Concept: Surveillance
Definition: to watch someone or some event, often pertaining to an enemy, for the purpose of gathering information to monitor movements, and to locate and strike suspected terrorists and foreign agents
Related Terms: spying, monitoring, Big Brother, GPS, imaging and mapping technologies
Description: While the term espionage usually connotes human agents who are operating on behalf of governments, surveillance is associated with sophisticated technologies in which remote sensing via satellites provides images to military and intelligence establishments. This “cataclysmic shift” in the ability to represent space came about through a series of developments: the deployment of GPS satellites in 1991; the distribution of data and imagery in 1992; widespread mapping made possible by Google Earth in 2005 (Kurgan 2013). As these technologies grew, it was also possible to make false claims on the basis of the images they gathered. Hence, fatal mistakes were made in identifying enemy positions and resources, as in the infamous case made to the United Nations in 2003 for the invasion of Iraq by then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
In her book, Close Up at a Distance (2013), Laura Kurgan cites this example (with its devastating consequences) to argue that satellite images are interpretations, not self-evident facts: they “have been stripped of their data and presented to us as pictures already interpreted by experts.” She reminds us that data are representations and subject to the conventions and aesthetics of narratives, and also that we need to engage with the technologies themselves in order to be critically aware of their function and use. What is perhaps most relevant for our purposes is that surveillance is no longer simply the domain of governments, but involves companies, non-governmental organizations and consumers.
Perhaps not surprisingly, surveillance has become a major preoccupation of contemporary cinema and television series. In Cache (2006), a series of videotapes are delivered mysteriously to the home of a white French couple and shed light on the condition of France’s Algerian immigrants. The popularity of The Imitation Game (2014) may rest on the clarity of moral vision that a previous era of espionage embodied, and that could still see the computer scientist as a hero. Since then, the waters have gotten murkier. The intersection between media, surveillance, and politics could not be stronger.
S.C. 2024
Further Readings:
Kurgan, Laura. Close Up at a Distance: Mapping. Technology and Politics. New York: Zone Books, 2013.
Zimmer, Catherine. Surveillance Cinema. New York: NYU Press, 2015.
The Lives of Others, 2006 (Germany; dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck).
Person of Interest, 2011-2016 (CBS).
