Surveillance and Democracy

This collection represents the first sustained attempt to grapple with the complex and often paradoxical relationships between surveillance and democracy. Is surveillance a barrier to democratic processes, or might it be a necessary component of democracy? How has the legacy of post 9/11 surveillance developments shaped democratic processes? As surveillance measures are increasingly justified in terms of national security, is there the prospect that a shadow "security state" will emerge? How might new surveillance measures alter the conceptions of citizens and citizenship which are at the heart of democracy? How might new communication and surveillance systems extend (or limit) the prospects for meaningful public activism?
Surveillance has become central to human organizational and epistemological endeavours and is a cornerstone of governmental practices in assorted institutional realms. This social transformation towards expanded, intensified and integrated surveillance has produced many consequences. It has also given rise to an increased anxiety about the implications of surveillance for democratic processes; thus raising a series of questions – about what surveillance means, and might mean, for civil liberties, political processes, public discourse, state coercion and public consent – that the leading surveillance scholars gathered here address.

Kevin D. Haggerty is editor of the Canadian Journal of Sociology and book review editor of the international journal Surveillance & Society. He is professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Alberta, Canada.
Minas Samatas is associate professor of political sociology in the Sociology Department at the University of Crete, Greece, and author of Surveillance in Greece: From anticommunist to the consumer surveillance, Pella, NY, 2004.

1. Surveillance and Democracy: An Unsettled Relationship, Kevin D. Haggerty and Minas Samatas Section I: Theorizing Surveillance and Democracy 2.Surveillance and Transparency as Sociotechnical Systems of Accountability, Deborah Johnson and Kent Wayland 3. Identification, Surveillance and Democracy, David Lyon 4. Democracy and Its Visibilities, Andrea Mubi Brighenti 5. Periopticon: Control Beyond Freedom and Coercion - and Two Possible Advancements in the Social Sciences, Michalis Lianos Section II Surveillance Policies and Practices of Democratic Governance 6. Surveillance as Governance: Social Inequality and the Pursuit of Democratic Surveillance, Torin Monihan 7. Democracy, Surveillance and ‘Knowing What’s Good for You’: The Private Sector Origins of Profiling and the Birth of ‘Citizen Relationship Management, Kirstie Ball, Elizabeth Daniel, Sally Dibb and Maureen Meadows 8. The Impact of Communications Data Retention on Fundamental Rights and Democracy: The case of the EU Data Retention Directive, Lilian Mitrou 9. ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ as European Union security policy: On the trail of the ‘NeoConOpticon’, Ben Hayes Section III Case Studies in the Dynamics of Surveillance and Democracy 10. A Trans-systemic Surveillance: The Legacy of Communist Surveillance in the Digital Age, Maria Los 11. Balancing Public Safety and Security Demands with Civil Liberties in a New Constitutional Democracy: The Case of Post-1994 South Africa and the Growth of Residential Security and Surveillance Measures, Anthony Minnaar 12. The Greek Olympic Phone Tappings Scandal: A Defenceless State and a Weak Democracy, Minas Samatas 13. Surveillance and Democracy in the Digital Enclosure, Jennifer R. Whitson