Computers, Surveillance, and Privacy
From computer networks to grocery store checkout scanners, it is easier and easier for governments, employers, advertisers, and individuals to gather detailed and sophisticated information about each of us. In this important new collection, the authors question the impact of these new technologies of surveillance on our privacy and our culture.
Contributors: Jonathan P. Allen, Colin J. Bennett, Simon G. Davies, Oscar H. Gandy Jr., Calvin C. Gotlieb, Rob Kling, Gary T. Marx, Abbe Mowshowitz, Judith A. Perrolle, Mark Poster, Priscilla M. Regan, James B. Rule.
Informative and well organized, this collection offers a timely discussion of issues that will become even more important in the future, as computerization and new technologies take over more and more domains of life and threaten individual privacy and autonomy.
Contemporary Sociology
From computer networks to grocery store checkout scanners, it is easier and easier for governments, employers, advertisers, and individuals to gather detailed and sophisticated information about each of us. In this important new collection, the authors question the impact of these new technologies of surveillance on our privacy and our culture.
Although surveillance-literally some people “watching over” others-is as old as social relationships themselves, with the advent of the computer age this phenomenon has acquired new and distinctive meanings. Technological advances have made it possible for surveillance to become increasingly global and integrated-both commercial and government-related personal data flows more frequently across national boundaries, and the flow between private and public sectors has increased as well.
Addressing issues of the global integration of surveillance, social control, new information technologies, privacy violation and protection, and workplace surveillance, the contributors to Computers, Surveillance, and Privacy grapple with the ramifications of these concerns for society today. Timely and provocative, this collection will be of vital interest to anyone concerned with resistance to social control and incursions into privacy.
Contributors: Jonathan P. Allen; Colin J. Bennett, U of Victoria, British Columbia; Simon G. Davies, U of Essex/Greenwich U, London; Oscar H. Gandy Jr., U of Pennsylvania; Calvin C. Gotlieb, U of Toronto; Rob Kling, U of California, Irvine; Gary T. Marx, U of Colorado, Boulder; Abbe Mowshowitz, City College of New York; Judith A. Perrolle, Northeastern U; Mark Poster, U of California, Irvine; Priscilla M. Regan, George Mason U; James B. Rule, SUNY, Stony Brook.
David Lyon is professor of sociology at Queen’s University, Canada. His previous books include The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society (Minnesota, 1994). Elia Zureik is also professor of sociology at Queen’s University, Canada, and coedited (with Dianne Hartling) The Social Context of the New Information and Communication Technologies (1987).
Informative and well organized, this collection offers a timely discussion of issues that will become even more important in the future, as computerization and new technologies take over more and more domains of life and threaten individual privacy and autonomy.
Contemporary Sociology
I cannot overemphasize the importance of the overall focus of the book on the encroachment of public surveillance technologies, and do not have space to communicate fully all that I learned in the process of reading this book.
Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies