Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life (Issues in Society)

By David Lyon

Book Overview

This text takes a post-privacy approach to surveillance with a fresh look at the relations between technology and society. Personal data is collected from us all the time, whether we know it or not, through identity numbers, camera images, or increasingly by other means such as fingerprint and retinal scans. This book examines the constant computer-based scrutiny of ordinary daily life for citizens and consumers as they participate in contemporary societies. It argues that to understand what is happening we have to go beyond Orwellian alarms and cries for more privacy to see how such surveillance also reinforces divisions by sorting people into social categories. The issues spill over narrow policy and legal boundaries to generate responses at several levels including local consumer groups, Internet activism, and international social movements.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 033520547X
• ISBN13: 9780335205479
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Open Univ Pr
• Length: 189 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher