The Surveillance Project

TEXT AND LOGO SOURCE: THE SURVEILLANCE PROJECT WEBSITE

The Surveillance Project is a multi-disciplinary and international collaborative initiative at the cutting edge of social science research. We are based in the Department of Sociology at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. Our work also supports appropriate policy development and contributes to an understanding of the contemporary politics of information.

The Surveillance Project researches both the workings of large surveillance systems -- data, video, audio -- and their interactions with ordinary people -- workers, travelers, consumers, citizens. Our work impacts attitudes and policy; our academic study informs and challenges all to greater care and accountability in processing personal data.

The Surveillance Project researches the ways in which personal data are processed. We explore why information about people has become so important in the 21st century and what are the social, political and economic consequences of this trend. Questions of "privacy" and of "social sorting" are central to our concerns.

Surveillance is "any systematic attention to a person's life aimed at exerting influence over it" (James Rule). So The Surveillance Project studies everything from supermarket loyalty cards to police networks searching for suspects. We have a special interest in the surveillance aspects of post 9/11 quest for tightened security. While high-tech methods have become very significant, we also examine surveillance as face-to-face supervision or as mediated watching using video cameras.

Surveillance is not simply about large organizations using sophisticated computer equipment. It is also about how ordinary people - citizens, workers, travelers, and consumers - interact with surveillance. Some comply, others negotiate, and yet others resist. The Surveillance Project explores how expanding flows of personal data affect and are affected by everyday life.
Surveillance raises important issues such as privacy, anonymity, and trust. But because surveillance is related to risk management and to modes of governance it also involves what we call social sorting. Social groups are classified so that they can receive different treatment. So questions of social justice and democratic participation are at least as important as those of security and privacy.