Cognitive Capital and Spaces of mobility, Session 2:

ÒSocieties of Control & New Technologies of SurveillanceÓ

Saturday November 1, 10-12

Campus LinnŽ, Annedalshuset, Floor 1.

 

 

 

Preliminary schedule:

  1. Karl PalmŒs (chair) introduces the panel.
  2. Marietta Radomska
  3. Mark Klamberg
  4. Kerstin Elias

Panel description:

New forms of surveillance have become central to the functioning of several contemporary institutions. Digitalisation of human behaviour and advances in data mining capabilities are allowing states and corporations to order the world on the basis of prediction, pattern-recognition and preemtion.

For instance, corporations such as Google and Wal-Mart are successfully deploying these techniques of surveillance to tap into the inter-psychological flows of consumer preferences. Similarly, ÒpanspectricÓ methodologies are making their inroads into the sciences, reshaping the natural sciences, as well as urban studies, social sciences and humanities.

However, as is often the case, the state of the art of new technology is controlled by states. Since the 1990s discussions regarding the US ECHELON, a number of similar surveillance systems have been debated – the Swiss Onyx, the French so-called ÒFrenchelonÓ and the US ADVISE, ANCHORY, CAPPS II, MATRIX, PANDA and TIA programmes. The most recent example of such discussion is the controversy regarding the surveillance programme planned by the Swedish FRA (the National Defence Radio Establishment).

This panel will interrogate the technological components of, and rationales for, this type of surveillance. It will also discuss the modes of resistance that have sprung up around it. Each author will be granted 20 minutes for presentation, followed by an additional 15 minutes of discussion.

 

Participants

Kerstin Elias, urban planner, Gothenburg Regional Association of Local Authorities. Preliminary title: Geodemographic analysis – productive aspects. (With Jonathan Metzger, Ph.D.)

Mark Klamberg, Ph.D candidate, law, Stockholm University. Preliminary title: Signals Intelligence in Sweden – the legal perspective.

Karl PalmŒs, Ph.D, sociology, Gothenburg Research Institute, University of Gothenburg.

Marietta Radomska, Ph.D candidate, political philosophy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan. Preliminary title: Grasping the actual... Towards the control society.