“We live in a surveillance society. It is pointless to talk about surveillance society in the future tense. In all the rich countries of the world everyday life is suffused with surveillance encounters, not merely from dawn to dusk but 24/7. It is not just that CCTV may capture our image several hundred times a day or that check-out clerks want to see our loyalty cards in the supermarket. It is that these systems represent a basic, complex infrastructure which assumes that gathering and processing personal data is vital to contemporary living.Today’s surveillance processes and practices bespeak a world where we know we’re not really trusted. Surveillance fosters suspicion. The employer who installs keystroke monitors at workstations, or GPS devices in service vehicles is saying that they do not trust their employees. And when parents start to use webcams and GPS systems to check on their teenagers’ activities, they are saying they don’t trust them either. Some of this, you object, may seem like simple prudence. But how far can this go?”
Not ARC's words - These are the summary findings of a 2006 “Report on the Surveillance Society” by the Surveillance Studies Network:
http://www.surveillance-studies.net/
The report is essential reading if you are undertaking a post-course essay which covers surveillance in any of its many manifestations.
