SURVEILLANCE PERTAINING TO SOCIOLOGY

Definiton Of Surveillance Pertaining To Sociology

Definiton Of Surveillance Pertaining To Sociology

An organized crime figure is sentenced to prison based on telephone wiretaps. A member of a protest group is discovered to be a police informer. These are instances of traditional surveillance --defined by the dictionary as, “close observation, especially of a suspected person”. Yet surveillance goes far beyond its' popular association with crime and national security. To varying degrees it is a property of any social system --from two friends to a workplace to government. Consider for example a supervisor monitoring an employee's productivity; a doctor assessing the health of a patient; a parent observing his child at play in the park; or the driver of a speeding car asked to show her driver's license. Each of these also involves surveillance.

As Foucault lays it out, in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, much of the western world saw a sudden shift in the strategies on punishment. The system before this shift Foucault refers to as the "society of spectacle"; afterwards, "disciplinary society." Each system was a strategy of the hegemony of the time to exercise power and control over the lower classes, but they each used entirely different strategies and techniques.

Although written nearly 20 years ago, this text still remains largely relevant to today's issues concerning law enforcement tactics of surveillance. Marx, (1989) traces the history of undercover police practices and the resultant development of police organizations such as the FBI, DEA, etc., as well as their existent roles in society (surprisingly, this remains relatively unexplored) as well as the increase of undercover police work by offering the reader a very detailed account of recent and developing changes in the area, which Marx argues among other things tends to be scattered, invisible, involuntary, covert and deceptive. The latter of which is sometimes viewed as problematic because lying violates trust, which is central to relationships and the whole of civil society. (Marx, 1989)

The traditional forms of surveillance noted in the opening paragraph contrast in important ways with what can be called the new surveillance, a form that became increasingly prominent toward the end of the 20th century. The new social surveillance can be defined as, "scrutiny through the use of technical means to extract or create personal or group data, whether from individuals or contexts". Examples include: video cameras; computer matching, profiling and data mining; work, computer and electronic location monitoring; DNA analysis; drug tests; brain scans for lie detection; various self-administered tests and thermal and other forms of imaging to reveal what is behind walls and enclosures. The use of "technical means" to extract and create the information implies the ability to go beyond what is offered to the unaided senses or voluntarily reported. Much new surveillance involves an automated process and extends the senses and cognitive abilities through using material artifacts or software. Using the broader verb “scrutinize” rather than “observe” in the definition, calls attention to the fact that contemporary forms ...