Surveillance (Sociology)

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

Il tracollo della modernità e l’indebolimento delle sue istituzioni, prima fra tutte lo Stato nazione, ha segnato l’emergere della società postpanottica, molto più fluida e dinamica, caratterizzata dal superamento della dicotomia controllo/libertà e dalla nascita di nuovi dispositivi che tendono ad uniformare il comportamento in maniera non coercitiva. La società postpanottica ha però bisogno, al contempo, di un crescente numero di dati e informazioni sugli individui e di una sorveglianza sempre più capillare, che spazia dalle strade che attraversiamo ogni giorno per andare al lavoro, sino al mondo virtuale della rete: è qui che una parte del nuovo controllo sociale tende a trasferirsi. Come è possibile allora far coesistere un sistema di sorveglianza con le caratteristiche rizomatiche della rete? Cosa si nasconde dietro l’apparente neutralità di un algoritmo che caratterizza un motore di ricerca?

The internet and social media have revolutionized activism. In response, governments seeking to curb opposition have recently learned to target the very same technologies that gave rise to activist empowerment in the first place. This article challenges the accepted framework for discussing these efforts by governments, focused on surveillance and privacy. It argues, first, that governments’ actions should be evaluated in the aggregate and understood as measures of digital domination, whose harm extends beyond the harm to individual privacy. Applying the republican concept of freedom as non-domination, the article suggests that the core harm resulting from governments’ actions is to activists’ freedom. Since activism is a check on the government, these measures also have devastating consequences for the freedom of the citizenry as a whole. Second, the article argues that governments’ reliance on digital militias allows them to sidestep the limits of their legitimate authority, therefore posing a grave threat to the rule of law. Finally, third, the article underscores that governments deploy digital measures of control beyond surveillance. Rather, they (1) gather information on activists; (2) disrupt communication channels; (3) flood online conversation to drown out the opposition; (4) deploy the state’s coercive power based on information gathered, and (5) mobilize digital militias to bully activists online. The article therefore proposes a new conceptual framework: rather than discuss political freedom through the lens of privacy, we ought to retain appreciation of privacy’s importance but refocus the discussion around individual freedom. Similarly, rather than subsume government control measures under the category of surveillance, we ought to recognize the much broader set of tools employed by them.

Der Begriff des Profilsdas ist vor diesem Hintergrund wenig überraschend und zudem dem Alltagsverständnis intuitiv entsprechendfand auch Eingang in die bildende Kunst, um insbesondere das Portrait eines Menschen von der Seite zu bezeichnen. Obwohl die Seitenansicht als Darstellungspraktik wohl älter als jede Formulierung einer kunsttheoretischen Reflexion ist, wird sie laut Pfeifer et al. erst ab Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts als Darstellung ‚im Profil' bezeichnet. 11 In Das Grosse Königliche Wörter-Buch 12 von 1700 taucht der Begriff noch nicht auf und auch im Deutschen Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm 13 findet sich keine Erwähnung ‚menschlicher' Profile vor 1750. Im ersten englischsprachigen Wörterbuch The new world of English words, or, A general dictionary von 1658 ist nur der allgemeine Hinweis "Profile, (Ital.) a Term in painting, being a picture onely drawn side-ways" 14 aufgeführt. In italienischer Sprache dagegen findet sich im Vocabulario della Crusca 15 bereits 1612 unter den Stichworten ‚proffilo' und ‚proffilare' der Verweis auf die Seitenansicht eines Gesichts, ebenso 1690 im französischen Wörterbuch Dictionaire universel 16. Eine erste explizite Erwähnung in deutscher Sprache liefert auch hier 1741 das Grosse vollständige Universallexicon von Zedler: Profil, hießt der Umriß um eine Figur: man sagt profiler, das ist, die Umrisse von einer Sache abreissen; ingleichen saget man auch, der Profil von einem Gesichte oder Kopffe, so ferne man nichts als die Hälfte, und nur eine Seite davon siehet. Ob nun auch gleich das Wort Profil general ist, wenn man alle Umrisse eines Leibes ausdrücken soll, so braucht man selbiges doch auch ordentlich in der Mahlerey, für zeichnen, umzühen, oder umreissen.

El mundo de Internet es uno de emprendedores e ideas innovadoras. También es el mundo de los datos masivos, de las fuentes abiertas, disponibles en tiempo real. Un sueño hecho realidad para quienes por profesión o por otras motivaciones –placer, delito, negocios, etc.– ahondan en la experiencia de indagar en la vida de los otros

For over fifty years, successive waves of critique have underscored that the apolitical character of much of Political Science research betrays the founding mission of the discipline to have science serve democracy. The Caucus for a New Political Science was originally based on such a critique, and the Perestroika movement in the discipline included a call for more problem-driven as opposed to theory- or method-driven work that would better connect Political Science research to ongoing political struggles. In recent years, movements for a public Sociology and public Anthropology as well as dissonant movements in Economics and related fields have added to the insistence that social science research was too often disconnected from the real world. Phronetic Social Science has emerged out of the ferment for change in the social sciences, starting with the much-debated book by Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter (Cambridge 2001). Flyvbjerg critiqued the social sciences for mimicking the natural sciences while proposing an alternative approach that focuses research on helping people address the problems they are facing in the context they are facing them. Today, Phronetic Social Science goes beyond the call for an alternative approach to social inquiry and its growing adherents are providing evidence that this alternative approach to doing research can enrich the social sciences by more effectively connecting research to efforts to address real world problems as people experience them. This essay provides a genealogy of efforts to connect Political Science to politics, a review of the major critiques of mainstream research, an explication of the rationale for more problem-driven, mixed methods research, a specification of the key principles of the phronetic approach, and examples of its application in the public realm. The essay concludes with implications for realizing a more political Political Science by way of taking a phronetic approach.

This paper analyzes the politics of mapping along the US-Mexico border to explore how humanitarian activists wield geospatial technologies in challenging border securitization. In addition to 'bounding' societies within delimited territorial zones, mapping technologies have recently been elevated to encompass observing, locating, and tracking mobile bodies-outcomes that, in the context of immigration control, have heightened the risk of clandestine border crossings and produced a sharp rise in migrant fatalities. As geospatial tools have been integrated into official gatekeeping strategies, activists have deployed them to protect migrants, promote mobility rights, and disrupt borders and the spatial, legal, and technical orders underpinning their materialization and enforcement. This case study considers the political implications of these interventions, and highlights how technologies traditionally aligned with state security and surveillance have been reappropriated in the service of transnational solidarity, recognition, and hospitality.

To refine wholesale accounts of transnationalism, scholars have cited the amplification of border enforcement and immigration control. Whilst received analysis emphasizes multiple processes whether border militarization, mass deportation or the crossdeputization of local authorities, other trends remain unexplored. Employing the insights of scholarship on the diffusion and decentralization of policing and crime control, this work interrogates the enlistment of private individuals in official gatekeeping efforts. Drawing on relevant empirical examples -anonymous tip lines, voluntary immigration posses, border vigilantes, local anti-immigrant ordinances and other practices that compel, encourage and include societal participation -it assesses three modalities of citizen involvement: deputization, responsibilization and autonomization. Each displays distinct state-society relations and techniques for mobilizing societal actors and energies. In addition to illuminating the complexities, consequences and contradictions of contemporary immigration control, this article enriches understandings of social exclusion and the redistribution and transposition of government amidst neoliberal restructuring.

The term ‘phronetic social science’ was coined in Making Social Science Matter (Flyvbjerg 2001). However, as pointed out in that volume and by Schram (2006), phronetic social science existed well before this particular articulation of the concept, but it was just not organized, recognized or named as such. Rather, it occurred here and there as scholars had adopted phronesis-like methods for their own purposes. The present title is the first organized volume of empirical–practical work in phronetic social science. Before Making Social Science Matter, phronesis, as a critical term of Aristotelian philosophy, had been theorized and its continuing importance as a key concept in Western thought had been convincingly argued by distinguished philosophers like Hans Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Alasdair MacIntyre and Richard J. Bernstein, among others. But no one had developed the theory and philosophy of phronesis into a practical methodology that could be applied by researchers interested in actually practising a phronetic social science. Making Social Science Matter developed such a methodology. Its implications were discussed and developed further in Making Political Science Matter (Schram and Caterino 2006). After these two theoretical–methodological contributions, it was evident that an important next step in demonstrating the usefulness of phronetic social science would be to illustrate, with concrete examples, how applied phronesis works in practical, empirical social science research. The contributions on applied phronesis contained in the present volume make clear that this next step has now been taken.

Under the year of 963, a particular John, the author of the fourteenth-century <Chronicle of the Glastonbury Abbey>, noted the following story: ‚King Edgar furthermore made a cross over the high altar, covered all over with gold and silver. After the church burned, this cross was placed before the holy-water stoup, at the monks' entrance. The monks bowed reverently toward it whenever they entered or left. But there was a monk in the monastery by the name of Ailsi who, when he passed by the cross and the altars of the church, did not bow in due reverence according to the Rule's discipline. Finally, either compelled by the rigour of the order or pricked, though late, by conscience, he bowed before the cross as he passed by. The figure upon the crucifix, seeming to break forth in a voice formed with the organs necessary for speech, said "Now too late, Ailsi. Now too late, Ailsi." The monk, struck by this divine voice, immediately fell down and died.' 2 Two elements are striking in this story. The first and most obvious one is that God himself intervened to punish a disobedient monk, giving a tangible example of his omnipresence and his ultimate awareness of all things. The second and less conspicuous one is that this evident misconduct passed unnoticed for a long time, never meeting any reaction from the authorities. This story, a slight exaggeration perhaps, nonetheless says something about discipline and is one of the means by which the officials tried to make their subordinates conform. As we shall see from the example of St. Gall, in the early Middle Ages the chronicles instruct us that God 1 This article is a result of a nine-month stay at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster kindly sponsored by The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT) and Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Gerd Althoff for his help and our fruitful discussions, as well as Professor Volker Honemann who invited me to Münster. Much thanks is owed to Gray Gatehouse from Örebro universitet, who proofread this text for publication. 2 Fecit pretera rex Edgarus super maius altare crucem undique auro et argento contectam. Hec crux, post combustionem ecclesie, posita est ante uas aque benedicte ad introitum monachorum, ad quam, semper intrando et exeundo ecclesiam, reuerenter inclinant. Set erat in eodem monasterio quidam monachus nomine Ailsi qui, per eandem crucem et per altaria ecclesie transiens, nequaquam debita reuerencia secundum regularem disciplinam se inclinauit. Tandem, uel ordinis rigore coactus, uel eciam sero compunctus, ante eandem crucem transitum faciens inclinauit. Imago igitur crucifixi, quasi debitis organis formatam in uocem erumpens, ait: "Now to late Ailsi. Now to late Ailsi". At ille, diuine uoce perculsus, statim corruens expirauit.

People in contemporary western societies are subject to surveillance more than ever before, so much that surveillance has almost become ubiquitous. Since the declaration of the Global War on Terrorism this situation has only increased as law enforcement and intelligence agencies attempt to increase their powers to stop terrorists. The result of the declaration this war, and the increase in surveillance has been a culture of fear. The following investigation discusses sociological and anthropological theory concerning these aspects along with their impact covering a wide range of topics which are related to this discussion.

There is ferment in the social sciences. After years of sustained effort to build a science of society modelled on the natural sciences, that project, long treated with suspicion by some, is now openly being rethought. A critical intervention in this period of reflection was Making Social Science Matter (MSSM) by Bent Flyvbjerg, published in 2001. In that book Flyvbjerg challenged the very idea of social science as a science modelled on the natural sciences. Flyvbjerg argued that, as the social sciences study human interactions that involve human consciousness, volition, power and reflexivity, attempts to build generalizable, predictive models such as those for the natural world are misplaced and even futile.

Both films Her (2013) and Ex Machina (2015) suggest the arrival of highly advanced Artificial Intelligence that are vastly superior to present-day AI/androids (e.g. Nadine) and virtual voice assistants (e.g. Siri). Imagined AI in the near-future do not just emulate to look, speak or act like a human being, but are capable of developing their own thoughts and agency. Artificial Intelligence who are intuitive, self-aware and conscious of their existence may use their gender/sexuality for data consumption, surveillance and self-preservation, while being independent agents who seek to construct new identities and social realities. ~ By Charlotte Lai Hong Lan

The essay that the reader is holding in his hands is an attempt to understand the extent to which, in the present-day, we are watching the return of a visibility, exposure and surveillance system that a utilitarian author like Jeremy Bentham baptized of Panopticon, or “place where everything is seen”. In fact, the pinnacle of the “information society”, and the present scenario of widespread surveillance intensified by the establishment of Security State post-September 11th, has implications in the practices of control over individuals on a daily basis, what Deleuze calls “societies of control” at the same time it contributes to the frontiers dilution between the public sphere and the private sphere. In this sense, we consider it is important to do a review on “disciplinary societies” surveillance and the control of “biopower” theorized by Michel Foucault tosubsequently realize how new surveillance technologies increase, exponentially, the subjects’ transparency.

This thesis, a platform study of Microsoft's videogame console the Xbox 360, demonstrates
how one of the defining traits of the videogame platform's design and architecture is pervasive
surveillance of its users. By applying William Bogard’s (1996) theory of surveillant
“enclosures,” this thesis will explain how the Xbox 360 uses a panopoly of methods and
technologies to watch users and shape their use of the videogame system, forming them as easily
governed subjects. In support of this argument, this thesis will examine not only the hardware
and software layers of the Xbox 360, but also peripheral hardware and networks including the
motion tracking sensor the Kinect and Xbox Live, the videogame console’s online network. Of
particular interest to this platform study will be an examination of how each of these layers
performs surveillance, and how they collectively perform a project of governance over
videogame players.
References
Bogard, William. (1996). The Simulation of Surveillance: Hypercontrol in Telematic
Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Background: During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, digital tracking technologies were recognised as one of the key tools in preventing the spread of the virus and maintaining health security. However, they also raised numerous controversies because of their potential to endanger civil rights and privacy. Most studies on the acceptance of anti-COVID-19 tracking technologies did not include important social factors and did not examine the directionality between variables. We aimed to fill this gap in the present study. Methods: We conducted a four-wave, representative longitudinal panel survey among Polish citizens on the relationship between acceptance of anti-COVID-19 tracking technologies and prosociality, national identification, and endorsement of individual liberty. Analyses were performed using random-intercept cross-lagged panel models.
Results: We observed bidirectional cross-lagged relationships between prosociality and acceptance of anti-COVID 19 tracking technologies, with a stronger path from prosociality to acceptance than the other way around. Endorsement of individual liberty predicted negative attitudes towards technologies and this relation was strengthened by perceived threat of future technological surveillance. We did not find a significant relationship between acceptance of technologies and national identification at the within-subject level. Conclusions: This is the first study to analyse dynamic within-person relationships between communal and individual aspects and acceptance of anti-COVID-19 surveillance technologies. We conclude that prosocial attitude may lead to social acceptance of technology that, while helpful to fight with a pandemic, might also infringe on personal rights.

This paper seeks to explore political, cultural, legal and socio-economic legacies of the Fascist regime in Italy. With the fall of the regime, in fact, the overall surveillance apparatus did not fade away. Former fascists were not purged from political and cultural life and very few were found guilty. The transition to democracy was thus marked by a substantial continuity of men and institutions (Della Porta and Reiter 2004) due to the active involvement of ex-OVRA (Organization of Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism) officers in public institutions (Fonio 2011). It comes as no surprise that forms of pervasive nontechnological social control continued for more than twenty years after the fall of the duce.

This paper analyzes the use of surveillance by activist groups opposed to the extensive securitization of the US-Mexico border and examines the implications of their activities for scholarship on borders, surveillance, and empowerment. The work of three organizations-the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), No More Deaths, and Humane Borders-is covered. While there is some overlap in their practices, these three organizations, respectively, have concentrated on (1) the use of digital photography and video recording equipment to monitor state agents and vigilante organizations; (2) the coordination of citizen-organized foot patrols to locate and assist migrants in danger; and (3) the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to support the provision of water and high-resolution border maps to migrants. In documenting the practical use and symbolic framing of surveillance by secular and faith-based activists, this article adds necessary complexity to prevailing conceptualizations of observational strategies and practices. It demonstrates that, while they may enhance and extend state control over bounded territories and populations, watching, monitoring, and rendering visible are not inherently exclusionary or repressive acts and can, in fact, be used in the service of undermining borders and their attendant consequences. The groups examined herein have applied surveillance towards contesting official gatekeeping strategies and creating alternative moral geographies where the imperatives of sovereignty and national security are subordinated to social justice and global hospitality.

As traditional public spaces rapidly change the question arises whether pervasive surveillance is actually compatible with the nature of individual agency. It is known that new and largely unregulated technologies often both erode old de facto limitations of access, and erect new asymmetric barriers of knowledge, but how should we understand the harms of these new contexts? Based on our psychological and biological knowledge of social perception, embodiment and action choice it seems that these conditions present a toxic mix for our ability to gauge what I call our " relational privacy " , and thereby for our autonomous and purposeful action planning. If this functional analysis is right then boundless surveillance of our bodies and behaviors threatens rather than supports basic personal freedom and responsibility. However, in contrast to this analysis, the private-public dichotomy often implied in existing debates assumes that privacy concerns can be theorized without much attention to the functional and relational dynamics of our embodied agency. Building on among others Nissenbaum and Reidenberg's work, this chapter seeks to counter this tendency. Two conclusions stand out: Firstly, it seems that our action choices depend on the existence of limited contexts also in public, and thus actions in what we might term " unbounded contexts " are typically performed through some kind of denial. Secondly, abundant availability of data traceable to persons can not only undermine and coerce our choices, but even to a large extent completely bypass our current volitional action choices. Thus it seems that the contextual nature of our agency should be of utmost importance to political and legal privacy issues, and could usefully guide attempts to recreate more bounded public spaces.

İnsan hayatının ayrılmaz bir parçası haline gelen gözetim, teknolojik gelişmelerin hızlı gelişimine de bağlı olarak son 50 yıl içerisinde çok daha güçlü ve etkili bir hale gelmiştir. Bu gelişme ve yenilikler 21. yüzyılın hızlı ve arkası kesilmeyen internet ve sosyal medya devrimlerinin ardından 2019’un sonlarında başlayarak, özellikle 2020 yılında tüm dünyayı etkisi altına alan covid-19 pandemisi ile çok daha hızlı bir hal almıştır. Bu
dönemde zaten var olan ancak daha da geniş bir kullanım alanına yayılan evden çalışma, evden toplantı, uzaktan eğitim gibi kavramlar bireyin günlük hayatını değiştirmeye başlarken, başta Çin olmak üzere birçok ülke hastalığı kontrol altına alabilmek adına yeni gözetleme pratikleri geliştirmişlerdir. Bu çalışma başta Çin olmak üzere çeşitli devletlerin covid-19 salgını ile başlayan süreçte ülkelerin ne gibi yeni gözetim projelerini
hayata geçirdiklerini ele alırken maskenin ardını görmeyi amaçlayan iktidarın gözünü mercek altına alınmaya çalışılacaktır. Maskeler bu dönemde bireyin yüzünü gizlerken, devletler ve diğer çeşitli iktidarlar bireyi daha farklı biyopolitik biçimlerde kontrol altında tutmayı amaçlamış; bununla yetinmeyerek zihinleri üzerinde bir ikna pratiği olarak iktidar kurmaya çalışarak maskeyi şeffaflaştırmışlardır. Niteliksel paradigmaya dayalı descriptif (betimleyici) yöntemin kullanıldığı çalışmada covid-19 pandemisi kapsamında Foucault’nun biyopolitika görüşünü eleştiren Chul-Han’ın psikopolitika görüşünü tartışma imkanının yanında, iktidar çevrelerinin yeni psikolojik deneyimleri nasıl inşa ederek daha gözetlenebilir ve daha kontrol edilebilir bir dünyayı inşa ettiğini de ele almak mümkün olacaktır.

The paper explores pedagogies of surveillance and counter pedagogies of radical democracy and co-operative practice and their implications for teacher education.

Teachers have had to respond to an increasing naturalization of surveillance in the mundane work of schools.  However, this naturalization can be countered by drawing upon the emergent development of the co-operative education movement in the UK.

Drawing upon radical democratic theories I argue that critical to developing effective pedagogies of radical democracy and cooperation is the formation of a ‘public space’ of discussion and debate about courses of action.  This will be illustrated through research drawn from a co-operative school and its use of information technologies.  Although the intentions are to improve standards of learning, the hidden curriculum implicit in the use of the technologies can lead to ‘supersurveillance’. Teachers I argue have a critical role in the deconstruction of the naturalization of supersurveillance.

Přehledová studie se zabývá proměnami městského prostoru pod vlivem globalizace, post-industrializace a neoliberalistické ideologie od 70. let 20. století. Hlavní pozornost je věnována problematice kamerového dohledu a vzniku specifických prostorových forem, které souvisí se snahou o zabezpečování města. Na tyto jevy je nahlíženo ze dvou vzájemně se doplňujících perspektiv. Panoptická perspektiva vychází z M. Foucaulta a jeho pojetí mocensko-prostorových vztahů. Hlavní důraz je kladen na charakteristiku fyzických prvků prostoru, jejich vývoj a dopad na celkovou podobu města. Druhý badatelský proud vychází z konceptu města jako růstového stroje, který zavedl H. Molotch. V souvislosti s přerodem městské správy v městský podnikalismus se badatelé začali zabývat především mocenskými, politickými a ekonomickými zájmy elit, které nalezly své vyjádření v rozsáhlé revitalizaci městského prostoru a zavádění kamerového dohledu. Práce kriticky analyzuje oba přístupy a jejich přesahy. Zároveň s jejich pomocí vytváří komplexní obraz vybraných charakteristik současného veřejného i privatizovaného prostoru s důrazem na otázky spojené se zaváděním kamerového dohledu.

With a point of departure in the concept "uncomfortable knowledge," this article presents a case study of how the American Planning Association (APA) deals with such knowledge. APA was found to actively suppress publicity of malpractice concerns and bad planning in order to sustain a boosterish image of planning. In the process, APA appeared to disregard and violate APA's own Code of Ethics. APA justified its actions with a need to protect APA members' interests, seen as preventing planning and planners from being presented in public in a bad light. The current article argues that it is in members' interest to have malpractice critiqued and reduced, and that this best happens by exposing malpractice, not by denying or diverting attention from it as APA did in this case. Professions, organizations, and societies that stifle critique tend to degenerate and become socially and politically irrelevant "zombie institutions." The article asks whether such degeneration has set in for APA and planning. Finally, it is concluded that more debate about APA's ethics and actions is needed for improving planning practice. Nine key questions are presented to constructively stimulate such debate.

Based on group interviews conducted in 2006 that included 71 social justice organizations, this paper analyzes the impact of surveillance on the exercise of assembly and association rights. We link these protected legal activities with analytic frameworks from social movements scholarship in order to further a socio-legal conception of political violence against social movements.

A discussion on the history, current use and future of drones around the world. Analysing their controversial role in tackling extremist groups, the paper explores how drones are slowly but surely moving into the domestic realm, where they will be increasingly used for government surveillance, as well as privately - in farming, transport and leisure.

This paper seeks to explore political, cultural, legal and socio-economic legacies of the Fascist regime (1922-1943) in Italy. With the fall of the regime, in fact, the overall surveillance apparatus did not fade away. Former fascists were not purged from political and cultural life and very few were found guilty. The transition to democracy was thus marked by a substantial continuity of men and institutions (Della Porta and Reiter 2004) due to the active involvement of ex-OVRA (Organization of Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism) officers in public institutions (Author 2011). It comes as no surprise that forms of pervasive non-technological social control continued for more than twenty years after the fall of the duce.   Moreover, police state surveillance was combined with a meaningful continuity in other areas. For instance, the welfare state immediately after World War II was actually based upon the model built during Fascism. The “Fascist Social State” (Silei, 2000) had a ...

The phenomenon of surveillance has become one of the distinguishing features of today's societies. Surveillance, which first emerged as a panoptic prison design in its modern form, has chanced with the coming of computers and cameras into our lives, and has been moved to quite advanced dimensions with the addition of "data surveillance". We call this type of surveillance as “human surveillance.” If human surveillance is a paradigm, it is clear that one of the aims of this paradigm is the desire to see and know everything, especially about human beings. This reminds us of a familiar belief in God, who sees and knows everything. We might call this kind of belief in God as “divine surveillance.” Divine surveillance is based on religious beliefs that God watches over and records everything that happens in the universe and all human activities. This belief is particularly strong in monotheistic religions. Does human surveillance have a religious basis? This is the main question of the study. Theologically, human surveillance is not the same as divine surveillance. But, according to Lyon, one of the theorists of the surveillance society, the source of human surveillance design is “the belief in God who sees everything” in the Psalms. In this context, surveillance is a redesigned and globalized version of the Christian and Judaic belief in the "All-Seeing God" politically. Although it was designed with the inspiration from a monotheistic and sacred source, it can be applied in all societies as if it had no sacred source. This is related to the fact that it is highly secularized. Although the belief in the "All-Seeing God" in the monotheistic religions is similar to each other, it seems very difficult to establish an natural link between the human surveillance and belief in the "All-Seeing Allah" in Islam. Because, there is no historical and sociological relationship between the two types of surveillance. The reason for the descriptive similarity between the two is not that Islam inspires human surveillance, but that monotheistic religions have common theological roots. Though, there are empirical findings that there is a psychological connection between the human surveillance and the belief in the "All-Seeing God" and these findings include those related to Muslims. But even if we assume that this empirical results are completely correct, it can only be used to explain the issue from a psychological point of view. However, surveillance is designed as a political tool, and the inspiration for this design is the Psalms, not the Qur'an. Nevertheless, the Qur'an can be a starting point in terms of surveillance ethics. The verse, “…Do not search for each other's faults and privacy…” is important in this regard. The study also addresses “data surveillance” and argues that people in the position of “masters of data” act like “artificial gods”. It relates this to the story of Nimrod mentioned in the Qur'an. Nimrod's attitude of "I also kill and resurrect" shows that he acts like an “artificial god”. He designed this behavior as a political discourse. He didn't need to have the power to kill and resurrect the entire universe to be perceived as a “god” politically. It was enough just that he had the power to kill whoever he wanted in his own society. Indeed, Nimrod was glorified like a god among his society. Just like this, it is not necessary for the "masters of the data" to collect the information of the entire universe in order to be perceived as "god". It is enough for them to collect only some of the data belonging to people. Nowadays especially when global epidemics are talked about, these "artificial gods" have been talked about a lot. Moreover, in the social consciousness, it is seen that there is a tendency to glorify their "false deity". The data of the study were collected through literature review and analyzed with a descriptive approach. The basic data used for Islam are the relevant verses of the Qur'an. A comparison method was also used to reveal the relationship between the belief in the "All-Seeing Allah" in Islam and human surveillance systems.
Surveillance, Surveillance Society, Human Surveillance, Divine Surveillance, Data Surveillance
Gözetim, Gözetim Toplumu, Beşeri Gözetim, İlahi Gözetim, Veri Gözetimi

This article focuses on the means by which the state controls welfare recipients in France. The paradox of these actions, which are made in the name of legal rigor but are characterized by ambivalence and the discretionary power of grassroots agents, reveals the broader functioning of a government over the poor. These actions are based on the combination of a multitude of individual relationships, which, although unevenly coordinated, derive from the structural rationale of the post-welfare era. Individualization and uncertainty signal not so much a disaggregation of the state as a consistent mode of governance in which discretion and leeway accorded to street-level bureaucrats are necessary for the state to exert power over citizens’ behaviors.

Whilst trying to enter the Ancient Mayan Centre, Palenque, Chiapas, at night and during the full moon I was hunted through the jungle by several guards. Around town and the nearby campground were numerous photocopies of missing young travellers.
I believe it conceivable that if I myself were captured I might have been Ritualistically Sacrificed.

-I tried and eventually succeeded to get the 'Department for Foreign Affairs' to tell me they had contacted the Mexican Embassy but when asking for detail have been refused and simply  told by 'Jonas Loven', the dept under secretary 'The matter is now closed and we will no longer continue to discuss this matter'!

-That email has now magically missing from my One.com email account. I do not believe they contacted the Embassy at all.

-Also my official email to the 'Department of Complaints', provided me exactly the same reply and that email too is missing from my account.

-I am now in a very bitter, public, stressful and personal 'battle', with 'Carl Bildt', and his 'Department of Foreign Affairs', to put to the test his promise of 'Whilst the Swedish people are under Surveillance, they have no reason for concern as it is Covert, and their right of freedom of expression, remain unaffected'!

-I am currently and very publicly pushing his 'promise', to breaking point.

Please see other article pertaining to that 'battle.