Surveillance and Control in the 21st Century Security State

This is a post I have been working on over the last 6 months in which time I have been working on the topic of the demise of neoliberalism in western societies and what it is being replaced by (a security state based on an authoritarian form of "democracy"). I believe that the points made in this argument are becoming more relevant everyday.

(Source: redflag.org.au)

One of the main issues associated with the 21st century security state is that of surveillance and control. In totalitarian societies, surveillance is generally carried out by secret services, but also, through propaganda programs aimed at convincing people to report suspicious behaviours, which only serves to turn neighbour upon neighbour and to elevate suspicion within the community.

This is also another tactic of the 21st security state, but also of the preceding form of governance - neoliberal government - to control the population to their own ends, which are? Well, that seems to be quite opaque. It has been argued within the governmentality literature (which has taken its theoretical lead from the work of Michel Foucault), that neoliberal governmentality has no utopia in mind, and perhaps not even an overall programmatic goal to aim for. In the literature, neoliberal government (the act of governing, rather than the institution of government) is characterised as putting out fires, moving from one crisis to the next, and only using band-aid solutions for the immediate crisis. This characterisation appears to be fairly apt except for one major factor.

In the 1990s, the heyday of research on neoliberal governmentality, governments were not as authoritarian as they are today. With this caveat in mind, I would suggest that we have entered a new period of neoliberalism in which there is an aim – it is not to aim for utopia, but is driven solely by two factors: 1) paying back the corporate elites who are responsible for you and your party winning government; and 2) the self-seeking motivations of most politicians (but not all).

Surveillance is part of this equation. Surveillance creates a passive population, as characterised by Bentham’s Panopticon.

(Source: chengduliving.com

The Panopticon effect is well-and-truly apparent in a whole range of government practices. Let’s look at the Australian government welfare system. After decimating the services through funding cuts, and the terrible labeling of welfare recipients as ‘bludgers off the system and off honest taxpayers’, the bulk of the services are now delivered in the online environment. The online environment for these services is a well-constructed, monolithic, labyrinth that takes an intelligent person hours to wade through just to find information. Imagine the struggle of someone who is not trained to read such legalistic documentation? The end result is that many people either forgo the payments (which makes the unemployment rate look better for the government), or they join the massive queues at the under-staffed offices and get terrible service because the staff are enormously stressed. It is a recipe for frustration and maybe worse, perhaps violence. Not a good scenario.

This is a familiar situation in relation to government services in the neoliberal era. However, it has significant implications for surveillance. In recent years, government is seeking to coordinate its (slashed) public service institutions so that agencies talk to and cross-reference each other to build up a bigger picture of what the Australian community is doing, and to watch what particular individuals are doing. This has become a particular issue in relation to the terrorist threat that has arisen in recent decades, particularly since the 9/11 tragedy. However, one may well ask whether this is even a viable strategy despite the efficiencies gained through the use of electronic technology in tracking and legislation for the collection metadata.

With the achingly inefficient state of Australia’s public institutions (which have been DELIBERATELY run-down by government so that they can be privatized in the future), this widespread tracking and surveillance may not even be viable unless public services are refunded with these specific aims in mind. Then we would truly have an Orwellian state.

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(Source: philosophersforchange.org)

Nevertheless, these forms of surveillance are very widespread adding to the control over populations by various agencies. For example, the proliferation of CCTV cameras in suburban streets has led to a certain panoptonic policing of one’s own behaviours, again adding to the increasing passivity of the population, and in general, eating away at the heart of democracy, as a passive population is more likely to accept the actions of government. Smartcards, electronic detection gates, the proliferation of security guards (most of whom are employed by private companies), legislation for ISPs to save two years of metadata of computer users (almost the entire population), and so on, are having a negative effect on freedom, and ultimately, on democracy.

If people still believe that we are in the same governmental ‘system’ as we were living in 40 years ago and beyond, they are highly naïve. We have entered a new configuration of government for the 21st century, one which can be characterised as ‘authoritarian democracy’. The democratic part of this equation must be in parenthesis because it is ONLY through the ballot box that democracy remains, which is arguably, the weakest part of the democratic tradition, and is also very open to abuse, manipulation, propaganda, and rigging.

This thirst for control of the population through surveillance and other means, appears to be a goal of neoliberal government, rather than a means to an end. Ultimately, in the neoliberal era, the major political parties often pass bi-partisan legislation increasingly in favour of the corporate elites, who do not really care which party is in power as long as they are looked after.

What these parties and the corporate elites do need, however, is a passive population which does not question the status quo, continues to consume recklessly, and which does not blame the corporate elites. This gives great control to government and the corporate elites. However, the passivity of the population is rapidly changing as well, with the people becoming increasingly militant and outspoken - hence, the development of an authoritarian form of 'democracy'.

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(Source: philosophersforchange.org)

Interestingly, capitalism from the 1930s through to half way through the 1970s, for all its faults, did provide a good standard of living for large parts of the population in western nations, with robust welfare states and high-wage, medium-cost economies. One could argue that this kept the population passive as most people, being relatively uneducated in matters of politics and power, were quite happy with what they perceived to be the benefits of capitalism (home on quarter-care, two cars, labour-saving devices, and so on). These benefits are now being diminished by the neoliberal form of government.

It will be interesting to see the public’s levels of satisfaction with capitalism diminish over coming years – the ramifications of this will be profound – and where it takes us, nobody knows at this point in time.