“A Serious Political Economy of Security and Surveillance”
September 4, 2009 by SocProf and tagged Corporatism, Privacy, Social Interactions, Sociology, surveillance society, Technology
David Lyon (2009), Identifying Citizens: ID Cards as Surveillance, Cambridge: Polity Press.
“Missing from many accounts of new ID card systems is a political economy perspective that explores the corporate as well as the administrative and governmental aspects of national identification. And yet the facts are clear. Big business works with big government in what is now a booming security industry. In the USA, an industry expert for the business magazine, Intelligent Enterprise noted that ‘Homeland Security will help fuel an IT recovery. IT solution providers may one day look back on the War on Terror and be grateful for the opportunities born out of turmoil’. In September 2001 Oracle CEO Larry Ellison saw the possibilities for national IDs right away, before the dust had settled at Ground Zero. He offered the US Administration free software for a national ID system. Numerous others have followed his lead in seeking to become key providers of identification and other security technologies in the aftermath of 9/11. It is a lively marketplace and has induced the OECD to name a whole new field of enterprise, ‘the New Security Economy’. Sociologically, this means that ID card systems cannot properly be understood without a serious political economy of security and surveillance.” (64)
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