Surveillance and Security

Recent revelations about data collection by actors as varied as the National Security Agency and Facebook have challenged many of our most basic beliefs about power and privacy. It is increasingly clear that our bodies, images, and words are ceaselessly tracked, sorted, profiled, stored in databases, and recalled by algorithms—all in the name of a loosely defined concept called ‘security’. In this class, we will interrogate these uneasy relationships between surveillance and security, looking at both state surveillance practices as well as visual practices aimed at monitoring the state. By engaging with a broad array of media – academic research, social theory, television, film, fiction - we will debate the role of surveillance in generating security, but also focus on the ways that broad data collection can actually enable populations to act in new and beneficial ways

Olympic rings of steel: Constructing security for 2012 and beyond

Academic and political commentators have commonly sought to understand the Olympics as a cultural dynamic, a "spectacle" that motivates certain actors to project their relative interests in localized spaces and as well on a global scale (Hiller 2006; Boyle and Haggerty 2009b ). Mega-events, as this argument goes, are monumental cultural events (Roche 2000) that rely on the audacity of spectacle to dramatize and condition the cultural, political, legal and economic landscape. Extending these insights into surveillance studies, Boyle and Haggerty (2009b: 259-260) position spectacle and the disciplinary mechanisms of anxieties associated with mega-events to explain the risk management practices of security planners. The dynamic social implications of the spectacle condition dramatic regimes of securitization and surveillance such that sovereign power emanates from the production and consumption of spectacle. In similar fashion Vida Bajc (2007: 1648) writes that security meta-rituals "demonstrate[s] that the process of transformation of [the] public space [of mega-events] from one of routine of daily life into a sterile area [that] has a ritual form [that] .... separates insiders from outsiders and brings about a new socio-political reality." Put another way, the "security-meta ritual" legitimates security and surveillance practices by normalizing the social hierarchies it imposes. Bajc focuses on the over-determination of dividing practices in mega-event security, but the signifying practices associated with capital are absent (perhaps due to her empirical focus on presidential addresses). Klauser (2008: 181) links commercialization and mechanisms of surveillance, but only by foregrounding the significance of "neutralized space" created by granting absolute commercial rights to event sponsors. Neoliberalprivatization and its articulation with security and surveillance, however, cannot be reduced to control over sponsorship rights and consumptive practices in particular urban "zones," nor can it be limited by the methodological temporality of the event itself

Ensuring Cyber-Security in Smart Railway Surveillance with SHIELD

Modern railways feature increasingly complex embedded computing systems for surveillance, that are moving towards fully wireless smart-sensors. Those systems are aimed at monitoring system status from a physical-security viewpoint, in order to detect intrusions and other environmental anomalies. However, the same systems used for physical-security surveillance are vulnerable to cyber-security threats, since they feature distributed hardware and software architectures often interconnected by ‘open networks’, like wireless channels and the Internet. In this paper, we show how the integrated approach to Security, Privacy and Dependability (SPD) in embedded systems provided by the SHIELD framework (developed within the EU funded pSHIELD and nSHIELD research projects) can be applied to railway surveillance systems in order to measure and improve their SPD level. SHIELD implements a layered architecture (node, network, middleware and overlay) and orchestrates SPD mechanisms based on ontology models, appropriate metrics and composability. The results of prototypical application to a real-world demonstrator show the effectiveness of SHIELD and justify its practical applicability in industrial settings

Legal Archetypes and Metadata Collection

In discussions of state surveillance, the values of privacy and security are often set against one another, and people often ask whether privacy is more important than national security.2 I will argue that in one sense privacy is more important than national security. Just what more important means is its own question, though, so I will be more precise. I will argue that national security rationales cannot by themselves justify some kinds of encroachments on individual privacy (including some kinds that the United States has conducted). Specifically, I turn my attention to a recent, well publicized, and recently amended statute (section 215 of the USA Patriot Act3), a surveillance program based on that statute (the National Security Agency’s bulk metadata collection program), and a recent change to that statute that addresses some of the public controversy surrounding the surveillance program (the USA Freedom Act).4 That process (a statute enabling surveillance, a program abiding by that statute, a public controversy, and a change in the law) looks like a paradigm case of law working as it should; but I am not so sure. While the program was plausibly legal, I will argue that it was morally and legally unjustifiable. Specifically, I will argue that the interpretations of section 215 that supported the program violate what Jeremy Waldron calls “legal archetypes,”5 and that changes to the law illustrate one of the central features of legal archetypes and violation of legal archetypes. The paper proceeds as follows: I begin in Part 1 by setting out what I call the “basic argument” in favor of surveillance programs. This is strictly a moral argument about the conditions under which surveillance in the service of national security can be justified. In Part 2, I turn to section 215 and the bulk metadata surveillance program based on that section. I will argue that the program was plausibly legal, though based on an aggressive, envelope-pushing interpretation of the statute. I conclude Part 2 by describing the USA Freedom Act, which amends section 215 in important ways. In Part 3, I change tack. Rather than offering an argument for the conditions under which surveillance is justified (as in Part 1), I use the discussion of the legal interpretations underlying the metadata program to describe a key ambiguity in the basic argument, and to explain a distinct concern in the program. Specifically that it undermines a legal archetype. Moreover, while the USA Freedom Act does not violate legal archetypes, and hence meets a condition for justifiability, it helps illustrate why the bulk metadata program did violate archetypes

Surveillance and security - a dodgy relationship

Modern societies are vulnerable. We have known this long before the attacks of September 11, but they made it clear to everyone. The second lesson learned was that it is impossible to foresee such events. Although these attacks to the real world were 'low-tech', now there are attempts around the globe to control especially the electronic or virtual world. However, does more surveillance really lead to more security? If so, what will be the price we have to pay? This paper gives an overview over what happened on a governmental level after September 11 in the EU, in some EU-member states and in the USA. Apart from political actions, we already face even direct socio-economic implications as some anonymizer services were shut down. They empowered Internet users to protect their right of privacy, and they were the first targets of investigation and suspicion. Shutting down these services reduces the potential room of users to protect their privacy by using privacy enhancing technologies (PETs). This is an indicator for a serious societal problem: democracy already has changed. In a second part this paper analyses the relationship between surveillance and security. It is argued that, the international over-reactions will not lead to the intended effects. Rather, they will have long-term implications for the respective societies.Privacy, security, surveillance, international policy

Security and Surveillance

On the theoretical backdrop of Foucault’s studies about the space and Deleuze’s inquiry on the society of control, this article aims to question the meaning of civil rights and freedom in an ultra-monitored society, within Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice. This novel, in fact, provides not only a precise historical account of Los Angeles in the late Sixties but also a reflection about police and government policies concerning the process of reorganization of the space in Los Angeles and the several public disorder episodes connected to these policies. In the form of a detective fiction, Pynchon continues the investigation on Los Angeles land abuse carried out by Mike Davis and Edward Soja’s essays (such as City of Quartz and Thirdspace) on the postmodern metropolis par excellence. In fact, land speculation, segregation, inequality and racial violence were just some of the rotted fruits that fell out of the ruthless government tree. Pynchon explores the relationship between federals and magnates, the urgency of making Los Angeles a theme-park paradise, the utopia city par excellence, the dreaming of prosperity and flourishing that created an atmosphere of terror and paranoia. On the other side, the counterculture, hippies, groups, communities and all those who had been segregated geographically or ideologically, tried to feed their ethnic and cultural identity against the flatland developers. Starting from this ideological battlefield, this article moves to analyze the nature of late capitalism logic consequences in the Los Angeles civil rights era, and how the countercultural utopia was doomed often in behalf of social injustice and racial restrictions

Mitigating Inadequate Security Claims Through Effective Security Measures

Gaming and hospitality operators are currently facing a litigation crisis. Recent court decisions, such as Tailhook, have established that hospitality operators are responsible for foreseeable security problems. Because of the increased responsibility placed on gaming and hospitality operators to provide a safe and secure environment for their guests, patrons, and employees, companies must take a proactive stance regarding security. While the surveillance and security programs in place at most gaming establishments are often quite sophisticated, care must still be taken to remain current with technological advances in security and changing industry security standards. The implementation of security measures can help mitigate costs associated with inadequate security claims. A cost/benefit analysis can help quantify whether a proposed security measure is se