The new ways governments, law enforcement agencies, and businesses can keep tabs on people is jaw dropping. This book examines the many new methods of data collection, the rationale behind developing them, the pros and cons of developing these new technologies, and the difficulties of restricting the use of these technologies before laws can be passed to protect citizens from abuses. This technology is getting more sophisticated as well as more common, leaving us to wonder if it really is a progressive development.

Privacy and data protection are recognized as fundamental human rights. Recent developments, however, indicate that security issues are used to undermine these fundamental rights. As new technologies effectively facilitate collection, storage, processing and combination of personal data government agencies take advantage for their own purposes. Increasingly, and for other reasons, the business sector threatens the privacy of citizens as well. The contributions to this book explore the different aspects of the relationship between technology and privacy. The emergence of new technologies threaten increasingly privacy and/or data protection; however, little is known about the potential of these technologies that call for innovative and prospective analysis, or even new conceptual frameworks. Technology and privacy are two intertwined notions that must be jointly analyzed and faced. Technology is a social practice that embodies the capacity of societies to transform themselves by creating the possibility to generate and manipulate not only physical objects, but also symbols, cultural forms and social relations. In turn, privacy describes a vital and complex aspect of these social relations. Thus technology influences people’s understanding of privacy, and people’s understanding of privacy is a key factor in defining the direction of technological development. This book was originally published as a special issue of Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research.

Resisting State Surveillance in the Digital Age provides an in-depth examination of the complexity and diversity of organised opposition to increasing state surveillance powers in the UK. Taking the introduction of the Investigatory Powers Act as a central case study and combining an analysis of publicly available commentary and campaign materials, with detailed expert interviews, this book provides a comprehensive mapping of organised opposition to state surveillance at a time of heightened debate. It reveals the importance of looking at resistance from a multi-actor perspective, capturing the complex relationships between the actors that oppose state surveillance measures. It traces the varied arguments and knowledge that these groups bring to debates, and the–at times unlikely–coalitions that are formed as a result. The state’s mobilization in response, and the strategies designed to defy and diminish the value and knowledge of this opposition are also given much needed scrutiny. This book will be of interest to researchers across the social and political sciences, including sociology, criminology, and socio-legal studies. It will be useful to students studying surveillance and social control or those with an interest in resistance and social movements. Policy professionals and activists may also find its various insights and recommendations useful for future work in this area.

Questions surrounding the concept of freedom versus security have intensified in recent years due to the rise of new technologies. The increased governmental use of technology for data collection now poses a threat to citizens’ privacy and is drawing new ethical concerns. Ethical Issues and Citizen Rights in the Era of Digital Government Surveillance focuses on the risks presented by the usage of surveillance technology in the virtual public sphere and how such practices have called for a re-examination of what limits should be imposed. Highlighting international perspectives and theoretical frameworks relating to privacy concerns, this book is a pivotal reference source for researchers, professionals, and upper-level students within the e-governance realm.

This book analyses some of the key problems explored in Paul Virilio’s theorising on war and security. Paul Virilio has developed a provocative series of writings on how modern societies have shaped the acceleration of military/security technologies – and how technologies of security and acceleration have transformed society, economy and politics. His examination of the connections between geopolitics, war, speed, technology and control are viewed as some of the most challenging and disturbing interventions on the politics of security in the twenty-first century, interventions that help us understand a world that confronts problems that increasingly emerge from the desire to make life safer, faster, networked and more efficient. Security, Technology and Global Politics examines some of the key concepts and concerns in Virilio’s writings on security, society and technology: endo-colonization, fear and the war on terror; cities and panic; cinema and war; ecological security and integral accidents; universities and ideas of progress. Critics often point to an apocalyptic or fatalistic element to Virilio’s writings on global politics, but this book challenges this apocalyptic reading of Virilio’s work, suggesting that – while he doesn’t provide us with easy solutions to the problems we face – the political force in Virilio’s work comes from the questions he leaves us with about speed, security and global politics in times of crisis, terror and fear. This book will be of interest to students of critical security studies, political theory, sociology, political geography, cultural studies and IR in general.

"The state, that must eradicate all feelings of insecurity, even potential ones, has been caught in a spiral of exception, suspicion and oppression that may lead to a complete disappearance of liberties." —Mireille Delmas Marty, Libertés et sûreté dans un monde dangereux, 2010 This book will examine the security/freedom duo in space and time with regards to electronic communications and technologies used in social control. It will follow a diachronic path from the relative balance between philosophy and human rights, very dear to Western civilization (at the end of the 20th Century), to the current situation, where there seems to be less freedom in terms of security to the point that some scholars have wondered whether privacy should be redefined in this era. The actors involved (the Western states, digital firms, human rights organizations etc.) have seen their roles impact the legal and political science fields.

Today, the Internet has become a source of information that no country or company can forgo. It is not only used to communicate or entertain, but most importantly to operate utilities and public services such as banking or air traffic. As the reliance on computer networks across societies and economies keeps growing, so do security risks in cyberspace - referred to as "cybersecurity." Cybersecurity means protecting information and control systems from those who seek to compromise them. It also involves actors, both malicious or protective, policies and their societal consequences. This collection of essays provides a better understanding of the risks, perceptions, and myths that surround cybersecurity by looking at it from three different levels of analysis: the sovereign state, the infrastructure and stakeholders of the Internet, and the individual. The essays explore such issues as information ownership, censorship, cyberwars, cyberterrorism, privacy, and rebellion, bringing together expert knowledge from computer science and the social sciences with case studies. It reviews existing policies and practices and discusses the threats and benefits of living in an increasingly networked world. This authoritative analysis of one of the most controversial and compelling security debates of the twenty-first century will appeal to scholars and practitioners interested in security, international relations and policymaking.

A chilling account of the tradeoff we are willing to make between interactive media technologies and the power of others to watch over--and control--us. This brave new world of electronic marketing and consumption actually lulls consumers into blissful ignorance of how that usage can be--and is being--monitored.

A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. This book is an examination of the effect of contemporary wars (such as the 'War on Terror') on civil life at a global level. Contemporary literature on war is mainly devoted to recent changes in the theory and practice of warfare, particular those in which terrorists or insurgents are involved (for example, the 'revolution in military affairs', 'small wars', and so on). On the other hand, today's research on security is focused, among other themes, on the effects of the war on terrorism, and on civil liberties and social control. This volume connects these two fields of research, showing how 'war' and 'security' tend to exchange targets and forms of action as well as personnel (for instance, the spreading use of private contractors in wars and of military experts in the 'struggle for security') in modern society. This shows how, contrary to Clausewitz's belief war should be conceived of as a "continuation of politics by other means", the opposite statement is also true: that politics, insofar as it concerns security, can be defined as the 'continuation of war by other means'. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, war and conflict studies, terrorism studies, sociology and IR in general. Salvatore Palidda is Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Education at the University of Genoa. Alessandro Dal Lago is Professor of Sociology of Culture and Communication at the University of Genoa.