transformations of identities in a digitizing society across a range of domains of modern life. As digital technology and ICTs have come to pervade virtually all aspects of modern societies, the routine registration of personal data has increased exponentially, thus allowing a proliferation of new ways of establishing who we are. Rather than representing straightforward progress, however, these new practices generate important moral and socio-political concerns. While access to and control over personal data is at the heart of many contemporary strategic innovations domains as diverse as migration management, law enforcement, crime and health prevention, "e-governance," internal and external security, to new business models and marketing tools, we also see new forms of exclusion, exploitation, and disadvantage emerging.

The Globalization of American Infrastructure

The Globalization of American Infrastructure PDF

Author: Matthew Heins

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-01-29

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 131728237X

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This book gives an account of how the U.S. freight transportation system has been impacted and “globalized,” since the 1950s, by the presence of the shipping container. A globally standardized object, the container carries cargo moving in international trade, and it utilizes and fits within the existing transportation infrastructures of shipping, trucking and railroads. In this way it binds them together into a nearly seamless worldwide logistics network. This process occurs not only in ocean shipping and at ports, but also deep within national territories. In its dependence on existing infrastructural systems, though, the network of container movement as it pervades domestic space is shaped by the history and geography of the nation-state. This global network is not invariably imposed in a top-down manner—to a large degree, it is cobbled together out of national, regional and local systems. Heins describes this in the American context, examining the freight transportation infrastructures of railroads, trucking and inland waterways, and also the terminals where containers are transferred between train and truck. The book provides a detailed historical narrative, and is also theoretically informed by the contemporary literature on infrastructure and globalization.

The Fukushima Effect

The Fukushima Effect PDF

Author: Richard Hindmarsh

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-12-07

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1317568885

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The Fukushima Effect offers a range of scholarly perspectives on the international effect of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown four years out from the disaster. Grounded in the field of science, technology and society (STS) studies, a leading cast of international scholars from the Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the United States examine the extent and scope of the Fukushima effect. The authors each focus on one country or group of countries, and pay particular attention to national histories, debates and policy responses on nuclear power development covering such topics as safety of nuclear energy, radiation risk, nuclear waste management, development of nuclear energy, anti-nuclear protest movements, nuclear power representations, and media representations of the effect. The countries featured include well established ‘nuclear nations’, emergent nuclear nations and non-nuclear nations to offer a range of contrasting perspectives. This volume will add significantly to the ongoing international debate on the Fukushima disaster and will interest academics, policy-makers, energy pundits, public interest organizations, citizens and students engaged variously with the Fukushima disaster itself, disaster management, political science, environmental/energy policy and risk, public health, sociology, public participation, civil society activism, new media, sustainability, and technology governance.