Surveillance Society 2.0 – NeoConOpticon
October 21st, 2009 by SocProf and tagged Global Governance, Neoliberalism, Privacy, Public Policy, Risk Society, Social Deviance, Sociology, surveillance society, Technology
The apparatus of surveillance society is reaching further and deeper into many domains of life and it is very clear that it is not about protecting us against amorphous threats but about controlling us. And the surveillance-industrial complex stands at the ready to assist the neoliberal state to reach new levels:
Technology Boost for Orwell: EU to Monitor Deviant Behavior in Fight against Terrorism – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International via kwout
Needless to say, the definition of what counts as “deviant behavior” can be quite variable and elastic and one can already see the multiplicity of applications in a variety of settings. This is pretty chilling.
Technology Boost for Orwell: EU to Monitor Deviant Behavior in Fight against Terrorism – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International via kwout
“Crime and riots”, huh? How about political demonstrations against the advances of the neoliberal agenda? Does that count as “deviant behavior” to be controlled? The absurdity of it all, of course, is these new technologies might provide an enormous amount of data but very little information unless a lot of people get recruited to sift through these mountains of behavioral data and find the overactive-bladdered, cold-nosed terrorist.
You can find the NeoConOpticon report here (pdf version). What does neoconopticon mean? Of course, it is reminiscent of Bentham’s Panopticon, so often reference as part of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. NeoConOpticon is the version 2.0:
See also the blog that will keep track of this program:
NeoConOpticon via kwout
I am sure they will not run out of things to talk about.
This, of course, correlates with Loïc Wacquant’s idea that massive surveillance (prisonfare and workfare as part of that) is the way in which the neoliberal state authoritatively reasserts itself once faced with the Habermasian crisis of legitimacy. The state may no longer provide a safety net or decent economic conditions, but at least, it can preserve our way of life against the enemies from without (terrorists) and those from within (criminals and socially irresponsibles)
It is actually quite disconcerting that these developments take place without much protests from the populations of Western countries as their economic security and democratic freedoms are being eaten away at, ever so incrementally.
Heck, we don’t even have to bend over anymore:
Posted in Global Governance, Globalization, Privacy, Public Policy, Risk Society, Social Deviance, Sociology, Surveillance Society, Technology | No Comments »
