Surveillance Technology, Privacy and Social Control

Classical perspectives on the development of social control are generally described as the shift from overt, external and punitive to covert, internal and preventive control and may be subsumed as ‘from reactive to proactive social control’. However, the diffusion of advanced technologies supported by effective data management systems has provided a more encompassing, more obscure but less intrusive and more powerful means of surveillance. Given these circumstances, the mode of social control tends to move towards pseudo self-control that relies heavily on the deterrence effect of external agencies or devices. Particularly, in a highly transparent society where most activities are ‘captured’ by an online network of data surveillance, invasion of privacy becomes an integral part of our daily life and the natural attitude that takes the ‘surveillant way of life’ for granted is expected to prevail. The dispute over the introduction of the electronic national identification card in South Korea shows that the Enlightenment ideal of autonomous or self-regulatory control tends to be threatened by the increasing dependence on sophisticated, more unobtrusive, and thus less illegal surveillance technologies. In this vein, a new concept of ‘co-active’ control, that implies ‘choosing to live with ever empowering surveillance technologies’, is suggested as an alternative type of social control to take over from modern proactive control.