01 Dec Public Perception of Surveillance: In the wake of the COVID-19 vir
Attached word document has project proposal topic and the assignment that I completed as part of the project propsoal..
Research Project on the Public Perception of Surveillance State consists of two parts:
a Powerpoint presentation consisting of at least 12 slides not including title and references and 750 word research paper with at least 3 sources.
There should be no lists.
Do not double space.
You must include at least 3 quotes from your sources enclosing the copied words in quotation marks and cited in-line.
There should be no lists – bulleted, numbered or otherwise with APA citation.
Public Perception of Surveillance
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Public support for state surveillance:
In the wake of the COVID-19 virus, one could expect greater demand for technology that helps to monitor and control infected people. Ziller and Helbling(2021) state that monitoring technology's main intention was to prevent terrorist attacks and crime or control disease spreading. But at the same time, mass surveillance encroaches on civil liberties and undermines citizens' support for related policies. Ziller and Helbling(2021) argued that support for Surveillance depends on the salience of security-related threats, the range of the policy measure and the risk of data protection violations. Additionally, they conducted experiments in Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Spain, randomly assigning surveillance policies with varying characteristics.
I believe that Surveillance could help identify the coronavirus spread in crowded places to control the spread. However, it is unacceptable to punish innocent citizens if the covid spreads through a particular citizen unaware of their situation. There were two types of surveillance measures: targeted and dragnet, which focus on a specific individual or group and collect information on all members of society(Ziller & Helbling, 2021). While dragnet surveillance typically required greater organizational effort, technological development and decreasing I.T. costs reduced the expense of implementing large-scale Surveillance. Citizens are likely to expect targeted Surveillance to emphasize the provision of safety, but encroachments on the rights of privacy and personal freedoms might become more relevant compared to targeted measures.
Dark mirror: Edward Snowden and the American surveillance state:
Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Gellman chronicled his reporting on Edward Snowden's revelations of the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance programs(Wescott, 2020). Snowden provided over 50,000 documents detailing how the NSA operates, including documents, instant messages, email conversations, and metadata on phone calls. Wescott(2020) argued that such data could erode privacy and lead to an increasing "tyranny of metrics". Furthermore, the author took extreme measures to ensure the security of the data trove provided by NSA contractor Snowden, independently verifying Snowden's allegations. Snowden decided to work through journalists to give independent credibility to his findings and to take a careful approach in determining which reporters should publish NSA documents.
Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans' telephone records. An appeals court has found the program unlawful, and those intelligence leaders lied about it. Snowden says the ruling vindicates his decision to go public with evidence. I believe that Snowden exploded after viewing how the United States surveillance program used the infrastructure to spy on the public, which was otherwise thought secure. From the public perspective, they would never trust the government if the government tracked their activities without their consent and permission from law enforcement with solid proof that they are a danger to the community.
Surveillance State:
After Roe v. Wade, a Texas abortion ban that originated in the 1850s roared back to life. Doctors or anyone violating the ban could be imprisoned for life and fined up to $100,000. S.B. 8 was an end-run around the right to abortion and a weapon of fear and Surveillance. Levy(2022) states that Vigilante-style laws like Texas' S.B. 8 now reach into school bathrooms, classrooms, and sports. Vigilante enforcement laws allowed them to attack the government's legal and social norms and turned citizens into spies in a surveillance scheme more reminiscent of a totalitarian state.
Texas citizens turning into spies would be very dangerous to society as it impacts citizens' privacy. Because of which, citizens could not live peacefully, as the vigilantes could misuse their power to target minority groups. And the part where vigilante's reached bathrooms could make the girls and women hostile as they would live in fear. Additionally, vigilante-style monitoring does not follow any particular training to enforce policies which would lead to the mishandling of the power to impose on the immigrants. Considering the high crime rates in the United States, Police and law enforcement could be overwhelmed in handling the cases that would rise due to vigilantism.
Modern democracy: Data, surveillance creep and more authoritarian regimes?:
According to Medicott(2020), Surveillance creep was not a new phenomenon in a pandemic world but something that had been prominent for a while. The 2016 U.S. election and Brexit were pivotal moments that showcased the erosion of privacy and the evident control large tech corporations have in our everyday lives. Medicott(2020) stated that the government's highly normalized the rose in Surveillance and data collection in the current world, and it is essential to consider the ethical implications surrounding privacy and safety. Data played an extremely vital role, arguably the most valuable resource today. The spread of right-wing populism, along with the rose of Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte and many other world-renowned right-wing leaders, showed the usage of data to influence political discourse.
I agree with Medicott that Surveillance creep is not a new marvel. The government used to spy on fewer targeted citizens in the past. But with surveillance technology, it would just increase their horizon of monitoring with fewer resources. Considering right-wing leaders rose in popularity across the world, they would try to impose conservative laws that should not be needed to be followed by all citizens as the ideologies are different. My focus here is that religious beliefs should not be imposed on citizens or used against citizens to suppress their freedom.
Marseille vs. the surveillance state:
Police used most of the sixteen hundred cameras to enforce pandemic lock-down measures and monitor protests in Marseille, France(Macdonald, 2022). Activists were fighting back, highlighting the existing surveillance system's overreach. Jean-Jaurès Square in Marseille was a new model of ubiquitous Surveillance, but Surveillance prioritized capturing a particular class of criminals. The new mayor of Marseille has promised to pause video surveillance. Le Monde, in 2017 announced the Big Data of Public Tranquillity Project for the city of Marseille and the Bouches-du-Rhône region that would crunch data from local police, firefighters, hospitals, and video cameras, using artificial intelligence to understand better and predict security risks(Macdonald, 2022, as cited in Le Monde, 2017). But there was little focus on privacy protection, data breach possibility, or the threat of bias—a particular concern given Marseille's considerable North African population.
Marseille's case would be the perfect example of how technology could be misused to identify people. Police used images that were not clear in identifying the people, leading to targeting the wrong people. Metz(2021) wrote in the New York times that artificial intelligence development proved very poor when used against the black community. In addition to the racial bias, multiple biases could be built into the system as they use the enormous amounts of data available for developing the systems. One should consider the demographics of the data used for making these surveillance technologies and test them to reduce biases.
References:
Levy, P. (2022). Surveillance State. Mother Jones, 47(6), 42–65.
MacDonald, F. (2022). Marseille vs. the surveillance state. MIT Technology Review, 125(4), 28–37.
Medicott, O. (2020, October 10). Modern democracy: Data, surveillance creep and more authoritarian regimes? ORF. Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/modern-democracy-data-surveillance-creep-and-more-authoritarian-regimes/
Metz, C. (2021, March 15). Who is making sure the A.I. machines aren't racist? The New York Times.
Wescott, C. G. (2020). Dark mirror: Edward Snowden and the american surveillance state. Governance, 33(4), 976–979. https://doi-org.nec.gmilcs.org/10.1111/gove.12537
Ziller, C., & Helbling, M. (2021). Public support for state surveillance. European Journal of Political Research, 60(4), 994–1006. https://doi-org.nec.gmilcs.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12424
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