Counter-surveillance as Political Intervention?

Abstract

This paper analyzes practices of counter-surveillance—particularly against closed-circuit television systems in urban areas—and theorizes their political implications. Counter-surveillance is defined as intentional, tactical uses, or disruptions of surveillance technologies to challenge institutional power asymmetries. Such activities can include disabling or destroying surveillance cameras, mapping paths of least surveillance and disseminating that information over the Internet, employing video cameras to monitor sanctioned surveillance systems and their personnel, or staging public plays to draw attention to the prevalence of surveillance in society. The main argument is that current modes of activism tend to individualize surveillance problems and methods of resistance, leaving the institutions, policies, and cultural assumptions that support public surveillance relatively insulated from attack.

Keywords:

• Surveillance
• resistance
• activism
• art
• social movements
• social control
• globalization

The author would like to thank the Institute for Applied Autonomy for its support and Michael Musheno and two anonymous reviewers for generous comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

¹See Marx (2003) for a typology of acts of resistance to dominant uses of surveillance (or “tacks in the shoe”), which exploit the ironic vulnerabilities of ubiquitous surveillance projects.

² www.appliedautonomy.com/isee.html

³ www.rtmark.com/cctv/

⁴In contrast, ®^TMark's “The Yes Men” clearly do agitate for change on an institutional level (The Yes Men 2003). Their website explains this mission: “Identity theft: Small-time criminals impersonate honest people in order to steal their money. Targets are ordinary folks whose ID numbers fell into the wrong hands. Identity correction: Honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else” (The Yes Men 2005).

⁵ wearcam.org/shootingback.html

⁶ www.notbored.org/the-scp.html

⁷Cameron (2004) likens this type of movement to “spy vs. spy” behavior, noting that “Choosing to address the problems of surveillance through technological fixes opens up some strategic options and shuts down others,” perhaps deepening our “subjection” (Cameron 2004, 143).