Literature and Culture of Surveillance

All the President’s horses,

and all the President’s men,

couldn’t put Nixon together again.

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/hsw/5591-watergate-identifying-deep-throat-video.htm

This is an awesome video about Deep Throat!!! I highly recommend watching it before the final! It’s all about people trying to figure out who Deep Throat is, and I think this video was made before Felt revealed himself.

-Stephen Clendenin, group 2

My friend went to high school with this boy; interesting story and another example of how someone is always watching.

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/video-shows-university-maryland-student-beaten-county-police/story?id=10362033

Date: 23 April 2010

Submitted by: Courtney Woodburn, Group 12

Point Blog Entry Subject: Categorization in Post-9/11 Surveillance

Quote:   “Law contributes to the codifying of classifications, as we saw with regard to the definitions of terrorism.  But technology buttresses this by removing further the human element, and by digitally facilitating the power of separation.  Law and technology may seem remote to many, but their effects are felt locally, relationally, personally.  As Bourdieu says: ‘The fate of groups is bound up with the words that designate them.’  This could hardly be more true than for those today who are viewed first as ‘Arabs,’ ‘Muslims,’ or ‘terrorists.’  Surveillance practices enable fresh forms of exclusion that not only cut off certain targeted groups from social participation, but do so in subtle ways that are sometimes scarcely visible.” (Lyon, 372)

Analysis:

Although in this chapter, “Resisting Surveillance,” David Lyon attempts to examine the ambiguity of surveillance practices by addressing the positive as well as the negative consequences of surveillance, this example of a negative consequence of post-9/11 surveillance practices was particularly striking because it is so widespread.  Classification has always been a source of struggle, but the problem that occurs with it in post-9/11 surveillance, according to Lyon, is that “classification processes are being automated” (372).  In other words, prejudices become part of systematic categorization that denotes people as ‘safe’ and ‘suspect,’ with little in between.

The real question we have to ask ourselves is whose methods of categorization – whose prejudices – are we following.  Prior to the selected passage (clearly it was difficult to narrow down my selection), Lyon cites Pierre Bourdieu’s argument that “power over classificatory schemes is central to the meaning of the social world” (372).  It’s not like we can point the finger at one Big Brother behind it all; these classifications play off public fears and prejudices.

We are made to categorize ourselves.  Just look at the 2010 Census.  Section 9, which asks for race, rationalizes its presence on the census and its importance to be properly completed with needing to acquire race information to “monitor compliance with the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.”  We can take the reason as legitimate, but the categories themselves are surprising.  “White,” for example, is just that, whereas “Black” is followed by “African American,” and “Negro,” which I thought had definitely gone by the wayside, you know, with the Civil Rights Movement.  And there’s no bubble for someone of European or Middle Eastern descent.  Anyone who has studied genealogy knows racial identity is not as simple as the census makes it appear.  We are made to choose one, and selection goes into the system, for better or for worse.

We feel safe within our categories.  We define and know ourselves by them.  Being one makes someone different Other.  My own mother continues to refer to her new neighbors as “the Muslims next door” even after talking to them and borrowing their snow shovel.  I don’t think she means it in an accusatory manner (at least anymore, because there was some wariness at first), but the label – the categorization – carries an accusation and a negative connotation regardless of her intentions.  For another class I read the book Zeitoun, a nonfiction account of a Muslim Syrian-American man who ends up in Guantanamo-like imprisonment in the aftermath of Katrina because he is suspected of being a terrorist.  This suspicion is undeniably linked with his ethnicity.  The labels have become conflated.  Those used to designate 9/11 terrorists – Muslim, Middle Eastern – condemn anyone else who falls under those labels.

On the flip side of the categorization issue, we need something to systematize it, right?  How do we keep track of it all if we don’t have labels?  Lyon points out that our compliance with surveillance (and categorization processes) has normalized it – we comply with surveillance in exchange for protection and security – but we must, Lyon argues, function within a code of ethics.  We must ask who decides these categories, and are they effective.

Date: April 23, 2010
Submitted by: Sarah Trimble – Group 12
Point Post Subject: Resisting Surveillance, by David Lyons (from The Surveillance Studies Reader)
Title: On living with necessary evils.

Quote: “…when I first started researching and writing about surveillance I endeavored to maintain an appropriate stance that was neither paranoid nor complacent… however the pendulum has swung so wildly from ‘care’ to ‘control’ that I feel compelled to turn more robustly to critique.” (Lyons 368)

Analysis: In his opening paragraphs Lyons admits that as a result of his research on surveillance and its effects, he cannot help but err on the critical side of a theoretically unbiased center. I say theoretical because I personally think that one cannot extensively research a contentious subject without developing some level of an opinion on it; that is the very nature (and often a goal) of research. Lyons in no way lessens the strength of his argument by admitting that he has formed a conviction regarding his subject; rather, it strengthens his point.

The world through Lyons’ eyes is one of necessary evils. He sees societies that, as they become increasingly technological, also become increasingly surveilled. He points out that “a further irony is this:” the very processes that shape our modern world simultaneously enabled both the attacks of 9/11 and our “efforts to apprehend potential terrorists.” He also points out that “the same kinds of technology that enable remote networked surveillance” can be used just as easily “to enable communication between those who dissent…” (378).

Much of the technology and “progress” that allows us to operate in today’s modern society can only exist if it allows for both the advantages we enjoy (finding and purchasing rare books on AbeBooks) and the surveillance it makes possible (a traceable record of your purchase history). Since we choose to embrace the modern inventions which allow us to advance our culture and awareness of our world, we must also embrace surveillance. In Lyons’ opinion this gives us all the more reason to actively engage in conversation with surveillance methods.

As he goes on to list the reasons we must be wary of this now rhizomatically structured surveillance system and the many heads it can wield, Lyons also makes sure to drive home his overall point: the many cautions against surveillance that he offers are meant to incite not fear of all surveillance (for by now its roots are innumerable) but increased discussion and awareness of the problems presented by a globalized and increasingly surveilled society. It is only by actively seeking awareness of these systems that we can ensure our participation in minimizing the negative consequences of surveillance activities.

It seems to me, then, that the greatest irony is this: to follow Lyons’ advice and resist surveillance as a means of keeping it ethical, we must constantly surveil those systems implemented to surveil us. Of course, since he openly admits we must embrace surveillance technologies in order to progress modern society, he safely avoids contradicting himself – at least for now.

Date: 4/23/10

Submitted by: Terrell Taylor #11

Counterpoint: Exclusion at the risk of inclusion

Quote:

“Surveillance trends have solidified after September 11, especially those of social sorting. The much-publicized debates over ‘racial-profiling’ places this in high relief, but the issue is much broader than this. Negative discrimination toward those defined as ‘Muslim/Arabs’ is certainly occurring. this is one of the most insidious results of 9/11, not least because it connects suspicions with particular ethnic and religious groups regardless of on-the-ground-realities.”

(Lyon,370)

Analysis:

Lyon, in the essay “Resisting Surveillance,” is guilty of the sin that he throughly denounces: through focusing the nexus of discriminatory, undemocratic and insidious surveillance as post 9/11, he ignores the ways that surveillance has been a tool of discrimination before 9/11. A scholar named Paul Virillio identifies the way that the threat of nuclear war has turned surveillance from a process that monitored activities of enemy military to a process that that monitored numbers of enemy arsenals and functioned as a digitized game of calculating numbers from numbers (probably with an additional layer of numbers) to predict action. What Virillio argues is that this focus upon digitized, processed, and inherently mediated data, ignores many of the social issues regarding race, gender, and class within society, for the sake of an impending doom that is represented by national enemies. It seems that although Lyon is not speaking of the digitized form of surveillance upon external entities and does speak of the local issues of discrimination against people of the Muslim faith or those of Middle Eastern descent, the fact that those focal points for discussion of how and why to resist surveillance are equally problematic as they crowd out already inherent and systemic issues that exist and probably make the issues that arise from 9/11 possible and more profoundly disturbing. In my last post I spoke of issues of gender and surveillance, and the way that identities of oppression and submission are produced and reinforced through the gaze of the oppressor and the discourse that surrounds that gaze. Additionally, and probably very related to Lyon’s concern for racial discrimination post 9/11, blacks have been and are racially profiled daily, and have been long before and long after 9/11. The implications of the latter, the racial example are plentiful and enough to warrant addressing and attacking before 9/11; If weren’t for the acceptance of racial profiling with blacks and other races, then the racial profiling that was enforced post 9/11 wouldn’t have been possible. Also the very possibility of race as a criterion for surveillance indicates a certain structure of racial discrimination, which is one that makes such a broad distinction between whites and blacks, that it set the stage and gave the mechanisms for racial discrimination in 9/11. In the former example, concerning gender, we see issues of surveillance having the possibility of defining gender roles and identities, and thus shaping the subjectivity of the survielled. the fact that surveillance only becomes problematized post-9/11 implies complicitiness in these issues that make the issues of 9/11 surveillance possible. This is not to say that those issues do not matter, but it is disturbing that one only cares about attrocities after great lengths have been taken to reveal them and that one does not see a surveillance as a historical entity that has existed and oppressed for sometime prior to 9/11

Date: April 23, 2010
Submitted By: Taryn Tashner
Counterpoint Post Subject: Surveillance did not appear in response to 9/11

Quote:

“Democracy is in trouble after 9/11. Treating ordinary citizens as suspects, and simultaneously inciting them to spy on their neighbors, is an unlikely recipe for confidence in the political process. Placing security and military concerns at the top of the political agenda necessarily displaces freedom and democracy. They cannot coexist as equal priorities, at least under the current ‘surveillance state’ regimes that are emerging” (373).

Analysis:

Lyon attempts to make the argument that the surveillance that has been occurring in the United States since September 11 and is aimed at keeping our country safe from further terrorist attacks is in fact jeopardizing our democracy. Even before the updated technological surveillance that is used today, our country has monitored people’s activities while still allowing them democratic freedoms. Ordinary citizens have always been treated as suspects of some kind of crime against the community, state, or the country. The Red Scare, for instance, was a movement to flush out all the enemies of state who were selling secrets to Soviets. Everyone was suspicious of everyone, and even famous/powerful people like Tennessee Williams were questioned for possible traitorous behavior. While Americans are granted many freedoms, including privacy and speech, they can still be risks to the well being of the country and should be willing to be subjected to surveillance in the greater interest of democracy, not in violation of it. Lyon also says inciting citizens to spy on their neighbors is somehow undemocratic, but the fact is that most ordinary citizens will spy on their neighbors of their own volition to ensure that their children will be safe playing outside, that their house won’t be broken into by sketchy friends of the neighbors, or that they won’t have an incessant dog barking next door. It is natural for people to be curious about those living around them and to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior. Although this may have inclined after 9/11, it has always been present and has nothing to do with the political process failing.

Having security and military concerns at the forefront of politics is again in the best interest of the country in a time of turmoil. It does not displace freedom and democracy at all, but instead fights to protect them. There is no reason that they can’t coexist equally because they are not mutually exclusive. While there are certainly limits to the amount of security that should be placed on American citizens before crossing the line of the democratic freedom that this country stands for, there is still reason to have strong security if its intent is honorable. There should be no fear or anger from those ordinary citizens who are in the line of surveillance fire if they have nothing to hide, and they should be grateful that the government is trying to hunt out those who wish to do this country harm. My biggest problem with Lyon’s argument is that he doesn’t offer an alternative to the surveillance being conducted since 9/11. What other way is there of catching terrorists before they attack again?

The surveillance used by the US government may pan over ordinary citizens, but for the most part they don’t have the time or money to waste on these people. It is, however, incredibly useful in discovering terrorist networks once one terrorist has been found. He/she can be tapped and watched to see who he/she is working with and how. Democracy is only threatened by surveillance if rights are violated or surveillance is so intrusive to innocent people that they cannot live their lives normally. It is not “in trouble” if our society remains cognizant of its rights, and we are not at risk of becoming like the society in 1984 just because the government is using surveillance to search for terrorists.

Landon Randolph

group 9

Rhizomatic Surveillance and the Concept of Friendship

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of one’s life. and it is therefore essential that they should not let one down. They often do. Personal relations are despised today. They are regarded as bourgeois luxuries, as products of a time of fair weather which is now past, and we are urged to get rid of them, and to dedicate ourselves to some movement or cause instead. I hate the ideas of and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. EM Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy (Chapman, iii)

Barbara:Helen’s lying and we’re lying–we’re all playing the same rotten game.

Stewart: Well, hardly.

Barbara: Of course we are. What’s the difference between one lie and another? When I hear you making excuses for whate we’ve done, I feel sick with fear–Physically sick! People like you can find excuses for anything.

Bob: Look, there’s no point in upsetting yourself like this.

Barbara: I’m not upsetting myself! I’m trying to explain how I feel–And I’m trying to face up to the fact that I have betrayed Helen as much she has betrayed me.

(Whitmore 86)

The struggle between personal loyalties and national security concerns is of central importance to both Pack of Lies and One of Us. In effect, they both offer a sophisticated critique of Deleuze and Guttari’s notion of rhizomatic surveillance. The idea of an organic method of surveillance sprouting throughout various levels of society often implies a social connection between those conducting surveillance and the surveilled, one that can be quite intimate. Scotland Yard cannot get close enough to surveil to the Krogers without someone who is already familiar with them personally, and so they set up their counterintelligence operation within the already existing personal social structure. While this may be the most effective method for collecting data, it forces those collecting it to make sometimes uncomfortable choices about their loyalties to the larger social sphere, or to their small circle of friends. Furthermore, personal ideology may add additional complications. The Krogers marxist beliefs are at odds with the larger society around them and their private social sphere, but they see it as their personal duty to change both of them. The close intersection between these various loyalties means that at least one of them ends up being betrayed despite the best of intentions, calling into question who the surveillance actually serves. It becomes clear that far from being a tool to protect the whole of civil society, all too often it is just a tool for the maintenance of power for those in charge.

Date: April 21, 2010
Post by: elizabeth reed (group 9)
Subject: Betraying my country or betraying my friend?

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. ~Edward Forster

Quote 1: BARBARA: Helen’s lying and we’re lying – we’re all playing the same rotten game.
STEWART: Well, hardly.
BARBARA: Of course we are. What’s the difference between one lie and another? [her anger rising] When I hear you making excuses for what we’ve done, I feel sick with fear – physically sick! People like you can find excuses for anything.
[BOB steps forward, anxious to make peace.]
BOB: Look, there’s no point in upsetting yourself like this.
BARBARA: I’m not upsetting myself! I’m trying to explain how I feel·- and I’m trying to face up to the fact that I have betrayed Helen as much as she has betrayed me.

STEWART: That’s just not so.

BARBARA: Isn’t it?(Whitmore.85-86)

Quote 2: “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my children I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. Guts? Or. If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying … my brother-in-law … No, you see Duff. Friend is what does it. My friend. That’s what brings in the cellos. My friend. Who is my friend? My friend is the memory of the youth half of them were gone on at school. My friend is True Love as it presents itself the one and only time in their stunted, little lives… A choice between country, which is to say school, headmaster, government, club and class; and fidelity, which is to say friendship, honour, compassion and all the other virtues which, if they were going to get anywhere at all in the world they were going to have to betray anyway. ” (Bennett. 251-2)

Analysis:

What I thought was interesting about these two quotes was the discussion of whether or not it was more noble or brave to betray one’s country, or betray a friend. In the play “A Pack of Lies” the characters of Barbara and Bob both choose to betray their closest friends. One could see this as an act of patriotism and of doing the right thing. But, as she says in this quote, she is betraying her friend just as much as her friend betrayed her. Which really begs the question of how far is too far to stick your neck out for a friend? Should you hide the fact that they are soviet spies? Is just lying to create an alibi for a friend too far? How about letting them copy your work? Would telling someone about these things be betraying them, or is not telling them betraying the system itself?

In “The Old Country” Hilary says the lines about who to betray over your country. He undoubtedly says that ones friendships and fidelity are bound to make us betray anyway. It should always preside over one’s country. Barbara feels this sentiment at the end of the play, where it is said she only lives for a few years after Helen was released. She passed away at a young age of a heart attack. She probably felt guilty for the entire time Helen and Peter were locked up. She had to lie all that time to Helen, and Peter, and even her own daughter. Should she have told? Is the fact that she encouraged them to escape to Australia as soon as possible a kind of justification that she did try and help? Barbara and Bob did what they thought was right. But in the end, was it right because the law and their morals says it’s so, or was it wrong to betray people they loved so dearly?

Date: April 20, 2010
Submitted by:  John Schell, Group 10
Subject:  The Irresistible Space of Surveillance

STEWART: Dh-uh. Uh-uh. [Brief pause.] Is he a car person? Is he interested in cars?

BOB: No, not particularly.

STEWART: He just took a fancy to yours …

BOB: Well, yes. Why shouldn’t they buy a car like ours if they want to?

STEWART: No reason at all- on the other hand, it could be construed as an extremely clever thing to do.

BOB: Clever? Why?

STEWART: Because it would certainly confuse anyone who might be watching them; I mean, if one of my chaps saw a black Ford Consul parked in Cranley Drive he couldn’t be sure, at a glance, whether the Krogers were at home or whether you were. Might be useful, that.

[BOB stares at STEWART but says nothing.]

It’s not terribly important, I agree – it’s just one of those little details that tend to arouse interest. And it’s only when you start adding all these things together that a significant pattern begins to emerge.(Whitemore 65)

……

STEWART: [sympathetically] Well, I’m quite sure that her [Helen] affection for you is perfectly genuine. There’s no reason to doubt that.

BARBARA: [angriLy] No reason … ? What do you mean, no reason? There’s every reason to doubt everything she’s ever said or done!

[A moment of silence. ]

I wish you’d never come here, Mr Stewart.

(Whitemore 85)

Analysis:

The connection between space and information in this play (and these passages specifically) signals to the audience how surveillance not only utilizes an environment to extract information about particular subjects, but surveillance also produces an environment because it is itself an infrastructure of power.  No where is the ambivalence between surveillance as a tool of a larger societal context and surveillance as an autonomous system more evident then in the forcefully combined space of the Jackson’s household.  In fact Stewart’s ability to accommodate the house for his clandestine operations through legitimate means, both through the appeal to Scotland Yard and the law, demystifies the idea that somehow private citizenship ultimately stands at a different point of origin than civic duty.  While Stewart serves to inaugurate the Jacksons into the broader subtext of political espionage and paranoia (as we can see with the suggestion about the black Ford Consul), he can only do so from a position both literally and figuratively within the domestic space.  When he naively tries to evoke the distinction between personal and professional in the second quote, we see how Barbara rejects that difference precisely because the presence of Stewart collapses (rather than delineates) the public into the private.

As Sewell and Barker suggest in their essay, the surveillance capabilities Stewart represents seems to go beyond the framework of private/public identity by transforming the Jackson household from a place of decision making to a place of rule obeying.  Stewart writes over the ethical abilities of Bob and Barbara through the rules of secrecy he imposes upon them.  Their ability to make a choice (a dilemma that arises toward the end of the play) becomes lost because it is substituted by their new position as informational subjects.  The transformation of the house into an outpost/living space and Bob and Barbara into informants/neighbors demonstrates the perversion of Stewart’s sentiment that “when you start adding all these things together that a significant pattern emerges”.  Whitmore has created a scenario that thoroughly resists any possibility of “adding all these things together”, and we rather experiences the characters in the same Rhizomatic structure in which they are apart of.  Surveillance serves not only to move Bob and Barbara’s position as subjects into the liminal and shifting space between the boundaries of duty and privacy, but surveillance also helps to produce and validate these same boundaries in order to reproduce it’s necessity and importance.  Barbara’s reaction to Helen’s new identity would not have been so nauseating had she not invested in Mr Stewart’s judgement as observer, and merely stated that it did not matter what he thought or saw.

Date: April 20, 2010

Submitted by:  Anna Snyder, Group 10

Key Passage Subject: Pack of Lies

Quote:

BOB: He might have bashed some old lady over the head and pinched her handbag. Supposing he had. How would you feel about him then?

[BARBARA says nothing; BOB grins; returns to his newspaper. Pause.]

BARBARA: People don’t stop being people just because they’ve done something wrong. They still have feelings.

BOB: [firmly] Look – it’s nothing to do with us, none of it. Mr. Stewart says this man’s mixed up with something criminal, something illegal – well, fine, that’s all we need to know. Who he is and what he’s done just doesn’t matter. It’s none of our business.

[No response.]

Well, is it?

BARBARA: I don’t know.

BOB: Well it isn’t. Take it from me.

(Whitemore, p. 39)

Analysis:

Selecting one passage was difficult, but I think this one best exemplifies one of the strongest themes in the play: the devaluing of the criminal or even the potential criminal, and how that label begins to become their entire and only identity. Those who are suspected of a crime (in the quote they are discussing a young man they saw arrested near the Tube, but Barbara is clearly connecting this story to Helen and Peter’s predicament) are in many ways guilty until proven innocent in the minds of law enforcement and in the minds of the public.

Bob exemplifies the trusting citizen who will do his part, so long as it is reasonably convenient, without asking questions; he assumes that whatever violations are going on happen for a reason and happen to bad people. Barbara’s more questioning nature clashes first with Bob and later with Mr. Stewart as this mindless complicity comes up against her friendship with Helen.

As the play progresses Barbara experiences phases of extreme guilt and then anger towards Helen. There is no question that their personal relationship, and the one Helen has with Julie, are extremely positive and valued. The claims Mr. Stewart brings into the house are extremely external and evolve from vague connections to explicit accusations against the Krogers, but even when Barbara (presumably) has the whole story she still voices a wish that she had the courage to betray her country and not her friend… a sentiment we’ve discussed earlier in the class.

While Bob has seemingly disengaged from the Krogers, trusting Stewart and not exhibiting nearly as much discomfort about any duplicity on his part, Barbara’s internal conflict is endless. The question turns from whether or not Helen is a criminal to whether or not Helen can still be her friend and if trust was lost through omission. This exploration of the grey area seems to be the heart of this play and connect deeply with several other that we have read. Helen exemplifies the ‘enigma’ of being several seemingly contradictory things at once, many of them good; this makes her voiced feeling of betrayal at the end even more heartbreaking.