The World's Tabs and The Rise of Technology

 For much of his book David Lyon has explored both the history and general effect of the growth of surveillance. However in his chapter "The Surveillance State: Keeping Tabs on You" he begins to explore the how prevalent these systems literally are in our society and in related ones. He starts the chapter by noting a system in Canada where the central government (in the 1990's) operated a total of 2,20 databases with about twenty files per person, and where 10% of the population's names were contained on the police computer. The shocking thing to imagine is if these were the levels in the 1990's, what could have the evolution of technology past that have done. Fortunately, as Lyon notes later, American systems are more likely to rely on existing systems such as Social Security instead of developing all new systems to tackle the growing amount of information available. However, the vast majority of this information in this chapter was centered around systems developing in other countries. For instance, a single network in Thailand that, in 2006, gathered personal information on 65 million Thai citizens. In addition, the chapter also contains a lot of information on British systems, such as the the practice of the "whole person concept," which means that information on citizens would be available to a variety of systems and organizations in Britain. A third foreign example was the time taken to go into the Canadian carded health care system. In Canada, the Health Number system where each citizen has a health number printed on a card that identified their type of health care and other personal information. While this system advocated more privacy and faster service, there were  concerns, legitimately expressed, over the potential for abuse of the more integrated personal health information system. This final example also noted the value of "smartcards" in a surveillance capacity. Lyon concludes the chapter by raising the question of whether or not this increased surveillance capacity truly promotes totalitarianism as the technology helping it rises or not.

Lyon's next chapter focuses more in on what I'm truly interested in in the terms of surveillance society and the rise of surveillance technology. In this chapter, Lyon delves into the aspect policing plays into information gathering and sways away from the systems that hold information in terms of the central government. To start, Lyon explores what he calls "the single most significant item" about how individuals are identified in terms of UPI's (universal personal identifiers), which are used to pinpoint individuals more easily. The context of UPI's makes it easier to learn about suspect individuals that the government requires information on, and can make tracking down certain individuals much easier by holding information about residence, place of employment, or even just a zipcode. Later, Lyon examines the use of information and registration in certain criminal cases. For example, he notes the American National Auto Theft Bureau, and how these organizations can be used to help locate cars by registration or even license plate number. However, the potential for abuse still lingers about these systems, and how integrated these systems seem to be. However, the key chunk of this section of Lyon's book lies in his statement that "All the advanced societies possess large-scale computer systems for policing." For instance, the National Crime Information Center (run by the FBI) had, in 1994, records on seventeen million people, and handled a million transactions every day. Another example would be the British Police National Computer, which was meant to hold vehicle records, but now holds fifteen million records including fingerprints, convictions, and wanted or missing persons. However, Lyon also notes that reaction to these events has not always been positive, noting unrest that occurred in Liverpool and London over "community policing." As a conclusion, Lyon goes into worldwide policing, such as the link between Britain's General Communications Headquarters and the NSA. Finally, in a note I found very interesting, Lyon makes note of the "video vigilantes" phenomenon where citizens with cameras often videotape police brutality or crimes and in doing so help policing overall, or, in other cases, rebel against the growing aspect of social control by government systems and national policing systems.