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"Veillant panoptic assemblage": mutual watching and resistance to mass surveillance after Snowden
[journal article]
Abstract
The Snowden leaks indicate the extent, nature, and means of contemporary mass digital surveillance of citizens by their intelligence agencies and the role of public oversight mechanisms in holding intelligence agencies to account. As such, they form a rich case study on the interactions of "veillanc... view more
The Snowden leaks indicate the extent, nature, and means of contemporary mass digital surveillance of citizens by their intelligence agencies and the role of public oversight mechanisms in holding intelligence agencies to account. As such, they form a rich case study on the interactions of "veillance" (mutual watching) involving citizens, journalists, intelligence agencies and corporations. While Surveillance Studies, Intelligence Studies and Journalism Studies have little to say on surveillance of citizens' data by intelligence agencies (and complicit surveillant corporations), they offer insights into the role of citizens and the press in holding power, and specifically the political-intelligence elite, to account. Attention to such public oversight mechanisms facilitates critical interrogation of issues of surveillant power, resistance and intelligence accountability. It directs attention to the veillant panoptic assemblage (an arrangement of profoundly unequal mutual watching, where citizens' watching of self and others is, through corporate channels of data flow, fed back into state surveillance of citizens). Finally, it enables evaluation of post-Snowden steps taken towards achieving an equiveillant panoptic assemblage (where, alongside state and corporate surveillance of citizens, the intelligence-power elite, to ensure its accountability, faces robust scrutiny and action from wider civil society).... view less
Keywords
monitoring; digital media; civil society; secret service; journalism; control; citizen; national state; enterprise
Classification
Basic Research, General Concepts and History of the Science of Communication
Interactive, electronic Media
Media Politics, Information Politics, Media Law
Free Keywords
Rechenschaft
Document language
English
Publication Year
2015
Page/Pages
p. 12-25
Journal
Media and Communication, 3 (2015) 3
Issue topic
Surveillance: critical analysis and current challenges (part II)
ISSN
2183-2439
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed
Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution