Resolution resolved: The United States federal government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance. Violations

There is no agreement on meaning of surveillance

Neyland 6 Daniel Neyland, Senior Research Fellow, Said Business School, University of Oxford, UK 2006

Privacy, Surveillance and Public Trust pp 6-7

The term surveillance is used in relation to a variety of contexts, by a range of social science research and is oriented towards diverse claims regarding the actions of particular technologies, places and people. While privacy can act as a useful organizing principle in analyzing claims regarding who should have what (in terms of rights, protections and remedies) and how these claims might be decided, surveillance can act as a useful organizing principle for analyzing claims about who does what (in terms of day to day activities inside and outside technologies involved in collection, storage and categorisation of information on the population).

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It is not the case however, that there is agreement on which activities should form the focus for analysing surveillance. Rule (1973) considers surveillance as an embedded aspect of relations between the state and the population. 'Surveillance entails a means of knowing when rules are being obeyed, when they are broken, and most importantly, who is responsible for which' (1973:22). While Rule focuses on social order and possible punishment, McCahill (2002) focuses on the ambivalence of surveillance technologies. He argues that 'The introduction of new surveillance technologies always has a social impact, and this impact can be both positive and negative' (2002: xi). However Lyon (2001) shifts debate towards the practices of information collection and analysis involved in surveillance, suggesting a definition of surveillance as: 'any collection and processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for the purposes of influencing or managing those whose data have been garnered' (2001: 2). This view is contrasted by Bennett (2005) who suggests that Lyon draws his definitions too broadly and that greater attention needs to be paid to the details of exactly who has their personal data scrutinized, and to what effect. For Bennett most data collected is entirely routine and free from further scrutiny, both for the collectors and subjects of collection. Bennett suggests, however, that this is a highly selective, contingent process and forms the point at which questions should be asked of whose information is selected for greater scrutiny, why and for what end. This selectivity involves issues of identity (who someone is) and claims about likely future action (what threats they might pose.