Public Feeling on Privacy, Security and Surveillance

2015

This co-edited volume examines the relationship between privacy, surveillance and security, and the alleged privacy– security trade-off, focusing on the citizen's perspective. Recent revelations of mass surveillance programmes clearly demonstrate the ever-increasing capabilities of surveillance technologies. The lack of serious reactions to these activities shows that the political will to implement them appears to be an unbroken trend. The resulting move into a surveillance society is, however, contested for many reasons. Are the resulting infringements of privacy and other human rights compatible with democratic societies? Is security necessarily depending on surveillance? Are there alternative ways to frame security? Is it possible to gain in security by giving up civil liberties, or is it even necessary to do so, and do citizens adopt this trade-off? This volume contributes to a better and deeper understanding of the relation between privacy, surveillance and security, comprising in-depth investigations and studies of the common narrative that more security can only come at the expense of sacrifice of privacy. The book combines theoretical research with a wide range of empirical studies focusing on the citizen's perspective. It presents empirical research exploring factors and criteria relevant for the assessment of surveillance technologies. The book also deals with the governance of surveillance technologies. New approaches and instruments for the regulation of security technologies and measures are presented, and recommendations for security policies in line with ethics and fundamental rights are discussed. This book will be of much interest to students of surveillance studies, critical security studies, intelligence studies, EU politics and IR in general.

In modern societies, surveillance is progressively emerging as a key governing tech- nique of state authorities, corporations and individuals:‘the focused, systematic and routine attention to personal details for purposes of influence, management, protection or direction’ (Lyon, 2007, p. 14). The ‘Snowden revelations’ of mass-surveillance programmes brought into the light of day the ever-increasing and far-reaching capabilities of digital surveillance technologies (Greenwald, 2014). The lack of serious reactions to these activities shows that the political will to implement digital surveillance technologies appears to be an unbroken trend. This drive towards a security governance based on digital mass-surveillance raises, however, several issues: Are the resulting infringements of privacy and other human rights compatible with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union or the EU data protection framework and the values of demo- cratic societies? Does security necessarily depend upon mass-surveillance? Are there alternative ways to frame security? Do surveillance technologies address the most pressing security needs, and if so, are they the most efficient means to do so? In other words, the promotion and adoption by state authorities of mass-surveil- lance technologies invites us to ask again if the argument of increasing security at the cost of civil liberties is acceptable, and thus to call into question the very idea that this would be necessary to preserve democratic societies. Focusing on the citizens’ perspective on surveillance, privacy and security, this volume contributes new insights from empirical research and theoretical analysis to a debate, characterized by evident tendencies to provide simplified answers to apparently multidimensional and correspondingly complex societal issues like security. This book tries to further nurture a debate that challenges the assumption that more security requires less privacy, and that more surveillance necessarily implies more security (Bigo et al., 2008). A key motivation is the wish to incorporate into new analyses the perspectives, attitudes and preferences of citizens, understood as being the main beneficiaries of security measures, while at the same time potential and actual targets of mass-surveillance programmes conducted in the name of responding to imminent security threats.

On 21 March 2011 President José Manuel Barroso requested the EGE to draft an Opinion on the ethical implications of information and communication technologies and to produce, subsequently and separately, an Opinion on the ethical implications of security technologies, with due attention given to the development of security technologies and to surveillance technologies. The EGE has provided the Commission with its Opinion on Ethics of Information and Communication Technologies on 22 February 2012. It also drafted an Opinion on Research, Production and Use of Energy that was published on the 16th January 2013, in response to an intervening request from the President of the Commission. The present Opinion addresses the issues of security and surveillance technologies from an ethical perspective. As the group prepared the re- port, the revelations of Edward Snowden emphasised how important a reorganisation and reinterpretation of our approach to security and surveillance is. Indeed the predicament of data flows and surveillance activities thrown into sharp relief by these revelations form part of the evolving backdrop against which this Opinion is set. National security is the responsibility of the Member States, but the Lisbon Treaty, and particularly the Charter of Fundamental Rights embedded in it provides for action by the Union where necessary to protect the rights of individual citizens. In addition, the EU shares competence with member states as regards the internal security of the Union and has established an Internal Security Strategy to identify and coordinate action against common threats. In this opinion we address the manner in which surveillance has been enhanced due to the availability of new technologies and the means to record and analyse and retain vast amounts of data provided by advances in information and communication technologies. While national security or state security paradigms pertain to a state’s ability to defend itself against external threats, the notion of human security holds that the referent for security is the individual rather than the state. This is to be considered against the backdrop of the forms of security expected from the Westphalian nation-state (46) (with the social contract on which it is premised calling upon the state to ensure the security of its citizens) and against the backdrop of an increasing technologically mediated attention to border control as well as to the ‘enemy within’. Security procedures lie within the compass of the State that in addition may procure services from national or international companies to provide the facilities for collection and management of information that the security services require. Information gathered about individuals or organisations may then be held either by the State, where democratic accountability ought to exist, or by private entities where the conditions for handling sensitive material may not be in the public domain and may possibly be retained or may not only be used for the purposes of a particular State. The Opinion addresses the principles by which these forms of surveillance should be governed. In addition, surveillance of the public by companies or by other individuals should be subject to conditions, and again, the opinion addresses the principles that govern these forms of ‘commercial’ or individual surveillance, and the manner in which the data so gathered may be used as part of a data mining or profiling system by private entities or the state. The digital revolution and subsequent advances in mobile, wireless and networked devices have significantly contributed to the development of security and surveillance technologies. New technologies offer the possibility of recording the everyday activities of billions of individuals across the globe. Our mobile phones can identify and pinpoint our location at any given moment, loyalty cards allow commercial entities to analyse our spending and track our personal preferences, keystroke software monitors our performance and productivity in the workplace and our electronic communications can be screened for key words or phrases by intelligence services. Moreover, personal data concerning our health, employment, travel and electronic communications are stored in databases, and data mining techniques allow for large amounts of personal data from these disparate sources to be organised and analysed, thereby facilitating the discovery of previously unknown relationships within these data. Security technologies are no longer discrete; the trend is toward convergence, creating more powerful networked systems. Thus, our everyday lives are scrutinised by many actors as never before, all made possible by developments in technology together with political choices or lack thereof.

While the UN introduced the paradigm of ‘human security’ in the 1990s, the post 9/11-legislation has returned to the paradigm of national security, in the name of ‘homeland’ security. The paper explores the ramifications of this reorientation in view of new and emerging security and surveillance technologies. It argues that a culture of surveillance has emerged that contradicts the vision and values of the human security concept. Regarding the intersection of political and private security and surveillance technologies, the ubiquity and entanglement of surveillance technologies with everyday life goes far beyond the purpose of security. Therefore, the paper argues for a reorientation that is backed by moral and political theory, and a (new) social contract that is based on the concept of social freedom, deliberative democracy, and a human rights-oriented concept of justice. From: Journal of Political Science and Public Affairs 3/1: 145, 2015, 1-6. Available: http://www.esciencecentral.org/journals/political-sciences-public-affairs-abstract.php?abstract_id=48774

Contemporary Publics, 2016

NOTE: The uploaded file is uncorrected page proofs. Please refer to the published version if citing and for final, corrected text. In May 2013, Edward Snowden leaked to The Guardian details of global digital surveillance programs orchestrated by intelligence agencies in the United States and United Kingdom. By making public the existence of PRISM, XKeyScore, Boundless Informant and other programs, Snowden did more than prove the breadth and pervasiveness of intelligence operations. His act gave radically distinct form to social bodies known, defined and constituted by its very monitoring: surveillance publics. To date, surveillance studies has tended to focus analysis on the technical aspects of surveillances, its effects at a societal level, or the operation of complex, multi-layered “surveillant assemblages” (Haggerty & Ericson 2000) formed by the practices state and non-state actors. Taking up threads from each of these approaches, this essay maps the vectors of state surveillance and and traces their complex fields of relations to everyday life. Manuel DeLanda’s (2006) social assemblage theory provides the framework for understanding state surveillance and its relationship to individuals, while Brian Massumi’s (2012) work on the ontology of events offers an understanding of Snowden’s making public as not simply a discursive act but the assembling of new relations, affects and forces. Linking everyday practices of individuals and collectives to the processes of leaked surveillance programs, this essay asks how publics might be understood once the secrets of their near-ubiquitous surveillance are made known.

Surveillance, Privacy and Security, 2017

This volume examines the relationship between privacy, surveillance and security, and the alleged privacy-security trade-off, focusing on the citizen's perspective. Recent revelations of mass surveillance programmes clearly demonstrate the everincreasing capabilities of surveillance technologies. The lack of serious reactions to these activities shows that the political will to implement them appears to be an unbroken trend. The resulting move into a surveillance society is, however, contested for many reasons. Are the resulting infringements of privacy and other human rights compatible with democratic societies? Is security necessarily depending on surveillance? Are there alternative ways to frame security? Is it possible to gain in security by giving up civil liberties, or is it even necessary to do so, and do citizens adopt this trade-off? This volume contributes to a better and deeper understanding of the relation between privacy, surveillance and security, comprising in-depth investigations and studies of the common narrative that more security can only come at the expense of sacrifice of privacy. The book combines theoretical research with a wide range of empirical studies focusing on the citizen's perspective. It presents empirical research exploring factors and criteria relevant for the assessment of surveillance technologies. The book also deals with the governance of surveillance technologies. New approaches and instruments for the regulation of security technologies and measures are presented, and recommendations for security policies in line with ethics and fundamental rights are discussed. This book will be of much interest to students of surveillance studies, critical security studies, intelligence studies, EU politics and IR in general.

Seconomics Discussion Papers 2013/3

Public Understanding of Science, July 2012 vol. 21 no. 5, pp. 556-572, 2012

As surveillance-oriented security technologies (SOSTs) are considered security enhancing but also privacy infringing, citizens are expected to trade part of their privacy for higher security. Drawing from the PRISE project, this study casts some light on how citizens actually assess SOSTs through a combined analysis of focus groups and survey data. First, the outcomes suggest that people did not assess SOSTs in abstract terms but in relation to the specific institutional and social context of implementation. Second, from this embedded viewpoint, citizens either expressed concern about government’s surveillance intentions and considered SOSTs mainly as privacy infringing, or trusted political institutions and believed that SOSTs effectively enhanced their security. None of them, however, seemed to trade privacy for security because concerned citizens saw their privacy being infringed without having their security enhanced, whilst trusting citizens saw their security being increased without their privacy being affected.