Why Is It Difficult to Criticize Surveillance ?

Surveillance as a Form of Risk Handling in Reflexive Modernity

Abstract

Surveillance as a theme of this paper is what is attracting attention recently. Security strengthened by surveillance is not a proliferation of monitoring systems, but is a move towards prevention and exclusion of people who are not suitable for this system. The various technologies for surveillance enable watchpersons to exclude them. For example, there is not only a surveillance camera but also biometrics technology for authentication systems.
Although we normally tend to think it easy to criticize such technology, it is not true. This is because the criticism of surveillance is tacitly replaced by the criticism of values which are realized by surveillance. For example, the problem is not surveillance but an economic gap if the exclusion is based on the economic gap.
This paper aims to clarify why it is difficult to criticize surveillance. It uses “risk” and “reflexive modernity” as important concepts. Some arguments explain that accumulation of data based on surveillance is enabled to calculate a risk. Therefore, risk means a danger of the undecided future in this paper, and surveillance make us to be a decided one. But the “decided” future is always provisional. Accordingly, uneasiness always influences how danger is determined. This uneasiness is reflex.
According to Ulrich Beck, such reflexive uneasiness calls for people's solidarity among sub-politics in the worldwide risk society, although today it is characterized by inter-invisibilization among sub-politics.
This paper explains the mechanism of this invisibilization and points out the problems in the criticism of surveillance.