Revision notes on Civil Liberties in Vigilant State. Topics covered:
- Privacy
- Theorising state surveillance
- Surveillance vs state secrecy
- Surveillance in practice
- Detention and repression
- Civil liberties
Privacy is a curiously ‘fuzzy’ and existential concept. This is particularly true in the UK,
given that UK law is broadly materialistic - based on ownership of goods and property.
Invasion of these material goods is one expression of privacy violation. What is arguably
more important is the invasion of personal space and privacy - an existential matter much
harder to pin down and much less well defined under UK law.
Subversion is all about ideas - to allow us to think dangerous, anarchic, rebellious
thoughts - if not to act on them. Conflict in the 20th-21st century is no longer between
states - it is between ideas and systems of ideas regarded by states as dangerous. The
idea of subversion arises from this, as does the ‘4th wave of terrorism’ and modern
surveillance. GCHQ rhetoric (Financial Times article) implies that privacy has never been
an absolute right. Rhetoric intensified hugely post-Lee Rigby. There is a huge asymmetry
in public and media response between events like this and IRA murders carried out in the
1990s. It is perhaps most striking that we have seen relatively few murders.
e.g. Harold MacMillan, 1963: alerted by Security Service that the leader of the
opposition (Harold Wilson) might have been a KGB agent. This left MacMillan
“flummoxed”.
Theorising State Surveillance
Bentham’s "Panopticon": power should be visible and unverifiable.
Foucault extends this idea in Discipline and Punish - surveillance as "a state of
conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of
power". (see Amoore on biopolitics). This can be tied into surveillance as a form of
governance.
Tilly: surveillance as a racketeering exercise.
Giddens: surveillance as a natural consequence of mobilising the administrative
power of the state.
Zuboff: political economy explanation: surveillance in the workplace - employers
know what workers are doing every minute of the day, and can optimise
accordingly.
Surveillance vs State Secrecy
Vincent, "The Culture of Secrecy": secrecy is used to hide state abuses and
inefficiencies, not for protecting national security. The 21st century heralds not just the
end of privacy, but the end of secrecy. Transparency is a two-sided coin. Aldrich: all
modern societies are less about secret policing, and more a general drift towards the
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