Gary T. Marx

A Tack in the Shoe: Neutralizing and Resisting the New Surveillance

Eleven behavioral techniques of neutralization intended to subvert the collection of personal information are discussed: discovery moves, avoidance moves, piggybacking moves, switching moves, distorting moves, blocking moves, masking moves, breaking moves, refusal moves, cooperative moves and counter-surveillance moves. In Western liberal democracies the advantages of technological and other strategic surveillance developments are often short-lived and contain ironic vulnerabilities. The logistical and economic limits on total monitoring, the interpretive and contextual nature of many human situations, system complexity, and interconnectedness and the vulnerability of those engaged in surveillance to be compromised, provide ample room for resistance. Neutralization is a dynamic adversarial social dance involving strategic moves and counter-moves and should be studied as a conflict interaction process.

What's New About the "New Surveillance"? Classifying for Change and Continuity.

A critique of the dictionary definition of surveillance as “close observation, especially of a suspected person” is offered. Much surveillance is applied categorically and beyond persons to places, spaces, networks and categories of person and the distinction between self and other surveillance can be blurred. Drawing from characteristics of the technology, the data collection process and the nature of the data, this article identifies 28 dimensions that are useful in characterizing means of surveillance. These dimensions highlight the differences between the new and traditional surveillance and offer a way to capture major sources of variation relevant to contemporary social, ethical and policy considerations. There can be little doubt that major changes have occurred. However the normative implications of this are mixed and dependent on the technology in question and evaluative framework. The concept of surveillance slack is introduced. This involves the extent to which a technology is applied, rather than the absolute amount of surveillance. A historical review of the jagged development of telecommunications for Western democratic conceptions of individualism is offered. This suggests the difficulty of reaching simple conclusions about whether the protection of personal information is decreasing or increasing. “We are at any moment those who separate the connected or connect the separate.” Georg Simmel

What's in a Name? Some Reflections on the Sociology of Anonymity.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of either the recent death or coming dominance of anonymity have been greatly exaggerated. This article is a beginning effort to lay out some of the conceptual landscape needed to better understand anonymity and identifiability in contemporary life. I suggest seven types of identity knowledge, involving legal name, location, symbols linked and not linked back to these through intermediaries, distinctive appearance and behavior patterns, social categorization, and certification via knowledge or artifacts. I identify a number of major rationales and contexts for anonymity (free flow of communication, protection, experimentation) and identifiability (e.g., accountability, reciprocity, eligibility) and suggest a principle of truth in the nature of naming , which holds that those who use pseudonyms on the Internet in personal communications have an obligation to indicate they are doing so. I also suggest 13 procedural questions to guide the development and assessment of any in...

Murky conceptual waters: The public and the private

In discussions on the ethics of surveillanceand consequently surveillance policy, thepublic/private distinction is often implicitlyor explicitly invoked as a way to structure thediscussion and the arguments. In thesediscussions, the distinction ‘public’ and ‘private’ is often treated as a uni-dimensional,rigidly dichotomous and absolute, fixed anduniversal concept, whose meaning could bedetermined by the objective content of thebehavior. Nevertheless, if we take a closerlook at the distinction in diverse empiricalcontexts we find them to be more subtle,diffused and ambiguous than suggested. Thus,the paper argues for the treatment of thesedistinctions as multi-dimensional, continuousand relative, fluid and situational orcontextual, whose meaning lies in how they areinterpreted and framed. However, the aim ofthis paper is not to finally ‘sort things out’. The objective is rather to demonstrate thecomplexities of the distinction in variouscontexts and to suggest that those using thedistinction, when considering the ethics andpolitics of surveillance technologies, wouldbenefit from more clearly specifying whichdimensions they have in mind and how theyrelate.

Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent Provocateur and the Informant

This article considers the hitherto unexplored phenomenon of the informant as used by authorities in their response to social movements. The origins and motives of informants, their roles in radical groups, and factors conducive to their becoming agents provocateurs are explored. Suggestions for further research and conclusions about the effects of using informants are offered.

Ethics for the New Surveillance

The Principles of Fair Information Practice are almost three decades old and need to be broadened to take account of new technologies for collecting personal information such as drug testing, video cameras, electronic location monitoring, and the Internet. I argue that the ethics of a surveillance activity must be judged according to the means, the context and conditions of data collection, and the uses/goals, and suggest 29 questions related to this. The more one can answer these questions in a way that affirms the underlying principle (or a condition supportive of it), the more ethical the use of a tactic is likely to be. Four conditions are identified that, when breached, are likely to violate an individuals reasonable expectation of privacy. Respect for the dignity of the person is a central factor and emphasis is put on the avoidance of harm, validity, trust, notice, and permission when crossing personal borders.

Ironies of Social Control: Authorities as Contributors to Deviance Through Escalation, Nonenforcement and Covert Facilitation

Current theoretical approaches to the study of deviance and social control tend to neglect a crucial level of analysis: the specific situation within which rule breaking occurs. I analyze the nature and sources of three types of interdependence between rule enforcers and rule breakers: escalation, nonenforcement and covert facilitation. Each involves the possibility of deviance amplification and illustrates—from the labeling perspective but at a level not previously considered—the ironic insight that authorities often contribute to the deviance they set out to control. I also consider current trends and the implications of this perspective for future theory and research, arguing that social control must be seen as a cause of primary as well as secondary deviance. “[Civil politics] requires an understanding of the complexity of virtue, that no virtue stands alone, that every virtuous act costs something in terms of other virtuous acts, that virtues are intertwined with evil.” Edward Shils

Who Really Gets Stung? Some Issues Raised by the New Police Undercover Work

In the last decade covert law enforcement has expanded in scale and changed in form. Factors responsible for this are briefly considered. The advantages and successes of recent undercover work have been well publicized. Yet the mere fact that a practice is legal should not be sufficient grounds for its use. Its ethical, practical, economic, and so cial implications must also be taken into account. Without denying the positive aspects of undercover work, the paper discusses some disadvantages, costs, and risks which have received inadequate public attention. These are discussed with respect to (1) targets of the in vestigation who may be subjected to trickery, coercion, excessive temptation, and political targeting, (2) undercover police work, which may cause police severe stress, entail lack of supervision, and present police with unique opportunities for corruption, (3) informers, the weakest link in the system, who may exploit their undercover role in a variety of ways, (4) third parties victimized as a result of undercover operations, and (5) the potential of undercover work to contribute unintentionally to crime, through such factors as generation of a mar ket or the provision of ideas, motives, or scarce resources. Recent undercover practices such as ABSCAM and police-run fenc ing fronts may be portents of a subtle and perhaps irreversible change in how social control is carried out. It is important to reflect on wheth er this is the direction in which we wish to see our society move.

Undercover : police surveillance in comparative perspective

The United States and Europe have recently experienced a significant expansion in the use of undercover police tactics and technological means of surveillance. In a democratic society, such tactics raise significant questions for public policy and social research. New and sophisticated forms of crime and social control (and their internationalization) represent an important and neglected topic. Realizing this, the leading scholars in this field created a European and American working group for the comparative study of police surveillance. This collaborative, landmark volume reports the results of their work. It is the first book ever devoted to the comparative study of the topic and includes articles on the historical development of covert policing in Europe and its spread to the United States (where it was extended and recently exported back to Europe), plus detailed accounts of the use of covert tactics in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Sweden, Canada and the United States. Audience: Social scientists, historians, policy makers, lawyers, and criminal justice practitioners.

Citizen Involvement in the Law Enforcement Process: The Case of Community Police Patrols

When institutions fail to meet felt needs, a number of recurring responses on the part of the communities presumably being serviced may be observed. These vary, perhaps in decreasing order of frequency, from passive resignation or withdrawal to reformist and radical politics to efforts to set up wholly new institutions. In earlier periods of American history when people felt that there was too much crime, that their persons or property were in danger, that cherished traditions and values were being threatened, and that regular law enforcement officials were not coping with the problem, vigilante-type efforts frequently emerged (for example, see the discussion in Brown, 1969). The present era is