“Current systems of public policy and decision-making evolved alongside the Second Industrial Revolution, when decision-makers had time to study a specific issue and develop the necessary response or appropriate regulatory framework” (Schwab, 2016b: para. 21).
Technological innovation and the fundamental nature of the ICT revolution in surveillance pervade structures throughout the social, political and economic realms and require continuous adaption in terms of transparency and efficiency. “It is, therefore, critical that we invest attention and energy in multi-stakeholder cooperation across academic, social, political, national and industry boundaries” (Schwab, 2016a: 4). Particularly regarding regulations where linearity limits the recognition of these complex mechanisms and their power to profoundly transform the society in myriad directions in a dynamic urban environment. Technologies determine the modern world and in their complexity and scale, it is unlike anything humanity has experienced before. Even though some innovations are still in their infancy, they reach “an inflection point in their development as they build on and amplify each other in a fusion of technologies across the physical, digital and biological worlds” (Schwab, 2016a: 1). Modern surveillance technologies inexorably necessitate a multidisciplinarity and interconnectedness in order to exponentially exhaust the controlling potential of the implemented systems. Hence, privacy is “[o]ne of the greatest individual challenges posed by new information technologies [...], yet the tracking and sharing of information about us is a crucial part of the new connectivity” (Schwab, 2016b: para. 28). Having said this, a paradoxical double-sidedness evokes through the convergence of the digital and biological world. New Technologies enable citizens to circumvent or engage with governments and public authorities, while they simultaneously “gain new technological powers to increase their control over populations, based on pervasive surveillance systems and the ability to control digital infrastructure” (Schwab, 2016b: para. 19).
The notion of power initially derives from the legitimacy to decide over life and death (Foucault, 1978: 135-6), but the mechanisms have profoundly transformed since ancient times: from a deductive force attempting to suppress life with the threat of death to a power exerting positive influence on life „to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations” (Foucault, 1978: 137). The supervision of the biological process in order to maintain and perpetuate the existence of human kind is established through regulatory controls and an entire series of bio-political intervention (Foucault, 1978: 139). Biological power over the population requires the controlled insertion of bodies into systems and the adjustment of collective phenomena to structure behavior through implementing mechanisms ensuring a specific, favorable outcome. Therefore, “power is defined, from this perspective, as the capacity to structure the field of action of the other, to intervene in the domain of the other’s possible actions” (Lazzarato, 2002: 107). One important consequence of biological power is the normalization of power beyond the formal legal system. Judicial institutions are increasingly incorporated into a continuum of administrative apparatuses whose functions are regulative and normative (Foucault, 1978: 144). The right of existence has increasingly become the underlining demand of political struggles and power has increased political significance in order to discipline the body and regulate the population (Foucault, 1978: 145-6).
Surveillance technology exerts disciplining power while being “nurtured in complex social and economic circumstances, and the latter necessarily have consequences for their genesis” (Webster, 2014: 51). Latour (2008: 151-2) focuses on the dichotomy of social constructivism and technological determinism with his actor network approach. Implemented technical systems derive from a synthesis of society, organizations, and institutions. Technologies with their anthropomorphic characteristics can prescribe behavior of actors and steer it towards certain directions. “Prescription is the moral and ethical dimension of mechanisms [...] [and] no human is as relentlessly moral as a machine” (Latour, 2008: 157). Surveillance technologies are anthropomorphic in the sense that they are developed by humans, substitute the required action of humans and permanently occupy that position and prescribe human action. Furthermore, they transcend the boundary of mechanisms deriving from social delegation or the projection of human character (Latour, 2008: 160). Replacing control mechanism to a technology like camera systems does not make it a mere mechanism even though the effect is uniform, but leads to an inflation of delegation. The descriptively analyzed proliferation of surveillance mechanisms enforces the difference between behavior and action, which is primarily not a natural one since scenes in artificial urban areas presuppose role expectations from its transcribed actors (Latour, 2008: 165-77). Such prescriptions are carried over the human and lead to the difference between behavior and action. Behavior in this regard resembles human conduct related to inscribed social norms, while an action is performed to accomplish a particular purpose. Hence, surveillance systems constantly look “for social links sturdy enough to tie all of us together or for moral laws that would be inflexible enough to make us behave properly” (Latour, 2008: 152).
Technological determinism and moreover social constructivism is not only latently visibly in ICT but in artificially implemented mechanisms throughout smart cities. When relating it to McLuhan’s quote “the medium is the message”, the implemented and installed devices or intermediaries of defensive urbanism have a particular predestination inscribed. Cities are littered with behavior determining architecture and while in some cases they are very useful, in others, the pose a demeaning manifestation of power exertion over a marginalized part of the population. The complex constellation of physical space and the underlying ideas and goals are important to comprehend how control operates and how it is constituted in an artificial, conceptualized environment and spatialization of power (Koskela, 2003: 296). To understand the spatial organization of modern smart cities one should critically consider the spatial construction and their interpretation as such artifacts can play myriad roles in this particular context. While Verbeek (2011: 52) imposes the role of a moral mediator on technologies in their intended context instead of a neutral intermediary, we
would argue that the unintended or latently inscribed consequences can be racist in the circumstances in which they function. In that, we leave out the intended safety ambitions and moral agendas as they are not necessarily of a discriminative nature.
This resembles Merton’s (1976) influential article, titled “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action”. Those unanticipated consequences include ignorance, an imperious immediacy of interest, basic values, self-defeating prediction, and error. Ignorance concerns epistemological errors and an incomplete analysis in a process of anticipation driven by immediate interests overpowering the long-term effects. Prediction is based on incorrect conclusions stemming from past deductions, which can lead to self- defeating prophecies as solutions to anticipated future problems are implemented without having the consequences in mind. In terms of basic values, they are interdependent with consequences and might lead to unfavorable long-term results. When applied to surveillance, there may be a multitude of unanticipated consequences because watching the world through surveillance cameras implies changing the world. If technologies for social control are implemented in one area, the issue those devices were installed for might only appear in another area. These unanticipated consequences can exclusively be solved by the trajectory of omnipresence and ubiquity (Gray, 2003: 317) or the significant increase of panoptic power by technological innovations like biometric software. “The negative ways in which urban dwellers may experience facial recognition are all the more salient because they are not countered by the feelings of security they are meant to instill” (Gray, 2003: 325). Furthermore, informal social control declines as responsibility is taken away from the individual level (Koskela, 2003: 294), but potential drawbacks of facial recognition technology “are at risk of being ignored or viewed as irrelevant compared to the immediate threat of further terrorist attacks” (Gray, 2003: 319). With reference to databases for biometric software, the continuum of possibilities ranges from a focus on criminals to the holistic inclusion of all citizens depending on the classification of risk in societies. Regardless of purpose, the appropriate usage of authorized information collection is based on trust and the sentiments are mutable depending on the risk evaluation (Gray, 2003: 321-2). Surveillance also increasingly focuses on the future and its prediction by integrating gathered information in simulated models of reality or probabilistic statements for risk management (Gray, 2003: 319; Koskela, 2003: 305).
Social control entails anticipatory conformity despite a process of individualization in what Beck (1992) called new modernity. Modernity has started a process of individualization and liberation of the determination by structural or spatial constraints, which enabled them to reflexively construct society. Though, with industrial developments and globalization, new unprecedented risks emerged for society. In a risk society (Beck, 1992: 22-23), the mass media and scientific and legal professions are fundamental to the process of reflexive modernization since they are in charge of defining risks and socially construct them within a public discourse over the definition, assessment, and identification. If risks become visible through social definition, the risk society “is also the science, media and information society. Thus new antagonisms grow up between those who produce risk definitions and those who consume them” (Beck, 1992: 46). The invisible nature of surveillance, its consequences and ontological insecurities and the solutions thereof are transforming into epistemological concepts created by the legitimized interpretation of social problems. These conceptualizations undermine the rationality of claims and awareness of risks. Hence, exceptional conditions may become the norm as surveillance encourages conflict via purification, exclusion, and segregation of particular groups.
Moreover, the revolutionary innovations in surveillance technology along with defensive urban architecture have a military connotation. In other words, the absence of personnel authoritarian force creates the force of our times (Koskels, 2003: 303). The potential of the concept surveillance to address urban insecurities and fears can exponentially increase with innovations such as databases and algorithmic software as tools to detect subjects considered dangerous. Yet, it also transforms society in unanticipated directions and causes discrepancies on political and economical levels. The punitive potential of control is interconnected with information analysis, and the ability to digitally archive content “represents a leap in this disciplinary influence” (Gray, 2003: 315). Biometric software still has to undergo developments before mass application, but the potential disciplinary power, when combined with surveillance cameras, is unprecedented. Especially when private and public surveillance is combined, spatial control reaches a new dimension if the presence of individuals and their digital identities stored in databases are permanently, yet invisibly, monitored. Apart from those negative aspects, the positive ones in terms of economy, authority or security are sacrosanct, concerning the prevention of identity fraud, automated tracking of terrorism suspects or pedophiles. Nevertheless, until now the error rates of such systems are high and incorrect matches would squander manpower resources and create a deceptive sense of security when implemented. Furthermore, the risks of a mass application of premature biometric software are high, but the possibilities of inexpensive solutions for urban control so tempting that research and innovation are stimulated (Gray, 2003: 316-7).
“There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interiorising to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over, and against, himself. A superb formula: power exercised continuously and for what turns out to be a minimal cost” (Foucault, 1980: 155).
The consequences of ostensible control, whether intended or unintended, are reinforcing existing power relations rather than challenging them and the emergence of other forms of power exertion with simultaneous social erosion (Koskela, 2003: 295-301). Among intended consequences is the exclusion of delinquent or deviant behavior. Unintended consequences might be eliminating the openness and lifestyles, which are considered incompatible especially since visual appearances form the basis for prejudice and social sorting or inflated stereotypes (Lyon, 2001: 58-63). “The intolerant or racist attitude of the ones responsible for surveillance is mediated and even reinforced by the cameras” (Koskela, 2003: 301). The goal of surveillance is “to induce [...] a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automate functioning of power“ (Foucault, 1995: 201) while embarking towards “a transparent society” (Foucault, 1980: 152). Constant visibility implies self-subjection since the control mechanisms have the unverifiable technical possibility to permanently monitor individuals. Those functional characteristics of surveillance in urban areas lead to an assumption of responsibility for the constraints of power relations, evoking an internalization of control, rules, and norms by manufacturing conscience and adapting behavioral patterns (Foucault, 1995: 201-3). This resembles the political and economic argument of efficient surveillance and exertion of power, which is used to legitimize surveillance technologies because it provides the possibility to control urban space with fewer personnel. Thus, such mechanisms inherently influence behavioral paradigms and deter deviant behavior with disciplining through constant scrutiny, whereas interpersonal trust erodes and subsequently evokes the need for more surveillance. This emotional state created by institutionalized surveillance is mutable and ambivalent due to the unpredictable dynamic of insecurity, resistance or power (Koskela, 2003: 300). Furthermore, the increasing automation and computerization of surveillance render systems independent from legitimized authorities exercising it. Automation together with anonymity intensify social erosion and subsequently undermine the legitimating argument of safety enhancement. Then again, anonymity is considered an urban value, which is destabilized by modern surveillance technology, leading to a subtle power surfacing in assimilated purposeful actions and transforming public spaces to “pseudo-public spaces like those in shopping malls” (McCahill, 1998: 52).
The notion of anonymity has been reflected by Simmel (1903), who influenced urban discourse with his idea of modern metropolises as a place where strangers, unknown to each other, congregate together based on the complex functions of a monetary economy. This circulation of commodities disintegrates the cities’ inhabitants while intimate contacts and interpersonal communications decrease and shift towards objectivity. The interaction in cities is characterized by casual contact and anonymity with new forms of communication to arrange the arising tension between the strangers in terms of their respective privacy and similarities. Even though his theory was envisioned long before modern surveillance technology emerged, Simmel (1903) considers the urban inhabitants as an abstract subject without exclusion or boundaries in public space.
Baumann (1991: 54-6) believes the ambivalence of the stranger is a threat to society since strangers in their hybridity question the dualism of exclusion or inclusion as well as presence and absence. Besides focusing on classification and clear separation, his perspective is optimistic, as he considers the increasing fragmentation and differentiation as a chance of tolerance. Lyon’s (2002; 2007) position on segregation and social sorting is a more dystopian one. For him, it increases hostile racial stereotypes and decreases tolerance. Furthermore, classification based on visual characteristics intensifies the homogenization of the urban population, because “in many situations certain categories of persons may not be authorized to be present, and that should they be present, this in itself will constitute an improper act” (Goffman, 1966: 11).
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