Surveillance Studies

Prolongeant ses travaux sur la répression, Vanessa Codaccioni analyse et dénonce les ressorts de « la société de vigilance ». Surveillance massive, appel à la délation, légitimation de la répression : une nouvelle servitude volontaire est insidieusement imposée aux citoyens qui deviennent des acteurs incontournables de cette dynamique sécuritaire.

Prolongeant ses travaux sur la répression, Vanessa Codaccioni analyse et dénonce les ressorts de « la société de vigilance ». Surveillance massive, appel à la délation, légitimation de la répression : une nouvelle servitude volontaire est insidieusement imposée aux citoyens qui deviennent des acteurs incontournables de cette dynamique sécuritaire.

Italian:
Il recente caso del Datagate, con la rivelazione da parte di Edward Snowden di informazioni riservate circa i sistemi di sorveglianza elettronica globale utilizzati oggi dagli Stati Uniti anche in Europa, ha mutato radicalmente sia il panorama della sicurezza sia gli equilibri geopolitici mondiali, aprendo nuove prospettive all’idea stessa di privacy del cittadino e di controllo statale. L’Autore ripercorre con dovizia di particolari, in questo articolo, le premesse al caso Datagate e le sue evoluzioni sino ad oggi, con particolare attenzione alle questioni giuridiche e politiche.

English:
Geopolitical consequences of Datagate: notes and reflections for geopolitics of global surveillance The recent case of Datagate, with the revelation by Edward Snowden of confidential information concerning global electronic surveillance systems used today by the US also in Europe, has radically changed the security landscape and the geopolitical balance of the world, opening up new perspectives about the very idea of privacy of citizens and of state control. The author recounts in great detail in this article the premises to Datagate case and its progress to date, with a focus on legal and policy issues.

[T]he law recognizes that we inherently have to bear the risk of the "tattletale" but draws the line at concluding that we must also bear, as the price of choosing to speak to another human being, the risk of having a permanent electronic recording made of our words. R. v. Duarte (1990), 1 SCR 30 at 48, 53 CCC (3d) 1.

This article examines dynamics of financial surveillance and risk-based regulation in the context of ongoing activities to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. Close analysis of the situation in the UK reveals entangled forms of co-regulation and ultimately co-production of surveillance that challenge ‘institutional boundaries’ of the state regarding policing and intelligence practices. It is argued that ongoing transformations in the anti-money laundering field reveal a dual movement that combines forms of indirect administration with a process of ‘neoliberal bureaucratization’.The article aims to show how current policies against ‘dirty money’ still paradoxically work on the basis of heterogeneous goals and misapprehensions between ‘professionals of security’ and ‘professionals of finance’.

This article examines changing rules and regimes 0/visibility on social media, using Facebook as a case study. Interpersonal social media surveillance warrants a care of the virtual self. Yet this care is complicated by social media's rapid growth, and especially Facebook's cross-contextual in/ormation/Iows that publicize otherwise private information. Drawingfrom a series of thirty interviews, this article/octises on how usersperceive and manage their own visibility and take advantage ofthe visibility of other users. These experiences are tied to shifting understandings of private and public information, as well as new terms like "stalking" and "creeping" that frame surveillant practices. RÉSUMÉ Cet article examine l'évolution des règles et des régimes de visibilité sur ¡es médias sociaux, en utilisant Facebook comme une étude de cas. La surveillance interpersonnelle sur les médias sociaux nécessite un soin de l'être virtuel Pourtant, ce soin est compliqué par l'expansion rapide dès médias sociaux, et en particulier la nature inter contextuel de Facebook, qui diffuse de l'in/ormation privé. Tirant d'une série de trente entrevues, cet article concentre sur la manière dont les utilisateurs perçoivent et gèrent leur proper visibilité sur Facebook ainsi que de profiter de la visibilité des autres. Ces expériences sont liées à l'évolution des conceptions de l'in/ormation publique et privée, ainsi que de termes nouveaux comme «harcèlement» et «stalking» qui caractérise la surveillance sur les médias sociaux. MOTS CLÉS Surveillance; La vie privée-. Les médias nouveaux; Les médias sociaux Daniel Trottier is a postdoctoral fellow in the

"The Piracy Crusade examines the music industry’s overreaction to the threat of digital piracy, and the resulting damage done to our economy, culture and society. It challenges the commonly-accepted myth that piracy is killing the music industry, exploring the unheralded benefits of digital sharing, and the “perfect storm” of economic factors – many of them self-inflicted – that burst the industry’s bubble.

The book critiques the premise of digital piracy itself, arguing that today’s file sharers, music bloggers and mashup artists are simply making use of new technologies to recuperate music from its 20th Century status as an entertainment commodity, and returning it to its original role as a medium for interpersonal and group communication.

Finally, The Piracy Crusade reveals how a flood of new laws and policies enacted in the name of combating piracy have undermined free speech, privacy and cultural innovation – all for the sake of protecting an outmoded media cartel."

Delving behind Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada.

While highlighting the ubiquity of Black resistance, Policing Black Lives traces the still-living legacy of slavery across multiple institutions, shedding light on the state’s role in perpetuating contemporary Black poverty and unemployment, racial profiling, law enforcement violence, incarceration, immigration detention, deportation, exploitative migrant labour practices, disproportionate child removal and low graduation rates.

Emerging from a critical race feminist framework that insists that all Black lives matter, Maynard’s intersectional approach to anti-Black racism addresses the unique and understudied impacts of state violence as it is experienced by Black women, Black people with disabilities, as well as queer, trans, and undocumented Black communities.

A call-to-action, Policing Black Lives urges readers to work toward dismantling structures of racial domination and re-imagining a more just society.

Atualmente, o deslumbramento tecnológico determinado pelos gigantes da tecnologia, com seus hardwares e softwares e com o discurso de aproximar pessoas, coloca o usuário na condição básica de uso, já que, por esse meio, há garantia de liberdade. A realidade, porém, é oposta. Quanto maior liberdade de escolha, mais controle tecnológico. Por esse viés, opera-se uma violência que passa despercebida por todos. O progresso tecnológico, aliado à inovação, possibilitou ao homem poder adequar-se aos novos recursos embutidos nos gadgets eletrônicos; uma ferramentaria sempre à mão. A premência no aprendizado é fator crucial de permanência nesse território em contínua atualização. Os utilizadores, que não conseguirem acompanhar esse progresso, tendem a ficar na marginalidade e, consequentemente, serem excluídos. As empresas
– cientes dessa condição – apressam-se em dispor no mercado produtos com novidades embutidas que provavelmente nunca serão usadas. Não por culpa delas, mas porque essa modalidade lhes permite acomodar-se e depositar todas as mazelas da vida em aparelhos que possam determinar e garantir seu futuro. Propicia ainda que elas abram mão de seu estado natural e compreendam como valor agregado dos dispositivos o fator segurança, mesmo que sejam vigiadas 24 horas por dia. Qual o limite dessa proposta de autonomia que, ao mesmo tempo em que oferece escolhas, pode esbarrar na liberdade já promovida muito anteriormente por diversos pensadores? Considerando que, quanto mais segurança e justiça asseguradas, menor será a taxa de liberdade. O fascínio promovido e o progresso estipulado/manipulado pelas grandes corporações impõem a sensação de proteção como fator preponderante para a existência e a manutenção da sedação nas pessoas. Com um mundo conturbado por especulações acerca de vigilância, poder e controle, fundamenta-se a pesquisa em autores que justificam a leitura e orientam para a reflexão mais aprofundada acerca do tema proposto. Diante disso, apesar de os usuários comuns exigirem a privacidade, os governos e as corporações violam essa condição para poder exercer o controle de perto. Entretanto, para a microesfera do poder, as informações devem ser cristalinas com o propósito de manter e sustentar a infovigilância sobre os corpos dos seres viventes.

This dissertation analyzes the postfeminist tendencies and biopolitics in contemporary media practices by considering the pop culture exemplar, the Kardashian-Jenner family.

This dissertation received First Class Honors from Trinity College Dublin.
Vanessa graduated with Distinction in B.A. English Literature and Media Studies.

Teaching the research paper has been considered a “present controversy” for over fifty years (Saalbach, 1963). Some scholars believe that it prepares students for “generalized academic writing” (Reiff and Bawarshi, 2011; Sutton, 1997; Schwegeler and Shamoon, 1982). However, others have referred to the research paper as a “fossilized,” “pseudo-academic,” “mutt genre” (Nowacek, 2011; Wardle, 2007; Carroll, 1999; Larsen, 1982). This chapter argues that radical openness and information overload--two major features of new media composing environments--compromise the relevance of the traditional research paper. First, the research paper has been praised and blamed for its (in)ability to help students learn the importance of writing from sources (Brent 2013, Rooney 2000). However, the parameters of most research assignments are incapable of matching the scale of data available at any given time. For instance, typical constraints like “use 5-7 sources” for a first-year college writing course seems ridiculous when it takes seconds to retrieve thousands, if not millions, of possible sources. Next, open-access publishing and collaborative authorship have transformed the way that research is conducted and recognized across disciplines. Although teaching students how to crowdsource research makes the most sense in a data deluge, the research paper privileges single authorship. Moreover, the problems of authorship and source attribution implicate the research paper in certain kinds of fraud. For instance, plagiarism and term paper mills are a “built-in” problem of research papers (Howell, 1977).  In sum, this chapter focuses on what the term "research" means in a context of too much information.  It concludes by offering a brief discussion of literature relevant to this topic.

Chernóbil, la crisis financiera del 2008, los incendios en el Amazonas o la pandemia de coronavirus no son eventos aislados. Son “accidentes normales”, síntomas del crecimiento y la destrucción acelerados que, en menos de 70 años, transformó nuestra vida y la del planeta para siempre.

En Tecnoceno Flavia Costa delinea con sutileza la trama política y cultural de este mundoambiente alucinatorio cuya virtualidad se sostiene en una red material hecha de cables, satélites y edificios, y por donde desfilan bioartistas, ciencia forense, organizaciones de derechos humanos, sistemas de vigilancia y empresarios transhumanistas. Y advierte sobre el papel clave que cumplen hoy las huellas: las biométricas, las comportamentales y las que dejamos en el suelo, la atmósfera y los océanos. Unas, porque su capitalización ha desatado una feroz batalla geopolítica. Otras, porque de ellas depende el futuro de la Tierra.

Rapid adoption and expansion of the CCTV systems in Turkey as well as all over the world have produced a fair amount of ―technological determinism‖ among many law enforcement officials, which Norris and Armstrong (1999, p. 9) define as ―an unquestioning belief in the power of technology‖. As a matter of technological determinism, politicians and the public continue to myopically expect that the exclusive responsibility of preventing crime rest on the police-monitored CCTV cameras. Conversely, policy makers may be better informed if they consider why the law enforcement agencies should invest in the installation of the CCTV cameras in public areas based on the research. In fact, a well-designed evidence based paradigm in the CCTV literature is likely to reveal the truth about the question of ―does it work?‖
In addition to all previous methodological efforts, empirical evaluations in the CCTV literature are still needed to account for alternative perspectives to measure their effectiveness in the deterrence of crimes. Therefore, the present study focused on the concepts of environmental criminology, namely "crime risk at place". This research also considered the environmental risk values that might identify ―environmental conditions under which cameras would be most effective‖ (Caplan et al., 2011, p.271). Thus, the concept of ―Environmental risk value" provided a unique methodological approach to the police- monitored CCTV literature.
This study examined the impact of the metropolitan city of Bursa‘s city-wide system

and certain individual police-monitored CCTV camera‘s views used to scan the landscape, respectively on street level, including aggravated assault, auto theft, thefts from autos, and larceny theft crime incident numbers in a spatial distribution of locations; and analyzed whether the environmental risk value effects on the deterrent effect of police-monitored CCTV cameras on aforementioned crime types. To accomplish that statistical analyses (paired t test, location quotient, and regression models) and risk terrain modeling (RTM) were conducted in this dissertation.
Three important findings were found in this study. Firstly, city-wide system effect indicated that larceny thefts and thefts from auto experienced significant reduction. However, aggravated assaults and auto thefts were not. Secondly, the results from assessing the deterrent effect of certain individual police-monitored CCTV cameras on aggravated assaults, larceny thefts, thefts from autos and auto thefts were mixed. Finally, each individual CCTV camera has a unique environment – environmental risk value that influences its deterrent effect on – aggravated assaults, larceny thefts, thefts from autos and autos theft. Further, the affect was discernable and in positive direction for each crime type.
Environmental risk value assessments can advance our understanding of the deterrent effect of CCTV cameras at their viewshed areas. So environmental risk sites must be taken into account when the decision process concerning CCTV cameras is made by local and national level policy makers, police agencies and politicians who try to establish where the most appropriate location to install police-monitored CCTV cameras is. In this respect RTM can be considered as a pre intervention tool so that police agencies can measure the deterrent effect of CCTV before installation. Such a pre-evaluation process increases the capacity for effective police management and crime prevention strategies in police agencies.

There is a line of reasoning shared by police officials, police unions, legislators, and civil rights organizers that supposes that videos of the police behaving badly will naturally lead to reform. This is the logic that fuels expensive body camera programs, like the ones implemented by the NYPD, LAPD, and Department of Justice. However, the idea that surveillance in the hands of the state can be somehow emancipatory is laughable. To equate the footage of Rodney King or Eric Garner with footage taken from police cameras is to fundamentally misunderstand the nuance that images express. Existing social vulnerabilities migrate seamlessly into new technologies, and photography’s dominant mode is to reinforce, not resist, existing structures of power.

Current revelations about the secret US-NSA program, PRISM, have confirmed the large-scale mass surveillance of the telecommunication and electronic messages of governments, companies, and citizens, including the United States' closest allies in Europe and Latin America. The transnational ramifications of surveillance call for a re-evaluation of contemporary world politics' practices. The debate cannot be limited to the United States versus the rest of the world or to surveillance versus privacy; much more is at stake. This collective article briefly describes the specificities of cyber mass surveillance, including its mix of the practices of intelligence services and those of private companies providing services around the world. It then investigates the impact of these practices on national security, diplomacy, human rights, democracy, subjectivity, and obedience.

While players are enjoying casual mobile games like Candy Crush Saga, we also must negotiate elements that have been brought to the forefront by the intersection of networked play environments and casual game technologies. While casual games are fun to play and often seemingly banal—provoking questions of why anyone would study Candy Crush academically—they in fact can reveal a whole host of issues worthy of our attention, such as privacy and surveillance; the readability and accessibility of terms of service; and intellectual property issues.

Informal gold miners in South Africa are not “illegal" because they mine gold. They are criminalized from the start, and mine gold because the substance makes it difficult for police and private industry to forensically track and trace them. My chapter on “Zama-Zamas” (criminal miners) who take big risks to avoid surveillance, in a new United Nations sponsored book that contains writing from leading experts on crime and corruption inside the global mining industry.

This article provides a different angle to understand the Cambridge Analytica (CA) data scandal. It focuses on the role of models and simulations in the big data campaigning tools CA allegedly used, and their epistemological and ontological potential to produce and reproduce voters' digital doubles that would first colonise and eventually replace the analogue selves they were related to. By integrating and revising Zuboff's surveillance capitalism framework with Debord's classic theory of the Spectacle, the article argues that the dystopian simulations played as real life experiments by surveillance capitalist firms such as CA have the ultimate goal of replacing analogue humanity with digital humanity – the two kinds are ontologically different albeit dialectically related. The predictive models that these simulations produce are only as good as the capacity of the digital doubles in the simulations to shape the behaviour of analogue selves in line with the simulations' parameters and goals.

Amazon’s Ring relies on infrastructural obfuscation to hide their
infrastructures through urban camouflage (as doorbells,
floodlights, sensors) while simultaneously expanding the carceral
state and extending the industrial police-surveillant state. Through
a critical analysis of the Ring surveillant assemblage, this paper
reveals the way Ring and its associated apps produce fear and
paranoia of the racialized Other, promote community buy-in that
more surveillance will improve safety, while obscuring private
partnerships with local law enforcement. I argue Ring cannot be
viewed in isolation from its entangled corporate owner, Amazon,
which relies on an ever-expanding infrastructural network,
including surveillance of their highly prized package delivery
service. Ring is more than individual community members
installing doorbells with cameras that extend beyond their
property into public space; it is the blurring of boundaries
between police work and civilian surveillance, the reliance on
obscured digital infrastructures that hide to whom and what
users are connecting when they install a Ring device, and the
expansion of Amazon’s vast infrastructural power. By recentering
critique on the infrastructural backbone, made up of discourses
and fixtures, this paper argues for the need for infrastructural
accountability from companies such as Amazon, who not only
profit from fear, but actively reproduce structural violence
through their data infrastructures.

O combate à criminalidade por via de dispositivos tecnológicos e pela informatização e manuseamento massivo de informação biogenética sobre os cidadãos reflete a expansão, crescentemente global, de aparatos de biovigilância burocráticoestatais. Estes, por sua vez, produzem efeitos na governabilidade dos corpos e nos processos culturais identitários de populações "suspeitas" que são alvos preferenciais de recolha de dados pessoais, armazenados e geridos em redes de circulação transfronteiriça. No presente texto, usamos o conceito de governabilidade dos corpos criminais e da criminalidade para discutir os processos de biovigilância nas sociedades da informação. O enfoque no fenómeno da governabilidade da criminalidade é explorado a partir da aceção desenvolvida por Michel Foucault, a propósito da passagem histórica de uma sociedade "disciplinar" para uma sociedade da "segurança" (Foucault, 2004, para uma sistematização desta mudança histórica consultar Cunha, 2009), orientada não para a erradicação do crime mas para uma intervenção necessária e suficiente que torne a criminalidade tolerável e assegure o equilíbrio societal. Essa nova forma de governabilidade, em crescente expansão nas duas últimas décadas, fundamenta-se em práticas de gestão governamental caracterizadas por um "conjunto" formado por instituições, procedimentos, análises e reflexões, em que os cálculos e as táticas que permitem o exercício deste tipo de poder específico e complexo têm a sua populaçãoalvo, a sua principal forma de economia política do conhecimento, e os seus principais meios e aparatos técnicos de segurança (Foucault, 1979 apud Hannah, 2000: 22, tradução dos autores). Esta modalidade de governabilidade legitima-se pelo recrutamento de conhecimentos especializados na área da ciência e do direito e a ordem social segue orientações normativas provenientes desses saberes científico-jurídicos que, por sua vez, se apresentam como ferramentas imprescindíveis para assegurar o progresso da sociedade e a segurança e tranquilidade públicas.

Racial profiling is a unique regime of social control specifically due to its reinvention of blackness as a signifier to criminality. The author argues that the ‘new black’ (or new non-white) is reconstructed under this regime when previous regimes did not necessarily criminalize whole groups. This study employs panopticism, and its critique by Foucault, to argue that racial profiling as dressage aims to increase the visibility of black people – control minorities. Its different practices (like Driving While Black) aim to normalize, assimilate, and rehabilitate everyone to one centre. It is done by means of penetrating the consciousness through continuous surveillance, thereby making the black individual an obedient citizen. The article argues also that the expression of social control in the racial profiling regime is spatial too. This means that space is classified so that some activities are criminal only if they occur in the ghetto, or at the borders of white neighbourhoods. Racial profiling serves as a reminder of the black people’s ‘place’. Thus, it is all about the perpetual visibility of the modern individual. The author argues that racial profiling is designed to enhance this visibility. Racial profiling is not the first regime to occur; it succeeded three preceding social control regimes: slavery, Jim Crow, and mass imprisonment. All these regimes are a manifestation of a fundamental structural fault of modern society: racism and inequality. That is the modern state surveillance function. So, the question addressed here is: how does surveillance through police practices shape the modern subject (how is the subject socially produced)?
Keywords: racial profiling; surveillance; Driving While Black; disciplined space; ‘new black’; modern individual; panopticism

Hoover’s War on Gays is an excellent and much-needed empirical contribution to our knowledge on twentieth-century surveillance and harassment of a sexual minority, which intensified as that minority became more self-confident and public in its demands. Douglas M. Charles has demonstrated amply how intricate documentary histories based on deep and hidden bureaucratic paper trails provide uniquely illuminating details of key episodes of state power and grassroots resistance to it.

Recently, discussions of non-binary gender identity have been increasingly featured in U.S. American mainstream print media, particularly mass market magazines, advertising and business editorials, and marketing reports from consumer insight strategy groups. I present a threefold argument relating to this increase in non-binary gender visibility. First, I argue that the media depictions I examine portray non-binary gender identity as a more “authentic” gender identity than cisgender and binary transgender identities, a claim that encourages all consumers to engage in individualized consumptive patterns that transcend hegemonic gender categories in order to attain an authentically gendered self. I frame this media and marketing reification of the supposed affective and consumptive behaviors of non-binary individuals as a result of the parallel evolution of trans respectability politics, targeted marketing techniques, and aspirational economic subjecthood in the U.S. Second, I argue that the departure from these broad, hegemonic consumptive patterns that all consumers are encouraged to adopt enables the development of ever more fine-grained individual consumer data profiles within various algorithmic targeting marketing systems. Finally, I argue that the algorithmic legibility that such discourse encourages renders individuals more vulnerable to the many surveillance systems with which individualized commercial data profiles are often shared.

Treating the airport checkpoint as part of the new security regime, this article concentrates on three issues. First, it considers the working conditions of Transportation Security Agency (TSA) employees whom the US government pays to screen passengers and emphasizes the enduring physicality of their labor despite the technologization of the checkpoint. Second, it explores new techniques of inspection implemented at TSA checkpoints and delineates practices of 'close sensing' that establish continuities between looking and touching. Finally, the article describes the object-oriented visual economy that takes shape at the checkpoint, and suggests that the x-ray sequence ultimately exposes the state's inability to regulate the flow of objects and matter in the age of globalization. Thus the searches, exposures, and probes that define this threshold should not be understood only in terms of individual privacy invasions, but rather as an opportunity to focus on structural changes in federal labor, state surveillance and globalization that have emerged since 9/11. Keywords airport screening G imaging technologies G national security G 9/11 G objects G surveillance G travel journal of visual culture 6(2) Parks Points of Departure: US Airport Screening 185 186 journal of visual culture 6(2)

Digital technologies are now considered important in shaping young people's engagement in and with health and physical activity. Recent discussions show that the use of digital technologies to track health and fitness may over-emphasize the linear understanding of the body and health generally underpinned by Western health ideologies such as healthism. Other studies have shown the increased use of digital technologies in teaching Health and Physical Education (HPE) and as a means to enhance health and increase physical activity. Despite the opportunities and risks apparent in these studies, little is known about how HPE students make choices, negotiate, and resist or embrace the digitalisation of physical activity, exercise, and more broadly health. This study examines HPE students' meaning making of risk and surveillance associated with the self-digitisation of exercise. The study further investigates how the concept of 'prosumption'; the production, curation and consumption of self-data within the context of digitised health and physical activity, is understood. Based on the findings, we have constructed a typology of prosumers that can be used as a pedagogical device to illustrate the various kinds of subject positions students take up with digital technology in health and physical activity. This study extends the current understanding of prosumers by identifying the 'ambivalent prosumer'. The results provide insights that have direct pedagogical implications in HPE teacher education specifically in the areas of knowledge production and consumption of knowledge through digital technology in health and physical activity.

Many accounts of surveillance and its subjective effects tend to focus on privacy. Along with this focus comes the assumption that surveillance’s objects are simply facts and attributes, straightforwardly ‘mined’ (or stolen) from people’s private lives. Yet, the habits and propensities ascribed to individuals through surveillance apparatuses are complex, relational phenomena: co-produced, selected and interpreted with interest by various actors. This essay begins to develop a critical language for surveillance as a form of characterization, by analysing SWAMP's McService (2003), Hasan Elahi’s Tracking Transience (2005–) and Erica Scourti’s Life in AdWords (2012–2013). Following Sara Ahmed, I theorize characterization as a ‘technology of attribution’ that attaches such interpretations of character to people within surveillant scenarios. Drawing from literary studies as well as recent work on the surveillance economy, I analyse the forms of attribution made possible within surveillant scenarios. Within SWAMP, Elahi and Scourti's works, which span a decade between 9/11 and the Snowden revelations, one can trace an evolution of structures through which such attributions manifest: from self as threat, to self as set, to self as product.

The full text is available here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14794713.2015.1086134

For those without free access to T&F Journals, there are a limited number of free copies here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/JMasTKf8YwaFW852eadH/full

Dynamically changing background ("dynamic background") still presents a great challenge to many motion-based video surveillance systems. In the context of event detection, it is a major source of false alarms. There is a strong need from the security industry either to detect and suppress these false alarms, or dampen the effects of background changes, so as to increase the sensitivity to meaningful events of interest. In this paper, we restrict our focus to one of the most common causes of dynamic background changes: that of swaying tree branches and their shadows under windy conditions. Considering the ultimate goal in a video analytics pipeline, we formulate a new dynamic background detection problem as a signal processing alternative to the previously described but unreliable computer vision-based approaches. Within this new framework, we directly reduce the number of false alarms by testing if the detected events are due to characteristic background motions. In addition, we introduce a new dataset suitable for the evaluation of dynamic background detection. It consists of real-world events detected by a commercial surveillance system from two static surveillance cameras. The research question we address is whether dynamic background can be detected reliably and efficiently using simple motion features and in the presence of similar but meaningful events such as loitering. Inspired by the tree aerodynamics theory, we propose a novel method named local variation persistence (LVP), that captures the key characteristics of swaying motions. The method is posed as a convex optimization problem whose variable is the local variation. We derive a computationally efficient algorithm for solving the optimization problem, the solution of which is then used to form a powerful detection statistic. On our newly collected dataset, we demonstrate that the proposed LVP achieves excellent detection results and outperforms the best alternative adapted from existing art in the dynamic background literature.

Cameras are ubiquitous and increasingly mobile. While CCTV has captured considerable attention by surveillance researchers, the new visibility of police activities is increasingly produced by incidental sousveillance and wearable on-officer camera systems. This article considers advocacy for policing’s new visibility, contrasting that of police accountability activists who film police with designers and early adopters of on-officer cameras. In both accounts, these devices promise accountability by virtue of their mechanical objectivity. However, to each party, accountability functions rather differently. By attending to the social and legal privileging of police officers’ perspectives, the article provides an explanation for design decisions that produced Taser’s AXON Flex on-officer cameras and for why police are embracing these new technologies. Critics of these cameras cite privacy concerns, officer discretion in operating cameras, and department disclosure of footage. Nonetheles...

The purpose of the study was to determine the level of knowledge and attitudes towards surveillance capitalism and online institutional privacy protection practices among adolescents in Poland (aged 18-19), as well as to determine the relationships between these variables. Surveillance capitalism has emerged as a result of internet users' activities and involves the collection of all data about these users by different entities for specific benefits without letting them know about it. The dominant role in surveillance capitalism is played by hi-tech corporations. the aim of the study was to verify whether knowledge, and what kind of knowledge, on surveillance capitalism translates into practices related to the protection of online institutional privacy. the study was conducted on a sample of 177 adolescents in Poland. the main part of the questionnaire consisted of two scales: the scale of knowledge and attitudes on surveillance capitalism, and the scale of online institutional privacy protection practices. the results of the study, calculated by statistical methods, showed that although the majority of respondents had average knowledge and attitudes about surveillance capitalism, which may result from insufficient knowledge of the subject matter, this participation in specialized activities/workshops influences the level of intensification of online institutional privacy protection practices.

Since the 1960’s, commercial surveillance in the form of bar code and RFID technologies have provoked distinctly different responses from businesses and consumers. A comparison of the history of bar codes to the current diffusion of RFIDs reveals that recent information and communication technology advances have dramatically shifted threats to consumer privacy from the point-of-sale into the realm of mobile surveillance and the dataveillance of networked databases. Businesses, driven by economic competition have aggressively embraced these technologies, while consumers have initially resisted them. Over time however, resistance fades as consumers either accept these technologies as tools of convenience or become accustomed to their pervasive presence. With the introduction and adoption of more advanced commercial surveillance technologies, user groups are confronted with the power of information analysis made possible by computer technology, databases, and the accessibility of data through networks, laying the philosophical foundation for the growth of data crimes.

The possibility of so-called ‘smart' technologies to improve city life has filled both pages of concern and PR leaflets. While the corporations driving these developments have emphasized how smart technologies can improve efficiency, critics have warned against the risks associated with the proliferation of smart surveillance. However, a critical discourse about the potential, limits and risks of the proliferation of smart technologies has not yet emerged, and in most instances public officials and decision-makers are ill-equipped to judge both the value and the externalities of the technologies being sold under the label ‘smart cities'. This paper presents a summary of smart solutions and definitions, and draws on the surveillance literature to address issues and risks related to the global drive to outsmart competing cities in a context of global governance. Using a multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary approach, it aims to provide a starting point for a public debate that involves policy-makers, developers and academics.

Este artigo argumenta, assumindo uma perspectiva geopolítica, sobre o papel dos media cinematográficos como arma ideológica, política e cultural durante o período da Guerra Fria. Uma primeira abordagem, pretende esclarecer o conceito de geopolítica através de quatro dos seus aspectos. O artigo aborda, depois, os formatos e materializações da propaganda americana, nos primeiros anos, com a ascensão dos newsreels e o seu papel como garante psicológico da resistência ao comunismo.
De seguida, são analisados os anos da segunda metade da Guerra Fria, revelando a ascensão dos géneros cinematográficos da espionagem e vigilância e o seu papel na formação da identidade nacionalista, na geração do herói americano e na inscrição social da ideologia capitalista.
A relação estratégica entre a indústria do cinema de Hollywood e as várias administrações americanas do período da Guerra Fria fica, assim, demonstrada, caracterizando-se como uma verdadeira rede comercial multinacional e com influências em vários países, especialmente na Europa, traduzindo-se na hegemonia cultural americana dos nossos dias.

This article argues, in a geopolitical perspective, on the role of cinematographic media as an ideological, political and cultural weapon during the Cold War period. The first approach tries to clarify the concept of geopolitics through four of its aspects. The article addresses, then, the formats and representations of the American propaganda in the early years, with the rise of newsreels and their role as guarantor of psychological resistance to communism.
Next, we analyse the years of the second half of the Cold War, revealing the rise of the film genres of espionage and surveillance and their role in forging nationalist identity, the rise of the American hero and the social inscription of capitalist ideology.
The strategic relationship between Hollywood film industry and the various American administrations of the Cold War period is thus demonstrated, being characterised as a true multinational commercial network influencing several countries, mainly in Europe, into nowadays American cultural hegemony.

Direct human intervention in AI reports and mitigating outcomes within their contest shall be regarded as fundamental factors in this development. The safeguards offered by Article 22 GDPRsupport this view when stating that “the data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing”.