A report published this week by the Surveillance Studies Network states that Britain is now one of the five most watched societies on earth, and that it has a culture of "endemic surveillance". The report highlights an increasing use of militarized surveillance technology in civilian life; a widespread sharing of data and technology between private companies and the military; the heavy interpenetration of transnational communication systems such as GPS and the Internet by the military; and the convergence of telephony technologies and the internet in ways that make surveillance operations easier as some of the main causes behind this.It also argues that the war on terror has produced "a drive to security" which has given rise to new civilian markets for what were previously military products, and that the networked systems we now use to communicate can be altered "in certain places and times when it suits military objectives." The process of "function creep"  is also highlighted, whereby networked personal data collected for one reason, is used for numerous other purposes. This extends and intensifies its surveillance value and has serious implications for personal privacy. This aspect of data sharing by stealth the report states, is also one of the most often overlooked.The full PDF report can be downloaded from here.

[ Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:05:31 +0000 ]

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