David Lyons's "Surveillance, Power, and Everyday Life"

David Lyon published the article “Surveillance, Power, and Everyday Life”.  Lyon was a Sociology and Law professor at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario.  He is best known for his Surveillance study works. In fact, he is director of the Surveillance Study Center at Queens University. He has published a fair amount of books including Liquid Surveillance, Identifying Citizens: ID Cards as Surveillance, and most recently The International Handbook of Surveillance Studies (Lyon). Based on these publications and professions, Lyon has the credibility to argue and analyze points on surveillance. This article is from Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies, which was published in 2007, around the time that search engines, satellite navigation on phones, and social medias came into place. This article is intended for anyone who is in contact with any type of technology. I think adults should be the most concerned about the issue with surveillance, but the article is intended for a broader audience.

The main point of this article is that surveillance is evolving and growing at a rapid pace. Within recent years, the surveillance is growing around ICT’s as well. As technology becomes more adavaneces, surveillance does too. There is now more access to record data and to keep track of society’s patterns. Lyon describes surveillance as “any focused attention to personal details for the purposed of influence, management, or control” (Lyon). An interesting point brought up is that surveillance isnt only for the consumers; surveillance can be used to watch employees as well. This relates to an article we read a while back, Rise of the Reingineers, by Simon Head. This article talked about how businesses used surveillance to track their employees actions, behavior, and to track customers purchase patterns (Head). In Lyon’s article, he proposes that companies and government can classify people by their purchasing patterns and shopping patterns, which is called social sorting. Social sorting is supposed to help companies better their market to their consumers. This allows for companies to target a particular audience. Lyon explains that social sorting can be a pro or a con. He says that when people are put into certain categories, they can obtain benefits, but also can be excluded from participation in a certain marketplace. Lyon also introduces the question of ‘is privacy ending’? Many people argue that privacy is ending because there are  fewer places to hide out and be alone. Surveillence systems track our every move and it seems that we are never in privacy. Others celebrate the fact that privacy is over because it means that personal data is constantly cicrulating.

Surveillence is a complex topic that has many different views. Some surveillence such as baby monitors and personal tracking of purchases can be seen as a good thing. On the flip side, government tracking of personal purchases and the unknown of when you are being surveilled is a scary thing. Lyon’s argument about surveillence in society and the control of power in surveillene faces many difficulties today.

Related article:

Murphy, K. (2014, October 4). We want privacy but can’t stop sharing. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/sunday-review/we-want-privacy-but-cant-stop-sharing.html?_r=0

Timberg, C. (2014, February 5). New surveillance technology can track everyone in an area for several hours at a time. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/new-surveillance-technology-can-track-everyone-in-an-area-for-several-hours-at-a-time/2014/02/05/82f1556e-876f-11e3-a5bd-844629433ba3_story.html

References:

Simon Head, "The rise of the reengineers," in The New Ruthless Economy (2003).

David Lyon, “Surveillance, power, and everyday life,” in R. Mansell et al. eds., The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies (2007).

David Lyon: The New Transparency. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.sscqueens.org/davidlyon