A CRITICAL CONTRIBUTION TO
(INTERNET) SURVEILLANCE STUDIES
THOMAS ALLMER
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
Abstract
Although there are a lot of other features in contemporary society such as information, neoliberalism, globalization, capital, etc., surveillance in general and Internet surveillance in
particular are crucial phenomena. The overall aim of A Critical Contribution to (Internet)
Surveillance Studies is to clarify how we can theorize and systemize economic surveillance
(on the Internet). Surveillance studies scholars like David Lyon (1994, 119-158; 2001, 40-44)
stress that economic surveillance such as monitoring consumers or the workplace are central
aspects of surveillance societies. The approach that is advanced in this work recognizes the
importance of the role of the economy in contemporary surveillance societies.
This work constructs theoretically founded typologies in order to systemize the existing literature of surveillance studies and to analyze examples of surveillance. Therefore, it mainly is a
theoretical approach combined with illustrative examples. This thesis contains a systematic
discussion of the state of the art of surveillance and clarifies how different notions treat economic aspects of surveillance. In this work it is argued that the existing literature is insufficient for studying economic surveillance (on the Internet). In contrast, a typology of surveillance in the modern economy, which is based on foundations of a political economy approach, allows to systemize economic surveillance and to analyze surveillance in the spheres
of production, circulation, and consumption. Constructing a theoretically founded typology of
economic surveillance is important in order to undertake a systematic analysis of surveillance
in the modern economy.
Finally, some political recommendations are drawn in order to overcome economic (online)
surveillance. The thesis can be fruitful for scholars who want to undertake a systematic analysis of surveillance in general and Internet surveillance in particular in the modern economy
and who want to study the field of surveillance critically.
Keywords: surveillance studies, Panopticon, information society research, Internet, political
economy, economic surveillance, workplace surveillance, pre-employment screening, intellectual property surveillance, consumer surveillance
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
Contents
1.
Introduction .................................................................................................................. - 1 -
2.
Foundations of surveillance theory............................................................................. - 6 2.1. Foucault’s notion of surveillance and the Panopticon ............................................ - 7 2.2. Non-panoptic notions of surveillance ................................................................... - 13 2.3. Panoptic notions of surveillance ........................................................................... - 21 2.4. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. - 28 -
3.
A critical contribution to surveillance studies ......................................................... - 35 3.1. The spheres of the economy .................................................................................. - 36 3.2. Surveillance in the spheres of the economy .......................................................... - 38 3.2.1. Surveillance in the sphere of production ........................................................ - 38 3.2.2. Surveillance in the sphere of circulation ......................................................... - 47 3.2.3. Surveillance in the sphere of consumption ..................................................... - 51 3.3. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. - 56 -
4.
Foundations of Internet surveillance theory............................................................ - 61 4.1. Non-panoptic notions of Internet surveillance ...................................................... - 62 4.2. Panoptic notions of Internet surveillance .............................................................. - 70 4.3. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. - 79 -
5.
A critical contribution to Internet surveillance studies .......................................... - 85 5.1. Internet surveillance in the sphere of production .................................................. - 86 5.2. Internet surveillance in the sphere of circulation .................................................. - 90 5.3. Internet surveillance in the sphere of consumption ............................................... - 96 5.4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................... - 102 -
6.
Conclusion................................................................................................................. - 104 -
Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... - 115 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
List of Figures
Figure 1: Panopticon of the penitentiary at Stateville, United States, twentieth century
(Foucault 1995, 169) ............................................................................................. - 11 Figure 2: Production, circulation, and consumption as dialectically mediated spheres
of the modern economy......................................................................................... - 36 Figure 3: Watch book for time study (Taylor 2003, 84) ..................................................... - 42 Figure 4: The television audience (Jhally and Livant 1986, 125) ....................................... - 55 Figure 5: Kroll’s advertising for background screening services (Kroll 2010) .................. - 91 Figure 6: Carratu International brochure of employee screening services (Carratu
International) .............................................................................................................. 92
Figure 7: Traffic rank for Porn Hub (Alexa) ....................................................................... - 98 Figure 8: Illustration of Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008 (Microreviews
2009) ................................................................................................................... - 100 Figure 9: A critical contribution to (Internet) surveillance studies ................................... - 104 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
List of Tables
Table 1: Foundations of surveillance theory ....................................................................... - 29 Table 2: Economic aspects in panoptic notions of surveillance.......................................... - 34 Table 3: The mill-owner’s benefit (MEW 23, 255) ............................................................ - 39 Table 4: Time study note sheet (for excavation of earth with wheelbarrows)
(Taylor 2003, 83) .................................................................................................. - 44 Table 5: Groups of personal information in the application process (Gandy 1993, 63) ..... - 50 Table 6: Surveillance in the economy ................................................................................. - 56 Table 7: Differences between traditional and new surveillance (Gary Marx 2002, 28f.) ... - 58 Table 8: Employees’ experiences with new types of surveillance (cf. Stanton and Weiss
2000, 429) ............................................................................................................. - 65 Table 9: Motivational factors for using the Web (Kaye and Johnson 2002, 61) ................ - 67 Table 10: Foundations of Internet surveillance theory........................................................ - 80 Table 11: Economic aspects in panoptic notions of Internet surveillance .......................... - 83 Table 12: Top sites on the web (Alexa) .............................................................................. - 97 Table 13: Google services (updated by the author, based on Stalder and Mayer 2009,
101-105) ................................................................................................................ - 99 Table 14: Internet surveillance in the economy ................................................................ - 102 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
1.
Introduction
Surveillance has notably increased in the last decades of modern society. Surveillance studies
scholars like David Lyon (1994) or Clive Norris and Gary Armstrong (1999) stress that we
live in a surveillance society. Although there are a lot of other features in contemporary society such as information, neoliberalism, globalization, capital, etc., surveillance in general and
Internet surveillance in particular are crucial phenomena. In order to get a first impression of
(Internet) surveillance, some illustrative examples can be given:
According to the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute (2008) that
undertake an annual quantitative survey about electronic monitoring and surveillance with
approximately 300 U.S. companies, “more than one fourth of employers have fired workers
for misusing e-mail and nearly one third have fired employees for misusing the Internet“.
More than 40% of the companies monitor e-mail traffic of their workers, and 66% of corporations monitor Internet connections. In addition, most companies use software to block nonwork related websites such as sexual or pornographic sites, game sites, social networking
sites, entertainment sites, shopping sites, and sport sites. The American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute (2008) also stress that companies “tracking content, keystrokes,
and time spent at the keyboard ... store and review computer files ... monitor the blogosphere
to see what is being written about the company, and ... monitor social networking sites.“
In addition, the New Yorker risk consulting company Kroll undertakes off- and online preemployment screening on a large-scale level. Kroll is an operating unit of the insurance and
professional services firm Marsh & McLennan, which is the 832nd biggest company worldwide (cf. Forbes 2009). Kroll offers background screening services of new job applicants for
companies and government agencies in order to check information such as address histories,
education and employment histories, media coverage, credit reports, civil and bankruptcy
records, criminal records, driving histories, liens and judgment histories, and professional
licenses and certifications (cf. Kroll 2010). If Kroll realizes a company’s application procedure, the job candidates have to fill out a detailed questionnaire on the Internet as part of their
application, which is sent invisibly to Kroll (cf. Searle 2006, 343). “Kroll has pioneered a secure Internet-based system that collects information from job candidates and provides clients
with project updates and final reports. Kroll’s Applicant Submission System allows job can-1-
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
didates to fill out a detailed questionnaire online and submit it securely to Kroll.” (Kroll 2010)
In order to investigate job candidates, Kroll “searches primary sources (including electronic
resources), visits courthouses throughout the country to retrieve and review public documents,
and conducts telephone interviews with a job candidate’s professional and personal references” (Kroll 2010).
Since 1996, the web information company Alexa Internet (a subsidiary company of Amazon)
has been publishing web traffic reports, global rankings, and top sites lists by country and
category of those users who have downloaded (over 10 million) and installed the Alexa
toolbar into their browser. Alexa Internet gathers detailed data and offers site info in order to
analyze a particular website or to compare different websites. These instruments are essential
for advertisers in order to know how popular certain sites are and to make online advertising
more effective and efficient. For instance, the popular pornographic video sharing website
Porn Hub has been monitored by Alexa Internet since 2008 and is currently the 54th most
visited website on the Internet. The Alexa traffic rank indicates how popular the site is including reach, pageviews, pageviews/user, bounce (percentage of visits to the website that consist
of a single page turn), time on site, and search. The audience data show what kind of users are
on the website and lists visitors by country: 29.6% of Porn Hub visitors are located in the
United States, 5.3% in the United Kingdom, 4.6% in France and Germany, and 4.1% in India.
Also interesting is that the clickstream sub-section shows which sites users visited immediately before and after pornhub.com: 6.56% of the users visited google.com, 5.27% partypoker.com, 5.24% livejasmin.com, 3.58% pornhublive.com, and 3.55% facebook.com before the
Porn Hub website. 7.58% of the users visited partypoker.com, 6.53% livejasmin.com, 5.18%
pornhublive.com, 4.86% streamate.com, and 4.19% google.com after the Porn Hub website.
The overall aim of A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies is to clarify how
we can theorize and systemize such phenomena. Surveillance studies scholars like Lyon
(1994, 119-158; 2001, 40-44) accentuate that economic surveillance such as monitoring consumers or the workplace are central aspects of surveillance societies. The approach that is
advanced in this work recognizes the importance of the role of the economy in contemporary
surveillance societies. For doing so, the following thematically grouped research questions are
subject to this work:
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
Foundations of surveillance theory
 How is surveillance defined in the existing literature?
 What are commonalties and differences of various notions of surveillance?
 What are advantages and disadvantages of such definitions?
A critical contribution to surveillance studies
 Which theory provides a typology in order to systemize surveillance in the modern economy?
 What are characteristics of surveillance in the spheres of production, circulation,
and consumption?
 What are differences between surveillance and Internet surveillance?
Foundations of Internet surveillance theory
 How is Internet surveillance defined in the existing literature?
 What are commonalties and differences of various notions of Internet surveillance?
 What are advantages and disadvantages of such definitions?
A critical contribution to Internet surveillance studies
 Which theory provides a typology in order to systemize Internet surveillance in
the modern economy?
 What are characteristics of Internet surveillance in the spheres of production,
circulation, and consumption?
This thesis can be fruitful for scholars who want to undertake a systematic analysis of surveillance in general and Internet surveillance in particular in the modern economy and who want
to study the field of surveillance critically. A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance
Studies deals with surveillance in modern societies. This work is understood as a critical contribution to surveillance studies insofar as it is based on the foundations of a critical political
economy approach. The term Internet refers to the global system of computer networks that
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
use the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP). Emerged in the 1970s, the Internet is a network of
networks which includes systems such as the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure of electronic mail. According to The Oxford Dictionary of English, the term surveillance
originated from the French sur- “over” + veiller “watch” and from the Latin vigilare “keep
watch” in the early 19th century (cf. Soanes and Stevenson 2005). The concept of the modern
economy means the capitalistic economy of modern societies. The modern society refers to a
historical period, which has begun with the Enlightenment and lasts up to today.
This thesis constructs theoretically founded typologies in order to systemize the existing literature of surveillance studies and to analyze examples of surveillance. Therefore, it mainly is a
theoretical approach combined with illustrative examples, advancing from the abstract to the
concrete level. Based on the research questions and the described methodology, the following
general and detailed structure can be outlined:
Foundations of surveillance theory are analyzed in the second chapter, a critical contribution
to the analysis of surveillance in the modern economy is treated in the third chapter, foundations of Internet surveillance theory are studied in the fourth chapter, a critical contribution to
the analysis of Internet surveillance in the modern economy is drawn in the fifth chapter, and
a conclusion is given in the sixth chapter.
Chapter two analyzes how surveillance is defined in the existing literature, what the different
notions of surveillance have in common and what distinguishes them from one another, and
what advantages and disadvantages such definitions have. In addition, chapter two elucidates
how different notions treat economic aspects of surveillance and clarifies if there is a gap in
the existing literature in order to study surveillance in the modern economy.
The specific economic mode of surveillance is studied in chapter three. Based on the foundations of a political economy approach, the distinction of production, circulation, and consumption within the economy is introduced in order to establish a typology of surveillance in
the economy and to study surveillance in the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption. Constructing a theoretically founded typology of economic surveillance is important in
order to undertake a systematic analysis of surveillance in the modern economy. That chapter
concludes with a discussion of the emergence of the Internet as new surveillance technology.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
Chapter four analyzes how Internet surveillance is defined in the existing literature, what
commonalties and differences of various notions of online surveillance exist, and what advantages and disadvantages such definitions have. Furthermore, chapter four describes how
different notions deal with economic surveillance on the Internet and makes clear if there is a
gap in the existing literature in order to study Internet surveillance in the modern economy.
The specific economic mode of Internet surveillance is studied in chapter five. Based on the
distinction of surveillance in the economy into the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption from chapter three, a typology of online surveillance in the economy can be constructed. Economic surveillance on the Internet in the spheres of production, circulation, and
consumption will be outlined.
Chapter six concludes with a summary and makes some political recommendations in order to
overcome (Internet) surveillance in the modern economy.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
2.
Foundations of surveillance theory
Since Michel Foucault has published his book Surveiller et punir in French in 1975 and in
English in 1977, the amount of literature on surveillance has increased enormously and represents a diffuse and complex field of research. Lyon (1994, 6-7) stresses: “Michel Foucault’s
celebrated, and contentious, historical studies of surveillance and discipline had appeared that
mainstream social theorists began to take surveillance seriously in its own right”. David Murakami Wood (2003, 235) emphasizes that ”for Surveillance Studies, Foucault is a foundational thinker and his work on the development of the modern subject, in particular Surveillir
et Punir (translated as Discipline and Punish), remains a touchstone for this nascent transdisciplinary field.” Corresponding to Google Scholar, Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish
(1977) is almost cited 15 thousand times. According to the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Pryor
2006, 898) and to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Gutting 1998, 708-713), Foucault is one of the most important historians and philosophers of the 20th century with wide
influence in different disciplines.
The overall aim of this chapter is to elucidate how surveillance is defined in the existing literature, what the different notions of surveillance have in common and what distinguishes them
from one another, and what advantages and disadvantages such definitions have. For doing
so, Foucault’s understanding of surveillance and the idea of the Panopticon are introduced
(section one). Based on these findings, section two and three contain a systematic discussion
of the state of the art of surveillance by establishing a typology of the existing literature and
discussing commonalties and differences. For analyzing the existing literature on a more abstract level and identifying advantages and disadvantages, it is essential to discuss commonalties and differences and to find certain typologies. Finally, section four gives a summary, describes how different notions treat economic aspects of surveillance and clarifies if there is a
gap in the existing literature.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
2.1.
Foucault’s notion of surveillance and the Panopticon
Foucault (1995; 2002; 2003; 2007) analyzes surveillance in the context of the emergence of
disciplinary societies in Discipline and Punish. He stresses an evolution from feudal societies
of torture, to reformed societies of punishment, and on to modern disciplinary societies. In the
age of torture, arbitrary penalties and public spectacles of the scaffold took place in order to
exterminate bodies. Afterwards in the age of punishment, defendants were punished and exterminated. In the age of disciplines, direct violence has been replaced with softer forms of
power in order to discipline, control, and normalize people in order to drill docile bodies and
“political puppets” (Foucault 1995, 136). “These methods, which made possible the meticulous control of the operations of the body, which assured the constant subjection of its forces
and imposed upon them a relation of docility-utility, might be called ‘disciplines’.” (Foucault
1995, 137) The meticulous techniques, methods, knowledge, and descriptions of details are
called microphysics of power. Foucault understands disciplines as forms of operational power
relations and technologies of domination. In contemporary society, disciplined power is exercised in order to control both behavior and bodies. “’Discipline’ may be identified neither
with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise,
comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it
is a ’physics’ or an ’anatomy’ of power, a technology.“ (Foucault 1995, 215) Disciplinary
control is for Foucault a modern form of power. Modern power is neither in the hands of one
particular person, nor does everyone occupy the same position. Foucault is opposed to the
idea of power as superstructure – he understands power in the context of the development of
forces of production. He describes power as a mutual hold, where the summit and the lower
elements of hierarchy are in a relationship of supporting and conditioning. Also aspects of
class are emphasized: “The bourgeoisie is perfectly well aware that a new constitution or legislature will not suffice to assure its hegemony; it realizes that it has to invent a new technology ensuring the irrigation by effects of power of the whole social body down to its smallest
particles.” (Foucault 2002, 98-99)
Foucault (1995; see also 2002; 2003; 2007) interprets the Enlightenment as a dual process of
liberty and disciplines. Although the French Revolution brought liberal elements, modern
society developed new disciplinary institutions. Foucault understands disciplines and control
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
as crucial implications for the functioning of modern industrial society in order to codify time,
space and movement, to obtain individual mechanisms like movements, gestures, attitudes
and rapidity, and to increase the efficiency of movements. There is a relationship between
docility and utility in the sense that the more docile bodies there are, the more efficient they
act. Disciplinary institutions establish “an increased aptitude and an increased domination”
(Foucault 1995, 138). Foucault points out disciplinary apparatuses as “one of bourgeois society’s great inventions” and “basic tools for the establishment of industrial capitalism and the
corresponding type of society” (Foucault 2003, 36) and stresses the relationship between
technology, economy, and disciplinary societies: “At a less general level, the technological
mutations of the apparatus of production, the division of labour and the elaboration of the
disciplinary techniques sustained an ensemble of very close relations. Each makes the other
possible and necessary; each provides a model for the other. ... The growth of a capitalist
economy gave rise to the specific modality of disciplinary power” (Foucault 1995, 221). Hierarchized individuals became necessary to assure political order within disciplinary institutions. Furthermore, empirical sciences like psychology, pedagogy, and criminology developed
a methodology of disciplines and investigations in the form of tests, interviews, and consultations. According to Foucault, the sciences help to organize and develop disciplined apparatuses and mark the causal relationship between power and knowledge. Sciences “reproduce, in a
concentrated or formalized form, the schema of power-knowledge proper to each discipline“
(Foucault 1995, 226f.).
Foucault (1995, 141-169) describes four types of disciplines, namely cellular, organic, genetic, and combinatory forms. As an example he analyzes the military, medical, educational and
industrial institutions and at certain points the police and family in it. Disciplines are cellular
in the way of spatial distributions, location, partitioning, and coding of individuals. ”Each
individual has his own place; and each place its individual. ... Disciplinary space tends to be
divided into as many sections as there are bodies or elements to be distributed. ... Its aim was
to establish presences and absences, to know where and how to locate individuals, to set up
useful communications, to interrupt others, to be able at each moment to supervise the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities or merits. ... Discipline organizes an analytical space.“ (Foucault 1995, 143) Discipline transforms confused,
diffused, and unplanned circulations of places into ordered and structured spaces and ranks
positions of individuals in order to create functional and hierarchical complex cells to make
individuals amenable and rationalize time and gesture. Foucault illustrates that phenomenon
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
in the context of the workplace and concludes: “to observe the worker’s presence and application, and the quality of his work; to compare workers with one another, to classify them according to skill and speed; to follow the successive stages of the production process.” (Foucault 1995, 145) Disciplines are organic and they control activities. In disciplinary societies,
time penetrates body as form of power. The main intention is to rationalize and to perfect the
exercises of body and gesture in order to maximize speed and efficiency and exhaust the body
Disciplinary time causes a well-disciplined body and an ideal correlation of body and gesture.
Foucault demonstrates disciplinary time with the help of the example of education institutions: “8.45 entrance of the monitor, 8.52 the monitor’s summons, 8.56 entrance of the children and prayer, 9.00 the children go to their benches, 9.04 first slate, 9.08 end of dictation,
9.12 second slate, etc.“ (Foucault 1995, 150) For Foucault, disciplines are genetic and regulate the relations of time, bodies, and forces. They divide duration into certain segments and
develop an analytical plan. The trained and disciplined body makes it possible to use each
moment of time. It is “the new techniques of power, and more specifically, with a new way of
administering time and making it useful, by segmentation, seriation, synthesis and totalization” (Foucault 1995, 160). Power allows “the integration of a temporal, unitary, continuous,
cumulative dimension in the exercise of controls and the practice of dominations“ (Foucault
1995, 160). Disciplines are combinatory and a composition of forces. Disciplinary societies
combine different individuals working together to create improved results. An efficient and
productive machine of combined forces is produced, where a system of command is required.
Foucault (1995, 163f.) cites in this context Marx’ Capital, where cooperation as productive
force is analyzed because of diminishing necessary labour-time and increasing surplus labourtime.
Characteristics and technologies of a disciplinary society are summarized in a very pointed
way in Foucault’s (2007, 84f.) Lectures at the Collège De France, 1977-1978: First, “discipline, of course, analyzes and breaks down; it breaks down individuals, places, time, movements, actions, and operations. ... Second, discipline classifies the components thus identified
according to definite objectives. ... Third, discipline establishes optimal sequences or coordinations ... Fourth, discipline fixes the processes of progressive training (dressage) and
permanent control, and finally, on the basis of this, it establishes the division between those
considered unsuitable or incapable and the others.”
Foucault (1995, 170-194) emphasizes the importance of correct training for disciplinary pow-9-
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
er: “Train vigorous bodies, the imperative of health; obtain competent officers, the imperative
of qualification; create obedient soldiers, the imperative of politics; prevent debauchery and
homosexuality, the imperative of morality.“ (Foucault 1995, 172) In addition, he analyzes
technical instruments like hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement, and examination.
Hierarchical observation is a crucial part of disciplinary societies and a form of power that
makes individuals visible, transparent, and to control their conduct. “The disciplinary institutions secreted a machinery of control that functioned like a microscope of conduct; the fine,
analytical divisions that they created formed around men an apparatus of observation, recording and training.” (Foucault 1995, 173) Disciplinary apparatuses intensify surveillance and
extend surveillance in space. Beside, hierarchized observation works as a machinery and corresponding architecture. For instance, surveillance at the workplace also takes ”into account
the activity of the men, their skill, the way they set about their tasks, their promptness, their
zeal, their behaviour.” (Foucault 1995, 174) Normalizing judgement is an instrument of power
and corrects deviant behaviour and performance. Disciplinary institutions have certain rules to
be followed as well as developing repressive standards and norms. “The workshop, the
school, the army were subject to a whole micro-penality of time (latenesses, absences, interruptions of tasks), of activity (inattention, negligence, lack of zeal), of behavior (impoliteness,
disobedience), of speech (idle chatter, insolence), of the body (‘incorrect’ attitudes, irregular
gestures, lack of cleanliness), of sexuality (impurity, indecency).” (Foucault 1995, 178) Categories of normal and abnormal and marks of good and bad classify individuals into determined levels and make corrective training possible. Disciplined ranking and grading mark the
gap and hiercharchize different qualities, skills, and abilities. It includes and excludes, creates
homogeneity, measures gaps, and fixes specialities. Disciplining is an organizing process of
self and mutual obsession to fulfil normalized standards. In disciplined societies, these rankings are visible through certain sings and symbols like uniforms in the army, streams in
schools, and specific clothes at the workplace. An examination combines the instruments of
hierarchical observation and normalizing judgement and is a technique to situate the level of
individuals and to indicate possible use of it. An examination constitutes the body as analyzable object and describable individual. Disciplinary institutions measure, document, and describe data of examinations in a meticulous way and make out a possible case of each individual. The disciplinary methods ”lowered the threshold of describable individuality and
made of this description a means of control and a method of domination. It is no longer a
monument for future memory, but a document for possible use. And this new describability is
all the more marked in that the disciplinary framework is
a strict one: the child, the patient,
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
the madman, the prisoner“. (Foucault 1995, 191f.)
For Foucault (1995, 195-210), Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon is a symbol for modern disciplinary society. “On the whole, therefore, one can speak of the formation of a disciplinary
society in this movement that stretches from the enclosed disciplines, a sort of social ‘quarantine’, to an indefinitely generalizable mechanism of ‘panopticism’.“ (Foucault 1995, 216) The
Panopticon is an ideal architectural figure of modern disciplinary power. It exists of an annular building divided in different cells and a huge tower with windows in the middle (see figure
1). Prisoners, workers, pupils, as well as patients stay in the cells and a supervisor occupies
the middle tower. The architecture allows the supervisor to observe all individuals in the cells
without being seen. Not every inmate is observed at every moment, but no one knows if she
or he is monitored. Observation is possible anytime. As a result, everyone acts as if kept under
surveillance all the time – individuals discipline themselves out of fear of surveillance. The
Panopticon creates a consciousness of permanent visibility as a form of power, where no bars,
chains, and heavy locks are necessary for domination any more. Foucault (1995, 228) finally
asks: “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all
resemble prisons?”
Figure 1: Panopticon of the penitentiary at Stateville, United States, 20th century (Foucault 1995, 169)
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
In summary, Foucault analyzes surveillance in the context of the emergence of modern disciplinary societies. He understands disciplines as forms of operational power relations and technologies of domination in order to discipline, control, and normalize people in respect of drilling docile bodies. For Foucault, the Panopticon is an ideal symbol of modern surveillance
societies. Foucault’s understanding of surveillance and the Panopticon allows to distinguish
panoptic (affirmation of Foucault’s notion) and non-panoptic (rejection of Foucault’s notion)
approaches of defining surveillance that can be used for constructing a typology of existing
surveillance literature and for discussing commonalties and differences of definitions of surveillance: The task of this chapter is to give a representative, but still eclectic overview about
different definitions of surveillance.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
2.2.
Non-panoptic notions of surveillance
Anthony Giddens (1985, 172-197; 1995, 169-181) defines surveillance as “symbolic material
that can be stored by an agency or collectivity” and as “the supervision of the activities of
subordinates” (Giddens 1995, 169). He primarily sees surveillance as a phenomenon of the
nation-state: “Surveillance as the mobilizing of administrative power – through the storage
and control of information – is the primary means of the concentration of authoritative resources involved in the formation of the nation-state.” (Giddens 1985, 181) While Foucault’s
negative and powerful understanding of surveillance is criticized, a neutral notion of surveillance is discussed. Surveillance is seen as documentary activities of the state, as information
gathering and processing, as collection, collation and coding of information, and as records,
reports and routine data collection for administrative and bureaucratic purposes of organizations. The nation-state began to keep these official statistics from its beginning and to “include the centralized collation of materials registering births, marriages and deaths; statistics
pertaining to residence ethnic background and occupation; and … ‘moral statistics’, relating
to suicide, delinquency, divorce and so on.” (Giddens 1985, 180)
Similar to Giddens, Christopher Dandeker (1990) describes surveillance as form of information gathering and administrative organization of modernity. “The term surveillance is not
used in the narrow sense of ‘spying’ on people but, more broadly, to refer to the gathering of
information about and the supervision of subject populations in organizations.” (Dandeker
1990, vii)
James Rule (1973, 36ff.), Foucault’s voice of dissent “in the best tradition of mainstream Anglo-American sociology” (Murakami Wood 2009, 54), stresses in his empirical case study the
idea of a total surveillance society. Although he describes the political and economic context,
he uses a non-judgmental term and a broad definition of surveillance. On the one hand, obsession is crucial and required for social processes and programs and it constitutes “an ideal type
of a social order” (1973, 37). On the other hand, collected personal data could be used in the
wrong sense and has a repressive potential, too. Rule (2007, 13-17) still accentuates a broad
term of surveillance with advantages and disadvantages in his continuing book about surveillance Privacy in Peril: Surveillance “systems share a distinctive and sociologically crucial
quality: they not only collect and record details of personal information; they also are orga- 13 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
nized to provide bases for action toward the people concerned” (Rule 2007, 14). In Rule’s
broad understanding, surveillance as process of data collecting surveillance is not necessarily
problematic and negatively connoted, because it is crucial for civic life. He combines problematic and crucial issues of data collection in one term. Although Foucault is listed in the
book’s bibliography, he is not mentioned once and in contrast to Foucault power relations in
contemporary surveillance society are not analyzed.
The importance of new information and communication technologies for undercover work
and the differentiation between traditional and new surveillance are mentioned by Gary Marx
(1988, 221; 2002, 10ff.). In contemporary society, surveillance has increased and so “the line
between the public and the private is obliterated; we are under constant observation, everything goes on permanent record by others we do not know. Data from widely separated geographical areas, organizations, and time periods can be merged and analyzed easily” (Gary
Marx 1988, 221). Surveillance is for Marx primarily a technical process and defined as “the
use of technical means to extract or create personal data” (Gary Marx 2002, 12). Marx sees
parents monitoring their baby on CCTV as example of surveillance.
In Visions of Social Control, Stanley Cohen (1987, 1-12) focuses on crime, punishment, and
classification. Contemporary society has developed a whole system of classifications into
good vs. bad and normal vs. abnormal, that makes control and surveillance necessary. Cohen’s understanding of social control and surveillance is not quit clear: “This purpose will be
served less well by any essentialist definition than simply by mapping out those ‘social control matters’ which this book covers. My interest is in planned and programmed responses to
expected and realized deviance rather than in the general institutions of society which produce
conformity. I will use the term ‘social control’, then, to cover matters considerably narrower
and more specific” (Cohen 1987, 2f.) Nevertheless, he stresses that it is not fruitful if social
control is used as negative term and if powerful abstractions of ideological and repressive
state apparatus are analyzed as Marxists did. In modern society power and domination are not
centralized, but rather everyone can get a powerful position.
For James Beniger (1986), control and surveillance are general concepts of “purposive influence toward a predetermined goal” (Beniger 1986, 7), where the “information storage, processing, and communication” (Beniger 1986, 62) are stressed.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
Computer scientist Roger Clarke (1988, 498-499; 505f.) defines surveillance as “the systematic investigation or monitoring of the actions or communications of one or more persons. Its
primary purpose is generally to collect information about them, their activities, or their associates. There may be a secondary intention to deter a whole population from undertaking
some kinds of activity.” (Clarke 1988, 499) For Clarke, surveillance and dataveillance are
neither negative nor positive as it depends on the situation. “I explicitly reject the notion that
surveillance is, of itself, evil or undesirable; its nature must be understood, and society must
decide the circumstances in which it should be used”. (Clarke, 1988, 498f.) Although many
dangers and disadvantages of surveillance in general and dataveillance in particular are mentioned, benefits like physical security of people and financial opportunities in both public (social welfare and tax) and private (insurance and finance) sector are listed as well.
David Lyon (1994, viii-x) grasps surveillance “as a shorthand term to cover the many, and
expanding, range of contexts within which personal data is collected by employment, commercial and administrative agencies, as well as in policing and security“ (Lyon 1994, ix). He
suggests a neutral understanding of surveillance with positive and negative effects of constraining and enabling. Surveillance is undemocratic, coercive, impersonal or even inhuman
on the one hand, but it is as well ”innocuous or a channel of positive blessing“ (Lyon 1994,
ix) on the other hand. Lyon (2001, 3) emphasizes watching over a child and taking care of it
as positive aspects of surveillance. In addition, he understands CCTV as an instrument that us
used for keeping modern society secure and safe, because “the camera is installed in the bar or
at the intersection in order to reduce rowdiness or road accidents. No one wants trouble when
relaxing at the bar and no one wants to end up in hospital because someone ran a red light.”
(Lyon 2001, 39)
In Forget Foucault, Jean Baudrillard (2007, 34) dismisses Foucault’s concept of the Panopticon: “The same goes for Discipline and Punish, with its theory of discipline, of the ‘panoptic’
and of ‘transparence.’ A magistral but obsolete theory. Such a theory of control by means of a
gaze that objectifies, even when it is pulverized into micro-devices, is passe. With the simulation device we are no doubt as far from the strategy of transparence as the latter is from the
immediate, symbolic operation of punishment which Foucault himself describes. Once again a
spiral is missing here, the spiral in front of which Foucault, oddly enough, comes to a halt
right at the threshold of a current revolution of the system which he has never wanted to
cross” Baudrillard (2006, 28-32) stresses the end of the panoptic system and analyzes surveil- 15 -
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lance in the era of simulation and simulacra. In this context, he blurs the distinction between
active and passive forms of surveillance. A mutation of the real into the hyperreal takes place
and the essence of power disappears. “Something else in regard to the Louds. ‘You no longer
watch TV, it is TV that watches you (live),’ or again: ‘You are no longer listening to Don’t
Panic, it is Don’t Panic that is listening to you’ - a switch from the panoptic mechanism of
surveillance (Discipline and Punish [Surveiller et punir]) to a system of deterrence, in which
the distinction between the passive and the active is abolished. There is no longer any imperative of submission to the model, or to the gaze ‘YOU are the model!’ ‘YOU are the majority!’
Such is the watershed of a hyperreal sociality, in which the real is confused with the model, as
in the statistical operation, or with the medium, as in the Louds’ operation. Such is the last
stage of the social relation, ours, which is no longer one of persuasion (the classical age of
propaganda, of ideology, of publicity, etc.) but one of deterrence: ‘YOU are information, you
are the social, you are the event, you are involved, you have the word, etc.’ An about-face
through which it becomes impossible to locate one instance of the model, of power, of the
gaze, of the medium itself, because you are always already on the other side. No more subject,
no more focal point, no more center or periphery: pure flexion or circular inflexion. No more
violence or surveillance: only ‘information’, secret virulence, chain reaction, slow implosion,
and simulacra of spaces in which the effect of the real again comes into play.” (Baudrillard
2006, 29f.)
Based on Baudrillard, William Bogard (1996, 1ff.) focuses on the simulation of hypersurveillant control in telematic societies. He defines bureaucratic surveillance as “information gathering and storage systems (accounting, recording, and filing mechanisms) and the various
devices for encoding and decoding that information (impersonal, standardized rules governing
its access, use, and dissemination).” (Bogard 1996, 1f.) He argues that surveillance ranges
between absolute control in disciplined societies and the absence of control in non-disciplined
societies. Bogard (2006, 97-101) understands surveillance as decentralized networks, where
monopolized power and control of information become more impossible. Surveillance is both
a mode of oppressed capture and a mode of lines flight of “escape, deterritorialization, indetermination and resistance” (Bogard 2006, 101).
In The Maximum Surveillance Society, Clive Norris and Gary Armstrong (1999, 3-12) consider surveillance as an ambivalent process with protective and enabling elements and totalitarian and powerful effects. Although the power of surveillance is mentioned, they do not want to
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automatically apply the idea of a powerful Panopticon or of a totalitarian Big Brother state to
the rise of CCTV (cf. also Norris and Armstrong 1998, 7). The deployment of CCTV is not
equal to one single Big Brother and it does not enable some singular disciplinary norms. “We
need to be cautious about merely equating the power to watch with the disciplinary power
implied in Foucault’s concept of panoptic surveillance. Similarly, the spread of cameras
should not automatically be assumed to herald the arrival of a totalitarian ‘Big Brother’ state.”
(Norris and Armstrong 1999, 6) Accordingly, it is seen more useful to refer to the works of
James Rule, whose ideas influence the book to a certain extent.
People’s active role in the context of surveillance is emphasized by Hille Koskela (2004, 199;
2006, 175). For instance, reality shows are based on viewer participation, mobile phones with
cameras create an active subject, and home webcams generate new subjectivities. She wants
to analyze “the other side of surveillance”, which has resistant and liberating elements.
“Webcams can also be argued to contribute to the ‘democratization’ of surveillance.” (Koskela 2006, 175) Kosekela argues that webcams have an empowering role and that the active
role of individuals with surveillance equipment shows that the lines of control are blurred.
Roy Boyne (2000, 285) uses the term post-Panopticism and argues against the basic panoptical paradigm: “The theoretical arguments in favour of abandoning the concept of the Panopticon (from Bauman, Bogard, Latour and others) are considered under five headings: displacement of the Panoptical ideal by mechanisms of seduction; redundancy of the Panoptical impulse brought about by the evident durability of the self-surveillance functions which partly
constitute the normal, socialized, ‘Western’ subject; reduction in the number of occasions of
any conceivable need for Panoptical surveillance on account of simulation, prediction and
action before the fact; supplementation of the Panopticon by the Synopticon; failure of Panoptical control to produce reliably docile subjects.” (Boyne 2000, 285)
Based on Deleuze’s and Guattari’s ideas, Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson (2000, 605620) combine surveillance with assemblages and come to develop the concept of surveillant
assemblage. An assemblage is an entity that consists of different flowing objects or multiple
phenomena and processes that work together. An assemblage contains multiple discrete assemblages and it is at the same time part of a greater assemblage. ”Lines and measurable
speeds, constitutes an assemblage. … As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection
with other assemblages and in relation to other bodies without organs. ... An assemblage is
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
precisely this increase in the dimensions of a multiplicity that necessarily changes in nature as
it expands its connections. ... An assemblage establishes connections between certain multiplicities drawn from each of these orders, so that a book has no sequel nor the world as its
object nor one or several authors as its subject.“ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 4; 8; 23)
Haggerty and Ericson stress that surveillance has the potential to put different systems, practices, and technologies together into a larger whole and talk of surveillance as an assemblage.
Additionally, rhizomatic surveillance as an interconnected system is analyzed. A rhizome is
an interconnected root and represents a decentral network. Deleuze and Guattari list characteristics of a rhizome: “Principles of connection and heterogeneity” (1987, 7), “principle of multiplicity” (1987, 8), “principle of asignifying rupture” (1987, 9), and “principle of cartography
and decalcomania” (1987, 12). As surveillance is organized like a networked rhizom, an
enormous expansion took place in the last decades. According to Haggerty and Ericson, surveillance is understood as a decentralized, non-hierarchical phenomenon without a certain
powerful group or institution. While Haggerty and Ericson (2000, 607) are neither interested
in analyzing Foucault’s concept of surveillance because it “fails to directly engage contemporary developments in surveillance technology” (2000, 607) nor in incorporating new approaches that are based on Foucault because they are “providing little that is theoretically
novel” (2000, 607), they introduce the term synopticism in contrast with Panopticism. The
emergence of new media and inexpensive video cameras allows the general public to keep
someone synoptically under surveillance. “Synopticism signifies that many individuals are
able to observe and control a certain phenomenon or process. Synopticism essentially means
that a large number of individuals are able to focus on something in common.” (Haggerty and
Ericson 2000, 618) Haggerty and Ericson (2000, 617) mention the media circus surrounding
Britain’s royal family as an example and conclude: “Surveillance has become rhizomatic, it
has transformed hierarchies of observation, and allows for the scrutiny of the powerful by
both institutions and the general population.”
Roy Coleman and Joe Sim (2000, 623; 635) publicized an empirical case study about CCTV
surveillance in Liverpool. They stress a shift of power from Foucault’s concept towards multiple centres of government, localized mechanisms of rule, and autonomous forms of
knowledge. Surveillance and social control are understood as networked phenomena and
partnerships acting at a distance. “Within this discourse CCTV cameras can be understood as
helping to create public spaces for ‘free’, ‘responsible’, consumer-oriented individuals who
independently choose their autonomous role in the life of the city. Thus CCTV is constructed
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
around the idea of ‘empowerment’ and ‘freedom’, particularly the ‘freedom and safety to
shop’.” (Coleman and Sim 2000, 635)
Katherine Williams and Craig Johnstone (2000, 183-193) make a re-reading of video surveillance and criticize the idea to see CCTV in the context of the Panopticon. The panoptical notion stresses an all-encompassing visibility and control, but CCTV is only available at selected streets and places. The authors emphasize the concept of a selective gaze because the Panopticon in their view leads to a misleading interpretation of CCTV: “By emphasising the selective gaze rather than the all-encompassing Panopticon, we are attempting to open the analysis up to a more complex, and perhaps more nuanced, encounter with a range of different
issues associated with surveillance, policing and the use of public space.” (Williams and
Johnstone 2000, 192)
Sean Hier (2004, 542-546) explores emotional repertoires and cultural milieus of public video
surveillance program and undertakes a selective reading of Foucault’s notion of the Panopticon. Hier criticizes approaches that understand surveillance predominantly as a mechanism of
repression, because “the routine disciplinary mechanics of surveillance need not fundamentally be located with elite partnerships or some abstracted governmental body“ (Hier 2004, 546).
Although Hier (2003, 403) rejects the idea of the non-hierarchical rhizomatic surveillant assemblage, he suggests understanding surveillance as a multifaceted structure of consent and
coercion with inclusionary and exclusionary impulses that does not automatically involve
punishment. (cf. Hier 2004, 546).
Although Elia Zureik (2003, 42; 46-49) emphasizes the importance of the political economy
of surveillance and theorizes surveillance in the case of the workplace, he gives a rather neutral understanding of surveillance with enabling and disabling functions: “Surveillance is (1)
an ubiquitous feature of human societies, and is found in both the political (public) and civil
(private) sphere of society; (2) associated with governance and management; (3) endemic to
large-scale organizations; (4) constitutive of the subject and has a corporeal aspect to it; (5)
disabling as well as enabling and is “productive” in Foucault’s sense; (6) understood in terms
of distanciation, i.e., the control of space and time; (7) becoming increasingly implicated in a
system of assemblage which brings together diverse control technologies; and (8) rhizomatic,
as evident in the ability of convergent technologies to capture and assemble inordinate
amounts of information about people from various sources.“ (Zureik 2003, 42)
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Michalis Lianos (2003, 412-427) wants to analyze social control after Foucault and rejects the
latter’s contribution, because “the Foucauldian model of control, and consequently its explanatory power, refers to the past and is not concerned with the emergence of the contemporary
postindustrial subject.“ (Lianos 2003, 413) As a result, “we must stop projecting his [Foucault’s; TA] analyses onto objects of study that they were not made for, and take the risk of
approaching these objects of study with the subtlety and originality that they demand.” (Lianos 2003, 427) Instead, Lianos pleads for a new theoretical paradigm considering control in the
interaction between users and institutions, the emergence of neutral and unintended control,
and the contribution of sociotechnical systems.
For Anders Albrechtslund (2008), positive aspects of being under surveillance are worth mentioning and he argues that surveillance also empowers the users, constructs subjectivity, and is
playful. Surveillance as social and participatory act involves mutuality and sharing. ”Surveillance in this context offers opportunities to take action, seek information and communicate.“
(Albrechtslund 2008) Although Albrechtslund and Dubbeld (2005, 216) do not want to ignore
the controlling aspects of surveillance, they study its entertainment values and fun features.
Surveillance is a play and art and “could be considered not just as positively protective, but
even as a comical, playful, amusing, enjoyable practice” (Albrechtslund and Dubbeld 2005,
216).
In summary, many scholars use a neutral and general notion and stress non-panoptic elements
of surveillance, where everyone has the opportunity to surveil. This approach applies a broad
definition of surveillance and stresses constraining and enabling effects of collecting data.
Surveillance is primarily understood as a plural, neutral, and technical process. Nevertheless,
there are theorists who analyze surveillance based on Foucault in the context of the Panopticon and stress powerful and disciplinary elements of contemporary surveillance societies.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
2.3.
Panoptic notions of surveillance
Gilles Deleuze (1992, 3-7; cf. also 1988, 23-46) underlines a mutation of capitalism in Postscript on the Societies of Control. Based on the ideas of Foucault, he describes the change
from the disciplinary societies to the societies of control. He speaks of a change in the mode
of institutions, production, culture, and technique that creates a new level of control in social
subsystems. “The operation of markets is now the instrument of social control“ (Deleuze
1992, 6). The school system has been commercialized and is dominated by corporations,
which presents a new form of control. The economic system has developed new forms of production and marketing. The hospital system substitutes for the body a controlling code to be
controlled and the prison system developed the use of electronic collars for more efficient
controllability. For Deleuze (1992, 7) technical changes in the societies of control are crucial
and he mentions that “what counts is not the barrier but the computer that tracks each person’s
position--licit or illicit--and effects a universal modulation”. Furthermore, society has become
data, markets, and samples. Deleuze describes the neoliberal area of capitalism and emphasizes the emergence of control and surveillance as necessary part in it. The control societies are
for him not just societies of data collecting, but rather societies full of power, struggles, domination, and control. “These are very small examples, but ones that will allow for better understanding of what is meant by the crisis of the institutions, which is to say, the progressive and
dispersed installation of a new system of domination.“ (Deleuze 1992, 7)
Also interesting in this context is the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
(2004), first published in 1949. Orwell describes a ruling system called Oceania, which exists
of Big Brother, the party and the proles and stands for pervasive government surveillance,
totalitarian regime and public mind control. “Every citizen, or at least every citizen important
enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the
police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication
closed. The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but
complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.” (Orwell 2004,
255)
Shoshana Zuboff (1988, 315ff.) studied the emergence of information technologies at the
workplace in her book In the Age of the Smart Machine, where she defines authority as “the
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spiritual dimension of power” (Zuboff 1988, 219) and technique as “the material dimension of
power” (Zuboff 1988, 311). Based on Foucault’s disciplinary societies, she stresses the panoptic power of information technology in corporate institutions and presents empirical case
studies. Furthermore, new technologies at the workplace have brought a universal transparency, increased hierarchy and control, and they provide the management with a full bird’s-eye
view to counter the behaviour of their workers.
In Foucault’s tradition, Mark Poster (1990, 69-98) understands surveillance as “a major form
of power in the mode of information” (Poster 1990, 86). Poster emphasizes that technological
change has caused new forms of surveillance and an electronic Superpanopticon in the postmodern and postindustrial mode of information. A Superpanopticon is a process of normalizing and controlling masses and a form of computational power. “Today`s ‘circuits of communication’ and the databases they generate constitute a Superpanopticon, a system of surveillance without walls, windows towers or guards. The quantitative advances in technologies of
surveillance result in a qualitative change in the microphysics of power. … The Superpanopticon imposes a new language situation that has unique, disturbing features” (Poster 1990,
93f.) Poster stresses that new information and communication technologies have advanced
new forms of surveillance and therefore new forms of power.
For Oscar Gandy (1993, 1-13), panoptic surveillance is a “complex technology that involves
the collection, processing, and sharing of information about individuals and groups that is
generated through their daily lives as citizens, employees, and consumers and is used to coordinate and control their access to the goods and services that define life in the modern capitalist economy” (Gandy 1993, 15). Gandy notices surveillance as a complex high-tech system of
power, where people are sorted into categories in order to identify, classify, and assess them.
Furthermore, surveillance is used to normalize and homogenize behaviour with discriminatory
elements in a structure of hierarchical observation.
Frank Webster and Kevin Robins (1993, 244-246) analyze surveillance in the context of Taylorism. Frederick Winslow Taylor’s development of Scientific Management “provides management with a codification of purpose” (Webster and Robins 1993, 245) in order to accumulate knowledge and information in the production process. For realizing Taylor’s scientific
management, a system of information gathering and surveillance is necessary. “The panopticon is the precursor of Scientific Management.” (Webster and Robins 1993, 245) Webster and
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Robins point out the development of modern surveillance societies: “A line of descent is
traceable from Bentham’s original conception of the panopticon, through Taylor’s development of Scientific Management, to the current notion of neo-Fordism or flexible accumulation
… What is common throughout is the central concern with information/surveillance.” (Webster and Robins 1993, 245) Just-in-Time and Total Quality Control as new forms of postFordist production process “appear to bring decentralization while in fact increasingly centralising power” (Webster and Robins 1993, 243) Additionally, Robins and Webster (1999, 90)
refer to Foucault’s ideas of the Panopticon and describe surveillance in the context of control,
repression, discipline, and power: “To echo Foucault’s words, it is not possible for social
planning and administration to be exercised without surveillance, it is impossible for surveillance not to reinforce administrative cohesion, efficiency, and power.” (Robins and Webster
1999, 90) Primarily political and economic forms of surveillance are analyzed and it is argued
that corporations use monitoring of markets for propaganda and to control consumer groups.
John Fiske (1999, 125ff.; 217ff.) focuses on surveillance as possibility to collect certain
knowledge about other people. He gives examples of counter-hegemonic surveillance and
refers to the Rodney King video (a privately video-taped happening, which shows an African
American man, who was the victim of police brutality). Fiske argues that especially the easy
access to home video cameras has made it possible to surveil the surveillers and to enable
“those who are normally the object of surveillance to turn the lens of reverse its power” (Fiske
1999, 127). Nevertheless, he argues that there are social groups, which have preferred abilities
to watch others; hence, there is an unequal access and power to surveil in contemporary society. In Foucault’s tradition, surveillance is stressed as oppressive and totalitarian method of
power. “I believe that surveillance is rapidly becoming the most efficient form of power, the
most totalitarian and the hardest to resist.” (Fiske 1999, 218) Furthermore, Fiske (1998, 67ff.)
analyzes surveillance in the context of racism. Surveillance cameras are used as control
mechanism especially against black people in public space. Fiske emphasizes that surveillance operates differently upon black and white people and works in a powerful and racialized
context. “Surveillance is a technology of whiteness that racially zones city space by drawing
lines that Blacks cannot cross and whites cannot see. Surveillance enables different races to be
policed differently.” (Fiske 1998, 69)
Thomas Mathiesen (1997) revisits Foucault’s Panopticon in The viewer society and argues
that in modern society not only the few see the many as Foucault has articulated, but also the
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many see the few and introduces in contrast to the Panopticon the term Synopticon – a combination of the Greek word “syn” = together, at the same time and “opticon” = visual (cf.
Mathiesen 1997, 219). The scholar stresses that modern mass media especially television
make possible to see the few and that both Panopticon as well as Synopticon are important
elements of modern society, which create the viewer society. Mathiesen accentuates three
parallels of panoptical and synoptical developments, namely “the acceleration which synopticism as well as panopticism has shown in modern times, that is, during the period 1800-2000”
(Mathiesen 1997, 219), that “they are archaic, or ‘ancient’, as means of potential means of
power in society” (Mathiesen 1997, 222) and that they “have developed in intimate interactions, even fusion, with each other” (Mathiesen 1997, 223). Most important in the Synopticon,
news reporters, media personalities, and commentators “actively filter and shape information;
as has been widely documented in media research, they produce news …; they place topics on
the agenda and avoid placing topics on the agenda … Those who are allowed to enter [the
media from the outside; TA] are systematically men – not women – from the higher social
strata, with power in political life, private industry and public bureaucracy … The information
professionals have become highly visible and valuable sources of information for the media;
informational activity has become an occupation. The information professionals are trained to
filter information, and to present images which are favourable to the institution or organization in question.” (Mathiesen 1997, 226f.) Therefore, not only the Panopticon but also the
Synopticon makes individuals silent and directs, controls, and disciplines our consciousness
(cf. Mathiesen 1997, 230). As a result, the author concludes: “Taken as a whole, things are
much worse than Michel Foucault imagined.” (Mathiesen 1997, 231).
Greg Elmer (2003, 231-245; see also 2004) draws upon the work of Foucault, Varela,
Deleuze, and Guattari and outlines a diagram of panoptic surveillance: “With the help of Foucault and his ‘interlocutors’ Gilles Deleuze and collaborator Felix Guattari, this article conversely theorizes panoptic surveillance as a multiplicity of processes that work to increasingly
quantify and qualify not only the specific behaviours of consumers (or other sales, inventory
or distribution data), but also the efficiency of the panoptic process itself. It is argued that one
cannot provide such an overarching theory of surveillance – or even appreciate the specific
dynamics of panopticism (such as data accumulation or storage) – by privileging any one step
in the process of panoptic surveillance. That is, by focusing exclusively on questions such as:
how is personal information solicited? Or, how and where is personal information and other
forms of consumer data stored (in databases or networked systems)? Consequently, in expli- 24 -
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cating the diagrammatic characteristics of panoptic surveillance, this article attempts to account for the way in which consumers and their data-selves become continuously integrated
into the act of collecting, storing, and cross referencing a multitude of consumer market data
(i.e. inventory – distribution – sales).” (Elmer 2003, 233)
In regard to Foucault’s Panopticon, Didier Bigo (2006, 46ff.; 2008, 10-38) highlights banopticon dispositif in globalized spaces. The United States has propagated a global insecurity
of crime and terrorism and has created a governmentality of unease, where global police networks are necessary. These ideas permit transnational regimes to close borders, to declare
certain exceptions, to signify differences, to create an image of terrorists, and to profile and
contain foreigners. “It allows us to analyse the collection of heterogeneous bodies of discourses (on threats, immigration, enemy within, immigrant fifth column, radical Muslims versus good Muslims, exclusion versus integration, etc.), of institutions (public agencies, governments, international organizations, NGOs, etc.), of architectural structures (detention centres, waiting zones and Schengen traffic lanes in airports, integrated video camera networks in
some cities, electronic networks outfitted with security and video-surveillance capacities), of
laws (on terrorism, organized crime, immigration, clandestine labour, asylum seekers, or to
accelerate justice procedures and to restrict the defendants’ rights), and of administrative
measures (regulation of the ‘sans papiers’, negotiated agreements between government agencies vis-à-vis policies of deportation/repatriation, ‘common’ aeroplanes specially hired for
deportation with costs shared by different national polices, etc.).” (Bigo 2008, 32) While certain groups are excluded and under surveillance, the non-excluded majority is normalized and
disciplined. Hence, there is a fragmented and heterogeneous contradiction of inclusion and
exclusion in surveilled global spaces.
Graham Sewell and Barry Wilkinson (1992, 271) scrutinize surveillance in the labour process
and draw parallels between Foucault’s ideas of power, knowledge and surveillance and the
phenomenon of post-Fordism. According to these authors, Just-in-Time (JIT) and Total Quality Control (TQC) regimes are improved surveillance techniques that aim at the optimization
of disciplinary power and the control of the labour process. JIT and TQC are methods, which
provide an organizational structure and over-arching controlling mechanism and elaborate the
post-Fordist production process: “We demonstrate that the surveillance systems integral to
JIT/TQM are deliberately designed such that discipline is established in a most efficient manner and the exercise of minute control is possible with a minimum of supervisors. The desired
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effect of harnessing these dual forces is to minimise negative divergences from expected behaviour and management defined norms whilst identifying positive divergencies and maximising their creative potential.“ (Sewell and Wilkinson 1992, 271)
Jean-François Blanchette and Deborah Johnson (2002, 33-35; 43) examine data retention as
well as the rise of panoptic society and stress the disappearance of social forgetfulness. Surveillance and data retention have made social forgetfulness irrelevant. Data retention hinders
the opportunity for a second chance and for a new and upstanding life, because it allows storing data about individual crimes from the past. Blanchette and Johnson (2002, 33) examine
“three domains in which social policy has explicitly recognized the importance of such a principle: bankruptcy law, junvenile crime records, and credit reports”. For Blanchette and Johnson, the disappearance of social forgetfulness makes surveillance even more powerful and
indicates that a panoptic society is being put into place: “Unless data retention issues are addressed explicitly as part of a comprehensive policy approach to personal privacy, we will
gradually move to a panoptic society in which there is little social forgetfulness and little, if
any, opportunity to move on beyond one’s past and start afresh.” (Blanchette and Johnson
2002, 43) It is argued that data have predictive power.
Asymmetrical characteristics and unbalanced power relationships of panoptic surveillance are
also emphasized by Steve Mann, Jason Nolan, and Barry Wellman (2003, 332-336). Based on
Foucault’s panoptic notion, Mann, Nolan, and Wellman claim the rise of neo-Panopticons
with new communication technologies. Subjects of neo-Panopticons do not have direct contact with the observers and ”are under the potential control of people in positions of authority
who are organizational monitors of their behavior. They are like the subjects of a king, a dictator, authority figure, or organizational institution.“ (Mann, Nolan, and Wellman 2003, 335).
Additionally, they introduce the term sousveillence, which was first developed by Mann.
Sousveillence is a form of inverse surveillance using tools and technologies in order to observe the organizational observer and to surveil the surveiller: ”One way to challenge and
problematize both surveillance and acquiescence to it is to resituate these technologies of control on individuals, offering panoptic technologies to help them observe those in authority. We
call this inverse panopticon ’sousveillance’ from the French words for ’sous’ (below) and
’veiller’ to watch.“ (Mann, Nolan, and Wellman 2003, 332)
A different reading of Foucault is undertaken by Paulo Vaz and Fernanda Bruno (2003, 272- 26 -
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277). They want to open the concept in order to focus on subjectivity, care of the self, and
practices of self-surveillance. Self-surveillance is based on (productive) power and normalizing judgement and it is analyzed in the context of disciplinary society. Because individuals are
not able to realize if they are actually being observed or not, they discipline themselves, internalize power, and constitute as a normal citizen. If experiences of self-surveillance ”are to be
seen as an extension and intensification of the panopticon principles, we would be running the
risk of living in a totalitarian age today.“ (Vaz and Bruno 2003, 276)
Stuart Elden (2003, 24ff.) undertakes a precise study of Foucault’s notion of surveillance and
analyzes only partly translated lectures and seminars from this period. He criticizes traditional
Foucauldian approaches of surveillance, because they tend to overemphasize the figure of
Panopticon at the expense of other writings of Foucault; hence, they are eclectic. Although
analyzing the Panopticon is important and crucial, it only covers a few pages and power cannot be reduced to this figure. Elden argues that control mechanisms and surveillance have
more in common with the plague towns and the leper and suggests that ”the analysis of medicine may be a more profitable model for surveillance than the Panopticon“ (Elden 2003, 240).
Bart Simon (2005, 1-5) highlights a return of the Panopticism and analyzes surveillance in the
context of power, subjection, normalization, internalization, and social control. Simon finds it
fruitful studying surveillance based on Foucault, because his “model both allows for these
twin concerns within the context of the new surveillance while serving as a source of further
insight into the empirical nuances of contemporary surveillance relations.” (Simon 2005, 1)
Summing up, these approaches consider surveillance to be always negative and being connected to coercion, repression, discipline, power, and domination. For these authors, power is
primarily centralized and society tends to be repressive and controlled. This view emphasizes
panoptical elements and uses a narrow definition of surveillance.
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2.4.
Conclusion
The overall aim of this chapter was to clarify how surveillance is defined in the existing literature and what the different notions of surveillance have in common and what distinguishes
them from one another. For doing so, Foucault’s understanding of surveillance and the idea of
the Panopticon were introduced. Based on these findings, a systematic discussion of the state
of the art of surveillance by establishing a typology of the existing literature and a discussion
of commonalties and differences were introduced. The following table summarizes the results.
Foundations of surveillance theory
Non-panoptic Many scholars use a
and
general
Non-panoptic notions
Panoptic notions of
of surveillance
surveillance
Anthony Giddens (1985;
notions of
neutral
1995),
Christopher
surveillance
notion and stress non-
Dandeker (1990), James
panoptic elements of
Rule (1973; 2007), Gary
surveillance. This ap-
Marx
proach applies a broad
Stanley Cohen (1987),
definition of surveil-
James Beniger (1986),
lance and stresses con-
Roger Clarke (1988),
straining and enabling
David
effects of collecting
2001), Jean Baudrillard
data. Surveillance is
(2006; 2007), William
primarily
understood
Bogard (1996), Clive
as a plural, neutral,
Norris and Gary Arm-
and technical process.
strong
(1988;
Lyon
Hille
2006),
2002),
(1994;
(1998;
1999),
Koskela
(2004;
Roy
Boyne
(2000), Kevin Haggerty
and
Richard
Ericson
(2000), Roy Coleman
and Joe Sim (2000),
Katherine Williams and
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Craig Johnstone (2000),
Sean Hier (2003; 2004),
Elia
Zureik
(2003),
Michalis Lianos (2003),
Anders
Albrechtslund
(2008)
Panoptic
This approach consid-
Gilles Deleuze (1988;
notions of
ers surveillance to be
1992), George Orwell
surveillance
always negative and
(2004), Shoshana Zub-
being connected to co-
off (1988), Mark Poster
ercion, repression, dis-
(1990), Oscar Gandy
cipline,
(1993), Frank Webster
power,
and
domination. For these
and
authors, power is pri-
(1993;
marily centralized and
Fiske
society tends to be re-
Thomas
pressive and controlled.
(1997),
This view emphasizes
(2003; 2004), Didier
panoptical
Bigo
elements
Kevin
Robins
1999),
(1998;
John
1999),
Mathiesen
Greg
Elmer
(2006;
2008),
and uses a narrow defi-
Graham
Sewell
and
nition of surveillance.
Barry Wilkinson (1992),
Jean-François
Blanchette and Deborah
Johnson (2002), Steve
Mann,
and
Jason
Barry
Nolan,
Wellman
(2003), Paulo Vaz and
Fernanda
Bruno
(2003),
Stuart
Elden
(2003),
Bart
Simon
(2005)
Table 1: Foundations of surveillance theory
In conclusion, non-panoptic notions use a neutral and general notion of surveillance, where
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everyone has the opportunity to surveil; they are represented by scholars such Anthony Giddens, James Rule, Gary Marx, and Jean Baudrillard. In contrast, panoptic notions consider
surveillance to be negative and being connected to coercion, repression, discipline, power,
and domination; they are represented by scholars such as Gilles Deleuze, Oscar Gandy, Frank
Webster and Kevin Robins, and Mark Poster.
Although private actors monitor and watch over other individuals in everyday life experiences
(for example parents taking care of their children, providing personal information on Weblogs, and using social networking sites on the Internet), these acts are processes to which people agree and which involve no violence, coercion, or repression. In comparison, economical
and political actors use surveillance and exercise violence in order to control a certain behaviour of people and in most cases people do not know that they are surveilled. Corporations
control the economic behaviour of people and coerce individuals in order to produce or buy
specific commodities for accumulating profit and for guaranteeing the production of surplus
value. Corporations and state institutions are the most powerful actors in society and are able
to undertake mass-surveillance extensively and intensively (such as for example the collection
and gathering of information on Internet user profiles in order to implement targeted advertising), because available resources decide surveillance dimensions. In the modern production
process, primarily electronic surveillance is used to document and control workers’ behaviour
and communication for guaranteeing the production of surplus value. The commodification of
privacy is important to target advertising for accumulating profit. State institutions have intensified and extended state surveillance of citizens in order to combat the threat of terrorism (see
Gandy, 2003; Lyon 2003c) Therefore, one can assume that corporations and state institutions
are the main actors in modern surveillance societies and surveillance is a crucial element for
modern societies.
Non-panoptical notions use a broad definition of surveillance and tend to mix up very heterogeneous phenomena on one level of analysis: If for example pretty harmless experiences like
watching a baby on the one hand and for powerful economic and political surveillance on the
other hand the same term is used, it becomes difficult to criticize contemporary surveillance
phenomena such as for example CCTV, Internet surveillance, the EU data retention directive,
biometrical iris scanners, facial recognition software, Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS), and the collection of DNA samples (cf. Fuchs 2008, 273ff.). Furthermore, non-panoptic notions understand surveillance in a non-hierarchical and decentral- 30 -
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ized way, where everyone has the opportunity to surveil. This argument overlooks the fact
that corporations and state institutions are the most powerful actors in society and are able to
undertake mass-surveillance, what private actors are not able to do. Neutral concepts of surveillance tend to overlook the power asymmetries of contemporary society and therefore tend
to convey the image that private actors are equally powerful as corporations and state institutions. Hence, a general and neutral understanding of surveillance is not fruitful for studying
surveillance as it does not take asymmetrical power relations and repressive aspects of society
into consideration. Approaches that stress that everyone today has the opportunity to surveil,
that surveillance techniques democratize surveillance societies to a certain degree, and that
surveillance has comical, playful, amusing, and even enjoyable characteristics are typical for
postmodern scholars and disguise the fact of power and domination in contemporary surveillance societies.
Although panoptic notions of surveillance emphasize surveillance in the context of power and
discipline, the analysis of class-structured society and the specific capitalist mode of production of surveillance (documenting and controlling workers’ behaviour and communication for
guaranteeing the production of surplus value, commodification of privacy to target advertising
for accumulating profit) are missing in most of these approaches. Panoptic approaches do not
stress that for overcoming surveillance the sublation of domination and capitalist society as
well as the creation of a cooperative and emancipated society are needed. Studying The
Chomsky-Foucault Debate (Chomsky and Foucault 2006, 36-59) clarifies that Foucault rejects the idea that it is important to imagine alternatives to contemporary society and that
normative ideals are important: Noam Chomsky argues that the main political aim is to
change society in order to overcome coercion, repression, oppression, and destruction. In
Chomsky’s view (Chomsky and Foucault 2006, 38f.), contemporary capitalist society “cannot
be justified intrinsically. Rather it must be overcome and eliminated … and we must overcome it by a society of freedom and free association”. In addition, Chomsky stresses that this
change is not only necessary, but also possible at least in the technologically progressed western societies. In contrast to Chomsky, Foucault does not show interests eliminating capitalist
society, mentions risks and dangers of transforming society, refers to failed communist systems, and conclude: “When the proletariat takes power, it may be quite possible that the proletariat will exert towards the classes over which it has just triumphed, a violent, dictatorial, and
even bloody power.” (Chomsky and Foucault 2006, 52). Based on ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, he accentuates that power does not depend on the form of the system and that a society
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without power and class is not feasible. Foucault says “that the proletariat doesn’t wage war
against the ruling class because it considers such a war to be just. The proletariat makes war
with the ruling class because, for the first time in history, it wants to take power. And because
it will overthrow the power of the ruling class, it considers such a war to be just … One
makes war to win, not because it is just.” Hence, Foucault is not interested in articulating alternative types of human life, does not consider forms of emancipation, and “is not in the
hope that finally one day, in this or another society, people will be rewarded according to their
merist” (Chomsky and Foucault 2006, 50). For Foucault, imagining alternative automatically
means planning to install a new system of power and coercion, whereas Chomsky argues that
it is possible today to imagine how an alternative society – participatory democracy – could
look like and how it could be achieved. In conclusion, Chomsky in contrast to Foucault
stresses the importance of economic institutions in contemporary society and of political visions. The approach that is advanced in this work, recognizes the importance of the role of the
economy in contemporary society, and is therefore interested, just like Chomsky, in a political
economy approach.
Surveillance studies scholars like Lyon (1994, 119-158; 2001, 40-44) grasp that economic
surveillance such as monitoring consumers or the workplace are central aspects of surveillance societies. The following treatment indicates that most of the panoptic notions of surveillance recognize the importance of economic aspects of surveillance: As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Foucault (1995, 141-169) analyzes surveillance in the context of the
military, medical, educational and industrial institutions. When referring to the industrial institution, Foucault (1995, 145) illustrates surveillance in the context of the workplace and
concludes: “By walking up and down the central aisle of the workshop, it was possible to carry out a supervision that was both general and individual: to observe the worker’s presence
and application, and the quality of his work; to compare workers with one another, to classify
them according to skill and speed; to follow the successive stages of the production process.”
Deleuze (1992, 7) manifests control in the corporate system as “new ways of handling money,
profits, and humans that no longer pass through the old factory form.” Zuboff (1988, 324-337)
studies the panoptic power in two US American corporations namely Cedar Bluff and Metro
Tel. She concludes that “techniques of control in the workplace became increasingly important as the body became the central problem of production ... Still struggling to establish
their legitimate authority, they invented techniques designed to control the laboring body ...
As an informating technology textualizes a wide range of workplace behaviors, new patterns
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of conduct and sensibility emerge from the heart of the panoptic vision.” (Zuboff 1988, 319;
323) When Poster describes the emergence of the Superpanopticon in postmodern society, he
solely analyzes consumerist aspects of surveillance in the economy: “Indiviudals themselves
in many cases fill out the forms; the are at once the source of information and the recorder of
the information. Home networking constitutes the streamlined culmination of this phenomenon: the consumer, by ordering products through a modem connected to the producer’s database, enters data about himself or herself directly into producer’s database in the very act of
purchase ... Individuals are constituted as consumers and as participants in the disciplining
and surveillance of themselves as consumers.” (Poster 1990, 93) Gandy (1993, 80-87) argues
on the one hand that the aim of corporations is to get certain behaviours, preferences, usages,
interests, and choices of customers in order to identify, classify, and assess certain groups and
supply them with targeted advertisements. On the other hand, he stresses that surveillance also
takes place in the process of circulation and that surveillance of applications is “required to
classify the applicant in terms of eligibility or in relation to the assignment of the applicant to
one or more classes of service” (Gandy 1993, 62). Webster and Robins (993, 95) argue that
“the subsequent history of capitalist industry … has been a matter of the deepening and extension of information gathering and surveillance to the combined end of planning and controlling the production process”. They also mention that “one fundamental aspect of the ‘communications revolution’ has been to refine that planning and control of consumer behaviour that
was already inherent in the early philosophy of Scientific Management” (Webster and Robins
1993, 100). Elmer (2003, 245) states in his panoptic diagram that “consumers are not exclusively disciplined – they are both rewarded, with a preset familiar world of images and commodities, and punished by having to work at finding different and unfamiliar commodities if
they attempt to opt-out.“ Sewell and Wilkinson (1992, 272) scrutinize surveillance in the labour process and draw parallels between Foucault’s ideas of power, knowledge and surveillance and the phenomenon of post-Fordism: “It is our intention to examine this proposition in
greater detail in order that we might be able to draw meaningful parallels between the nature
of power, knowledge, and surveillance that Foucault unearthed in his archaeologies and the
role of the information superstructure that surrounds the production process in general, and
JIT/TQC manufacturing in particular.” In conclusion, panoptic notions of surveillance analyze
economic aspects of surveillance in different spheres, namely surveillance in the spheres of
production, circulation, and consumption. The following table can be outlined:
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Economic aspects in panoptic notions of surveillance
Surveillance in the sphere of Surveillance in the sphere of Surveillance in the sphere of
production
circulation
consumption
Michel Foucault (1995)
Gilles Deleuze (1992)
Mark Poster (1990)
Shoshana Zuboff (1988)
Oscar Gandy (1993)
Oscar Gandy (1993)
Frank Webster and Kevin
Frank Webster and Kevin
Robins (1993)
Robins (1993)
Greg Elmer (2003)
Graham Sewell and Barry
Wilkinson (1992)
Table 2: Economic aspects in panoptic notions of surveillance
Although panoptic notions of surveillance recognize the importance of the economy, they
tend to focus only on one or two spheres of the economy. Furthermore, panoptic notions of
surveillance claim that there are particular forms of economic surveillance without a theoretical criterion for a certain typology. In contrast, a typology of surveillance in the modern economy, which is based on Marx’ theory of the political economy, allows to systemize economic
surveillance and to distinguish surveillance into the spheres of production, circulation, and
consumption. A theoretically founded typology of economic surveillance is important in order
to undertake a theoretical analysis of surveillance in the modern economy. Therefore, in the
next chapter, foundations of a political economy approach on surveillance will be outlined.
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3.
A critical contribution to surveillance studies
The overall aim of this chapter is to analyze the specific economic mode of surveillance.
Based on the foundations of a political economy approach, the distinction of production, circulation, and consumption within the economy is introduced (section one) in order to establish a typology of surveillance in the economy and to study surveillance in the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption (section two). The chapter concludes with a summary
and discusses the emergence of new information and communication technologies as new
surveillance technologies (section three).
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3.1.
The spheres of the economy
In the Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx
(MECW 28, 26-37) distinguishes between (a) production, (b) circulation (distribution and
exchange), and (c) consumption as dialectically mediated spheres of the capitalistic economy.
(a) The sphere of production appears as the point of departure. In the capitalist mode of production, entrepreneurs purchase means of production and labour power in order to produce
commodities and surplus value. (b) Circulation is the “mediation between production and
consumption” (MECW 28, 27). In the process of circulation, consumers purchase commodities for daily life and proprietors sell the produced commodities to realize profit. (c) In the
sphere of consumption as the final point of the process, “the product drops out of this social
movement, becomes the direct object and servant of an individual need, which its use satisfies” (MECW 28, 26). While in the production the person receives an objective aspect, in the
consumption the object receives a subjective aspect. The “consumption, as the concluding act,
… reacts on the point of departure thus once again initiating the whole process.” (MECW 28,
27)
Although production, circulation, and consumption are separated spheres, they correlate in an
interconnected relationship (see figure 2):
Figure 2: Production, circulation, and consumption as dialectically mediated spheres of the modern economy
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In the sphere of production, means of production are consumed and in the sphere of consumption, labour power is (re)produced. “Production is consumption; consumption is production.
Consumptive production. Productive consumption.” (MECW 28, 30) Production is not possible without demand and consumption does not take place without material. “No consumption
without production; no production without consumption.” (MECW 28, 30) Moreover, the
process of production is determined by circulation of labour power as well as means of production whereas circulation itself is a product of production. Production, circulation, and consumption are not “identical, but that they are all elements of a totality, differences within a
unity. … There is an interaction between the different moments.” (MECW 28, 36-37) Nevertheless, production, circulation, and consumption are not equal spheres in the economy; production is rather “the dominant moment, both with regard to itself in the contradictory determination of production and with regard to the other moments. The process always starts
afresh with production. … A definite [mode of; TA] production thus determines a definite
[mode of; TA] consumption, distribution, exchange and definite relations of these different
moments to one another. Production in its one-sided form, however, is in its turn also determined by the other moments.” (MECW 28, 36)
Based on the distinction of production, circulation, and consumption, a typology of surveillance in the economy can be constructed. Such a typology will be outlined in section 3.2.
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3.2.
Surveillance in the spheres of the economy
Economical surveillance in the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption will be
outlined. The following three sub-sections are therefore structured according to this distinction.
3.2.1.
Surveillance in the sphere of production
Marx analyzes the process of producing capital in Capital, Volume I. The process starts with
commodities and money, continues with labour-produced surplus value and methods for producing absolute and relative surplus value, and concludes with the accumulation of capital.
For Marx (MEW 23 , 192-2131), production is a unity of the labour process (a) and the process of producing surplus value (b). (a) The labour process is a human activity where, with the
help of the instruments of labour, an alteration of material is effected. Marx understands the
labour process as a relationship of human activity with its physical and intellectual capabilities on the one hand and the means of production with its instruments and subjects of labour
on the other hand. Whereas labour is defined as “a process in which both man and Nature
participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material reactions between himself and Nature.” (MEW 23, 192) Furthermore, “the soil … is the universal subject of human labour” (MEW 23, 193) and an instrument of labour “is a thing, or a
complex of things, which the labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his labour, and which serves as the conductor of his activity. He makes use of the mechanical,
physical, and chemical properties of some substances in order to make other substances subservient to his aims.” (MEW 23, 193) (b) In the capitalist mode of production, entrepreneurs
consume purchased labour power as variable capital (v) and purchased means of production
as constant capital (c) in order to produce commodities. Constant capital such as raw materials, operating supplies, buildings, equipments etc. does not change its value in the process of
production, because the value of constant capital is transferred to the commodity; whereas,
labour power as variable capital changes its value during the process of production and produces surplus value (cf. MEW 23, 223). The overall aim of capitalists is to produce as much
surplus value as possible in order to accumulate profit. There are two different possibilities for
1
All translations from: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume35/index.htm (March 15, 2010)
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doing so: the production of absolute surplus value by extension of the working day and the
production of relative surplus value by intensification of the working day and increasing
productivity. “The surplus-value produced by prolongation of the working-day, I call absolute
surplus-value. On the other hand, the surplus-value arising from the curtailment of the necessary labour-time, and from the corresponding alteration in the respective lengths of the two
components of the working-day, I call relative surplus-value.” (MEW 23, 334) When Marx
refers to meticulous data protocols of factory inspectors it gets clear that proprietors are interested in expanding the time of the working day for producing absolute surplus value:
“The fraudulent mill-owner begins work a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes
less) before 6 a.m., and leaves off a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) after
6 p.m. He takes 5 minutes from the beginning and from the end of the half hour nominally
allowed for breakfast, and 10 minutes at the beginning and end of the hour nominally allowed
for dinner. He works for a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) after 2 p.m.
on Saturday.” Therefore, the mill-owner’s benefit is listed in table 3:
Before 6 a.m.,
15 minutes.
After 6 p.m.,
15 "
At breakfast time,
10 "
At dinner time,
20 "
Five days — 300 minutes,
60 "
On Saturday before 6 a.m.,
15 minutes.
At breakfast time,
10 "
After 2 p.m.,
15 "
40 minutes.
Total weekly,
340 minutes.
Table 3: The mill-owner’s benefit (MEW 23, 255)
“Or 5 hours and 40 minutes weekly, which multiplied by 50 working weeks in the year (allowing two for holidays and occasional stoppages) is equal to 27 working-days. Five minutes
a day’s increased work, multiplied by weeks, are equal to two and a half days of produce in
the year. An additional hour a day gained by small instalments before 6 a.m., after 6 p.m., and
at the beginning and end of the times nominally fixed for meals, is nearly equivalent to working 13 months in the year.” (MEW 23, 255)
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Marx develops the concept of producing relative surplus value as instrument to intensify the
working day and introduces co-operation as one possibility for doing so. For Marx, cooperation is an essential part of the capitalist process of production that is defined as a process
of many workers collaborating with each other in one process or many related processes of
production in order to work systematically side by side and together (cf. MEW 23, 344). He
highlights the importance and necessity of control, supervision, and surveillance in order to
guarantee co-operation, the production of relative surplus value, and therefore achieve accumulation of capital: “The work of directing, superintending, and adjusting, becomes one of
the functions of capital, from the moment that the labour under the control of capital, becomes
co-operative ... In proportion to the increasing mass of the means of production, now no longer the property of the labourer, but of the capitalist, the necessity increases for some effective
control over the proper application of those means … Just as at first the capitalist is relieved
from actual labour so soon as his capital has reached that minimum amount with which capitalist production, as such, begins, so now, he hands over the work of direct and constant supervision of the individual workmen, and groups of workmen, to a special kind of wagelabourer. An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a
real army, officers (managers), and sergeants (foremen, overlookers), who, while the work is
being done, command in the name of the capitalist. The work of supervision becomes their
established and exclusive function.” (MEW 23, 350-351)
Marx argues that collecting, analyzing, and assessing data of the working day as well as the
superintendence, control, supervision, and surveillance of workers’ behaviour and performance are central parts of the capitalist process of production for generating absolute and
relative surplus value in order to accumulate profit. As one can see, surveillance in the sphere
of production in capitalist economy is as old as capitalist economy itself. But for explaining
contemporary forms of surveillance in the process of production, the emergence of scientific
management has to be analyzed first (cf. Robins and Webster 1999, 93ff.).
The mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor developed the scientific management as a
system of industrial production and concept of management, which was firstly applied in
shops by Henry Ford and extended to a designated concept of mass production in the twentieth century (cf. Hirsch 1995, 75). Taylor’s concept of rationalising production and work,
mechanisation of workers including the expansion of discipline and order in production, as
well as the “militarisation of labour” (Gramsci 1992, 301) only characterize a new phase of a
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process which had already begun with capitalist production itself, but works on a more brutal
and powerful level (cf. Gramsci 1992, 301f.). “Taylor is in fact expressing with brutal cynicism the purpose of American society – developing in the worker to the highest degree automatic and mechanical attitudes … and reducing productive operations exclusively to the mechanical physical aspect.” (Gramsci 1993, 302) The overall aim of scientific management was
to increase productivity and to make labour more efficient, what means in Marx’ terms: decreasing value of labour power, inducing production of relative surplus value, and maximizing profit. The basic idea is the separation of mental and physical tasks in order to rationalize
and intensify the process of production. “All possible brain work should be removed from the
shop and centered in the planning or laying-out department.“ (Taylor 2003, 50) In the area of
scientific management, a precise distribution of labour and responsibility, mechanization and
schematization, and better coordination, control, discipline, and standardization over labourer
and labour process took place. Furthermore, with the help of Taylor, standards of tools and
machinery, the fragmentation of labour processes in as many parts as possible, and new forms
of performance-oriented wages and salaries were introduced (cf. Hirsch 1995, 75-83).
The meaning of knowledge and information as productive force has permanently increased;
therefore, surveillance and control of labour through knowledge became important (cf.
Braverman 1998, 82; Robins and Webster 1999, 94ff.). In the area of scientific management,
surveillance of workers is realized by humans such as overlookers, managers, and foremen
and by technology such as assembly lines, where through speed control the labour process is
disciplined. The management gathers knowledge of the labour process and uses this
knowledge in order to control the labour process (cf. Zuboff 1988, 43). That includes “the
gathering together of the workers in a workshop and the dictation of the length of the working
day; the supervision of workers to ensure diligent, intense, or uninterrupted application; the
enforcement of rules against distractions (talking, smoking, leaving the workplace, etc.) that
were thought to interfere with application; the setting of production minimums; etc.”
(Braverman 1998, 62) For Taylor (2003, 137f.), it is important to study worker’s time and
motion of each element and every single act of work in order to maximize efficiency. For doing so, labour is planned out by the management and complete instructions such as instruction
cards for labourers are given. For instance, managers suppose ”the burden of gathering together all of the traditional knowledge which in the past has been possessed by the workmen
and then of classifying, tabulating, and reducing this knowledge to rules, laws, and formulae
which are immensely helpful to the workmen in doing their daily work … This task specifies
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not only what is to be done but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it.”
(Taylor 2003, 136, 138)
In Shop Management, Taylor (2003, 82ff.) introduces the principles of time studies with the
help of watch books and time studies note sheets. Figure 3 shows a watch book, which consists of a sheet for describing course of movements and some stopwatches for stopping the
duration of each working part. The observation is performed “without the knowledge of the
workman who is being observed” (Taylor 2003, 82).
Figure 3: Watch book for time study (Taylor 2003, 84)
In addition, Taylor (2003, 82ff.) suggests how labourers should be observed and supervised:
“The writer does not believe at all in the policy of spying upon the workman when taking time
observations for the purpose of time study. If the men observed are to be ultimately affected
by the results of these observations, it is generally best to come out openly, and let them know
that they are being timed, and what the object of the timing is. There are many cases, however, in which telling the workman that he was being timed in a minute way would only result in
a row, and in defeating the whole object of the timing; particularly when only a few time units
are to be studied on one man’s work, and when this man will not be personally affected by the
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results of the observations. In these cases, the watch book …, holding the watches in the cover, is especially useful. A good deal of judgment is required to know when to time openly, or
the reverse.”
Furthermore, Taylor introduces the time study note sheet (see table 4), which contains: (1)
space for basic information on the operation and the description of the activity, such as the
name of the worker, used material, and working conditions, (2) space for noting the total time
of complete operations, (3) lines for listing detailed operations of the work including columns
for recording the stopped averages of the activity, and (4) squares for logging the timing of
the detailed operations according to the stopwatch.
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Table 4: Time study note sheet (for excavation of earth with wheelbarrows) (Taylor 2003, 83)
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For Taylor (2003, 84f.), the techniques of using the note sheets for timing labourers can be
summarized as follows: “After entering the necessary descriptive matter at the top of the
sheet, divide the operation to be timed into its elementary units, and write these units one after
another under the heading ‘Detail Operations’. If the job is long and complicated, it may be
analyzed while the timing is going on, and the elementary units entered then instead of beforehand. In wheelbarrow work as illustrated in the example shown on the note sheet, the elementary units consist of ‘filling barrow,’ ‘starting’ (which includes throwing down shovel
and lifting handles of barrow), ‘wheeling full,’ etc. These units might have been further subdivided – the first one into time for loading one shovelful, or still further into the time for filling and the time for emptying each shovelful. The letters a, b, c, etc., which are printed, are
simply for convenience in designating the elements.” The worker’s observer takes a stopwatch in order to stop each element of the activity and the “times are recorded in the columns
headed ‘Time’ at the top of the right-hand half of the note sheet. These columns are the only
place on the face of the sheet where stop watch readings are to be entered … The rest of the
figures (except those on the left-hand side of the note sheet, which may be taken from an ordinary timepiece) are the results of calculation, and may be made in the office by any clerk.”
(Taylor 2003, 85)
The implementation of scientific management in an American steel company is also interesting in the context of surveillance in the sphere of production. Taylor’s and some other managers’ overall aim was to maximize efficiency and productivity in this factory. For doing so,
they tried to find the fastest labourer of the company first of all:
“Our first step was to find the proper workman to begin with. We therefore carefully watched
and studied these 75 men for three or four days, at the end of which time we had picked out
four men who appeared to be physically able to handle pig iron at the rate of 47 tons per day.
A careful study was then made of each of these men. We looked up their history as far back as
practicable and thorough inquiries were made as to the character, habits, and the ambition of
each of them. Finally we selected one from among the four as the most likely man to start
with.” (Taylor 2003, 141)
As one can see, the realization of Taylor’s scientific management in the process of production
includes the observation and supervision of every particular element of labour and the collection as well as the assessment of these data in order to undertake a careful selection of labour- 45 -
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ers. Afterwards, the most efficient labourers were trained and supported to work corresponding to the scientific management:
“These men were given all kinds of tasks, which were carried out each day under the close
observation of the young college man who was conducting the experiments, and who at the
same time noted with a stop-watch the proper time for all of the motions that were made by
the men. Every element in any way connected with the work which we believed could have a
bearing on the result was carefully studied and recorded.” (Taylor 2003, 147)
Finally, it was known how effective and efficient each element of the process could be performed and what a proper day’s work was. While continuing observation and surveillance of
each labourer, the management was able to introduce different scales of wage and train all
workers towards scientific management:
“As each workman came into the works in the morning, he took out of his own special pigeonhole, with his number on the outside, two pieces of paper, one of which stated just what
implements he was to get from the tool room and where he was to start to work, and the second of which gave the history of his previous day’s work; that is, a statement of the work
which he had done, how much he had earned the day before, etc.“(Taylor 2003, 155)
Taylor’s concept of scientific management indicates the importance of knowledge in the process of production and therefore for the production of surplus value and accumulation of profit. Similarly in Fragment on Machines in the Grundrisse, Marx (1973, 706) stresses that
knowledge as general intellect “has become a direct force of production”.
In conclusion, “the subsequent history of capitalist industry … has been a matter of the deepening and extension of information gathering and surveillance to the combined end of planning and control.” (Webster and Robins 1993, 245) In this sub-section, I have tried to delineate the history of capitalist industry as a history of surveillance in the sphere of production:
Marx argues that collecting, analyzing, and assessing data of the working day as well as the
superintendence, control, supervision, and surveillance of workers’ behaviour and performance are central parts of the capitalist process of production for generating absolute and
relative surplus value in order to accumulate profit. Surveillance in the sphere of production in
capitalist economy is as old as capitalist economy itself. But for explaining newer forms of
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surveillance in the process of production, the analysis of the emergence of scientific management is important (cf. Robins and Webster 1999, 93ff.). Now, we move on to the sphere of
circulation.
3.2.2.
Surveillance in the sphere of circulation
For understanding the sphere of circulation of the capitalistic economy and the surveillance in
it, it is helpful to analyze how Marx described the circuit of capital in Capital, Volume II. For
Marx, the circuit of capital contains three stages, namely the stage of money capital (sphere of
circulation), the stage of productive capital (sphere of production), and the stage of commodity capital (sphere of circulation).
The first stage of the circuit of capital starts with a certain amount of money (M), which at
this stage is money capital. With this money, the capitalist purchases two different commodities (C), namely labour power (L) and means of production (mp). This act can be expressed as
follows:
L
M - C {mp
Money is transformed into commodities and the capitalist appears as a buyer. It is a transformation of money capital to commodity capital. With labour power and means of production,
the capitalist is able to start the process of production. (cf. Marx 1992, 110-118)
The second stage of the circuit of capital is a productive process. The capitalist consumes the
purchased commodities in order to produce a new commodity (C’) with an increased value
because of surplus labour. P indicates the process of production. The dots signify that the
sphere of circulation is interrupted by the sphere of production. This act can be expressed as
follows:
L
C {mp ...P...C'
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With a commodity of greater value than its single elements of production, the capitalist is able
to sell the commodity on the market. (cf. Marx 1992, 118-121)
In the third stage of the circuit of capital, the capitalist sells the commodity on the market and
transforms the commodity into money. The capitalist finishes with a greater amount of money
(M’) than what he owned at the beginning. This act can be expressed as follows:
C'-M'
The capitalist turns back to the market as a seller. It is a transformation of commodity capital
to money capital. (cf. Marx 1992, 121-131)
“We have seen how the circulation process, after its first phase … has elapsed, is interrupted
by P, in which the commodities bought on the market, L and mp, are consumed as material
and value components of the productive capital; the product of this consumption is a new
commodity, M’, altered both materially and in value. The interrupted circulation process, MC, must be supplemented by C-M.“ (Marx 1992, 131f.) Finally, the circuit as a whole can be
expressed as follows:
L
M - C {mp ...P...C'-M '
The first and the last stage take place in the sphere of circulation, whereas the second stage
takes place in the sphere of production. Only in the sphere of production surplus value is produced. The sphere of circulation represents a transformation of money capital to commodity
capital and a transformation of commodity capital to money capital. (cf. Marx 1992, 131-143)
“Here capital appears as a value that passes through a sequence of connected and mutually
determined transformations, a series of metamorphoses that form so many phases or stages of
a total process. Two of these phases belong to the circulation sphere, one to the sphere of production. In each of these phases the capital value is to be found in a different form, corresponding to a different and special function. Within this movement the value advanced not
only maintains itself, but it grows, increases its magnitude. Finally, in the concluding stage, it
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returns to the same form in which it appeared at the outset of the total process. This total process is therefore a circuit.” (Marx 1992, 132f.)
By knowing the sphere of circulation in the circuit of capital, one is able to identify surveillance in the sphere of circulation:
a.) Surveillance of purchasing labour power in the stage of money capital
Surveillance of purchasing labour power in the stage of money capital means applicant surveillance. Applicant surveillance is useful for getting the most suitable labour power, which is
able to produce the most surplus value and with means of production creates a new commodity of the greatest possible value in order to sell the commodity and to accumulate as much
profit as possible. Lyon (2001, 41) stresses in this context that “before an employee is even
hired, she or he is likely to be checked, using special databases (including data mining techniques) or genetic screening, to discover the likelihood of this or that person turning out to be
a responsible and hard-working employee.” Gandy (1993, 62) argues that the corporate file
“begins with the application” and that “applications are required to classify the applicant in
terms of eligibility or in relation to the assignment of the applicant to one or more classes of
service”. He lists groups of personal information, which may be useful for corporations in the
process of applications (see table 5):
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Table 5: Groups of personal information in the application process (Gandy 1993, 63)
In conclusion, collecting, classifying, and assessing data such as personal information for
identification and qualification (school records, marriage certificate), financial information
(tax returns, traveler’s checks), insurance information (liabilities), social services information
(health care, social security), utility services information (telephone, television), real estate
information (sale, lease), entertainment and leisure information (entertainment tickets and
reservations, newspaper and periodical subscriptions), consumer information (purchase inquiries, subscriber lists), employment information (applications, employment histories, employment agency applications), educational information (school records, rankings, sanctions),
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and legal information (records of the court, attorney records) are part of applicant surveillance
(cf. Gandy 1993, 63), which is undertaken by companies or by agencies (cf. Lyon 1994, 129).
b.) Surveillance of purchasing means of production in the stage of money capital
Surveillance of purchasing means of production in the stage of money capital includes screening of suppliers.
c.) Surveillance of produced commodities in the stage of commodity capital
Surveillance of produced commodities in the stage of commodity capital contains (material
and immaterial) property surveillance as well as surveillance of vendors.
In conclusion, the circuit of capital contains three stages, namely the stage of money capital,
the stage of productive capital, and the stage of commodity capital. Based on these findings,
surveillance in the sphere of circulation consists of applicant surveillance, screening of suppliers, property surveillance, and surveillance of vendors. Now, we move on to the sphere of
consumption.
3.2.3.
Surveillance in the sphere of consumption
Although the emergence of mass consumption in modern societies promises individuality,
free choice, sovereignty, and freedom of consumers, it synchronously requires knowledge of
consuming activities in order to stimulate and steer consumption (cf. Lyon 1994, 137). Advertising as a product of modern society is an important instrument for realizing profit, because it
induces people to consume more products or services through branding. The more data are
available, the more precise and effective are the targeted advertisements. Consumer surveillance can be seen as a product of the capitalistic economy (cf. Lyon 1994, 138; Gill 2003,
25ff.; Ogura 2006, 293f.; Brown 2006, 18ff.; see also Hewson 1994). In order to target advertising, market research such as analyzing behaviour, preferences, and interests of consumers is
important. The basic question for market research is who buys where, when, what and why.
The overall aim is to get certain behaviours, preferences, usages, interests, and choices of customers in order to identify, classify, and assess (cf. Gandy 1993, 80-87) certain groups and
supply them with targeted advertisements. As Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer
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(2002, 96f.) put it: “Sharp distinctions like those between A and B films, or between short
stories published in magazines in different price segments, do not so much reflect real differences as assist in the classification, organization, and identification of consumers.” So, “for
the consumer there is nothing left to classify, since the classification has already be preempted
by the schematism of production.” (Adorno and Horkheimer 2002, 98) Corporations are interested in collecting and generating as much data as possible (qualitative level) from as many
people as possible (quantitative level). Surveillance in the sphere of consumption has emerged
monitoring routines of everyday life (cf. Lyon 1994, 138).
On an abstract level, Dallas Smythe (2006, 234) undertakes a subdivision of data gathering in
the sphere of consumption: (a) surveillance of corporations while purchase producers’ goods
to enter a new process of production (for example: control units, logic units, bus units, input-,
and output). “The buyers of producers’ goods are typically institutions (government, in the
case of the ‘military sales effort’, or private corporations)”. (Smythe 2006, 234) (b) surveillance of labourers while purchase consuming commodities to exit the process of production
for consuming (for example: home computers).
Consumer surveillance results in both, permitting consumers in further specific areas of offers
and opportunities and limits the choices of those whose data point out that they are not able to
conform to certain consumption norms or have unacceptable debts (cf. Lyon 1994, 137 and
154). For instance, knowledge of personal information may influence decision-making to
whom an apartment is rented or to whom a credit is granted. Consumerist methods of surveillance are a contradictory form of social inclusion of qualified and desired consumers and social exclusion of disqualified and undesired consumers such as non-consumers as homeless
people. Thus, consumer surveillance produces and re-produces social classes in modern society. “Surveillance-oriented society is a dialectic process between the excluded population and
the dominant socio-economic political regime. Surveillance is a technique of redefinition and
making clear the boundaries between exclusion and inclusion, separation and integration, absence and presence, disregard and consideration.” (Ogura 2006, 277)
Market research in the sphere of consumption monitors both patterns of small and large consumption groups on a quantitative level and buying behaviour of individuals by combining
geo-demographic with socio-economic data on a qualitative level (cf. Lyon 1994, 152).
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Marx (MECW 28, 30) notes that “production produces consumption: (1) by creating the material for consumption; (2) by determining the mode of consumption; (3) by creating in the consumer a need for the products which it first posits as objects” and concludes that production
“produces the object of consumption, the mode of consumption and the urge to consume.”
Nevertheless, in order to know which mode of production generates which mode of consumption of different consumers, knowledge of consumption matters is required. Robins and Webster (1999, 96ff.) argue that for understanding the logic of surveillance in the sphere of consumption, the emergence of the Fordist system (based on Taylor’s concept of scientific management) has to be analyzed first.
The American entrepreneur Henry Ford applied Taylor’s concept of scientific management in
combination with assembly lines in his car factory (Ford Motor Company) in the early twentieth century. This form of production was enormously extended in the manufacturing industry
in the industrialized countries up to the 1970s. The reason for this expansion can be seen in
the context of the changed circumstances caused by the world depression in the 1930s as well
as in the economical, political, and cultural dominating position of the USA. (cf. Hirsch 1995,
75ff.)
Due to the systematic application of Taylorist management and assembly lines, a standard
mass production with low product prices became common. Because of higher productivity
and economical increase, higher real wages, reduction of working hours, and increased labour
requirements were realized what caused mass consumption and a relative prosperity of labourers. This consuming era was characterized by a distribution of commodities such as automobiles, television sets, and electric household appliances on a large scale. Mass consumption, higher productivity, and new markets were important in order to accumulate capital. Furthermore, these methods of production raised centralistic organized corporations and the
building of monopolies and capitalization of many areas of life. (cf. Becker and Sablowski
1997, 14f.; Fuchs 2001; Hirsch 1995, 75-83)
Fordism produced commodities on a large scale, whereas mass production depends on mass
consumption in order to avoid overproduction. Therefore, for guaranteeing mass consumption, market research on data such as demographic and socio-economic information and
knowledge of buying behaviour patterns became important in order to target advertising and
to stimulate needs and demands (cf. Robins and Webster 1999, 96f.). “The system of mass
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consumption (and the consumer society) is dependent upon the collection, aggregation, and
dissemination of information.” (Robins and Webster 1999, 96) Efficiency and effectiveness
were extended from the sphere of production to the sphere of consumption (cf. Lyon 1994,
141; Andrejevic 2007, 88) and a translation of scientific management to scientific marketing
took place: “Taylorist principles of calculation must extend into the marketing sphere.” (Robins and Webster 1999, 96)
Similarly, Andrejevic (2007, 74ff.) stresses that for a system of mass production a system of
mass consumption is necessary in order to avoid overproduction. For doing so, consumer desires and demands have to be studied and managed in order to professionalize advertising and
to stimulate consumption. “What was needed was a way of getting messages to a mass audience on a mass scale, large enough to encompass markets at the regional and national level. It
is no coincidence that the first national mass medium in the United States – the masscirculation magazine – emerged alongside the development of industrialized mass production
in the nineteenth century, not least because its success was reliant on the same technologies
that made the mass production and distribution of other manufactured goods possible.” (Andrejevic 2007, 77) The more commercialization and professionalization in the mass media has
taken place, the more the dependence on advertising has grown, and the more systematic
forms of consumer surveillance have been undertaken (cf. Andrejevic 2007, 80). Consumerist
methods of monitoring and information gathering constitute the “economic lifeblood of the
commercial mass media” (cf. Andrejevic 2007, 81).
Also Beniger (1986, 352ff.) emphasizes the coherence of media advertisement and surveillance and argues that with the rise of modern advertising consumerist methods of control have
permanently increased. He indicates an analogy of the development of advertising on the one
hand and the rise of control of consumption on the other hand. The more sophisticated advertising was in modern society, the more advanced methods for gathering knowledge of consuming behaviour were necessary.
In On the Audience Commodity and Its Work, Dallas Smythe (2006) argues that commercial
mass media, for instance, newspapers, magazines, television, radio, etc. gather information
about their audience and sell these data to advertisers in order to accumulate profit. Hence, the
audience appears as a commodity. “Because audience power is produced, sold, purchased and
consumed, it commands a price and is a commodity.” (Smythe 2006, 233) Mass media col- 54 -
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lect, analyze, and assess information in order to know which audience group consumes and
receives what, when, and in which market area. Besides, with the help of market research,
specific demographics such as age, sex, location, income level, social class, and hobbies, are
analyzed and sold. Advertisers buy “the services of audiences with predictable specifications
which will pay attention in predictable numbers and at particular times to particular means of
communication (television, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and third-class mail) in
particular market areas” (Smythe 2006, 234). The audience produces the for modern economy
crucial audience commodity for free in the “unpaid work time” (Smythe 2006, 238) and “the
system gets it ‘dirt cheap’” (Smythe 2006, 239). Furthermore, “while people do their work as
audience members they are simultaneously reproducing their own labor power” (Smythe
2006, 244). Audience commodity is the counterpart of the production of commodity (cf.
Smythe 2006, 251). In addition, some scholars articulated comparable terms with similar
meanings such as “watching as working” (Jhally and Livant 1986), “commodification of audiences” (Arvidsson 2004, 460), “the work of being watched” (Andrejevic 2004), “consumption as immaterial labour” (Arvidsson 2005, 239), “commercial exploitation of user data”
(Röhle 2007), “manufacturing customers” (Zwick and Knott 2009, 221), “the database as new
means of production” (Zwick and Knott 2009, 221), and “prosumer/produsage commodity”
(Fuchs 2010a; 2010b).
Figure 4: The television audience (Jhally and Livant 1986, 125)
In conclusion, the emergence of mass consumption is crucial in order to understand surveillance in the sphere of consumption. Furthermore, scientific management was translated to
scientific marketing, where the audience is treated as commodity.
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3.3.
Conclusion
The overall aim of this chapter was to analyze surveillance in the context of the economy.
Based on the foundations of a political economy approach, the distinction of production, circulation, and consumption in the economy was introduced in order to establish a typology of
surveillance in the economy and to study surveillance in the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption (see table 6).
Surveillance in the economy
Surveillance in the sphere of Surveillance in the sphere of Surveillance in the sphere of
production
circulation
consumption
Production of absolute and
Purchasing labour power in
Mass consumption
relative surplus value
the stage of money capital
Scientific marketing
Scientific management
Purchasing means of production in the stage of money
Audience commodity
capital
Produced commodities in the
stage of commodity capital
Table 6: Surveillance in the economy
Marx argues that collecting, analyzing, and assessing data of the working day as well as the
superintendence, control, supervision, and surveillance of workers’ behaviour and performance are central parts of the capitalist process of production for generating absolute and
relative surplus value in order to accumulate profit. For explaining newer forms of surveillance in the process of production, the emergence of scientific management was analyzed.
The mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor developed the concept of scientific management, where the meaning of knowledge and information as productive force has permanently increased and the management gathers knowledge of the labour process and uses this
knowledge in order to control the labour process.
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For understanding surveillance in the sphere of circulation, the circuit of capital was introduced. For Marx, the circuit of capital contains three stages, namely the stage of money capital, the stage of productive capital, and the stage of commodity capital. Based on these findings, surveillance in the sphere of circulation was identified and classified into surveillance of
purchasing labour power in the stage of money capital, surveillance of purchasing means of
production in the stage of money capital, and surveillance of produced commodities in the
stage of commodity capital.
For explaining surveillance in the sphere of consumption, the emergence of mass consumption was studied: For guaranteeing mass consumption, market research became important in
order to target advertising and to stimulate needs and demands. Efficiency and effectiveness
were extended from the sphere of production to the sphere of consumption and a translation of
scientific management to scientific marketing took place. In scientific marketing, the audience
appears as a commodity and produces crucial data for the economy for free.
According to Lyon (1994, 40-56; also 2001, 107-122), for understanding modern forms of
surveillance, the emergence of new technology, primarily information technology, has to be
analyzed. Lyon accentuates a remarkable mutation from paper to electronic surveillance,
which has caused changes in the economical, political, and cultural system on an intensive
and extensive level, and emphasizes four consequences of electronic surveillance: (1) larger
and more precise data files are available, (2) monitoring has become more dispersed and nearly every space is surveilled, (3) tempo of data-flows has been increased, and (4) citizens,
workers, and consumers are more visible and transparent than before. Lyon (1994, 56) concludes that “new ways of understanding surveillance are required in an era of information
technology, which take account of the historical development of surveillance systems and also
accommodate the new configurations and combinations that constitute the challenge of surveillance today“.
Gary Marx (2002, 9-29) asks in this context what new about new surveillance is and identifies
28 main differences between traditional and new surveillance (see table 7). He suggests dimensions such as senses, visibility, timing, context, and form and classifies traditional surveillance on the left side of the table and new surveillance on the right side of the table.
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Table 7: Differences between traditional and new surveillance (Gary Marx 2002, 28f.)
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Whereas in traditional surveillance the collection of data was more visible, monitoring has
become more invisible. Furthermore, compared to old forms of surveillance, new surveillance
is undertaken in a very inexpensive way and while former techniques of surveillance were
realized by humans, modern forms of surveillance are mostly automated. In addition, new
surveillance works on a more intensive and extensive level and data analyses are easier to
organize, store, retrieve, and analyze, as well as easier to send and receive. (cf. Gary Marx
2002, 28f.)
In order to describe surveillance in the context of the emergence of new information and
communication technologies, further scholars accentuated terms such as “social control in the
computer age” (Rule 1973), “information technology and dataveillance” (Clarke 1988), “in
the age of the smart machine” (Zuboff 1988), “the superpanopticon” (Mark Poster 1990),
“hypercontrol in telematic societies” (Bogard 1996), “social Taylorism of surveillance” (Robins and Webster 1999), “the maximum surveillance society” (Norris and Armstrong 1999),
“the intensification of surveillance” (Ball and Webster 2003), “digitizing surveillance” (Graham and Murakami Wood 2003), “profiling machines” (Elmer 2004), “surveillance in the
interactive area” (Andrejevic 2007), and “the rise of electronic surveillance” (Fuchs 2008).
Surveillance technologies are developed by analogy with productive forces in modern societies. New information technologies have generated a “rapid quantitative expansion of surveillance, which simultaneously raises questions of a qualitative shift“ (Lyon 1994, 56). New
surveillance is a dialectical sublation of traditional surveillance in the form of elimination,
retention, and emergence of new qualities on a higher level. For example, the necessity of
face-to-face surveillance is eliminated, but power relations and forms of domination are retained and work on a more intensive and extensive level. Surveillance in the context of new
information and communication technologies is a dialectic of continuity and discontinuity.
The Internet as an example of new information and communication technologies is a dynamic, global, decentralized, self-referential, and self-organizing techno-social system (cf. Fuchs
2008, 121), where in a top-down process “the technological infrastructure enables and constrains human cognition, communication, and cooperation“ (Fuchs 2008, 121) and in a bottom-up process “human actors permanently re-create ... global knowledge storage mechanism
by producing new informational content, communicating, and consuming existing informational content in the system” (Fuchs 2008, 121). Fuchs (2008, 129) distinguishes between web
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1.0 as a medium of cognition with applications such as peer-to-peer networks for file sharing,
web sites, e-portfolio, Internet radio/podcasting, and electronic calendar, web 2.0 as a medium
of communication with applications such as chat, instant messaging, video conferencing systems, e-mail, (photo and video) blogs, social network services, and mobile telecommunication, and web 3.0 as a medium of co-operation with applications such as multiuser dungeons,
wikis, and shared workspace systems and argues that “communication and cooperation have
become more important features of the web” (Fuchs 2008, 125). For Fuchs (2008, 139), interactivity, hypertextuality, globalized communication, many-to-many communication, cooperative production, decontextualization, and derealisation are important characteristics of the
World Wide Web and the Internet is a multimedium, because it allows the combination and
convergence of “text, sound, images, animation, and video in one medium that integrates all
senses” (Fuchs 2008, 139). In conclusion, the Internet is the most important phenomenon of
new information and communication technologies, which involves all different forms of information, communication, and co-operation in one medium.
These approaches show that many forms of contemporary surveillance are computer-based
and Internet based and that as a reaction a multiplicity of new analytical approaches has
emerged. Therefore in the next chapter, different notions of Internet surveillance will be outlined.
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4.
Foundations of Internet surveillance theory
The overall aim of this chapter is to elucidate how Internet surveillance is defined in the existing literature, what commonalties and differences of various notions of online surveillance
exist, and what advantages and disadvantages such definitions have. For doing so, based on
the distinction of panoptic and non-panoptic notions of surveillance from chapter two, sections one and two of this chapter contain a systematic discussion of the state of the art of Internet surveillance by establishing a typology of the existing literature and discussing commonalties and differences. For analyzing the existing literature on a more abstract level and
identifying advantages and disadvantages, it is essential to discuss commonalties and differences and to find certain typologies. Finally, section three gives a summary, describes how
different notions deal with Internet surveillance in the modern economy and makes clear if
there is a gap in the existing literature. The task of this chapter is to give a representative, but
still eclectic overview about different definitions of Internet surveillance.
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4.1.
Non-panoptic notions of Internet surveillance
As we have seen in chapter two, David Lyon understands surveillance as a neutral concept
that assumes there are enabling and constraining effects. As a logical result, he also understands the “world wide web of surveillance” (Lyon 1998) as a neutral concept that identifies
positive consequences such as protection and security as well as negative consequences such
as control. Computerization of surveillance makes bureaucratic administration easier (cf.
Lyon 2003b, 164) and surveillance in cyberspace permits “greater efficiency and speed, and
may well result in increased benefits for citizens and consumers, who experience them as enhancing their comfort, convenience, and safety“ (Lyon 2003a, 69). Nevertheless, Lyon expresses the nation-state and the capitalist workplace as the main sites of surveillance on the
Internet (cf. 1998, 95; 2003a, 69; 2003b, 163) and argues that surveillance technologies such
as the Internet reinforce asymmetrical power relations on an extensive and intensive level (cf.
Lyon 1998, 92). “So surveillance spreads, becoming constantly more routine, more intensive
(profiles) and extensive (populations), driven by economic, bureaucratic and now technological forces.” (Lyon 1998, 99) The Internet has become a multi-billion dollar industry, because
it is primarily corporations that are interested in collecting, analyzing and assessing a huge
amount of personal consumer data in order to target personalized advertisement (cf. Lyon
2003b, 162).
Similarly to Lyon’s notion of Internet surveillance that assumes there are enabling and constraining effects, Seumas Miller and John Weckert (2000) articulate advantages and disadvantages of being monitored. Their paper examines monitoring at the workplace in general
and observing of email and the Internet usage in particular. Although the authors claim that
privacy is a moral right (cf. Miller and Weckert 2000, 256) and criticize existing approaches
that stress benefits of workplace monitoring for both employers and employees (cf. Miller and
Weckert 2000, 258f.), they argue that ”surveillance and monitoring can be justified in some
circumstances“ (Miller and Weckert 2000, 255) and reason: “The proposition must be rejected
that the extent and nature of the enjoyment of rights to individual privacy is something to be
determined by the most powerful forces of the day, be they market or bureaucratic forces.“
(Miller and Weckert 2000, 256)
Stoney Alder et al. (2008) argue theoretically hypothetically and show empirical evidence that
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prior beliefs and ethical orientation influence employee reactions to Internet monitoring. They
mention both negative and positive aspects of surveillance. The authors stress that prior beliefs of invasiveness or usefulness of monitoring as well as formalist or utilitarian ethical orientation will influence workers’ acceptance of a newly implemented Internet monitoring system. In addition, prior beliefs and ethical orientation will affect whether labourers understand
organizational online monitoring practices as useful and as an effective management tool or as
privacy violation and invasion. Formalist ethics is defined as “a set of rules or principles for
guiding behavior. Actions are viewed as ethical or not to the extent that they conform to these
rules. For formalists, the acts themselves are moral or immoral, irrespective of their outcomes,
to the extent that they conform to these rules or principles.” (Alder et al. 2008, 486) (factors
for a formalist attitude: traits of principled, dependable, trustworthy, honest, noted for integrity, and law-abiding [cf. Alder et al. 2008, 489]). In contrast, utilitarian ethics ”evaluate outcomes or consequences of actions as ethical or not, rather than the actions themselves. With
utilitarian ethics, actions are ethical if they produce the greatest good. (Alder et al. 2008, 486)
(factors for a utilitarian attitude: traits of innovative, resourceful, effective, influential, resultsoriented, productive, and a winner [cf. Alder et al. 2008, 489]). The “fundamental struggle
between an individual’s right to privacy and an organization’s legitimate business interests“
(Alder et al. 2008, 487) provided the foundation for the scholars’ hypotheses and are outlined
as follows: Hypothesis 1: “Ethical formalism will moderate the relationship between employee beliefs that monitoring constitutes an invasion of privacy and negative outcomes regarding
(a) perceived organizational support, (b) trust in the organization, (c) trust in their supervisor,
and (d) perceptions of monitoring fairness, such that the relationships will be more pronounced for weak formalists than for strong formalists.” (Alder et al. 2008, 488) Hypothesis
2: “Ethical utilitarianism will moderate the relationship between employee beliefs that monitoring constitutes a useful tool and positive outcomes of (a) perceived organizational support,
(b) trust in the organization, (c) trust in their supervisor, and (d) perceptions of monitoring
fairness, such that the relationships will be more pronounced for strong utilitarians than for
weak utilitarians.” (Alder et al. 2008, 488) The authors undertook a quantitative survey with
62 male and female employees from a sales and service centre, where a new Internet monitoring system was implemented. Alder et al. (2008, 489) asked questions relating to (1) background checks (“Internet monitoring is an invasion of an employee’s privacy”, “Monitoring
employees’ use of the Internet is a good tool if used properly”), (2) drug testing (“Drug testing
is an invasion of an employee’s privacy”, “I think drug testing is a good tool if used properly”), (3) Internet monitoring (“Background checks are an invasion of an employee’s privacy”,
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“Background checks are a good tool if used properly”), and (4) fair usage (“Overall, the
methods used to monitor employee use of the Internet are fair”, “The procedures used to monitor my use of the Internet are fair”, “I believe the way the company monitors employees’ use
of the Internet is fair”) with a seven-point scale (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree). In
conclusion, the authors summarize that “ethical formalism interacted with employees’ beliefs
about monitoring as an invasion of privacy to affect their perceptions of trust in the organization ... and the fairness of the monitoring” (Alder et al. 2008, 490) and that “ethical utilitarianism interacted with employees’ perceptions of the extent to which monitoring is an effective
management tool to affect their trust in the organization ... and their perceptions of the fairness of the monitoring“ (Alder et al. 2008, 491).
Also interesting in this context is the fact that labourers have a quite non-panoptic understanding of surveillance: Jeffrey Stanton and Elizabeth Weiss (2000) undertook an exploratory
study of employees’ experiences with new types of surveillance such as email and website
monitoring. For doing so, 53 male and female employees with different types of jobs from
various organizations such as a university, manufacturing companies, service firms, and a
governmental organization participated in an anonymous online survey (cf. Stanton and Weiss
2000, 427). By means of qualitative interviews, the authors studied what the workers said
about electronic monitoring at the workplace in an open-ended questionnaire. The three sets
of the web-based survey questions are as following:
“1. In the box below, please briefly discuss information that your company collected from you
when you were applying for a job, or after you accepted the job and were filling out forms for
human resources. Some companies ask for social security number, emergency contact, work
history, medical history, drug tests, medical tests, skill tests, background checks, and/or credit
information. Your company may have asked other questions also. Did you care or worry
about providing any of this information, or was it all pretty routine?
2. Next, please discuss any technology your company uses to track your work performance.
Some companies use computer monitoring, email monitoring, phone monitoring, security
cameras, and/or geographic tracking (for example, of company trucks used by employees).
Your company may use technology to track your work in other ways as well. How are these
technologies useful or helpful to you? How are they annoying, undignified, or disturbing? Or
perhaps you don’t even notice these techniques in use?
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3. Finally, use the box below to describe something particularly good or bad that has happened to you at work because of the technology that your organization uses. Have you received a bonus or promotion because of technology? Have you been fired or discriminated
against because of technology? Has your boss found out something about you (using technology) that you wish he or she hadn’t? Any problems with privacy with your web browsing,
email, or other aspects of Internet use?” (Stanton and Weiss 2000, 436)
The results are summarized in table 8:
Table 8: Employees’ experiences with new types of surveillance (qualitative interviews, N=53) (cf. Stanton
and Weiss 2000, 429)
In conclusion, 26 respondents are monitored and 23 are not. From the 26 monitored workers,
17 answered that their computer usage is monitored, including monitoring computer usage,
Internet usage as well as website visits. On the one hand, 10 labourers mentioned that monitoring is not annoying, undignified, or disturbing and nine respondents answered that monitoring provides security, on the other hand, only four workers articulated that surveillance technology and company policy is annoying, just three respondents wrote that technological monitoring is disturbing, and only two interviewees stated that electronic monitoring such as email
and web site monitoring is intrusive. (cf. Stanton and Weiss 2000, 429) In addition, some examples are given in order to get an impression how the interviewees feel and what they think
being electronically monitored at the workplace:
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 ”’My agency does track my use of computers and phones to make sure such use is job
related (does allow for some personal use that is reasonable). I do not have a problem
with this.’ (Respondent 54)” (Stanton and Weiss 2000, 430)
 “’Security cameras/key cards have also been used to verify who was entering the building after hours or to observe potential thefts after hours.’ (Respondent 43)” (Stanton
and Weiss 2000, 430)
 “’However, I do know that if someone wanted to they could read my email, and monitor
computer work. None of this bothers me, because these are work- related resources. If
I have someone that personal, I would not associate with anything at work.’ (Respondent 19)” (Stanton and Weiss 2000, 430)
 “’If necessary, some work could be tracked by the computer system’s administrator or
by someone (a supervisor) with administrator rights. I don’t worry about this because
I’m always gainfully employed – even filling out this survey is a work process that is
useful information in my occupation, human resources.’ (Respondent 46)” (Stanton
and Weiss 2000, 430)
 “’I recently discovered that there is a report about how long each employee in the organization is using the Internet. However, I do not think anything is being done with that
information. I feel it is appropriate for companies to know that. They pay the bills and
it may point towards misuse.’ (Respondent 50)” (Stanton and Weiss 2000, 432)
 “’… [they use] computer monitoring, security cameras, security codes for access after
hours … These technologies generally protect my security while I am working. I generally do not find them annoying, undignified or disturbing.’ (Respondent 18)” (Stanton and Weiss 2000, 432)
As a result, Jeffrey Stanton and Elizabeth Weiss (2000) conclude that “only a minority of the
respondents in our study who were subject to monitoring found the monitoring to be negative
in some way … For some employees, technological monitoring may actually represent a benefit.”
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Also based on a non-panoptic understanding of surveillance, Barbara Kaye and Thomas Johnson (2002) utilized the uses and gratifications approach in order to analyze the Internet in
general and Internet usage for accessing online sources for political information in particular.
The study suggests four key motivations for using the web for political information, namely
guidance, information seeking/surveillance, entertainment, and social utility (see table 9).
Table 9: Motivational factors for using the Web (Factor 1: Guidance, Factor 2: Information Seeking/Surveillance, Factor 3: Entertainment, Factor 4: Social Utility) (Kaye and Johnson 2002, 61)
The authors use 18 statements from past uses and gratifications studies, where students indicated their level of motivation for using the web (1=strongly disagree to 5= strongly agree).
“Respondents indicated their level of agreement with the reasons for accessing the Web …
The items were then factored by principal components analysis with varimax rotation. Items
were assigned to a particular factor if the primary loadings were greater than .60 … Summated indexes of each factor were created by summing the individual variables, and reliability
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
analysis was conducted. Reliability for the four factors ranged from .64 to .85 … The four
factors that emerged were guidance, information/surveillance, entertainment, and social utility.” (Kaye and Johnson 2002, 59f.) The authors define information seeking/surveillance as
“actively searching out specific political information and keeping an eye on the political landscape” (Kaye and Johnson 2002, 62) and conclude that “while the Web in general may satisfy
entertainment, escape, and social interaction needs, it may also gratify users’ needs to find
information about some feature of society or the world around them (surveillance)” (Kaye and
Johnson 2002, 56).
For Anders Albrechtslund (2008), positive aspects of being under surveillance are worth mentioning and he argues that online surveillance also empowers the users, constructs subjectivity, and is playful. Internet surveillance as social and participatory act involves mutuality and
sharing. ”Online social networking can also be empowering for the user, as the monitoring
and registration facilitates new ways of constructing identity, meeting friends and colleagues
as well as socializing with strangers. This changes the role of the user from passive to active,
since surveillance in this context offers opportunities to take action, seek information and
communicate. Online social networking therefore illustrates that surveillance – as a mutual,
empowering and subjectivity building practice – is fundamentally social.“ (Albrechtslund
2008)
People’s active role in the context of surveillance in general and online surveillance in particular is emphasized by Hille Koskela (2004; 2006). For instance, reality shows are based on
viewer participation, mobile phones with cameras create an active subject, and home
webcams generate new subjectivities. Koskela wants to analyze “the other side of surveillance”, which has resistant and liberating elements. “Webcams can also be argued to contribute to the ‘democratization’ of surveillance.” (Koskela 2006, 175) In addition, Kosekela
(2004, 204) argues that webcams have an empowering role and that the active role of individuals with surveillance equipment shows that the lines of control are blurred.
In conclusion, non-panoptic notions of Internet surveillance either use a neutral concept that
assumes there are enabling effects such as protection and security as well as constraining effects such as control or a positive concept that identifies comical, playful, amusing, and even
enjoyable characteristics of surveillance and where everyone has the opportunity to surveil. In
addition, these approaches tend to reject the proposition that surveillance mechanisms are
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
dominated by political and economic actors and see monitoring not necessarily as annoying
and disturbing. In non-panoptic notions of the Internet, surveillance is understood as a useful
and effective management tool and as fair methods and procedures of monitoring individuals
online. Now, we move on to panoptic notions of Internet surveillance.
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4.2.
Panoptic notions of Internet surveillance
Based on a diagrammatic understanding of panoptic surveillance (see chapter two), Greg
Elmer (1997) predominantly understands the Internet as a powerful space of economic surveillance. “The Internet is first mapped, through indexical search engines, and then diagnosed,
via ‘spiders’ and ‘cookies’, to actively monitor, survey, solicit and subsequently profile users’
online behavior.” (Elmer 1997, 182) Corporations map consumer profiles including demographic and psychographic data in order to target advertising and to accumulate profit (cf.
Elmer 1997 186; 189f.).
Similarly, Dwayne Winseck (2003) argues that media conglomerates dominate the commercialized cyberspace in modern society and mentions the importance to study online surveillance in the context of ownership patterns. “Overall, these concepts highlight how the growing mediation and extension of surveillance are a result of media conglomerates’ attempts to
regulate information flows and people’s use of the media so that they better conform to the
communication industries’ preferred visions of cyberspace and the ‘new economy.’” (Winseck 2003, 176) Information such as website visits, personal profiles, hardware usage etc. is
crucial data for corporations; therefore, surveillance is a source of revenue and nobody one
should expect that corporations have an interests in maintaining users’ privacy (cf. Winseck
2003, 186). Winseck’s understanding of surveillance can be seen in the context of Foucault’s
notion of panoptic surveillance. He considers, just like Foucault, surveillance to be negative
and centralized and being connected to coercion, power, and domination (cf. Winseck 2003,
195). Similarly to Foucault, Winseck (2003, 176) stresses that surveillance is primarily undertaken by powerful institutions such as corporations and is installed in order to discipline, control, and normalize people in respect of drilling conformed individuals.
Likewise, in The Internet Galaxy, Manuel Castells (2001, 168-187) describes the Internet not
only as a space full of opportunities, but also as a technology of control, which has primarily
emerged from the interests of economic and political actors such as corporations and state
institutions. He argues that these institutions make use of such technologies in order to locate
individual users. State institutions such as governments and corporations like Microsoft and
Google use special surveillance technologies that allow the monitoring of online behaviour in
one central database. “Surveillance technologies ... often rely on identification technologies to
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
be able to locate the individual user … These technologies operate their controls under two
basic conditions. First, the controllers know the codes of the network, the controlled do not.
Software is confidential, and proprietary, and cannot be modified except by its owner. Once
on the network, the average user is the prisoner of an architecture he or she does not know.
Secondly, controls are exercised on the basis of a space defined on the network, for instance,
the network around an Internet service provider, or the intra-network in a company, a university, or a government agency.” (Castells 2001, 171ff.) Castells understands the rise of the Internet as an emergence of a powerful electronic surveillance system and concludes: “If this
system of surveillance and control of the Internet develops fully, we will not be able to do as
we please. We may have no liberty, and no place to hide.“ (Castells 2001, 181) Castells
(2003, 171ff.) considers, just like Foucault, surveillance to be negative and centralized and
being connected to control and power. Hence, although Castells does not referring to the Panopticon directly, his contribution to online surveillance fits into panoptic notions of Internet
surveillance.
Michael Levi and David Wall (2004, 201ff.) emphasize the new politics of surveillance in a
post 9/11 European information society and the increase of the panoptic power of the EU
member states mediated through surveillance techniques such as identity/entitlement cards,
asylum seekers’ smartcards, data sharing schemes, and smart passports in order to create a
suspect population. Wall (2003; 2006) analyzes the growth of surveillant Internet technologies in the information society. He draws on Foucault’s understanding of panoptic power relations (cf. Wall 2006, 344) and distinguishes between personal and mass surveillance (cf. Wall
2006, 342). For Wall, the Internet as a multidirectional information flow has brought new
opportunities for individuals in the context of surveillance. Techniques such as spyware, spam
spider bots, and cookies allow a synoptic effect where the surveilled can surveil the surveillers
(cf. Wall 2006, 342f.). “The Internet is not simply a ‘super’ (Poster, 1995), ‘virtual’ (Engberg,
1996) or ‘electronic’ (Lyon, 1994, ch. 4) Panopticon: an extension of Foucault’s conceptualization of Bentham’s prison design – ‘seeing without being seen’ (Foucault, 1983, p. 223), as
has become the conventional wisdom. It is important to emphasize that Internet information
flows are simultaneously panoptic and synoptic – not only can the few watch the many, but
the many can watch the few (Mathiesen, 1997, p. 215).” (Wall 2003, 112) Wall argues that
the balance between personal surveillance on the one hand and mass surveillance on the other
hand is “rarely even” (Wall 2006, 346) and lists powerful corporations such as DoubleClick
and Engage that are able to undertake large-scale surveillance (cf. Wall 2006, 343). In addi-
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
tion, he emphasizes the growth of surveillance and privacy threats as tradeable commodities
in information capitalism (cf. Wall 2003, 135) and presents an empirical case study of the
spam industry such as e-mail list compilation and unsolicited bulk e-mails (cf. Wall 2006,
350ff.).
Joseph Turow (2005; 2006) speaks about marketing and consumer surveillance in the digital
age of media. He stresses that online media are interested in collecting data about their audience in order to sell these data to advertisers. In a next step, the advertisers use these data in
order to increase the efficiency of marketing (cf. Turow 2005, 103f.; 2006, 280). Furthermore,
the increasing customer relationship management constructs audiences and produces a surveillance-driven culture, where consumers understand surveillance as a cost-benefit calculation and willing to the data collection of media and advertisers: “In the early twenty-first century, marketers, media, and the commercial research firms that work with them are constructing contemporary U.S. audiences as frenetic, self-concerned, attention-challenged, and willing
to allow advertisers to track them in response to being rewarded or treated as special. This
perspective, a response to challenges and opportunities they perceive from new digital interactive technologies, both leads to and provides rationalizations for a surveillance- based customization approach to the production of culture. An emerging strategic logic encourages media
firms and advertisers to cultivate consumers’ trust so that their audiences will not object when
the companies want to track their activities. The goal of tracking is to store huge amounts of
linked personal and lifestyle information in databases with the goal of more efficient ’relationship‘-oriented marketing that rewards ’best customers‘ with discounts and even story lines
designed for them … The emerging strategic logic of mainstream marketing and media organizations is to present their activities not as privacy invasion but as two-way customer relationships, not as commercial Intrusion but as pinpoint selling help for frenetic consumers in a
troubling world.” (Turow 2005, 105; 119f.) Turow’s understanding of surveillance can be
seen in the context of Foucault’s notion of panoptic surveillance. He considers, just like Foucault, surveillance to be negative and centralized and being connected to discipline, control,
and power (cf. Turow 2005, 115). Similarly to Foucault, Turow (2003, 116f.) stresses that
surveillance is predominately undertaken by powerful institutions such as corporations. Also
interesting in this context is the national survey of Internet privacy and institutional trust by
Joseph Turow and Michael Hennessy (2007). In 2003, they undertook 1200 quantitative telephone interviews in the United States with adults (18 years and older) who go online at home
(cf. Turow and Hennessy 2007, 304). The authors tried to analyze what US citizens think
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
about institutional surveillance and conclude “that a substantial percentage of internet users
believes that major corporate or government institutions will both help them to protect information privacy and take that privacy away by disclosing information to other parties without
permission.” (Turow and Hennessy 2007, 301)
Andrejevic (2002; 2007b; cf. also 2007a 135-160) wants to offer an alternative approach of
online privacy in the era of new media. He studies the economic surveillance of interactive
media such as interactive TV (2002) and Google’s business model of free wireless Internet
access (2007b) and analyzes interactive surveillance in the digital enclosure: “the model of
enclosure traces the relationship between a material, spatial process – the construction of networked, interactive environments – and the private expropriation of information“ (Andrejevic
2007b, 297). The author argues that Foucault’s approach of the Panopticon is suitable in order
to study surveillance and hierarchical power asymmetries in the online economy and speaks
about a “digital form of disciplinary panopticism” (Andrejevic 2007b, 237). Andrejevic argues that just like workplace surveillance rationalized production in the era of scientific management, online surveillance rationalizes and stimulates consumption (cf. Andrejevic 2007b,
232; 244), produces customized commodities and the crucial capital of the economy (cf. Andrejevic 2007b, 234). “Viewers are monitored so advertisers can be ensured that this work is
being done as efficiently as possible. Ratings, in this context, are informational commodities
that generate value because they help to rationalize the viewing process.” (Andrejevic 2007b,
236)
Also in the context of economic surveillance, John Edward Campbell and Matt Carlson
(2002) revisit Foucault’s idea of the Panopticon as well as Gandy’s notion of the panoptic
sort. They apply these notions to online surveillance and the commodification of privacy on
the Internet: “The Panopticon was seen as a way of organizing social institutions to ensure a
more orderly society by producing disciplined and ‘rational’ (read predictable) citizens. With
Internet ad servers, the goal is to provide marketers with the personal information necessary to
determine if an individual constitutes an economically viable consumer. The enhanced consumer profiling offered by these third-party ad servers increases the effectiveness and efficiency of advertisers’ efforts, reducing the uncertainty faced by producers introducing their
goods and services into the marketplace.” (Campbell and Carlson 2002, 587)
Giving illustrative examples and focusing on the modern economy, Ashlee Humphreys (2006)
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wants to transform Foucault’s paradigm of prisoner surveillance to the consumer paradigm of
marketing in general and online surveillance in particular. For doing so, she tries to explain
with the help of Foucault’s understanding of the prisoner as “object of knowledge” how the
consumer is constructed as “object of knowledge” through Internet surveillance and gives
examples from observation and documentation practices of Amazon.com, namely using wish
lists and cookies (cf. Humphreys 2006, 296). An Amazon wish list is an online tool to create
an own catalogue of your preferred products. The user is able to add items from other websites, to add comments on each product as well as to share the wish list with other users
online. A cookie is a short text stored on a user’s computer which is sent by a web server to a
web browser and back each time a certain server is accessed in order to record individual actions online. For Humphreys (2006, 303), wish lists and cookies used by Amazon are ideal
techniques in order to monitor users’ behaviour, to identify website-visits of users, to classify
and group consumers, and to bombarding individuals with commodities that she or he might
be interested in. In addition, the author stresses that these techniques maintain the asymmetrical relationship between the marketer as the creator of object knowledge on the one hand
and the consumer as the object of knowledge on the other hand (cf. Humphreys 2006, 297)
and concludes that “the statistical analysis of consumers on Amazon.com fits this model.
Consumers are surveyed according to their preferences to establish them in a group, which
can then be observed from the ‘central tower’. The wish list, most importantly, has no power
of individuation if it cannot survey. It is through surveillance that Amazon.com has the power
to individuate.” (Humphreys 2006, 302)
In contrast, Ian Brown and Douwe Korff (2009) emphasize more political aspects of surveillance: While terrorist groups such as the Hezbollah use the Internet for communication, planning, research, propaganda, and community building, state institutions and policing agencies
have generated in the name of the fight against terrorism “new legal powers to put Internet
users under surveillance” (Brown and Korff 2009, 120) and “the extent of control by ‘data
controllers’ over individuals – tellingly referred to as ‘data subjects’ – through possession of
their data” (Brown and Korff 2009, 120). For Brown and Korff (2009, 119), the increased
surveillance mechanisms stand in a disproportionate relationship to terrorist acts and are problematic for democratic societies. “Anti-terrorist and related policies have given an immense
impetus to pre-existing developments in law enforcement surveillance of communications.
These measures are often adopted on a temporary, emergency basis – but once introduced,
become permanent and are extended into the general law.“ (Brown and Korff 2009, 131)
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Nowadays, state institutions show interest in developing techniques for decoding cryptographic data. Providers underlie a statutory duty to store all connection data for a certain period. In
many nations the police are allowed to obtain data from Internet Service Providers without
judicial authority (cf. Brown and Korff 2009, 126f.). In conclusion, “in the context of the fight
against terrorism, this means individuals are targeted for being suspected ‘extremists’ or for
being suspected of being ‘opposed to our constitutional legal order’, even before committing
any criminal (let alone terrorist) offence. ‘Targets’ of this kind are increasingly selected
through computer ‘profiles.’ Selection is based upon algorithms that are effectively unchallengeable, but inevitably generate large numbers of ‘false positives’ – innocent people being
wrongly treated as suspected terrorists. Members of minority groups are more likely to be thus
selected, leading to discrimination-by-computer. Yet by being presented as ‘scientific’ such
discrimination is more difficult to challenge than previous, coarser stereotyping. Even where
‘data mining’ and ‘profiling’ contributes to the apprehension of terrorists, there will always be
a high proportion of ‘false negatives’ – real terrorists that are not identified as such.” (Brown
and Korff 2009, 131) Therefore, the authors argue that “we are giving up freedom without
gaining security. In the process, all of us are increasingly placed under general, precautionary
mass surveillance, with comprehensive data being captured on our activities. The European
surveillance society is developing in a profoundly undemocratic way. Massive data collection
and trawling threaten the most fundamental values supposedly underpinning the European
political settlement, at both national and international level.” (Brown and Korff 2009, 131f.)
Although Brown and Korff do not referring to the Panopticon directly, their understanding of
surveillance can be seen in the context of Foucault’s notion of panoptic surveillance. They
consider, just like Foucault, surveillance to be negative and centralized and being connected
to discrimination, control, and power (cf. Brown and Korff 2009, 120). Similarly to Foucault,
Brown and Korff (2009, 131f.) emphasize that surveillance is primarily undertaken by powerful actors such as state institutions and is installed in order to discipline and normalize people.
Based on Foucault’s notion of surveillance, Brian Krueger (2005) undertakes an empirical
study that analyzes the relation of surveillance and political participation online. “This article
seeks to integrate this compelling factor by using Michel Foucault’s well-developed insights
on surveillance to generate empirical hypotheses involving Internet political participation.
Using Foucault has distinct advantages. Not only does Foucault place surveillance at the center of his theory of disciplinary society but also his imagery offers a framework for understanding how the architectural characteristics of the Internet likely affect individuals’ reaction
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
to surveillance.” (Krueger 2004, 441) In an era, where the Internet has become a new medium
for political participation (two thirds of the Internet users engage in political activity online),
Krueger (2005, 440) tries to analyze whether the awareness of being monitored electronically
influences political activity on the Internet.
As part of a larger survey, telephone interviews with US Internet users were conducted in
2003 (N is undefined). As a result, Krueger (2005, 444) states that more than 50% of the Internet users believe that the government monitors citizens’ Internet activity. The results from
the analysis also show that the awareness of being monitored influences online political participation depending on the political attitude: “Docility occurs most often when the surveillance system isolates individuals from each other and blinds individuals from surveillance and
those conducting the surveillance. Political resistance occurs most often when individuals are
aware of surveillance, can watch their watcher, and can communicate horizontally with others
… For those who disagree with dominant political opinion, perceptions that the government
monitors citizens’ Internet activity should result in higher levels of Internet political activity.
In addition, because they are not the focus of government surveillance, the political activity
levels of citizens who agree with dominant opinion should not be affected by perceived surveillance.” (Krueger 2005, 443)
In their book Virtual Control and Disciplining on the Internet, Michael Mehta and Eric Darier
(1998) argue that the Internet has intensified modern forms of power. In the era of the Internet, increased power, control, and surveillance “does not rely exclusively on technology, but
also on the willingness of a population to participate in it and even to demand it” (Mehta and
Darier 1998, 109). They stress a contradiction in the development of the Internet in so far as
the Internet has a decentralized and uncontrolled nature, but has become more centralized,
controlled, surveilled, and even censored by state institutions and corporations recently (cf.
Mehta and Darier 1998, 109). The authors conclude: “As Foucault correctly remarked, in order to be efficient, modern power has to become invisible like the guard in the panopticon. In
the case of the Internet there is no central control. In fact, the total unmateriality of the Internet creates a sense of absence of control. At the same time, this does not mean that power is
withering away. On the contrary, one could argue that if the Internet renders power less obvious, then its disciplining and normalizing effects are much greater in several ways ... Current
power relations are being transferred to the Internet. It is likely that the powerful will appropriate the Internet for their own instrumental advantage. The commercialization of the Internet
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
might be merely the result of the trend toward the globalization of capitalism, while state
agencies may be able to survey the population better at a fraction of the cost ... In this case the
Internet is truly a new social space where virtual communities are formed, maintained, and
observed. Therefore, we might need to take Foucault, or at least some of his theoretical concepts, along on our adventures.” (Mehta and Darier 1998, 115)
Andrew Hope (2005) presents case studies of the observation of student Internet use in UK
schools. He argues that “the panopticon is an appropriate model for analysing the surveillance
of school Internet use” (Hope 2005, 370). Since the UK government has introduced Internet
access in over 30,000 schools, the powerful opportunities to observe both student and staff
behaviour online have grown. Hope studied Internet usage in school in the context of surveillance in eight educational institutions in the UK (two primary schools, two 11-16 schools,
three 11-18 schools, and one post-16 college) for three years. For doing so, he carried out
semi-structured interviews with 30 staff members and 63 students, 180 hours non-participant
observation of student Internet use, and content analyses of school documents relating to web
usage. As a result, Hope (2005, 366f.) summarizes the virtual surveillance of Internet usage in
schools in the UK: “In schools, staff can also examine student computer accounts to see
whether they have stored any unsuitable material on the school computer hard drive … Furthermore, many schools use specialist software that record the online addresses of all the websites accessed in a central database or ‘log’. As students often have to sign onto the Internet
using an individual password, it is possible for staff not only to identify the websites visited
but also which student accessed the site … In addition to specialist software that records the
addresses of websites visited, certain applications, such as Net Top Teacher, allow staff to
view networked computer screens and control the activities of these machines. Net Top
Teacher is software aimed at enhancing the teaching process. However, in so far as staff can
use this software to observe students’ on-screen activity, it potentially serves as an effective
surveillance tool. Indeed the ability of the software to control other networked computers
means that staff can expose on-screen windows that students may have minimised or hidden
behind other material.” Also interesting in this context is the fact that some students know that
they are being monitored. “At Forestfields a year-eight student related that: ’If you go on the
Internet all the time Mr S, the Head, he like checks it on the server. So he knows which one
you’ve been on.’” (Hope 2005, 366)
Emphasizing more cultural aspects of surveillance, Macgregor Wise (2004) recognizes the
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
emergence of the Internet as a converging medium, where different forms of information and
communication are combined. He studies the expanding field of webcams in the context of
panoptic control in everyday life. “The capture of images of people, places and things can be
read through the disciplinary project of that same regime of truth; as Foucault (1977) has
shown of the panopticon: reveal, document, discipline. The camera’s gaze not only reveals the
world in a new way and reveals aspects of us that we are unaware of (habits, expressions), but
contributes to new social formations.” (Wise 2004, 435) For Wise (2004, 425), webcams are
digital cameras connected to the Internet in order to upload moving images to a webpage primarily for public viewing. Wise analyzes cyberspace in general and webcams in particular in
the context of Deleuze’s concept of control societies. He says that webcams “can be viewed
as a particular instance of a cultural form produced within a society of control“ (Wise 2004,
432).
Summing up, panoptic notions of Internet surveillance argue that power, control, and surveillance have increased in the era of the Internet. Furthermore, the rise of the Internet has
brought a space of electronic surveillance, where the powerful will appropriate the Internet as
a technology of control for their own instrumental advantage. These approaches consider
online surveillance to be negative and being connected to coercion, repression, discipline,
power, and domination. For these authors, power is primarily centralized and society tends to
be repressive and controlled.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
4.3.
Conclusion
The overall aim of this chapter was to clarify how Internet surveillance is defined in the existing literature and what the different notions of online surveillance have in common and what
distinguishes them from one another. Based on the distinction of panoptic and non-panoptic
notions of surveillance from chapter two, a systematic discussion of the state of the art of Internet surveillance by establishing a typology of the existing literature and a discussion of
commonalties and differences were introduced. The following table summarizes the results.
Foundations of Internet surveillance theory
Panoptic notions of
of Internet surveillance
Internet surveillance
Non-
Non-panoptic
panoptic
of Internet surveillance
2003a; 2003b), Seumas
notions of
either use a neutral
Miller and John Weck-
Internet
concept that assumes
ert (2000), Stoney Alder
surveillance
there are enabling as
et al. (2008), Jeffrey
well
constraining
Stanton and Elizabeth
effects or a positive
Weiss (2000), Barbara
concept that identifies
Kaye and Thomas John-
comical, playful, amus-
son (2002), Anders Al-
ing, and even enjoyable
brechtslund
characteristics of online
Hille Koskela (2004;
surveillance.
2006)
as
notions
Non-panoptic notions
David
of
Lyon
(1998;
(2008),
Panoptic
Panoptic
notions
Greg Elmer (1997),
notions of
Internet
surveillance
Internet
consider online surveil-
(2003), Manuel Cas-
surveillance
lance to be negative.
tells
(2001),
David
These approaches ar-
Wall
(2003;
2006),
gue that power, domi-
Joseph Turow (2005;
nation, coercion, con-
2006),
Dwayne
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Winseck
Mark
An-
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
trol,
discipline,
and
drejevic (2002; 2007a;
surveillance have in-
2007b), John Edward
creased in the era of the
Campbell and Matt
Internet.
Carlson (2002), Ashlee Humphreys (2006),
Ian Brown and Douwe
Korff (2009), Brian
Krueger (2005), Michael Mehta and Eric
Darier
drew
(1998),
Hope
Macgregor
An-
(2005),
Wise
(2004)
Table 10: Foundations of Internet surveillance theory
In conclusion, non-panoptic notions of Internet surveillance use either a neutral concept that
assumes there are enabling as well as constraining effects or a positive concept that identifies
comical, playful, amusing, and even enjoyable characteristics; they are represented by scholars such as David Lyon, Seumas Miller and John Weckert, Alder et al. Jeffrey Stanton and
Elizabeth Weiss, and Barbara Kaye and Thomas Johnson. In contrast, panoptic notions of
Internet surveillance consider online surveillance to be negative. These approaches argue that
power, domination, coercion, control, discipline, and surveillance have increased in the era of
the Internet; they are represented by scholars such as Greg Elmer, Manuel Castells, John Edward Campbell and Matt Carlson, and Ian Brown and Douwe Korff.
As shown in chapter two, economical and political actors such as corporations and state institutions are the main actors in modern surveillance societies and surveillance in general and
Internet surveillance in particular are crucial elements for modern societies. Like nonpanoptic notions of surveillance, non-panoptic notions of Internet surveillance understand
surveillance in cyberspace in a non-hierarchical and decentralized way, where everyone has
the opportunity to surveil. This argument overlooks the fact that corporations and state institutions are the most powerful actors in society and are able to undertake mass-surveillance
online, what private actors are not able to do. Neutral concepts of surveillance on the Internet
tend to overlook power asymmetries of contemporary society and therefore tend to convey the
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
image that private actors are equally powerful as corporations and state institutions. Hence, a
general and neutral understanding of surveillance in cyberspace is not fruitful for studying
online surveillance as it does not take asymmetrical power relations and repressive aspects of
society into consideration. Approaches that stress that everyone today has the opportunity to
surveil, that online surveillance is a useful and effective management tool, and that Internet
surveillance has comical, playful, amusing, and even enjoyable characteristics are typical for
postmodern scholars and disguise the fact of power and domination in contemporary surveillance societies.
Surveillance studies scholars like Lyon (1998, 95; 2003b, 163) grasp that economic surveillance on the Internet such as monitoring consumers or the workplace are central aspects of
modern surveillance societies. The following explanations indicate that most of the panoptic
notions of Internet surveillance recognize the importance of economic aspects of surveillance
in cyberspace: For example, Elmer (1997 186; 189f.) investigates economic Internet surveillance predominantly in the sphere of consumption and analyzes how corporations map consumer profiles in order to target advertising and to accumulate profit: “The Internet is subsequently being driven by a cynical and all-encompassing desire for consumer profiles, wherein
advertising links, and commercial Web pages in general, incorporate strategies, tactics and,
most importantly for this paper, techniques of demographic and psychographic ‘solicitation.’”
(Elmer 1997, 186). He concludes that “it is this pervasive desire to know more and more
about ‘what the customer wants’ – albeit so that profits can be maximized – which has of late
driven the production of such techniques of mapping and solicitation on the Internet.” (Elmer
1997, 190) Winseck (2003) argues that online surveillance is a source of revenue for media
conglomerates in the commercialized cyberspace and that new technologies such as the Internet allow for more detailed audience and clickstream analyses: “The shaky foundations of the
so-called new economy are also propelling the surveillance imperative as companies search
for new sources of revenue to justify their investments, such as transaction-generated personal
information.” (Winseck 2003, 186) In contrast, Castells (2001, 173f.) mentions economic
Internet surveillance in the sphere of production and in the sphere of consumption: “There has
been so much enthusiasm about the freedom brought by the Internet that we have forgotten
the persistence of authoritarian, surveillance practices in the environment that remains the
most important in our lives: the workplace. With workers becoming increasingly dependent
on computer networking in their activity, most companies have decided that they have the
right to monitor the uses of their networks by their employees …The fundamental develop- 81 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
ment has been the technologies of data-gathering associated with the economics of ecommerce. In many cases, the main revenue for e-commerce companies is advertising and
marketing … On the one hand, they receive the proceeds from the advertising banners they
can post for their users. On the other hand, the data from their users are sold to their clients for
marketing purposes, or used by the company itself to better target its customers. In all cases,
precious information must be collected from each click to the website.” When Wall (2006,
350ff.) presents an empirical case study of the spam industry such as e-mail list compilation
and unsolicited bulk e-mails, he solely emphasizes surveillance in the sphere of consumption.
Turow (2006, 114-118) analyzes consumer surveillance in the digital age and marks a development from customized media of one-to-one marketing to walled gardens as an online environment to interactive television such as video-on-demand and concludes that interactive television “already minutely tracks and categorizes the viewing habits of its users as part of its
service contract. The company sells the data in aggregate to potential advertisers.” (Turow
2006, 118) Citing the example of interactive media clarifies that Andrejevic (2007b, 242f.) is
primarily interested in analyzing consumer surveillance: “The general outlines of a commercial model for interactive media can thus be gleaned from the example of TiVo. Its main
components are: customization (the disaggregation of demand curves, the direct linkage between a specific act of production and a targeted act of consumption), interactivity (the ability
to monitor consumers in the act of consumption), off-loading labor to consumers (who perform the work of generating their own demographic information), and the development of an
on-going relationship with consumers (that allows for the exploitation of demographic information gathered over time).” In addition, Campbell and Carlson (2002, 587) understand
online surveillance in the context of the commodification of privacy, consumer profiling, and
advertising. Similarly, Humphreys (2006, 302) considers Internet surveillance in the consumer paradigm and how corporations such as Amazon monitor users’ behaviour, identify website
visits of users, and classify and group consumers. Likewise, Mehta and Darier (1998) emphasize economic aspects of surveillance in cyberspace in the sphere of consumption and give an
example: “A service on the Internet known as DejaNews facilitates this marketing goal. The
millions of messages posted in Usenet can be searched with DejaNews to target specific
groups, and relevant expertise, and monitor markets trends.” (Mehta and Darier 1998, 108) In
conclusion, panoptic notions of Internet surveillance primarily analyze economic aspects of
surveillance on the Internet in the context of consumption. Based on the distinction of surveillance in the economy into the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption from chapter three, the following table can be outlined:
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
Economic aspects in panoptic notions of Internet surveillance
Internet surveillance in the
Internet surveillance in the
Internet surveillance in the
sphere of production
sphere of circulation
sphere of consumption
Greg Elmer (1997)
Dwayne Winseck (2003)
Manuel Castells (2001)
Manuel Castells (2001)
David Wall (2003; 2006)
Joseph Turow (2005; 2006)
Mark Andrejevic (2002;
2007a; 2007b)
John Edward Campbell and
Matt Carlson (2002)
Ashlee Humphreys (2006)
Michael Mehta and Eric
Darier (1998)
Table 11: Economic aspects in panoptic notions of Internet surveillance
Although panoptic notions of Internet surveillance recognize the importance of the economy,
they tend to focus on the sphere of consumption and to overlook online surveillance in the
spheres of production and circulation as important aspects of contemporary surveillance societies. Furthermore, panoptic notions of Internet surveillance claim that there are particular
forms of economic surveillance without a theoretical criterion for a certain typology. In contrast, a typology of Internet surveillance in the modern economy, which is based on Marx’
theory of the political economy, allows to systemize economic surveillance on the Internet
and to distinguish online surveillance into the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption. A theoretically founded typology of economic Internet surveillance is important in
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
order to undertake a theoretical analysis of online surveillance in the modern economy. Therefore, in the next chapter, a distinction of Internet surveillance in the economy into the spheres
of production, circulation, and consumption will be outlined.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
5.
A critical contribution to Internet surveillance
studies
The overall aim of this chapter is to analyze the specific economic mode of Internet surveillance. Based on the distinction of surveillance in the economy into the spheres of production,
circulation, and consumption from chapter three, a typology of online surveillance in the
economy can be constructed. Economic surveillance on the Internet in the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption will be outlined. The following three sections are therefore
structured according to this distinction. The chapter concludes with a summary in section
four.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
5.1.
Internet surveillance in the sphere of production
As analyzed in chapter two, Marx argues that surveillance is important for the capitalist process of production and is used for generating absolute and relative surplus value in order to
accumulate profit. For explaining newer forms of surveillance in the process of production,
the emergence of scientific management was analyzed. The mechanical engineer Frederick
Winslow Taylor developed the concept of scientific management, where the meaning of
knowledge and information as productive force has permanently increased and management
gathers knowledge of the labour process and uses this knowledge in order to control the labour process. According to Robins and Webster (1999, 98ff.), for understanding modern
forms of surveillance such as Internet surveillance in the sphere of production, the transformation from a Fordist system of mass production to a post-Fordist system of flexible production has to be analyzed. Therefore I will now give a short overview of some characteristics of
what in the French regulation school has been termed the post-Fordist economy.
In the 1970’s, an economical, political, and ideological crisis of the Fordist production, based
on Taylor’s scientific management, took place and a post-Fordist accumulation regime began
to develop. In the context of the development of a post-Fordist production regime, concepts
such as “Kaizen” (Imai 1986), “lean production” (Womack , Jones, and Roos 1991), “virtual
corporation” (Davidow and Malone 1992), and “reengineered corporation” (Hammer and
Champy 1994) emerged. With the help of new information and communication technologies
and new systems of data processing, the post-Fordist accumulation regime created a flexible
production process with diversified and differentiated products instead of standardized mass
production. Moreover, corporations avoided to have long transport distances, attendance time,
and overproduction and realized outsourcing and methods for just in time-production and real
time productivity. At the same time, new forms of participatory management, decentralization, teamwork, reinforced motivation of employees, identification with the corporation, selfresponsibility, initiative of one’s own, self-discipline, and self-control play an integral role in
post-Fordism. (cf. Hirsch 1995: 88ff.)
In Capital, Volume I, after Marx has introduced commodities and money, as well as labourproduced surplus value and methods for producing absolute and relative surplus value, he
studies the distinction of time wages (based on a certain period of working time) and piece
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
wages (based on a certain amount of produced pieces) (cf. MEW 23, 565-582). When reading
Marx’ description of benefits of piece wages for proprietors, it seems like he predicted the
consequences of post-Fordist production methods – self-control and self-discipline: “But the
wider scope that piece-wage gives to individuality tends to develop on the one hand that individuality, and with it the sense of liberty, independence, and self-control of the labourers, and
on the other, their competition one with another.” (MEW 23, 579)
Fuchs (2008, 273) stresses a difference of surveillance between Fordist and post-Fordist capitalism: “From the early modern phase until the end of the Fordist accumulation regime, economic surveillance was visible and workers were physically controlled by hierarchic power
structures. In post-Fordist capitalism, surveillance is also based on technologies that document
and assess behavior and communication and on the ideologies of participatory management,
identification, and teamwork. Such mechanisms increasingly produce forms of self-control,
self-discipline, and anticipatory obedience because individuals who are uncertain about being
watched or not, and compete with other employees, might be more likely to internalize the
instrumental performance ethic and to have existential fears of losing their jobs than Fordist
workers who knew exactly when they were watched and when they could try to slow down or
stop work.”
As in the Fordist accumulation regime and in even earlier forms of capitalism and industrial
production, managers and overlookers had to walk around in the shop in order to control
workers, surveillance was primarily exerted by physically force and was visible. Managers
were able to only control a relatively small group of employees at the same time and not all
labourers could be controlled permanently. In contrast, in the post-Fordist accumulation regime, surveillance is predominantly technically mediated and physical presence is not necessarily required any more (cf. Lyon 1994, 133). With the help of new surveillance technologies
such as the Internet it is possible to undertake large-scale surveillance extensively and intensively, because every worker can be controlled every time by a minimum number of supervisors (cf. Sewell and Wilkinson 1992, 271). Robins and Webster (1995, 95) argue “while employees may have an enhanced degree of autonomy in their day-to-day operations, they are
subject to ready and sophisticated surveillance at any time”. Surveillance now works primarily invisibly, anonymously, and indirectly. Not every worker is observed at any moment, but
no one knows if she or he is monitored. Observation is possible anytime. As a result, everyone
acts as if kept under surveillance all the time – individuals discipline and control themselves.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
Robins and Webster (1993, 243) furthermore argue in this context that post-Fordism appears
to bring autonomy, participation, and decentralization, “while in fact increasingly centralising
power”. Similarly, Zureik (2003, 47f.) states a contradiction of new information and communication technologies in the modern workplace in so far as “the same information and communication technology that promises democratization, decentralization and liberation of the
worker (i.e., empowerment), imposes measurement techniques on the worker that by far exceed anything practiced in the name of Taylorism through the application of time-and-motion
studies.”
In this context, Christian Parenti (2003, 138) stresses that “nothing has advanced surveillance
on the job like the Internet”. He also emphasizes that companies in the majority of cases act
legally when collecting and analyzing employees’ data, because in reference to federal laws
“all communications occurring on corporate-owned computers and phone systems are automatically open to monitoring by employers“ (Parenti 2003, 138). According to the American
Management Association and the ePolicy Institute (2008) that undertake an annual quantitative survey about electronic monitoring and surveillance with approximately 300 U.S. companies, “more than one fourth of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail and nearly
one third have fired employees for misusing the Internet“. More than 40% of the companies
monitor e-mail traffic of their workers, and 66% of corporations monitor Internet connections.
In addition, most companies use software to block non-work related websites such as sexual
or pornographic sites, game sites, social networking sites, entertainment sites, shopping sites,
and sport sites. The American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute (2008) also
stress that companies “tracking content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard ... store
and review computer files ... monitor the blogosphere to see what is being written about the
company, and ... monitor social networking sites.“ Furthermore, about 30% of the companies
were also firing employees for non-work related email and Internet usage such as “inappropriate or offensive language“ and ”viewing, downloading, or uploading inappropriate/offensive content“ (American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute 2008).
To sum up: for understanding modern forms of surveillance such as Internet surveillance in
the sphere of production, the transformation from a Fordist system of mass production to a
post-Fordist system of flexible production has to be analyzed. In the post-Fordist accumulation regime, every worker can be controlled every time with a minimum of supervisors. On an
empirical level, more than 40% of companies monitor e-mail traffic of their workers, and 66%
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
of corporations monitor Internet connections. In addition, “more than one fourth of employers
have fired workers for misusing e-mail and nearly one third have fired employees for misusing the Internet“ (American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute 2008). Now,
we move on to Internet surveillance in the sphere of circulation.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
5.2.
Internet surveillance in the sphere of circulation
For understanding surveillance in the sphere of circulation, the circuit of capital was introduced in chapter two. For Marx, the circuit of capital contains three stages, namely the stage
of money capital, the stage of productive capital, and the stage of commodity capital. Based
on these findings, surveillance in the sphere of circulation was identified and classified into
(a) surveillance of purchasing labour power in the stage of money capital, (b) surveillance of
purchasing means of production in the stage of money capital, and (c) surveillance of produced commodities in the stage of commodity capital. Similarly, we can identify and classify
Internet surveillance in the sphere of circulation into (a) Internet surveillance of purchasing
labour power in the stage of money capital, (b) Internet surveillance of purchasing means of
production in the stage of money capital, and (c) Internet surveillance of produced commodities in the stage of commodity capital:
a.) Internet surveillance of purchasing labour power in the stage of money capital
Internet surveillance of purchasing labour power in the stage of money capital means online
applicant surveillance. Rosalind Searle (2006, 343) states in this context that “checking procedures are increasingly utilised to authenticate candidates’ data. In several countries financial
services authorities have sanctioned formal vetting, often outsourcing it to external contractors. The growth in the collection and sale of information databases can be seen by the proliferation of information verification firms, such as Kroll and Carratu International.” The New
Yorker risk consulting company Kroll undertakes off- and online pre-employment screening
on a large-scale level. Kroll is an operating unit of the insurance and professional services
firm Marsh & McLennan, which is the 832nd biggest company worldwide (cf. Forbes 2009).
Kroll’s revenues of 2008 were US$ 866 million (cf. Kroll 2010). Kroll offers background
screening services of new job applicants for companies and government agencies in order to
check information such as address histories, education and employment histories, media coverage, credit reports, civil and bankruptcy records, criminal records, driving histories, liens
and judgment histories, and professional licenses and certifications (cf. Kroll 2010). If Kroll
realizes a company’s application procedure, the job candidates have to fill out a detailed questionnaire on the Internet as part of their application, which is sent invisibly to Kroll (cf. Searle
2006, 343). “Kroll has pioneered a secure Internet-based system that collects information
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
from job candidates and provides clients with project updates and final reports. Kroll’s Applicant Submission System allows job candidates to fill out a detailed questionnaire online and
submit it securely to Kroll.” (Kroll 2010) In order to investigate job candidates, Kroll
“searches primary sources (including electronic resources), visits courthouses throughout the
country to retrieve and review public documents, and conducts telephone interviews with a
job candidate’s professional and personal references” (Kroll 2010).
Figure 5: Kroll’s advertising for background screening services (Kroll 2010)
Also interesting in this context is the corporate investigation company Carratu International,
which is headquartered in London. Carratu International operates around the world with national and multi-national corporations, insurance companies, law firms, and financial institutions, which are primarily found in the Fortune 500 and the Financial Times Top 100 rankings
(cf. Carratu International). Carratu International argues that pre-employment screening is crucial, because up to 80% of new job candidates give incorrect information about themselves
(see brochure of employee screening services in figure 6).
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
Figure 6: Carratu International brochure of employee screening services (Carratu International)
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
According to Carratu International, the only opportunity to “know that the information provided is complete and honest” is to undertake a systematic off- and online check of information such as personal data and information on civil litigation, credit history, bankruptcy,
employment history, educational achievements, professional qualifications, and professional
or occupational licensing. In addition, Carratu International provides three levels of off- and
online pre-employment screening at different prices: the basic service includes data analyzes
of items such as address, educational qualification, and employment history. The intermediate
service includes the basic service plus searches of the media, ownership records, company
directorship and judicial data. Finally, the professional level includes an investigation of “all
details contained on the application document, carry[ing; TA] out all checks as detailed in
Level Two validations, together with additional relevant research and investigations to confirm the probity and standing of the applicant” (Carratu International).
b.) Internet surveillance of purchasing means of production in the stage of money capital
Internet surveillance of purchasing means of production in the stage of money capital includes
online screening of suppliers. Kroll (2010) provides a so-called off- and online commercial
intelligence program in order to check existing and potential suppliers. According to Kroll
(2010), the service “goes beyond the published data” and gives your company “a real sense of
who you are doing business with”. Kroll (2010) screens primary source data and analysis of
suppliers, performance benchmarking in the sector of suppliers, and collects information
based on industry knowledge and contacts. As claimed by Kroll (2010), the “advantage lies in
being able to give you the right information, at the right time, to help you make the best possible decision … By accessing reliable and effective commercial intelligence from Kroll, you
will gain the confidence to make sound business decisions that will enhance your corporate
reputation and bottom line performance”.
c.) Internet surveillance of produced commodities in the stage of commodity capital
Internet surveillance of produced commodities in the stage of commodity capital contains
(material and immaterial) property surveillance as well as surveillance of vendors in cyberspace: Carratu International offers so-called Intellectual Property Protection Services (IPPS)
off- and online on behalf of brand, trademark, and patent owners. It includes services such as
anti-counterfeiting investigations, trademark infringement and passing-off investigations,
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
market watch, patent investigations, and parallel trade investigations. In order to avoid product counterfeiting, Carratu International provides “brand owners and their legal representatives a unique range of anti-counterfeiting programmes, tracking infringements from point of
sale to source, identifying those responsible and building up a comprehensive supply chain
diagnosis. We obtain the evidence needed to bring an enforcement action and support clients
through the entire process.” Furthermore, the corporate investigation company undertakes
trademark infringement and passing-off investigations: “Whether it is your company name or
one of your registered or un-registered trademarks, we investigate those individuals behind
the infringement and provide you with sufficient evidence to take the appropriate action.”
(Carratu International) The company also offers a market watch service. This service “constantly monitors all likely distribution centres with each area covered by a watcher, or watchers, who submit monthly intelligence reports on the outlets and venues checked. If an infringement is found, a test purchase is completed and, when requested, we liaise with the local
authorities to ensure that wherever possible, enforcement action is taken.” (Carratu International) In addition, Carratu International carries out parallel trade investigations and assists
“trademark owners in determining who is behind the supply of parallel goods and to secure
the necessary evidence to take enforcement action and so safeguard regional markets and
profits.”
Kroll (2010) provides a so-called off- and online vendor integrity program in order to check
existing and potential vendors whether they “have criminal records, financial troubles, or
business relationships that could create costly conflicts or be deeply embarrassing“ or “could
have a negative impact on your company’s revenues and reputation”. Therefore, Kroll (2010)
screens criminal records, bankruptcy records, illegal activity allegations, civil cases, liens, as
well as media coverage of vendors. For doing so, vendors have to “complete a detailed online
questionnaire that’s electronically submitted to Kroll …, Kroll’s staff screens the information
provided by vendors and collect additional intelligence“ (Kroll 2010) and publishes an online
report.
In conclusion, Internet surveillance in the sphere of circulation can be identified and classified
into Internet surveillance of purchasing labour power in the stage of money capital (online
applicant surveillance), Internet surveillance of purchasing means of production in the stage
of money capital (online screening of suppliers), and Internet surveillance of produced commodities in the stage of commodity capital (online property surveillance and online surveil- 94 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
lance of vendors). The next point of discussion is Internet surveillance in the sphere of consumption.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
5.3.
Internet surveillance in the sphere of consumption
For explaining surveillance in the sphere of consumption, the emergence of mass consumption was studied in chapter two: For guaranteeing mass consumption, market research became
important in order to target advertising and to stimulate needs and demands. Efficiency and
effectiveness were extended from the sphere of production to the sphere of consumption and
scientific management was translated to scientific marketing, where the audience is treated as
commodity. Although the importance of consumer data for target advertising is as old as the
advertising business itself, commodification of privacy on the Internet to enable online target
advertising has intensified and extended (cf. Robins and Webster 1999, 98).
Andrejevic (2007a, 87) stresses in this context that “in the world of digital capitalism, it’s
much easier to induce consumers to submit to detailed forms of information gathering, in part
because the work of generating information about purchasing habits can be offloaded onto
consumers themselves.” Robins and Webster argue that new information and communication
technologies such as the Internet have enhanced a new scientific management of marketing,
including new forms of surveillance in the sphere of consumption: “‘Teleshopping’, global
and targeted advertising, and electronic market research surveillance, all combine to establish
a more rationalised and ‘efficient’ network marketplace. Information, surveillance, efficiency:
the very principles of Taylorism become intensified, extended and automated through the application of new communications and information technologies. One fundamental aspect of
the ‘communications revolution’ has been to refine that planning and control of consumer
behaviour that was already inherent in the early philosophy of Scientific Management.” (cf.
Robins and Webster 1999, 99f.) In addition, Fuchs (2008, 273) states in this context that “corporations are keen on knowing our consumption preferences in order to target us with personalized advertisements online. They do so either legally, when you agree in an electronic contract to an analysis of your consumption preferences and to receive advertisements, for example, by e-mail or when you browse a Web platform, or illegally, by sending spam mail or invisible spyware that watches and transmits passwords and online behavior.” In order to get an
impression of Internet surveillance in the sphere of consumption, some illustrative examples
can be given:
For instance, web analytics is an analysis of non-personal Internet data that reports website
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traffic such as number of visitors and page views of a particular website or of a group of websites in order to enable comparisons and rankings. Web analytics sites such as Alexa Internet,
Quantcast, and Nielsen NetRatings are able to measure, collect, analyse, and report detailed
statistics about the visitors of a website. These instruments are essential for advertisers in order to know how popular certain sites are and to make online advertising more effective and
efficient. Since 1996, the web information company Alexa Internet (a subsidiary company of
Amazon) has been publishing web traffic reports, global rankings, and top sites lists by country and category (e.g. arts, business, health, news, science, society) of those users who have
downloaded (over 10 million) and installed the Alexa toolbar into their browser. Alexa Internet is collecting web content of about 1.6 terabytes per day. Table 12 indicates an Alexa Internet ranking of the three most visited sites on the web, namely google.com, facebook.com,
and youtube.com.
Table 12: Top sites on the web (Alexa)
In addition, Alexa Internet also gathers detailed data and offers site info in order to analyze a
particular website or to compare different websites. The next figure shows the Alexa traffic
rank for Porn Hub, a popular pornographic video sharing website:
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
Figure 7: Traffic rank for Porn Hub (Alexa)
Porn Hub has been monitored by Alexa Internet since 2008 and is currently the 54th most
visited website on the Internet. According to figure 7, the Alexa traffic rank indicates how
popular the site is including reach, pageviews, pageviews/user, bounce (percentage of visits to
the website that consist of a single page turn), time on site, and search. Furthermore, the audience data show what kind of users are on the website and lists visitors by country: 29.6% of
Porn Hub visitors are located in the United States, 5.3% in the United Kingdom, 4.6% in
France and Germany, and 4.1% in India. Also interesting is that the clickstream sub-section
shows which sites users visited immediately before and after pornhub.com: 6.56% of the users
visited google.com, 5.27% partypoker.com, 5.24% livejasmin.com, 3.58% pornhublive.com,
and 3.55% facebook.com before the Porn Hub website. Whereas, 7.58% of the users visited
partypoker.com, 6.53% livejasmin.com, 5.18% pornhublive.com, 4.86% streamate.com, and
4.19% google.com after the Porn Hub website.
According to the top sites of the web by Alexa Internet, Google has the most visits on the Internet. Google uses a wide range of methods in order to collect data on its users, namely click
tracking (to log clicks of users), log files (to store server requests), JavaScript and web bugs
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
(to check users visits), as well as cookies (to record individual actions) (cf. Stalder and Mayer
2009, 102). Stalder and Mayer (2009, 101-105) list different Google services, which are able
to create a broad profile of each user. The authors distinguish between three main types of
data seeking services, namely knowledge being (assembling a knowledge profile), social being (constructing a social profile), and physical being (recreating the user’s real-life embodiment). The following table can be outlined:
Google services
Knowledge being
Google
Search,
Social being
Google
Google
Physical being
Groups,
Google
Google
Health,
Google
(including
Google
Account, Google Maps (in-
Directory, Google Image
Mail
Search,
News
Buzz), Google Talk, Orkut,
cluding
Search, Google News Ar-
Google Calendar, Google
View),
chive
Finance, Google Checkout
Google Video, YouTube,
Scholar,
Google
Search,
Google
Google
Books,
Google
Google Video, Google Blog
Search,
Google
Google
Google
Voice,
Street
Earth,
Google
Wave, Android
Product
Search, Google AdSense,
Google AdWords, Google
AdPlanner, Google Analytics, DoubleClick, Google
Chrome, Google Toolbar,
Google
Web
History,
Google Web Accelerator,
Google Desktop, Google
Notebook, Google Bookmarks,
Google
Reader,
Google
Docs,
Google
Translate, Blogger
Table 13: Google services (updated by the author, based on Stalder and Mayer 2009, 101-105)
DoubleClick is one of the main products of Google (cf. Google 2008). DoubleClick is a global leader in ad serving and has developed sophisticated methods in order to collect, analyze,
and assess huge amounts of users’ data on the Internet (cf. Campbell and Carlson 2002,
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
596f.). Google (2007; 2008) acquired DoubleClick in 2008 for US$ 3.1 billion. In this context, Google’s chairman and chief executive officer, Eric Schmidt, expressed that “we are
thrilled that our acquisition of DoubleClick has closed. With DoubleClick, Google now has
the leading display ad platform, which will enable us to rapidly bring to market advances in
technology and infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability
and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies, while improving
the relevance of advertising for users.” (Google 2008)
Figure 8: Illustration of Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008 (Microreviews 2009)
DoubleClick is headquartered in New York City. It was found in 1996 and works for leading
digital publishers, marketers, and agencies around the world such as About, Durex, Ford,
Friendster, Optimedia, Scripps, and MTV (cf. DoubleClick). Ad serving companies such as
DoubleClick use methods by placing advertisements on websites and analyzing their efficiency. DoubleClick develops and provides Internet ad serving services that are sold primarily to
advertisers and publishers. DoubleClick collects personal data on many websites, sells this
data, and supports targeted advertising. DoubleClick’s main product is known as DART (Dynamic Advertising, Reporting, and Targeting). DART is an ad serving program working with
a complex algorithm and is primarily developed for publishers and advertisers in order to “ensure you get the right message, to the right person, at the right time, on the right device”
(DoubleClick).
According to the top sites of the web by Alexa Internet, Facebook has the second most visits
and YouTube the third most visits on the Internet. Web 2.0 activities such as creating profiles
and sharing ideas on Facebook, announcing personal messages on Twitter, uploading or
watching videos on YouTube, and writing personal entries on Blogger, enables the collection,
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
analyzes, and sale of personal data by commercial web platforms. Web 2.0 applications and
social software sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, and Blogger collect personal behaviour, preferences, and interests with the help of systematic and automated computer processes and sell these data to advertising agencies in order to accumulate profit.
As a result, Marx’ dialectically mediated spheres of the capitalistic economy of production,
circulation, and consumption as outlined in chapter two work now the other way round: Individuals produce personal data on the Internet, which are circulated by companies such as
Alexa Internet, Google, DoubleClick, and Facebook and these personal data are consumed by
advertisement agencies. In this context, Andrejevic (2007b, 313) speaks about “digital enclosure as a form of exploitation” and Fuchs (2010a; 2010b) about the “Internet
prosumer/produsage commodity”.
To sum up: although the importance of consumer data for target advertising is as old as the
advertising business itself, commodification of privacy on the Internet to enable online target
advertising has intensified and extended. In order to get an impression of Internet surveillance
in the sphere of consumption, illustrative examples were given: companies such as Alexa Internet, Quantcast, and Nielsen NetRatings undertake web analytics and report website traffic
such as number of visitors and page views of a particular website or of a group of websites in
order to enable comparisons and rankings. In addition, ad serving companies such as DoubleClick by Google collect personal data on many websites, sell this data, and support targeted advertising. Furthermore, Web 2.0 applications and social software sites such as Facebook
and YouTube collect, analyze, and sell personal data in order to accumulate profit.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
5.4.
Conclusion
The overall aim of this chapter was to analyze the specific economic mode of Internet surveillance. Based on the distinction of surveillance in the economy into the spheres of production,
circulation, and consumption from chapter three, a typology of online surveillance in the
economy was introduced. As a result, we were able to systemize illustrative examples of Internet surveillance in the modern economy into the spheres of production, circulation, and
consumption (see table 14):
Internet surveillance in the economy
Internet surveillance in the
Internet surveillance in the
Internet surveillance in the
sphere of production
sphere of circulation
sphere of consumption
More than 40% of compa-
Background Checks (Kroll),
Web Analytics (Alexa Inter-
nies monitor e-mail traffic
Employee Screening Ser-
net,
of their workers, and 66%
vices (Carratu Internation-
NetRatings)
of
al)
corporations
monitor
Internet connections
Nielsen
Ad Serving (DoubleClick by
Commercial
“More than one fourth of
Quantcast,
Intelligence
Google)
Program (Kroll)
employers have fired work-
Web 2.0 activities (Face-
ers for misusing e-mail and
Intellectual Property Pro-
book,
nearly one third have fired
tection
YouTube, Blogger)
employees for misusing the
Anti-Counterfeiting Investi-
Internet“ (American Man-
gations,
agement Association and
fringement and Passing-Off
the ePolicy Institute 2008)
Investigations,
Services
(IPPS),
Trademark
In-
Mar-
ketWatch, Patent Investigations, Parallel Trade Investigations (Carratu International),
Vendor
Program (Kroll)
Table 14: Internet surveillance in the economy
- 102 -
Integrity
Twitter,
MySpace,
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
For understanding Internet surveillance in the sphere of production, the transformation from a
Fordist system of mass production to a post-Fordist system of flexible production was analyzed. In the post-Fordist accumulation regime, every labourer can be controlled every time
with a minimum of supervisors. On an empirical level, more than 40% of companies monitor
e-mail traffic of their workers, and 66% of corporations monitor Internet connections. In addition, “more than one fourth of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail and nearly
one third have fired employees for misusing the Internet“ (American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute 2008).
In the sphere of circulation, online surveillance can be identified and classified into Internet
surveillance of purchasing labour power in the stage of money capital (Background Checks,
Employee Screening Services), Internet surveillance of purchasing means of production in the
stage of money capital (Commercial Intelligence Program), and Internet surveillance of produced commodities in the stage of commodity capital (Intellectual Property Protection Services, Anti-Counterfeiting Investigations, Trademark Infringement and Passing-Off Investigations, MarketWatch, Patent Investigations, Parallel Trade Investigations, Vendor Integrity
Program).
Although the importance of consumer data for target advertising is as old as the advertising
business itself, commodification of privacy on the Internet to enable online target advertising
has intensified and extended. In order to get an impression of Internet surveillance in the
sphere of consumption, illustrative examples were given: Companies such as Alexa Internet,
Quantcast, and Nielsen NetRatings undertake web analytics and report website traffic such as
number of visitors and page views of a particular website or of a group of websites in order to
enable comparisons and rankings. In addition, ad serving companies such as DoubleClick by
Google collect personal data on many websites, sell this data, and support targeted advertising. Furthermore, Web 2.0 applications and social software sites such as Facebook, Twitter,
MySpace, YouTube, and Blogger collect, analyze, and sell personal data in order to accumulate profit. In this context, Andrejevic (2007b, 313) speaks about “digital enclosure as a form
of exploitation” and Fuchs (2010a; 2010b) about the “Internet prosumer/produsage commodity”.
- 103 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
6.
Conclusion
The overall aim of A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies was to clarify
how we can theorize and systemize surveillance in general and Internet surveillance in particular in the modern economy. The thesis constructed theoretically founded typologies in order
to systemize the existing literature of surveillance studies and to analyze examples of surveillance. Therefore, it mainly was a theoretical approach combined with illustrative examples,
advanced from the abstract to the concrete level. The following figure summarizes the results.
How can we theorize and systemize surveillance in general
and Internet surveillance in
particular in the modern economy?
Surveillance in the spheres
of production, circulation,
and consumption
Internet surveillance in the
spheres of production,
circulation, and
consumption
Figure 9: A critical contribution to (Internet) surveillance studies
- 104 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
Foundations of surveillance theory were analyzed in the second chapter. In the third chapter, a
critical contribution to the analysis of surveillance in the modern economy was treated in order to establish a typology of surveillance in the economy and to study surveillance in the
spheres of production, circulation, and consumption. Foundations of Internet surveillance theory were studied in the fourth chapter. Finally in the fifth chapter, a critical contribution to the
analysis of Internet surveillance in the modern economy was drawn in order to distinguish
Internet surveillance into the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption. Based on
these findings, we were able to systemize illustrative examples of (Internet) surveillance in
the modern economy such as the Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance Survey, Kroll, and
Alexa Internet into the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption. The following
treatment brings up the thematically grouped research questions and discusses the results
more in detail.
Foundations of surveillance theory
The specific research questions that were addressed in chapter two are:
 How is surveillance defined in the existing literature?
 What are commonalties and differences of various notions of surveillance?
 What are advantages and disadvantages of such definitions?
The overall aim of chapter two was to clarify how surveillance is defined in the existing literature, what the different notions of surveillance have in common and what distinguishes
them from one another, and what advantages and disadvantages such definitions have. For
doing so, Foucault’s understanding of surveillance and the idea of the Panopticon were introduced (section one). Based on these findings, section two and three contained a systematic
discussion of the state of the art of surveillance by establishing a typology of the existing literature and discussing commonalties and differences. Section four clarified how different
notions treat economic aspects of surveillance and if there is a gap in the existing literature in
order to study surveillance in the modern economy.
Foucault analyzes surveillance in the context of the emergence of modern disciplinary societies. He understands disciplines as forms of operational power relations and technologies of
domination in order to discipline, control, and normalize people in respect of drilling docile
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
bodies. For Foucault, the Panopticon is an ideal symbol of modern surveillance societies.
Foucault’s understanding of surveillance and the Panopticon allows to distinguish panoptic
and non-panoptic approaches of defining surveillance that can be used for constructing a typology of existing surveillance literature and for discussing commonalties and differences of
definitions of surveillance.
Non-panoptic notions use a neutral and general notion of surveillance, where everyone has the
opportunity to surveil; they are represented by scholars such Anthony Giddens, James Rule,
Gary Marx, and Jean Baudrillard. In contrast, panoptic notions consider surveillance to be
negative and being connected to coercion, repression, discipline, power, and domination; they
are represented by scholars such as Gilles Deleuze, Oscar Gandy, Frank Webster and Kevin
Robins, and Mark Poster.
Although private actors monitor and watch over other individuals in everyday life experiences
(for example parents taking care of their children, providing personal information on Weblogs, and using social networking sites on the Internet), these acts are processes to which people agree and which involve no violence, coercion, or repression. In comparison, economical
and political actors use surveillance and exercise violence in order to control a certain behaviour of people and in most cases people do not know that they are surveilled. Corporations
control the economic behaviour of people and coerce individuals in order to produce or buy
specific commodities for accumulating profit and for guaranteeing the production of surplus
value. Corporations and state institutions are the most powerful actors in society and are able
to undertake mass-surveillance extensively and intensively (such as for example the collection
and gathering of information on Internet user profiles in order to implement targeted advertising), because available resources decide surveillance dimensions.
Non-panoptical notions use a broad definition of surveillance and tend to mix up very heterogeneous phenomena on one level of analysis. Furthermore, non-panoptic notions understand
surveillance in a non-hierarchical and decentralized way, where everyone has the opportunity
to surveil. This argument overlooks the fact that corporations and state institutions are the
most powerful actors in society and are able to undertake mass-surveillance, what private actors are not able to do. Neutral concepts of surveillance tend to overlook the power asymmetries of contemporary society and therefore tend to convey the image that private actors are
equally powerful as corporations and state institutions. Hence, a general and neutral under- 106 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
standing of surveillance is not fruitful for studying surveillance as it does not take asymmetrical power relations and repressive aspects of society into consideration.
Although panoptic notions of surveillance recognize the importance of the economy, they
tend to focus only on one or two spheres of the economy. Furthermore, panoptic notions of
surveillance claim that there are particular forms of economic surveillance without a theoretical criterion for a certain typology. In contrast, a typology of surveillance in the modern economy, which is based on Marx’ theory of the political economy, allows to systemize economic
surveillance and to distinguish surveillance into the spheres of production, circulation, and
consumption. A theoretically founded typology of economic surveillance is important in order
to undertake a theoretical analysis of surveillance in the modern economy. Therefore, foundations of a political economy approach on surveillance were outlined in chapter three.
A critical contribution to surveillance studies
The following research questions were subject to chapter three:
 Which theory provides a typology in order to systemize surveillance in the modern economy?
 What are characteristics of surveillance in the spheres of production, circulation,
and consumption?
 What are differences between surveillance and Internet surveillance?
The overall aim of chapter three was to analyze surveillance in the context of the economy.
Based on the foundations of a political economy approach, the distinction of production, circulation, and consumption within the economy was introduced (section one) in order to establish a typology of surveillance in the economy and to study surveillance in the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption (section two). This chapter concluded with a discussion
of the emergence of the Internet as new surveillance technologies (section three).
In the Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx
(MECW 28, 26-37) distinguishes between (a) production, (b) circulation (distribution and
exchange), and (c) consumption as dialectically mediated spheres of the capitalistic economy.
Based on the distinction of production, circulation, and consumption, a typology of surveil- 107 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
lance in the economy could be constructed. Such a typology was outlined in section 3.2.
Marx argues that surveillance is a central part of the capitalist process of production for generating absolute and relative surplus value in order to accumulate profit. For explaining newer
forms of surveillance in the process of production, the emergence of scientific management
was analyzed. The mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor developed the concept of
scientific management, where the meaning of knowledge and information as productive force
has permanently increased and the management gathers knowledge of the labour process and
uses this knowledge in order to control the labour process.
For understanding surveillance in the sphere of circulation, the circuit of capital was introduced. For Marx, the circuit of capital contains three stages, namely the stage of money capital, the stage of productive capital, and the stage of commodity capital. Based on these findings, surveillance in the sphere of circulation was identified and classified into surveillance of
purchasing labour power in the stage of money capital, surveillance of purchasing means of
production in the stage of money capital, and surveillance of produced commodities in the
stage of commodity capital.
For explaining surveillance in the sphere of consumption, the emergence of mass consumption was studied: For guaranteeing mass consumption, market research became important in
order to target advertising and to stimulate needs and demands. Efficiency and effectiveness
were extended from the sphere of production to the sphere of consumption and a translation of
scientific management to scientific marketing took place. In scientific marketing, the audience
is treated as a commodity and produces crucial data for the economy for free.
In order to describe surveillance in the context of the emergence of new information and
communication technologies, some scholars accentuated terms such as “social control in the
computer age” (Rule 1973), “information technology and dataveillance” (Clarke 1988), “in
the age of the smart machine” (Zuboff 1988), “the superpanopticon” (Mark Poster 1990), “the
electronic eye” (Lyon 1994), “hypercontrol in telematic societies” (Bogard 1996), “social
Taylorism of surveillance” (Robins and Webster 1999), “the maximum surveillance society”
(Norris and Armstrong 1999), “new surveillance” (Gary Marx 2002), “the intensification of
surveillance” (Ball and Webster 2003), “digitizing surveillance” (Graham and Murakami
Wood 2003), “profiling machines” (Elmer 2004), “surveillance in the interactive area” (An- 108 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
drejevic 2007), and “the rise of electronic surveillance” (Fuchs 2008).
Surveillance technologies are developed by analogy with productive forces in modern societies. New information technologies have generated a “rapid quantitative expansion of surveillance, which simultaneously raises questions of a qualitative shift“ (Lyon 1994, 56). New
surveillance is a dialectical sublation of traditional surveillance in the form of elimination,
retention, and emergence of new qualities on a higher level. For example, the necessity of
face-to-face surveillance is eliminated, but power relations and forms of domination are retained and work on a more intensive and extensive level. Surveillance in the context of new
information and communication technologies is a dialectic of continuity and discontinuity.
According to Fuchs (2008, 139), the Internet is the most important phenomenon of new information and communication technologies, which involves all different forms of information, communication, and co-operation in one medium.
These approaches show that many forms of contemporary surveillance are computer-based
and Internet based and that as a reaction a multiplicity of new analytical approaches has
emerged. Therefore, different notions of Internet surveillance were outlined in chapter four.
Foundations of Internet surveillance theory
The specific research questions that were treated in chapter four are:
 How is Internet surveillance defined in the existing literature?
 What are commonalties and differences of various notions of Internet surveillance?
 What are advantages and disadvantages of such definitions?
The overall aim of chapter four was to clarify how Internet surveillance is defined in the existing literature, what commonalties and differences of various notions of online surveillance
exist, and what advantages and disadvantages such definitions have. For doing so, based on
the distinction of panoptic and non-panoptic notions of surveillance from chapter two, sections one and two of this chapter contained a systematic discussion of the state of the art of
Internet surveillance by establishing a typology of the existing literature and discussing commonalties and differences. Section four clarified how different notions deal with economic
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
surveillance on the Internet and makes clear if there is a gap in the existing literature in order
to study surveillance in the modern economy.
In conclusion, non-panoptic notions of Internet surveillance use either a neutral concept that
assumes there are enabling as well as constraining effects or a positive concept that identifies
comical, playful, amusing, and even enjoyable characteristics; they are represented by scholars such as David Lyon, Seumas Miller and John Weckert, Alder et al. Jeffrey Stanton and
Elizabeth Weiss, and Barbara Kaye and Thomas Johnson. In contrast, panoptic notions of
Internet surveillance consider online surveillance to be negative. These approaches argue that
power, domination, coercion, control, discipline, and surveillance have increased in the era of
the Internet; they are represented by scholars such as Greg Elmer, Manuel Castells, John Edward Campbell and Matt Carlson, and Ian Brown and Douwe Korff.
Like non-panoptic notions of surveillance, non-panoptic notions of Internet surveillance understand surveillance in cyberspace in a non-hierarchical and decentralized way, where everyone has the opportunity to surveil. This argument overlooks the fact that corporations and
state institutions are the most powerful actors in society and are able to undertake masssurveillance online, what private actors are not able to do. Neutral concepts of surveillance on
the Internet tend to overlook power asymmetries of contemporary society and therefore tend
to convey the image that private actors are equally powerful as corporations and state institutions. Hence, a general and neutral understanding of surveillance in cyberspace is not fruitful
for studying online surveillance as it does not take asymmetrical power relations and repressive aspects of society into consideration.
Although panoptic notions of Internet surveillance recognize the importance of the economy,
they tend to focus on the sphere of consumption and to overlook online surveillance in the
spheres of production and circulation as important aspects of contemporary surveillance societies. Furthermore, panoptic notions of Internet surveillance claim that there are particular
forms of economic surveillance without a theoretical criterion for a certain typology. In contrast, a typology of Internet surveillance in the modern economy, which is based on Marx’
theory of the political economy, allows to systemize economic surveillance on the Internet
and to distinguish online surveillance into the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption. A theoretically founded typology of economic Internet surveillance is important in
order to undertake a theoretical analysis of online surveillance in the modern economy. There- 110 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
fore, a distinction of Internet surveillance in the economy into the spheres of production, circulation, and consumption was outlined in chapter five.
A critical contribution to Internet surveillance studies
The following research questions were subject to chapter five:
 Which theory provides a typology in order to systemize Internet surveillance in
the modern economy?
 What are characteristics of Internet surveillance in the spheres of production,
circulation, and consumption?
The overall aim of chapter five was to analyze the specific economic mode of Internet surveillance. Based on the distinction of surveillance in the economy into the spheres of production,
circulation, and consumption from chapter three, a typology of online surveillance in the
economy was introduced. As a result, we were able to systemize illustrative examples of Internet surveillance in the modern economy into the spheres of production, circulation, and
consumption.
For understanding Internet surveillance in the sphere of production, the transformation from a
Fordist system of mass production to a post-Fordist system of flexible production was analyzed. In the post-Fordist accumulation regime, every labourer can be controlled every time
with a minimum of supervisors. On an empirical level, more than 40% of companies monitor
e-mail traffic of their workers, and 66% of corporations monitor Internet connections. In addition, “more than one fourth of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail and nearly
one third have fired employees for misusing the Internet“ (American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute 2008).
In the sphere of circulation, online surveillance can be identified and classified into Internet
surveillance of purchasing labour power in the stage of money capital (Background Checks,
Employee Screening Services), Internet surveillance of purchasing means of production in the
stage of money capital (Commercial Intelligence Program), and Internet surveillance of produced commodities in the stage of commodity capital (Intellectual Property Protection Services, Anti-Counterfeiting Investigations, Trademark Infringement and Passing-Off Investiga- 111 -
A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
tions, MarketWatch, Patent Investigations, Parallel Trade Investigations, Vendor Integrity
Program).
Although the importance of consumer data for target advertising is as old as the advertising
business itself, commodification of privacy on the Internet to enable online target advertising
has intensified and extended. In order to get an impression of Internet surveillance in the
sphere of consumption, illustrative examples were given: Companies such as Alexa Internet,
Quantcast, and Nielsen NetRatings undertake web analytics and report website traffic such as
number of visitors and page views of a particular website or of a group of websites in order to
enable comparisons and rankings. In addition, ad serving companies such as DoubleClick by
Google collect personal data on many websites, sell this data, and support targeted advertising. Furthermore, Web 2.0 applications and social software sites such as Facebook, Twitter,
MySpace, YouTube, and Blogger collect, analyze, and sell personal data in order to accumulate profit. In this context, Andrejevic (2007b, 313) speaks about “digital enclosure as a form
of exploitation” and Fuchs (2010a; 2010b) about the “Internet prosumer/produsage commodity”.
Finally, it is clarified how we can theorize and systemize surveillance in general and Internet
surveillance in particular in the modern economy. As shown in this work, economical actors
such as corporations use (Internet) surveillance in the spheres of production, circulation, and
consumption. Corporations exercise violence in order to control a certain behaviour of people
and in most cases people do not know that they are surveilled. Economical actors control the
economic behaviour of people and coerce individuals in order to produce or buy specific
commodities for guaranteeing the production of surplus value and for accumulating profit.
Corporations and state institutions are the most powerful actors in society and are able to undertake mass-surveillance extensively and intensively, because available resources decide
surveillance dimensions. To sum up: based on Gandy (1993, 230f.), Castells (2001, 182ff.),
Parenti (2003, 207-212), Ogura (2006, 291ff.), Lyon (1994, 159-225; 2001, 126-140; 2007a,
159-178; 2007b, 368-377), Fuchs (2009, 115ff.), and Allmer (2011), some political recommendations can be drawn in order to overcome economic (online) surveillance:
 The first recommendations is that support is needed for critical privacy movements in
order to develop counter-hegemonic power and advance critical awareness of surveil-
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
lance.
 “Such public awareness of surveillance issues could further be raised through professional groups and organizations, especially those directly concerned with computing,
information management, and so on.” (Lyon 1994, 223)
 Furthermore, Lyon (2001, 127) states the importance of political activism by critical
citizens: “Films, consumer groups, Internet campaigns and international watchdogs are
just some of the ways that ongoing surveillance practices are brought to the surface of
our consciousness, and thus overtly into the realm of ethical evaluation and political
response.”
 According to Fuchs (2009, 116), “critical citizens, critical citizens’ initiatives, consumer groups, social movement groups, critical scholars, unions, data protection specialists/groups, consumer protection specialists/groups, critical politicians, critical political parties observe closely the relationship of surveillance and corporations and
document instances where corporations and politicians take measures that threaten
privacy or increase the surveillance of citizens”.
 In addition, it is recommended to support cyberactivism and “counter-surveillance”
(Lyon 1994, 159) in order to surveil corporate surveillants or rather to watch the
watchers.
 Parenti (203, 212) suggests civil disobedience, rebellion, and protest: “It will compel
regulators to tell corporations, police, schools, hospitals, and other institutions that
there are limits. As a society, we want to say: Here you may not go. Here you may not
record. Here you may not track and identify people. Here you may not trade and analyze information and build dossiers.”
 A further recommendation is to create non-profit, non-commercial social networking
platforms on the Internet such as Kaioo. Kaioo is owned by the non-profit organization OpenNetworX, has been available since 2007, and has currently about 30.000 users. Kaioo’s privacy terms are created in common and can be edited online by every
user. In addition, the data belong to their users (cf. Kaioo). OpenNetworX can do so,
because they are not interested in targeting advertising and they do not need to produce surplus value and to accumulate profit.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
 “To try to advance critical awareness and to surveil corporate and political surveillers
are important political moves for guaranteeing civil rights, but they will ultimately fail
if they do not recognize that electronic surveillance is not a technological issue that
can be solved by technological means or by different individual behaviours, but only
by bringing about changes of society.” (Fuchs 2009, 116) Therefore, Internet surveillance has to be put into the larger context of societal problems in public discourse.
“We should look at the whole macro picture.” (Ogura 2006, 292)
 Finally, surveillance is caused by economical and political issues and is inherent in
modern society. It is neither just a technical issue, nor an individual problem, but a societal problem. Surveillance in general and Internet surveillance in particular are crucial phenomena, but there are a lot of other features in contemporary society such as
information, neoliberalism, globalization, and capital.
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A Critical Contribution to (Internet) Surveillance Studies
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