Liquid Surveillance Liquid Surveillance A Conversation Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon polity Copyright © Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon 2013 The right of Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon to be identifi ed as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2013 by Polity Press Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6282-4 ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6283-1(pb) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset in 11 on 14pt Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Group Limited, Bodmin, Cornwall The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com Contents Preface and acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 David Lyon 1 Drones and social media 18 2 Liquid surveillance as post-p anoptic 52 3 Remoteness, distancing and automation 76 4 In/security and surveillance 100 5 Consumerism, new media and social sorting 121 6 Probing surveillance ethically 132 7 Agency and hope 142 Notes 159 Index 172 v Preface and acknowledgements Surveillance is a growing feature of daily news, refl ect- ing its rapid rise to prominence in many life spheres. But in fact surveillance has been expanding quietly for many decades and is a basic feature of the modern world. As that world has transformed itself through successive generations, so surveillance takes on an ever changing character. Today, modern societies seem so fl uid that it makes sense to think of them being in a ‘liquid’ phase. Always on the move, but often lacking certainty and lasting bonds, today’s citizens, workers, consumers and travellers also fi nd that their movements are monitored, tracked and traced. Surveillance slips into a liquid state. This book examines through conversation how far the notion of liquid surveillance helps us grasp what is happening in the world of monitoring, tracking, tracing, sorting, checking and systematic watching that we call surveillance. This provides the key thread through our conversation. It engages with both historical debates over the panopticon design for surveillance as well as contemporary developments in a globalized gaze that vi Preface and acknowledgements seems to leave nowhere to hide, and simultaneously is welcomed as such. But it also stretches outwards to touch large questions sometimes unreached by debates over surveillance. It is a conversation in which each par- ticipant contributes more or less equally to the whole. The two of us have been in touch, discussing sporadi- cally issues of new technologies, surveillance, sociology and social theory since the late 1970s (or early 1980s, we can’t recall). Bauman has continued to use the panop ticon critique and related themes in his work and has encouraged Lyon in his growing analysis of surveillance. Most recently, we prepared back-t o- back presentations for the Surveillance Studies Network biannual conference in 2008 (Bauman’s had to be given in absentia). Lyon’s was published in International Political Sociology (Dec. 2010) as ‘Liquid surveillance: the contribution of Zygmunt Bauman’s work to sur- veillance studies’. Bauman’s contribution to that event is unpublished. Our conversation occurred by email between September and November 2011. We’re very grateful for the very thoughtful help given by some valued colleagues in reading our conversa- tion and making suggestions for how things might be better put, and made more accessible to a wider audi- ence: Katja Franko Aas, Kirstie Ball, Will Katerberg, Keith Tester. Warm thanks are also due to Emily Smith, Research Associate at the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University, Canada for help with this project, and Andrea Drugan, our Polity editor, and Ann Bone, copy- editor, for their encouragement and advice. Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon vii